Slashdot Mirror
Australian Government Backing Down On Censorship
Combat Wombat sends the news that the government in Australia has begun waffling on whether country-wide Internet censorship will be mandatory. "The Rudd Government has indicated that it may back away from its mandatory Internet filtering plan. Communications Minister Stephen Conroy today told a Senate estimates committee that the filtering scheme could be implemented by a voluntary industry code. ... [The shadow communications minister] said he had never heard of a voluntary mandatory system. ... Senator Conroy's statement is a departure from the internet filtering policy Labor took into the October 2007 election to make it mandatory for ISPs to block offensive and illegal content." The censorship plan, which has been called "worse than Iran," was bypassed even before trials started. A minister's defection may have effectively blocked any chance of implementation.
The summary says "A minister's defection may have effectively blocked any chance of implementation."
But that link refers to Senator Nick Xenophon. He is an independent senator, not a Minister in the government.
This idiotic plan is not killed and dead. The Labor government in general, and Senator Stephen Conroy in particular, have been taken aback by the strength of the opposition. The article noted in the summary only covers some of the incompetent answers given to hard questioning by the main Opposition party and one of the minority parties.
Trials are still being underway involving 4 tiny ISPs, one medium ISP, one Christadelphian ISP and one large ISP majority owned by Singtel.
There is no engineering, vendor neutral specification giving trial design criteria or testing methodology as the basis for the trials. There is no requirement for the ISPs to disclose which method of censorship they selected. The ISPs have been supported to the tune of $AU300,000 but there is still a $AU887,000 consultancy contract for the testing and reporting of on a system to block up to 10,000 URLs. The IWF annual report lists between 1100-1300 sites blocked by their system. Rumour has it that much of the testing in the small ISPs is using equipment from the same censorware vendor but this is not confirmed as several censorware vendors have been lobbying for the windfalls. Watchdog, using the NetClean system was involved in some separate testing undertaken by another ISP, Exetel. The Exetel trial received a great deal of criticism in the Australian internet community and Exetel customers. The trial has not been cancelled and neither has the testing consultancy.
Any assumption that the scheme will disappear is premature.
A list of 1000s of banned films and publications is still in existence. The censorship regime has become more and more repressive over the last 10 years. Realistically the entire basis of censorship needs serious review. It is managed by more than one government authority under several different pieces of legislation. The proposed censorship of the internet is under the control of the telecommunications authority which is yet another government authority.
You would have to try very hard to find a more incompetent approach to anything to do with IT, networking or civil liberties all in the same package.
OpenAustralia.org is your friend.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
Its already been decided by most people I have talked to that Conroy is the worst communications minister we have seen (to be fair, its a small crowd). Further to that, many think that he is the worst minister with a big portfolio.
I think its only a matter of time before he is dumped from the role, as he would be a large liability for Rudd moving into the next election.
The particular debate refered to was the SBS show insight. This is of a much higher standard than the average TV debate show. It even had Network engineer Mark Newton, one of the leading opponents of the scheme there, and he managed to get this main points accross. Conroy did not look happy at having to respond to well informed crticism.
It's traditional for our communications ministers to be incompetent. Name one in the past few decades who hasn't been.