Monday, November 10, 2008

ignorance and falsehood in australia's internet censorship battle

Filter advocates need to check their facts

Mark Newton exposes some howlers from advocates of Australian Internet censorship at ISP level

(1) No one has advanced a valid argument as to why ISP level filtering is superior to PC level filtering

A former Victorian Family First candidate, Anh Nguyen, suggested that there was a different technology involved in filtering at the PC level compared with the ISP level. Well, according to Mark, who is an expert, there is no real difference. Except that the ISP version will slow everything down and make it harder for parents to set home filters at levels they want

(2) Senator Conroy (our Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy) has recently claimed that Sweden, the UK, Canada and New Zealand have already implemented something like what he is suggesting.

This is simply false (read the link for details). Rather, the countries which have introduced government-imposed internet censorship are nations which place more emphasis on opinion suppression than internet access, such as China, Saudi Arabia and Iran

Related:
australia's digital counter-revolution

2 comments:

shenki said...

Senator Ludlam (Greens) questioning Conroy in the Senate today:

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=OUohfIhFET8

Very revealing: Conroy can't answer any of the questions, simply reads prepared statement.


Some other links:
http://jms.id.au/wiki/AustralianInternetFilter

Anonymous said...

I really hope they don't enact this law.

We're planning on visiting Australia for 6 months later this year and I don't want to be treated like a child when I'm online.