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Fuzzy Logic Internet filter trials delayed, P2P now included!
Fuzzy Logic Internet filter trials delayed, P2P now included! | Internet filter trials delayed, P2P now included! |
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| by Alex Zaharov-Reutt | |
| Wednesday, 24 December 2008 | |
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It wasn’t until the second-last day (Dec 22) of the blogging process that the topic of “Internet filtering” was actually raised, something that annoyed a great many public commenters (Australians) who took the time to offer their views to the Minister. There was also much consternation that the time period for public comments at the blog would end at 3pm on December 23, giving Australians less than 48 hours to publicly comment on the Internet filtering topic as raised on the 22nd. In that 22nd of December blog posting, a question was asked. That question was “How we can all work together to inspire online confidence?”. Well, Minister. A good way to inspire confidence in the online world is not to filter and censor it out of existence. A good way is not to pretend that Australia’s filtering regime is nothing like that in China, Iran or Saudi Arabia. A good way is not to pretend that nothing else will ever be filtered, ever, besides child porn. After all, censorship is an erosion of freedom. We already have laws against child pornography, we already have a dedicated police force doing its utmost to fight the threat, with wonderful success in recent times. We even have free Internet filters provided by NetAlert for any parent or school to install whenever they wish. Another good way to inspire confidence online is not to “spring” the previously unannounced filtering of P2P (peer-to-peer) and BitTorrent traffic onto the public, as was done in the answer to the question “Internet filtering won’t stop peer to peer and bittorrent traffic so why bother”, where Senator Conroy noted that: “Technology that filters peer-to-peer and BitTorrent traffic does exist and it is anticipated that the effectiveness of this will be tested in the live pilot trial.” Given the many legitimate and illegitimate uses of these two technologies, we can only hope that if this nightmarish filtration plan ever gets of the ground and onto the Australian world wide web, false positives are zero, or the “digital economy” may as well have the digital taken off the front of it. At least we know Senator Stephen Conroy reads iTWire, as noted in the December 23 blog posting called “Thanks and so long...” where the Minister quoted iTWire journalist Stephen Withers, who said of the Minister's blog that: “the rules 'seem designed to keep the signal-to-noise ratio as high as possible, and that should encourage the maximum participation by real people (as opposed to link spammers and trolls, both of which are all too common in unmoderated spaces)'.” But I note that none of my stories were quoted! Details on why, and why it's no surprise, questions on the legacy of Senator Stephen Conroy and sincere apologies to Ronald Reagan are on page 2. Please read on! |
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