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Conroy Still Hell-Bent On Internet Filter
lukehopewell1 writes "In an interview for the ABC's PM program yesterday, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said that there would be no conscience vote on the Australian government's proposed mandatory internet filter. 'Conscience votes go to matters to do with life and death in the [Australian] Labor Party,' Conroy said. The minister said that the filter debate was not about censorship, rather it centred around refused classification material — an issue up for review in parliament. 'I'm not sure that the censorship claim stacks up. This is about classification systems. At the moment in Australia, there is no conscience vote on refused classification for movies, TV, DVDs or book stores,' the minister said. Conroy then called on the newly installed Shadow Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull to justify his position on the filter to families concerned about child pornography. 'According to the latest information I have here from the [Australian Communications and Media Authority], there are 430 child pornography sites on the [World Wide Web] ... that are accessible to anyone...[Malcolm Turnbull] has to explain to Australian families that he is prepared to do nothing about blocking access to those sites,' Conroy added." I hope some Australian and UK readers can help the rest of us understand the significance of conscience votes, though Wikipedia helps.
He's hell bent on hiding sites that contain child abuse material...
That doesn't prevent a child getting abused.
That doesn't help the child already abused to create the content.
Who the fk knows what these sites are anyway?
Sick bastards are going to work around his filter quicker than he can think.
How about, policing, work within the international community to have these sites removed and keep up the pressure.
If he put half the budget and pressure on law enforcement as he is putting on stringing a tarp over the crime scene he'd actually have a hope of getting somewhere!
FIX IT! DO NOT HIDE IT!
Most of it was plain old adult content, with dentists, dog boarding kennels, caterers, poker websites, and anti-abortion sites making up the balance.
I got some accidental inside information from a religious political lobbyist some years ago when this furor began... he was happy to get anything done to filter the net. But the religious lobbyists don't have that much clout .. he pretty much provided his perspective on legislation that happened to fall into his area of knowledge or got laws tweaked here and there to fill loopholes, that sort of thing.
The real reason that the lower house members listened to this suggestion was because the casino operators sided with the religious lobbyists to try to stop off-shore internet gambling, which is of course losing them loads of cash and losing the government loads of tax revenue.
If this filter were to be implemented (which appears to be next to impossible at this point) the first additions to the list would be every identifiable offshore gambling website. The 'child porn' is just to raise public outrage / support and imo the rest of the sites just added to the list as white noise to hide it's purpose. I'm guessing here that the secure gambling connections to offshore sites would be a damn site more difficult (impossible?) to pass through a proxy and that the average on-line gambler may not even bother to try ... just hop in the car, and go to the casino.