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Australian Government Delays Internet Filter Legislation
An anonymous reader writes "It seems the Australian federal government is being forced to delay the introduction of its proposed and much-hated, much-maligned Internet filter. It will not be introduced in the next two sittings of parliament, which realistically delays it until after the next election. News on withdrawing the filter, which was a promise from the previous election, has disappointed lobbying groups such as the Australian Christian Lobby."
With the election looming and the popularity of the Labor party taking a dive the Government is dumping all sorts of unpopular policies including their much touted Emissions Trading Scheme, the disastrous Insulation Scheme and of course this ridiculous Internet filter. Of course if Australia votes them in again, they'll say they have a mandate for this filter but the opposition is pretty much a joke. *Sigh*
With any luck we can get this farcical idea shot down somehow before then... I just wish every day Joe and Jane understood the slippery slope that is censorship. Unfortunately the government lackeys and christian rights groups continue to scream "CHILDREN!!!" and "PEDOPHILIA!!!!" and no real logic ever comes into play. Oh well, I already have a remote box in Europe anyway... this won't effect me. I just feel bad for the technical illiterate folk who suffer. I wish it was OPT-IN.
Of course, the "election promise" wasn't actually mandatory. It required ISPs to offer a "clean feed" to their customers. The ACL are a bunch of moralizing extremists and shouldn't be given any more notice than the guys who believe George Bush is a space alien.
I had a sig once. It was lost in the great storm of '09.
A brazilian writer told once that the problem with humanity started when stupid people realized they were the majority...
--- Illogical Spock
Last week I was discussing the filter with a friend who is an intelligent and sensible, non-religious person. Unfortunately he had swallowed the whole "think of the children" argument and thought the filter was a good idea. When I put the standard negative arguments to him, he agreed that it wasn't as simple as he'd thought. Problem is, he's probably representative of a large majority of ordinary people with voting rights in Australia. It's imperative that the debate about the filter is kept up and every Australian citizen is brought up to speed, otherwise I fear that we'll end up having it simply because nobody really bothered to give it much thought.
1) Stephen Conroy is spot on when he says the internet shouldn't be treated any different to any other forms of media. It isn't a magical beast, it's just another form of media (albeit more accessible and chaotic).
So there's nothing fundamentally wrong with filtering it. I mean hell, it's already illegal to *host* this sort of content in Australia.
Nope, Internet is not quite like other media, at the extent that all the other media require a physical support for the information. Thus, any censorship of other media will result in somebody, not affiliated with the government, in Australia knowing about the censorship: in extreme, the censorship of that item may be made public and, possibly, debated if necessary.
By contrast, Conroy's scheme assumes censoring the Internet without anyone's knowledge (at least no one affiliated with the gov, or law enforcement), letting you defenseless in the matter of exercising your control over the power. Not that the power one simply citizen would be quite remarkable, but if you give it away - so small as it would be - you remain with what?
The above letting aside that I take pride of being able to take care of what I'm doing or suffer the consequences. I don't need my own mother to take care anymore of my actions, why should I trust the government to do nanny me???
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
1. The filter is not restricted to illegal material - RC material is not ilelgal in itself, no matter how many times Senator Conroy repeats the line "including material such as child pornography".
2. It is certain to be abused. Even before the filter has been created, the blacklist is intrinsically abusive in its abandonment of due process and legal recourse.
3. Ineffective laws are bad laws. If everyone breaks the law, everyone is a criminal. Is that what you want?
The filter is an abomination of human rights. Everyone should be opposed to it. If you're not, you're wrong.
This angers me significantly: this is not a debate about the theory of filtering.
This is a tooth and nail fight against a specific proposal put forward by the current government.
Every variation of the filtering plan that has been put forward in the media has been savaged by opponents, who are entirely correct in their criticisms. What Conroy has failed to do is provide a convincing counter-argument. In media interviews, when grilled, he often struggles with defining just exactly what it is he is proposing.
