Stan Beer
Sunday, 01 March 2009 04:30
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 2
The
Internet Industry Association, the peak body representing the major
Internet players in Australia, including the ISPs, has once again
refused to take a stand against the Australian Government's attack on
Internet freedom. A question must now be raised over whose interests
the IIA truly represents.
A few months
ago, Michael Malone, the CEO of Australia's third largest ISP iiNet,
told iTWire in no uncertain terms what he thought of the Communications
Minister Stephen Conroy and his proposed mandatory content filtering
scheme. His attack on the scheme, the upcoming filtering trial and
Senatory Conroy were nothing short of scathing.
Mr Malone
described the scheme as a farce, unworkable and a waste of taxpayers'
money. However, he said iiNet would sign up for the government's trial
to demonstrate why.
Since Mr Malone's comments, senior
representatives of Telstra, Optus, Primus and a large coterie of other
substantial ISPs have all voiced their criticism of the filtering
scheme. Other groups opposed to Internet censorship such as Electronic
Frontiers Foundation have joined a groundswell of public opposition to
the scheme.
The Federal Opposition, sensing the groundswell of
opinion against mandatory Internet content filtering at the ISP level
has jumped on the bandwagon and joined the chorus against the
Government's scheme.
The Government has been caught out acting
in a blatantly oafish manner by excluding all the major ISPs except
Primus from its filtering trial. It also caused widespread outrage when
an advisor from Senator Conroy's staff contacted the IIA and demanded
that a network engineer from IIA member Internode be punished for
"acting irresponsibly" by publicly criticising the Internet filtering
scheme.
Industry experts have spoken out and warned of the
dangers of ISP content filtering. Aside from a potential level of
censorship that approaches that of what is currently in place in countries like
China, the technical issues are enormous they say. At a time when
Australia is already lagging the developed world badly in high speed
broadband access, the Government plans to introduce a ham-fisted,
burdensome load on a network that is barely able to keep up with
current demand.
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