Cornered!
Cornered! is a blog devoted, most of the time anyway, to telecommunications: local and global issues, technology, people and trends from the perspective of someone who's been reporting, analysing and commenting on the industry since the dark ages (BC - before competition). Sometimes serious, sometimes flippant, sometimes frivolous. Controversial, analytical, informative, amusing, but never boring; a vehicle for examinations of important issues and observations on my encounters and experiences in an industry where polarised views and hyperbole are the norm.

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Technology news and Jobs arrow Cornered! arrow Internet filter clogged with regurgitated policies
Internet filter clogged with regurgitated policies E-mail
by Stuart Corner   
Monday, 13 August 2007


In that denouncement, Coonan neglected to mention existing policy: namely mandatory codes developed by the Internet Industry Association and registered by the then Australian Broadcasting Authority in May 2005 following community consultation. They require ISPs to prominently display a link to Internet safety information on their home pages, to provide filters to customers at cost or below price and to provide updates on filtering options to their customers every four months.

When all this furore on filtering was going on I wrote at the time http://www.itwire.com/content/view/3800/1095/ that this provision was hardly effective "While it sounds impressive what it means in reality is that an ISP need do no more than put a link on its home page to the IIA's site where information on content filters is available, or a link to a commercial supplier of an approved filter, which can charge its full commercial rate for that product."

My spot check of the sites of a few prominent ISPs revealed just how 'prominent' information on filters wasn't. The simple step of beefing up and better enforcing this requirement would have achieved much.

Despite comprehensively panning ISP-based filtering in March 2006, by June 2006, Coonan did a significant about face, releasing a request for tender for a trial of ISP based content filtering products in Tasmania as part of a wider trial of content filtering products at the ISP level. http://www.itwire.com/content/view/13171/127/ She noted that this was the fourth such trial of this technology! And as EFA points out, this week's announcement requiring ISPs to implement  filtering has been made without input from the results of that trial.

Oh, and did I forget to mention that Coonan also announced in June 2006 that the Government would provide every Australian family with a free Internet filter as part of a $116.6 million "comprehensive package of measures to crack down on the scourge of Internet pornography."

Another recycled component of this week's announcement was filtering for libraries. "Whilst the National Library of Australia filters all public internet terminals, I am aware that many state, territory and local libraries do not filter their computers." Coonan said.

 
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Cornered! - Telecoms blog
Cornered! is a blog on all things tele-communication from the perspective of one who has observed, analysed commented and reported on the industry since the dark ages (BC - before competition).