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No. 1 Story

ACCC clears Optus to scrap HFC network and use NBN instead

The ACCC has cleared, provisionally, the proposed deal between Optus and NBN Co under which Optus is to be paid around $800m to shut down its HFC network and transfer customers onto the NBN. read more

Contentious issues, just add nuts

Opinion and Analysis

As a small aside, those same people who have seen the blacklist have also noted that there are no sites listed which contain any kind of child abuse material.  Of course there aren't.  That material went 'underground' years ago. 

Child abuse (and worse) material can't be found on websites, especially accidentally.  It is in encrypted traffic; it is contained on servers that are not accessed as web pages; it is shared on heavily protected private connections.  Remember, it is not just the material that must be guarded; it is the consumers themselves who must remain covert.

Placing any kind of Internet filter into our connections will block neither the material nor the people who seek it.  It will not save a single child from such abuse; neither will it identify a single consumer of such material (other than the terminally stupid, of course).

If the supporters of the filter are "thinking of the children” as they keep saying, they seem to have found an incredibly weird way to do it.

However, it has become increasingly clear that this whole project has nothing to do with "protecting the children.”  It has far more to do with "protecting the majority” in the Senate.  Evidence of that is clear in the total and blind disregard the minister has paid to ANY technical dissent to the project.