Stan Beer
Wednesday, 19 November 2008 15:21
IT Policy -
Government Tech Policy
Page 1 of 2
The managing director of Australia's third largest Internet service
provider has let fly with another tirade against Australian
Communications Minister, Senator Conroy, claiming that the ISP
community are not impressed with him.
Expressions of interest to particpate in an ISP
filtering trial conducted by the Department of Broadband and the
Digital Economy close on December 8.
The Federal Government's intention to press ahead with the trial for
madatory filtering at the ISP level has met with widespread opposition
from within the ISP and wider Internet community, as well as technical
and civil libertarian groups.
Michael Malone, managing director of iiNet, told iTWire that it is the
company's intention to destroy the impending ISP filtering Pilot and
has slammed Senator Conroy for what he believes is a waste of
taxpayers' money in conducting the trial.
"Half of the ISP community think he's an idiot while the other half think he's incompetent," said Mr Malone.
"This Minister would have you believe that this is all about filtering
kiddie porn but it's not. It's about filtering websites and anyone who
knows anything knows that kiddie porn doesn't appear on websites - it's
circulated privately between members of closed rings."
According to Mr Malone, content filtering at the ISP level has been
trialled in many free world countries previously and rejected.
"The only countries in the world today that have mandatory content
filtering at the ISP level are China and Saudi Arabia. What does that
tell you?
"What will happen if filters are applied is that genuine websites will
get blocked that shouldn't be blocked. What's more the filters will be
easy to bypass even for kids.
"We're going to participate in the trials because we intend to break it."
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