Net censorship or Why Stephen Conroy is an idiot

POSTED BY on 11:16 pm under internet

Not many things in the technology world make me angry but man I am PO’d about this Internet Censorship debacle.

A recent article at the SMH highlights how ridiculous the soon to be trialled internet filtering system will be. Labour MP Stephen Conroy is nothing more than a Orwellian censor who is making a mess of something he clearly does not understand. Take the following details for example:

The Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, has repeatedly claimed his proposed mandatory filters would target only "illegal" content - predominantly child pornography.

Already, a significant portion of the 1370-site Australian blacklist - 506 sites - would be classified R18+ and X18+, which are legal to view but would be blocked for everyone under the proposal. The Government has said it was considering expanding the blacklist to 10,000 sites and beyond.

OK so which is it? Deplorable stuff like child exploitation or just a list of stuff that Mr Conroy and his cronies take a dislike to. Half of this stuff is legal – not everyone’s taste but then what is? Some of it of course may not be ‘adult’ in nature at all – it could be political in nature or whatever. So if I say Mr Conroy is an idiot (oops too late) am I on the list? Where does this end and who decides.

Last time I checked Australia was a democracy mate. As long as we are acting fairly and reasonably and within the laws of our great nation you cannot tell us what to do or what to think. As an elected representative of the people I would have thought you wouldn’t need reminding of this

The article highlights how linking to the banned material can cost Australian websites $11,000 per day – yet the list of banned material is secret. So how the heck can anyone comply? I guess the list has to be secret because otherwise we run the risk of 1) just advertising some material that should not be promoted and 2) exposing most of it as just an uneducated whim of a stupid politician or his henchman.

Almost all of the major Internet providers including Telstra and Optus have declined to be a part of the trial. They still own half of Telstra and they can’t even get them to give it a go – speaks for itself doesn’t it?

Oh and don’t mistake filtering for doing something about the deplorable acts like child sex exploitation. This will not save one innocent child or do any other good. It’s like closing your eyes and sticking your fingers in your ears and pretending it isn’t happening. Any low-life who wants to see this sort of thing will find a way. By the time skilled law enforcement let alone some dull-witted public servant catch up with them the websites and users will have moved on long ago.

Come on Conroy – you came up with a bad idea and you aren’t man enough to say so. You don’t have the numbers to pass the legislation anyway – only your own party lemmings will vote for it. Even the Family First and other conservative senators can see this has no real positives and HUGE potential negatives. You keep saying yourself how far behind internet access is in Australia yet your first big move after being elected is to introduce a scheme that will clog up and slow down our access? Sheesh.

Kill this farce and get back to doing some good – like getting Telstra to toe the line on rural and regional hardware sharing, etc

Please do a bit of research on the topic on the internet (gee who would of thought huh – guess it’s not all porn hey Stephen?)

You might like to start at No Clean Feed

If you feel this is a bad idea like I do then you can write to Senator Conroy