Internet filter ferals blacklist Lundy

James Riley
Thursday, 14 January 2010 12:29

Opinion and Analysis

When the ACT senator Kate Lundy wrote a reasoned, informed and ultimately politically brave blog on the Government's filtering plans in mid-December, she would have already known what was coming. The filter brings out the feral in even the most mild-mannered users.

She was called a sell-out. Nice.

Still, there was an upside, of sorts. As a long-time advocate for open government and a pioneer in public sector use of 2.0 technologies to drive participatory practices in government, Lundy would almost certainly have been pleased with the response.

Her original blog attracted 400 published comments. A supplementary blog that collated and summarised the responses published a few days later attracted a further 270 responses.

Not bad for the musings of a backbencher, even if most responses weren't from happy campers.

In her blog, Lundy publicly restates her preferred approach is through education campaigns, more support for parents – including filtering options at the desktop. She recaps the history of the ALP policy, and she outlines her own plan to lobby caucus colleagues on including and “opt-out” option in the legislation to be introduced next month as her least-worst-option for filtering.

Given the Government took the filtering policy to the last election, and that it has been on the ALP agenda since before the last election, you might have thought the fact that Senator Lundy is still voicing her own consistent concerns inside Caucus might be enough for the ferals to cut her some slack. But no.

The filtering debate began with lots of colour and movement about the performance degradation of dynamic filtering, the rise of the religious right, and the Big Stick rhetoric about the thin end of the wedge. And Stephen Conroy has been all but burned in effigy as the Great Satan (or maybe that's happened too.)

And that's where the feral debate has stayed – despite the announced policy being a Filtering Lite proposition based on a simple, complaints-based blacklist system.

Except that the Filter Lite policy – mandatory though it is – seeks to legislate oversight and transparency safeguards into the administration of the blacklist.

I work in the information business. I get it. My personal view is that even a Lite filter is not such as great idea. But I don’t hold it against a Government simply making an attempt to apply the same standards that exist for governing the content of other mediums also apply to the internet.

I find it hard to get cranky about Filtering Lite. And I get cranky about *everything.*

After the bazillion words that have been written about the evils of draconian, Orwellian filtering that would ultimately force us all to wear Mao jackets and give up sex, we are presented with a simple complaints-based blacklist with better oversight processes.

So get a grip.

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