Australia Chooses Education Over Filtering

riprjak writes "The Australian federal government has rejected a call for Internet filtering to 'protect' Australians from child pornography and has opted instead to undertake an education and information campaign to teach parents about the perils of the Internet."

Comments

State of Shock

[Zontar The Mindless]

A government made a sensible, non-kneejerk decision with regard to the Internet?

I want to to move there!

Oh, wait... I already did. :)

Re:State of Shock

[Sime208]

What a breath of fresh air reading what Australia will do.

Trying to plug the hole that is child Internet porn would be an ongoing battle swallowing much time and resource better spent elsewhere. Sure the majority don't want to see it and have no interest in it spreading, but trying to stop it is like trying to stop the use of drugs. If people want it, they'll get it. I'd rather my tax dollars went into dealing with it at the source.

It also means the Government won't be submerged in requests of other anti- groups to stop whatever else they decide doesn't take their fancy.

It's been cencored for a while ..

[Anonymous Coward]

The Internet at schooles (or at least the ones I worked at) already had an internet filtration in place which was controlled at a state level. Bear in mind this was Queensland, I wouldn't know about other states.

It's a step

[monkease]

Really, it's laudable that the response by the Aussies is not the cyber-equivalent of smart-bombing (*cough*ChineseEmbassy*cough*Kosovo) but it's still part of the whole growing-pains thing that we'll experience for many years.

I'm not sure any government (save, maybe, South Korea's, which is its current form as a direct result of the internet) realizes just how much the internet is changing the world. Protecting your citizens' bodies is one thing--hunt those child-kidnappers down!--but it's too late for their minds...

and that's a good thing.

Excuse my ignorance but

[Silver Sloth]

The article quotes

including a British-style national internet filtering system but rejected it.

I wasn't aware that the UK has a national internet filtering system. Can anyone elaborate?

Re:Excuse my ignorance but

[timmyf2371]

We don't.

British Telecom's ISP blocks certain underage porn sites which are found on an IWF black list, however this is not a legal requirement by any means and AFAIK they are the only British ISP currently to do such a thing.

Re:This seems really smart

[sinewalker]

Um, isn't the issue that:
a) the children who are the subject of child-porn are the main victims.
b) banning such content from viewing in Australia does nothing for the poor children photographed oversees in the first place (the proposal was to filter out kid porn from outside Aust).
c) "what about the children viewing the porn?" Yes indeed. And what about the other offensive things they view, like adult porn, or bestiality, or planes flying into tall buildings, or.... where is the line drawn?

Filtering is not an answer. Education, while only reaching those who's mind-share you already have, is probably the only sensible solution, and it only addresses item c. Unforturnately nothing can be done about a or b. Directly. In fact by filtering it out, you lose the opportunity to catch the adult consumers of the content, and hense lose a lead back to the perpetrators of a...

I think that lead is worth keeping.

Re:This seems really smart

[Anne Honime]

Unless you consider that kids still have access to the pornography and no amount of "education" is really going to block them or persuade them from accessing it.

We've go a saying for this : a child who tumble inadvertantly over porn is not enough overlooked by the adult in charge of him, and that's the adult responsability ; a child who finds porn after looking for it is not a child anymore.

In the spirit of people who don't visit Fark.com

[Vicsun]

[WHAT]

Which just proves

[Paddo_Aus]

"One can't solve a sociological problem with a technological solution." - Edwards Law