I’m watching Senator Conroy on ABC's Q&A, trying to lie his way out of being grilled for his grim determination to push through a fundamentally flawed Internet filter. Forget the so called 'moral question', that's a ruse that Senator Conroy's stunt to divert attention from the real questions ...and a cheap shot: 'don't want internet filtering? you must be a supporter of pedophiles'.
When confronted with the problem that the filter doesn’t work, that it will put an 87% performance hit on the internet (among other problems), Senator Conroy blamed the previous government, and claimed that we need a trial of the technology. "It‘s the Howard government - that’s where the famous 87% comes from”. This is absolute bullshit (sorry for the emotive language, but Senator Conroy is aware that what he has said simply isn't true - the results came from a report he commissioned).
Sorry, Senator Conroy, the famous 87% comes the closed trial initiated last year by the Labor Government. While moral concerns about censorship should be taken seriously, the question should be whether it's remotely possible before letting a 'Clayton's' moral debate act as a smoke-screen to disguise the bulldozer-like effort to get the filter in place. Folks, read the report, see how far it is from ready, and keep this in mind; when Lackey of the Christian Right and Family First, Senator Conroy, is pushing the filter unconditionally.
http://www.acma.gov.au/webwr/_assets/main/lib310554/isp-level_internet_content_filtering_trial-report.pdf
There's also the Blacklist leaked on Wikileaks... I've had a quick look, and a lot of this seems to be just soft core porn, and not the evil Child Pornography/Child Abuse that poses a great threat to our civil society. In many cases you can see that many of the websites have US certification that all models are over 18 years old at the bottom of the page "All graphic materials & texts used on this site are in compliance with 18 USC 2257." There was another page that I saw that had images of modestly clothed adults bound with ropes ...presumably some kind of bondage thing. I expect the classification rejection (remember, it's not just Child Pornography that is 'blacklisted', but material refused classifaction) would be for 'sexual violence'. Sexual violence is a serious matter, but the pictures that I saw contained no violence, just people restrained by ropes - they didn't appear to be in distress. While this kind of thing doesn't interest me, I'm figuring that 'whatever floats your boat' is OK, provided it's not at the expense of someone else's well-being. This reminds me of A Clockwork Orange, and the terrible fuss about the film when it was released - the violence is implied - it's that 'pure mind sees no evil' problem.
I see the Christian Right behind this, which might seem strange with a Labor government in power. The ACMA does not change with the change of government, but the Senator Conroy has shown relentless determination to please Family First's Steve Fielding, and there's the suggestion in various publications from around the world that this effort will benefit uptight moral crusaders from around the world. America treasures it supposed 'absolute freedom of speech' (the reality is that you aren't free to say various unpopular things in America), and the few attempts that have been made to impose ISP-level censorship/filtering have not been recieved well - it seems that Australia is doing the 'heavy lifting' for the benefit (or harm) of other nations.
There's a Queensland Dentist and several other law-abiding citizens whose webpages have found their way onto the 'blacklist' (a woman who runs a local school canteen, a web host/designer...). Have a look for yourself at:
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Dentist%27s_website_on_leaked_blacklist
The most recent and complete copy of the 'Blacklist' can be found at:
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Australian_government_secret_ACMA_internet_censorship_blacklist%2C_6_Aug_2008#Aug_6_2008
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