John Hilvert over at ITNews has reported that the federal government has closed the branch responsible for mandatory ISP level filtering in the DBCDE, yet remains committed to filtering the internets.
It seems likely that mandatory filtering Labor-style won’t survive as a policy no matter who gets elected, and that’s good news. But as detestable as Labor’s policy was, it could be much, much worse. Family First has an even more extreme proposal that includes making users pay directly for a compulsory filter.
Over the weekend, Liberal MP Malcolm Turnbull held an anti-filter event in his electorate, where he promised that the filter is now, “dead, buried and cremated, and if it shows any signs of revival it will then be exorcised”. Let’s hope he’s right.
Credit where it’s due. When Greens Senator Scott Ludlam issued a media release supporting Joe Hockey’s statement that the Coalition would stop a mandatory internet filter, he didn’t just call it excellent news. He signed off his statement with a FTW.
Late this afternoon on Triple J’s Hack program, Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey announced the Coalition would act to block Labor’s mandatory internet filter if they find themselves in opposition after the election. With the Greens also taking a position against the filter, it is highly unlikely Labor will have any chance of getting the numbers they need to push their legislation through during a next term.
We object to the Government’s plan to censor the internet for a variety of reasons – it won’t help parents, it won’t help police, it’s secretive, it costs a lot of money. Perhaps these points are debatable, but one isn’t – experts agree, anybody who wants to will be able to get around the censorwall, easily, on day one.
The proposed filtering technique is based on exact HTTP URLs, not IP addresses nor domain names. URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) are the full address that you might type into your web browser’s address bar. For example: http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2010/07/the-evolution-of-labor-internet-filter-policy/
One of the “surprise” elements from last week’s filter delay announcement was that Telstra, Optus and iPrimus have all started voluntarily filtering known child pornography websites. But as Renai LeMay over at Delimiter discovered yesterday, Internode is not going to follow suit, while iiNet is waiting to see more details about the voluntary filtering proposal.
I’ve been following the debate around the proposed mandatory internet filter closely since the horrific idea was first made public. The entire Kogan team and I have been disgusted by the Australian government’s blatant infringement on basic human rights. It even led us to create this fictional product launch a few weeks back, the Kogan Portector. Even though it is clearly a joke, it has a serious message. The proposed mandatory Internet filter is quite simply one of the worst ideas ever proposed in the history of Australian politics.
The government’s proposed mandatory internet filter was extremely unpopular. So now that it’s been delayed, interested parties are beginning to respond to today’s announcement.
