Stan Beer
Monday, 30 March 2009 03:36
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 2
What
do the Russian mob, human error and Moore's Law have in common? They
were all invoked in the space of 30 minutes to support Communications
Minister Senator Stephen Conroy's drive to impose a mandatory Internet
filter at the ISP level on the Australian public.
During a long awaited question and answer session with a selection
of panelists and a live studio audience on an ABC TV program, Senator
tried his best to explain why Internet censorship via an ISP filtering
scheme is desirable.
According to Senator Conroy, false positives, such as dentists and dog
breeders having their sites blacklisted by regulator the Australian
Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) have nothing to do with the
proposed Internet filter, He is of course quite right about that.
As the Senator pointed out, the blacklisting of those sites occurred
under existing laws that have been in place for nearly a decade.
In the case of the dentist, Senator Conroy said, the Russian mob had
infiltrated and attached porn to the site. In another case, an official
within ACMA had made an error.
However, the question was not satisfactorily answered as to why these
lists need to be secret. There was also no discussion as to the
recourse available to the innocent affected parties.
Having established that pernicious websites are already being banned
under existing laws and that the Australian public, including
publishers, is not entitled to know what they are, the good Senator
went on to explain why he thought his much maligned filter trial is a
good idea.
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