CJ, I would be a dammed sight more comfortable about the future of this if your mob hadn't changed their tune from "block" to "passing with amendments". Eg Ludlam here:

http://www.smartcompany.com.au/politics/20091217-google-greens-and-labor-mp-object-to-conroy-s-internet-filter/print.html

Right now you would have to say the odds are this is going to get up in some form.

If Labor do this they will inherit fred niles and one nations spot at the bottom of my ballot paper.

walk with me: "SM, child porn, horse porn, incest or any of that way out sh@t I think the world can do without"

I shouldn't be wasting time responding to this wwm, as we have been over it so many times here. But this pisses my off so much, I can hold back.

Firstly, no one here disagrees that a world without those things would be no worse off. Very few people want to see it, and only the mentally ill want their kids to see it. So if you think that is what the argument is about, you have it 100% wrong.

Secondly, what is proposed won't stop anyone who does like it from seeing that stuff. It will still be there, available on the internet for all. If you think otherwise, consider this: the government publishes a list of every book, film and game they refuse classification for, along with a reason for why it was banned. Thus censorship today in Australia is a completely open process, functioning in much the same way as our open court system. For the mandatory filter this situation will be reversed. We will not be allowed to know what was banned, let alone why. This is the single biggest criticism of the entire plan. They could cut the legs from under the anti-censorship movement by just making internet censorship as open as it is for other media. So why not just do that? Because if someone determined knows there is a tasty URL out there, it is easy to bypass the filter undetectably to get at it. To put it bluntly, the ISP filter will leak like a sieve - and they know it. So if they published a banned list of URL's, it would become the favourite bookmark page for every testosterone driven school boy in country. Meanwhile, the rest of us who wouldn't go there anyway will have our internet filtered.

(cont'd...)

(cont'd...)

Thirdly, although no one particularly likes it, for the most part horse porn, SM and the like are harmless. It is just consenting adults indulging in perverse activities that I personally find ick. The things aren't harmless (like incest) are illegal, meaning they are already "filtered" far more strongly than proposed mandatory filter would. That is to say if you download them, you are thrown in jail.

Fourthly, the filter won't just ban stuff you find disagreeable. It bans all illegal things. This includes information about Euthanasia. Anti-abortion sites have been banned. Rudd said government leaks are illegal, so I guess they would be banned too. Thus you can be absolutely sure some activities you personally support will be banned because some noisy majority thinks they could be harmful and has managed to make them illegal.

Fifthly, because this banned list must be secret, you won't know exactly what "illegal things" the government has decided you are supposedly so horrible, so corrupting to us mere ordinary citizens, that we can not be trusted to see them!

So wwm, you are telling me because you might be offended by some harmless if objectionable content on the web, you want the government to control of what I can see, without me being able to see what they are doing. And you expect me to take this quietly. Not bloody likely.

These poly-ticks are beginning to play with fire, you aint seen nothin yet.

I know this has been on the agenda for quite a while now, but I wonder if the recent killing of the ETS has spurred this on faster? It is of course the internet that is fueling the war against the carbon cultists and it is the internet that is educating people on subjects never spoken about before in the education system.

The internet is waking people up and the poly-ticks don't like it!

I wanted to write more about this, but these past two governments have made me fearful of free speech, these are sad days in the once wonderful land of Oz!

CJ,
Can you explain to me how SM is even remotely correct on this?

He makes the *political* scare point indicating some sort of nefarious plot. The Labor party couldn't run a crooked chook raffle without telegraphing the fix, let alone some dark and devious 'Big Brother' operation. i.e. 'smokescreen', for what?

And of course the Liberal complexion is far from the odd melanoma or ten. to either side of the argument.

He, no more wants to talk about freedom of speech than Minchin does. He simply wants to sensitize the people to the evils of Labor and paint the Libs as the party of freedom (excuse me while I chuckle at the oxymoron).

Notwithstanding, I would be interested to hear how you figure it's a smokescreen