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Australia to Offer Widespread ISP-level Filtering
Phurge writes "According to a Sydney Morning Herald article, the Australia government has decided to take the controversial step of having internet service providers filter web content at the request of parents, in a crackdown on online bad language, pornography and child sex predators. 'The more efficient compulsory filtering of internet service providers (ISPs) was proposed in March last year by the then Labor leader, Kim Beazley. At the time, the Communications Minister, Helen Coonan, and ISPs criticised his idea as expensive. Three months later Senator Coonan announced the Government's Net Alert policy, which promised free filtering software for every home that wanted it. She also announced an ISP filtering trial to be conducted in Tasmania. That trial was scrapped. Today Mr Howard will hail the ISP filtering measure as a world first by any Government, and is expected to offer funding to help cover the cost. Parents will be able to request the ISP filter option when they sign up with an ISP. It will be compulsory to provide it. The measures will come into effect by the end of this month.'"
For every parent that picks this up so they can just plop their kids in front of the computer and ignore them all day, there's going to be one that actually uses it the right way: as a means to enforce rules that have already been set down in the house. If mom and dad say "no porn," a kid is going to try to look for some anyway. If he's blocked, he'll probably think "damn" and find something else to do, instead. If he's motivated enough to circumvent the block, then perhaps another talk with the parents is in order. Also, the filter could be useful for a lot of those instances where "accidental" porn come up, like every other Google image search.
There seems to be an election in the wind (I think I saw Nov mentioned), and Howard is on a downslide at the moment. I see this stunt as the Liberals (and that is the conservative party) playing the "think of the kiddies" card to drum up support.
.. ie a little bush.
Previously Howard has played the "OMG the illeagal immigrants" card (google for Tampa and babies overboard).
Hopefully this time the Oz public won't fall for it, bu then again we re-elected Howard in the election after the Tampa incident even though it had been shown that that was all a stunt.
Of course my opinion of Howard has been coloured ever since I listened to "How green was my cactus" many years ago, and he was always referred to as "Little Johnny Howard" (this was before he became supreme ruler).
I also liked it when a Japanese (I think) paper referred to him as "Shrub"
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It should be individual parents who want this service that pay for it. Furthermore, parents should have the ability to choose an alternative censorship system without paying for the default one.
http://outcampaign.org/
But of course this scheme does not allow the parents to decide what is profane; the parents' only role in this is to sign up for it (after being told that it is "for the sake of the children"); the censorship is then done by the government.
I saw a program on our local community TV station that was made by high school kids (I'm guessing they had an average age of 14 years old). This show had a voxpop style segment where kids spoke about issues arising from the Internet.
It was amazing to see how mature they were about the evils that they had found on the net. Sure, they said, they had come across some "creepy guys". Sometimes they string them along a bit, but mostly they just ignore them. They had seen porn, and they spoke of how it was a pain how much porn-spam they received. We can talk about this stuff without sniggering behind our hands - and kids can do that too.
I really wish that the hysterical parents and politicians would actually spend some time listening to the kids. They are not fools. Talk to them about the potential dangers that they may face before they start surfing by themselves so they know what to expect and how to avoid problems. Don't be sensationalist; just be straight forward and mature about it. Do this so they know they can come to you to get advice on more mature situations.