Internet filter clogged with regurgitated policies

Stuart Corner
Monday, 13 August 2007 12:42

Opinion and Analysis

So the statement that The National Filter Scheme WILL provide free filters to all public libraries nationally was a totally empty promise: (a) the Federal Government had no power to make it a reality and (b) had no intention of spending any money on persuasion in the absence of such power, it seems to have expected every other organisation running a library to have jumped unquestioningly into line and footed the bill.

It's clear that you can't trust the government to be upfront even when its duplicity is so easily exposed. So it would be well to heed EFA's real concern: 'We are also gravely concerned that this announcement is merely the thin end of the wedge. Once the government-mandated infrastructure is in place at all ISPs to supply this 'opt-in' filtering, it is a very small step to change it to an 'opt-out' system, or even a system where each and every Internet connection is censored by the ISP, whether the customer wants it or not."

Far fetched? Well, EFA chair Dale Clapperton notes that right-wing religious groups have long campaigned for blanket censorship of Internet content at an ISP level. There are already laws restricting what content can be made available over the Internet by content providers in Australia, that are line with 'censorship' of other types of content such as books and movies, but they are useless in restricting what overseas content can be accessed. ISP level censoring would soon fix that.