Rstuart.

"Nothing else needs to be said- actually no, there is more- this is nothing but abhorrent to a free society and another attempt to cripple Australia's development by access to free information (except the illegal porn- as it's the only content that has no practical use and I could assume is already being filtered by service providers here and worldwide)- absolutely everything else- be it Euthanasia sites, anti-abortion sites, even terrorist advocacy sites should be unrestricted if we want people that can access information outside the scare-media polluting our papers, radio and TV in order to weigh the merits and understand whatever people they would want to know about." Quoted by king H.

Come on stue! A horses what-see up who know,s what?, the king said it for me. What for the new and naive?, not all are computer savvy, so who protects them? filters? You know the sh@t Iam talking about and you know Iam all for freedom of speech. Its a consumer trap! The courts are full of innocent net surfers, and don't tell me people are all up to speed. Many don't know the laws concerning down loads, lots don't give it second thought, again! its a consumer trap, and its our duty to protect themselves from themselves.

or where does is stop? Come on mate. I said one can go to your local XXX store and buy what turns you on without the public having to monitor those that will get the shock of their lives.

I agree to disagree. And if you cant get your bonkings from your partner ( may it be a horse or snake... or ten foot dildo), and you say, your curiosity is threatened? Mate!....... ) You know what I,ve out lined.

"illegal porn- as it's the only content that has no practical use"

And this my point.

Walk with me,

If you bothered to read the article the "test" also showed:

-That 68% of the sites banned were legal (RC can include a lot of discussion sites, gambling, etc),
-The filter was extremely easy to bypass,
-The "child porn" sites that were blocked were not viewable by accident. (as it is illegal you need a password),
-there are millions of porn sites that continuously change their domains

In short:
-it doesn't work,
-As the list is secretive and "complaints based", the main purpose is political and financial control by the state.

Examinator, it would appear that big brother is labor. If you want "proof", there has been hundreds of articles written by many experts, and this is not the first time the topic has come up for discussion. Perhaps you would care to do some reading before launching such an incoherent post.

I might also add that I'm against the principal of the government making a porn filter to quite an extent too, I'm just giving the concept some leeway for my last point;
-Except for material that specifically involves the actual act of involuntary assault or participation of a minor- both of which DO cause harm to the participant involved (which may include bestiality), on what grounds do the government otherwise have to censor other material?
-That a compulsory filter would block an adult from accessing material he/she wants (minus the illegal sites that have already BEEN blocked by other organizations) by extension of the previous point.
-That business and religious groups might get input into what is abhorrent or not- totally corrupting a censorship system
-That a government would waste taxpayers money making a program to which countless other versions ALREADY EXIST ONLINE- the SAME internet that idiots need protection from.

-The dumbest part is, to see internet porn you actually have to TRY to access it- meaning the kids would have actually TYPED some pornographic term in with the obvious intent of accessing pornographic material- after turning "safe search" OFF.

Kids do try to access it Hazza. That is the point - even if soft porn was considered okay by some - afterall kids can get a playboy from a mate or older sibling perhaps, it is the extreme sites that are of concern.

When I ran a business I had an online site as well (many years ago) and sometimes when searching for various wholesalers a few porn sites would pop up with the most inane search terms. The most bizarre was 'greetings card' and 'gift wrapping' or similar. Things have got better and some of the free or purchased internet filters have cleaned things up a bit.

A clean feed option would not be compulsory but a voluntary subscription or freely provided - this is different from a filter. The feed would only include sites that do not have the unwanted content eg. rape porn, SM, bestiality etc. A website owner would, I guess, in this option, would have to apply to subscribe to the clean feed and be accepted or denied based on the criteria. The other feed would remain the same. Parents then would take responsibility for what they think is relevant or appropriate for their family.

I don't think efforts to stop this sort of content being available to kids is part of a greater government conspiracy. What does shadow minister mean a smokescreen?

What sort of smokescreen?

Interesting Pelican;

And by smokescreen Shadow refers to the broader censorship beyond illegal pornographic material- mentioning gambling sites- and as we do not ban gambling in Australia in general- would mean that it is also an attempt to thwart the internet as an access alternative competitors to local Australian business interests- making the filter based on a corrupt attempt to screw the Australian population out of broader consumer access, and not public protection.

Similarly, there are also implications of blocking Euthanasia information sites, and other sites that the government of the day (or their favorite supporters/lobbyists) simply doesn't LIKE.

walk with me: "What for the new and naive?, not all are computer savvy, so who protects them? filters?"

If you think your kids need protecting, then by all means protect them. There were free government filters. Did you install one when they were available? If not, you could buy one yourself. Did you care enough to do that? Failing that there are ISP's that provide filtering now. Eg http://www.webshield.net.au/ Do you use one?

The point is, if you think your kids are better off not seeing any of this stuff than you can do that. The only other places they might get access to computers are schools and friends places. Schools are already filtered, and you get to control the friends houses they visit. Problem solved!

As it happens, I didn't think my kids needed protecting. They are adults now, but had internet access in our house since primary school. The rule wasn't "thou should not look". It was "thou shall respect the wishes of others". They didn't initially of course. Boys and boyfriends left porn lying around, and both genders were seduced by viruses. But that stopped soon enough.

In the process a lot of other learning has been done. The girls have learnt to leave Google safe search on. More importantly everybody has learnt what a site trying to trick you into downloading a virus looks like, which phishing site is, how to trust the contents of an email, why you should not give your email address random web sites.

As a consequence, coming across unwanted web content is unheard of in my household. In fact given Google safe search is on by default, I imagine it is rare in general. People see this stuff have almost always gone looking for it.

My problem with you wwm is this isn't really about controling what your kids see, is it? It can't be, because you can already so that. It is about controlling how I choose to parent my kids. My response is ugly, but there is no polite way to say it: piss off.