Stuart Corner
Sunday, 22 June 2008 13:23
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 2
Australian communications minister, Stephen Conroy, seems to believe that regulation can be embedded in technology. Recent developments suggest he is being overly optimistic, but that may be no bad thing.
Tucked away in
Conroy's speech to the
OECD ministerial meeting on the future of the Internet economy, in Seoul last week, was the comment "we are moving to the point in the world where more and more law will be effectively expressed not in terms of statutes but in the technology itself...effective across borders in a way unimaginable in the past."
Conroy took his vision of legislation embedded in technology from Lawrence Lessig's seminal 1999 work
"Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace."
And he seems to be practicing what he preaches: he is commited to implementing technology in the network to protect children on the Internet from inappropriate material and to prevent the rest of us from viewing content that is illegal (in particular child pornography).
The recent federal budget contained a substantial but unspecified allocation for this purpose as part of the Cybersafety programme: it includes subsidies for ISPs to install ISP level Internet filtering.
It replaces the previous government's Protecting Australian Families Online programme announced in 2006 that would, it was claimed provide $116.6 million for a comprehensive package of measures.
According to the Opposition the Cybersafety programme also means "the removal of $2.8 million of Australian Federal Police funding to combat online child sex exploitation and to promote international cooperation."
Which, if it is true is at odds with what Conroy told the OECD meeting. He seems to acknowledge that what Lessig called 'regulation by code' represents some sort of future ideal toward which we should strive, but says: "...we must address fairly and squarely the issues of how we make the Internet itself as safe as we can from both physical attacks and cyber-attacks. Again this will require international co-operation and collaboration...I would like to acknowledge the OECD's achievements to date in cross-border cooperation."
And if he need solid evidence that technology is no substitute for diligence and thorough investigation by law enforcement agencies, he need look no further than the
front page of The Australian newspaper on June 20.
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