Australia to Offer Widespread ISP-level Filtering

Phurge writes "According to a Sydney Morning Herald article, the Australia government has decided to take the controversial step of having internet service providers filter web content at the request of parents, in a crackdown on online bad language, pornography and child sex predators. 'The more efficient compulsory filtering of internet service providers (ISPs) was proposed in March last year by the then Labor leader, Kim Beazley. At the time, the Communications Minister, Helen Coonan, and ISPs criticised his idea as expensive. Three months later Senator Coonan announced the Government's Net Alert policy, which promised free filtering software for every home that wanted it. She also announced an ISP filtering trial to be conducted in Tasmania. That trial was scrapped. Today Mr Howard will hail the ISP filtering measure as a world first by any Government, and is expected to offer funding to help cover the cost. Parents will be able to request the ISP filter option when they sign up with an ISP. It will be compulsory to provide it. The measures will come into effect by the end of this month.'"

Re:What's the problem here?

[CellBlock]

For every parent that picks this up so they can just plop their kids in front of the computer and ignore them all day, there's going to be one that actually uses it the right way: as a means to enforce rules that have already been set down in the house. If mom and dad say "no porn," a kid is going to try to look for some anyway. If he's blocked, he'll probably think "damn" and find something else to do, instead. If he's motivated enough to circumvent the block, then perhaps another talk with the parents is in order. Also, the filter could be useful for a lot of those instances where "accidental" porn come up, like every other Google image search.

Election pandering

[OzPeter]

There seems to be an election in the wind (I think I saw Nov mentioned), and Howard is on a downslide at the moment. I see this stunt as the Liberals (and that is the conservative party) playing the "think of the kiddies" card to drum up support.

Previously Howard has played the "OMG the illeagal immigrants" card (google for Tampa and babies overboard).

Hopefully this time the Oz public won't fall for it, bu then again we re-elected Howard in the election after the Tampa incident even though it had been shown that that was all a stunt.

Of course my opinion of Howard has been coloured ever since I listened to "How green was my cactus" many years ago, and he was always referred to as "Little Johnny Howard" (this was before he became supreme ruler).

I also liked it when a Japanese (I think) paper referred to him as "Shrub" .. ie a little bush.

Who is paying for this? What about competition?

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

It should be individual parents who want this service that pay for it. Furthermore, parents should have the ability to choose an alternative censorship system without paying for the default one.

Filters tend to be abused

[Joohn]

A similar thing is going on in Sweden. The government is forcing all major ISP:s to filter out sites that are known to provide child pornography. Recently, the popular bit-torrent tracker http://www.piratebay.org/ [piratebay.org] was threatened to be added to this filter because rumour had it "there where child porn available from the site". This is of course just an excuse used by the Swedish government, which is controlled by the American government, which is controlled by the record and movie industry. I understand that it's in the record companies interests but it bugs me that governments don't want to confess that they're being used these ways.

Re:First step towards ...

[mgblst]

The Australian government has already shown its uncaring for our right to the freedom of speech. They had a parody website shut down, merely because it showed them up. This is why we are afraid.

Re:What the hell happened to Australia?

[middlemen]

Your point makes sense a bit, but I am from India and the people can control the government more often that not. Guns don't solve political problems. They only might solve temporary tyranny problems, if at all. They should really be used as a trump card but that never happens. Abuse is rampant. Ask any parent whose kid has been shot. The problem with oppressive governments is not the lack of guns etc, it is the complacency of the populace who actually let the government snatch away their freedoms in the name of "anything". Blame the citizens of the country if you are in a "democracy/republic". Those who don't use their brains use guns.

Re:What's the big deal???

[sohare]

In modern society, we have a thing called "decency." Part of it is that we have enough self-respect so as not to debase ourselves with needless profanity. It's pretty much the same reason that we tend to use more formal language in formal writing - we similarly don't consider our everyday conversation so uncouth as to warrant whatever curses we can think of.

We choose not to profane our conversation.

You're assuming the existence of an absolute morality. Clearly, certain words tend to be associated with negatives or insults, but it always takes two parties for this to happen. Namely, one person to say a word (which at this point is devoid of meaning) and another person to place some value on this word.

The perfect example is "taking the Lord's name in vain." When I say, "Jesus fucking Christ", "Goddamnit!" or "Holy shit" these words pack about as much punch as "Oh man!", at least to me. This is because Jesus/God is not my Lord, and so of course to me to suggest I'm taking a non-entity's name in vain is somewhat silly. The true-believer, however, will hear these words and attach some offensive qualities to them.

Censoring of any sort always boils down to one party imposing their morals on a myriad other parties that do not share their beliefs. Sure, these groups (anti-abortionists, creation scientist, and those of their ilk) tend to argue that their position is no different than anyone else's, and ergo you just have to choose your poison, so to speak. This is patently absurd with a moment's thought, because it takes a positive belief in order for something to be offensive, and ergo the baseline will always rest with those who do not find something offensive.

Unless, of course, you always for absolute moralities. This is why groups who have no real ground to stand on always turn to this antiquated idea.

Re:What's the problem here?

[Chelloveck]

When I was a kid, I learned about computers because I wanted to 'hack' my games. I'm wondering if censorware are going to be the reason for this generation to learn about computers....i.e. I've got to learn enough to get around the blocks.

"Never underestimate the resourcefulness of teenage hormones."

I've got some fairly significant blocks on my network. The firewall completely blocks the kids' computers by MAC address. The only way for them to get out is via a web proxy set up on my server. They have to ask me to manually grant access to the proxy when they want to connect, and they know that I review the proxy logs every day. I'm sure it's not an airtight system, but it's a big step beyond a filter. I actually hope that they'll try to find a way around it; it would mean that they're learning something about networking. But alas, the most they've ever done is to blatantly go to hentai sites when the proxy is open and hope I don't look at the logs that day. I'm kind of disappointed that my 14yo son hasn't shown a bit more creativity in that regard.

Or else they're really, really good at covering their tracks!

Re:What's the big deal???

[badfish99]

But of course this scheme does not allow the parents to decide what is profane; the parents' only role in this is to sign up for it (after being told that it is "for the sake of the children"); the censorship is then done by the government.

Kids are not too breakable

[Gadget_Guy]

I saw a program on our local community TV station that was made by high school kids (I'm guessing they had an average age of 14 years old). This show had a voxpop style segment where kids spoke about issues arising from the Internet.

It was amazing to see how mature they were about the evils that they had found on the net. Sure, they said, they had come across some "creepy guys". Sometimes they string them along a bit, but mostly they just ignore them. They had seen porn, and they spoke of how it was a pain how much porn-spam they received. We can talk about this stuff without sniggering behind our hands - and kids can do that too.

I really wish that the hysterical parents and politicians would actually spend some time listening to the kids. They are not fools. Talk to them about the potential dangers that they may face before they start surfing by themselves so they know what to expect and how to avoid problems. Don't be sensationalist; just be straight forward and mature about it. Do this so they know they can come to you to get advice on more mature situations.