One moment it's a URL blacklist to protect children from accidental porn; another moment it's to prevent access to abhorrent material which is currently RC content. Conroy has not listened to one iota of the overwhelming feedback from members of the public; and is utterly clueless as to how to move forward from here.
I absolutely cannot tolerate such a waste of time and money on an unworkable solution driven forward by an individual who does not listen to reason for entirely political purposes.
Brushing this off as "filtering is ok in theory" is a red herring: the currently publicised intentions of the government are not ok; and all efforts by Conroy to implement such should be fiercely resisted.
1) Stephen Conroy is spot on when he says the internet shouldn't be treated any different to any other forms of media. It isn't a magical beast, it's just another form of media (albeit more accessible and chaotic).
No, I see one crucial difference in the way these two mediums are being treated that I haven't seen brought up anywhere else yet.
In other forms of media the censoring applies to the creator of the media. What the filter proposes to do is censor the audience, not the creator.
Now I'm of the opinion that total freedom of speech isn't necessarily a right I feel everyone needs. The greater good of our society trumps the rights of the individual when it comes to banning things such as child pornography, hate speech (at its most extreme), and shouting fire in a crowded cinema. I have no problem with these things being illegal, and the authorities coming down on those responsible for such things.
But don't persecute the audience. (with the exception of child pornography, where there is a clear link between the creator and the consumer)
Freedom to listen is a much more important right than freedom of speech
Assuming your answer is, "I don't!!", then your position is essentially that there should be no censorship in any form of media.
I don't and indeed I'm on the position that there should be no censorship on any form of media. That's because I don't know (more precisely, I don't admit as valid the existence) any kind of media that can cause harm by itself. Either:
For me, censorship is like the government/law enforcement bodies coming to me with the lame excuse that "I cannot do anything to protect you if you don't allow me to censor you - as well as anybody - the way I think and this without your knowledge, much less your approval". Of course, my non-acceptance of being nanny-ed by the gov would have the logical consequence of me replying to them "Did I ever asked you to protect me from information published on media? Let this be my responsibility, mate, I'm mature enough to handle it!"
Please note that I'm referring to "information published in/on media" and not about personal information - I still consider the right to privacy as fundamental, even if neither the Australian constitution nor the Universal Declaration of Human Right mention something about its protection.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
1) Stephen Conroy is spot on when he says the internet shouldn't be treated any different to any other forms of media. It isn't a magical beast, it's just another form of media (albeit more accessible and chaotic). So there's nothing fundamentally wrong with filtering it. I mean hell, it's already illegal to *host* this sort of content in Australia.
The point to walk away from this with is not that internet filtering is alright in principle, but rather that state filtering is wrong in principle in ALL forms of media.
If you are a Christian and oppose to this maybe you should apologize and then fight it. That or leave the religion.
That doesn't make any sense, the filter is not mandated by any Christian doctrine or authority. I understand the apologise bit because our Government apologised to the Indigenous people, but the problem is that although I support such an apology there is no reason for me personally to apologise since I personally did nothing wrong. Consider a Muslim who lives in New York, should he apologise for the WTC attacks just because they are of the same faith? If you don't support someone's actions who has similar beliefs as you, you don't need to apologise for their actions.
Please note the difference between similar beliefs and the same beliefs.
There are several things wrong with this comment. Most of them have already been pointed out, so I'll just add this. There are two other communications media that the internet is similar to: mail and telephone. Yet we don't see these media censored the same way that Conroy is proposing to censor the internet.
The filter already is abusive. The distinction between the filter and its application isn't relevant to this argument. Stuff is filtered or it is not.
Apparently the government has no such incentive at all. They're delaying this, after all. Whether they admit it or not, they actually have a strong incentive to simply drop this idea. They will certainly lose votes over this. The question is how many, and it occurs to me that this may well be one of the main reasons for putting this off.
It's hard to take this seriously; it's as if you haven't read or understood the real objections:
It's not just a waste of time and money. It's a breach of faith on several fronts.
Athy, athier, athiest.