Fence sitting IIA refuses to speak out against Internet filtering

Stan Beer
Sunday, 01 March 2009 03:30

Opinion and Analysis

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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