Filter Vendor Agrees Aussie Censorship Can't Work As Promised

Acidspew writes "The Australian Government's plan to filter the Internet has caused furore and has been met with vehement objection. Many people have put their opinions forward regarding this matter, but this time around, M86 Security — the vendor that provided many ISPs equipment during the initial filter trials — has finally weighed in on the discussion. Six of the nine ISP participants in the URL-based Internet filter trial last year used M86's R3000 filtering kit. According to ARN: 'Internet filtering won't prevent people deliberately looking for inappropriate material from accessing blocked content, according to security vendor M86 Security.' The company continues by saying its filter gear was designed to be implemented into schools and enterprise businesses, not for an entire country. The article also touches on M86's views on censorship."

Comments

XS4ALL

[RogerWilco]

In related news, I want to add that the biggest and oldest ISP of The Netherlands (XS4ALL) has also taken a stand against internet filtering. Unfortunately the site and documents are only available in Dutch:
http://www.xs4all.nl/overxs4all/maatschappelijk/dossiers/downloaden.php

What they have done is write a very thorough 32 page document explaining why internet filtering should not happen. It centers around a couple of arguments:
- It's very expensive
- It introduces single points of failure and bottlenecks, doing the opposite of what an ISP should be doing
- It can't work without also blocking a lot of legal content, no matter what method you choose
- Blocking legal content and censorship is against the idea of free speech, but more specifically the Dutch constitution and the European treaty on human rights.

It's really well written, I wish there would be an English version. It's well worth the read.

They have sent this to all Dutch political parties and the committee for copyright legislation. I was very happy to see them get involved in this discussion. We're having national elections next june, and it looks like at least some political parties are picking this up and making it a point in the elections.