<html><head><base href="x-msg://312/"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><br><div><div>On 04/01/2010, at 3:40 PM, Skeeve Stevens wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div lang="EN-AU" link="blue" vlink="purple" style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div class="Section1"><div style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(31, 73, 125); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; ">If I was the government, I would basically offer $$$ (or a tax break, or something) to ISPs who chose to join a filtering programme or offered products based on some sort of filtering standard.</span></div></div></div></span></blockquote><div><br></div>SAGE-AU suggested something along those lines over a year ago, it fell </div><div>on deaf ears.</div><div><br></div><div>Note that the Internet industry itself has been totally deficient in coming up</div><div>with (or endorsing) alternative proposals. Most of the big ISPs haven't been</div><div>able to get out of their way quickly enough to make public statements about how</div><div>they applaud the Government's efforts in this area, and the small ISPs have </div><div>barely said anything at all. Disappointing, but completely expected.</div><div><br></div><div><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div lang="EN-AU" link="blue" vlink="purple" style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div class="Section1"><div style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(31, 73, 125); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; ">If users are really screaming for this, surely they would just go and connect to an ISP who is offering the filtering solution.</span></div><div style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(31, 73, 125); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; ">If there were really a massive demand for this, wouldn’t someone have developed their own product by now and selling tons of it?</span></div></div></div></span></blockquote><div><br></div>Webshield has existed for years. They have about 3500 customers, nation-wide.</div><div><br></div><div>So there's your anticipated market size. Customer demand is virtually zero, so</div><div>nobody should be surprised by any disinterest shown by developers in this</div><div>space.</div><div><br><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div lang="EN-AU" link="blue" vlink="purple" style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div class="Section1"><div style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0cm; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(31, 73, 125); "><o:p> Or.. is this just the government not trusting people to be adults and responsible – and assuming that there are paedophiles everywhere.</o:p></span></div></div></div></span></blockquote></div><div><br></div>We'll see this in a number of issues that come down the pike in the next<div>few years:</div><div><br></div><div>The ALP left and the ALP right generally have more or less consistent visions</div><div>for how they expect society to work. But they take very different paths to </div><div>implement that vision.</div><div><br></div><div>In general terms, the left take the view that if they elucidate a compelling vision</div><div>and use Government to provide incentives to empower people to achieve it,</div><div>most people will, out of their own good graces, pick up the incentives and play</div><div>along.</div><div><br></div><div>Also in general terms, the right take the view that society is too dumb,</div><div>unimaginative and riven with special interests to behave like that, so they use</div><div>the Government to set rules which penalize failure to attain the vision.</div><div><br></div><div>The right is currently in charge. The online censorship policy is the right's</div><div>way of implementing their desire to facilitate a "civil and confident society."</div><div>They do this by making sure that anything uncivil is criminalized, rather than</div><div>by supporting civility and encouraging confidence among the Australian </div><div>population (and they also ignore ACMA's research which shows that</div><div>Australians are civil and confident online already)</div><div><br></div><div>We'll see this story repeat when copyright comes up: The progressive</div><div>way of dealing with copyright is to provide incentives for artists so that</div><div>creativity can continue to flourish while the business/marketing/promotional</div><div>side of creative industries flounders until they sort out their new business</div><div>models. The conservative way of dealing with copyright is to slowly </div><div>screw-down the restrictions and amp-up the penalties so that behaving in</div><div>a way which doesn't support existing copyright business models becomes</div><div>increasingly illegal and risky. The right wingers are in charge, so we're</div><div>going to get the conservative approach -- for all the same reasons that</div><div>they're trying to implement censorship. The ideology is the same, the</div><div>effects will be the same too.</div><div><br></div><div>In short, the left behaves as if laws are supposed to support and encourage</div><div>"good" behaviours; The right behaves as if people will change "bad" </div><div>behaviours in response to laws. Are the citizens controlling the Government,</div><div>or is the Government controlling the citizens? As the "V for Vendetta" tagline</div><div>said, "People should not be afraid of their governments, governments should</div><div>be afraid of the people."</div><div><br></div><div>While the right is currently ascendent, history will show that their approach</div><div>is wrong, and that the laws they pass won't be worth jack ten years from</div><div>now, that their implementation will oscillate between catastrophic and </div><div>hilariously incompetent, and that the only tangible outcome they'll achieve</div><div>is to burn long-term goodwill.</div><div><br></div><div>But we citizens are going to go through a lot of pain as we collectively teach</div><div>them that lesson. And because the right is such a bunch of control</div><div>freaks who neither know nor care what they're doing, the ISP industry is</div><div>going to bear much of the brunt of it too.</div><div><br></div><div>That's why I think the industry's continual efforts to appease the Government</div><div>are misplaced. The Government isn't even remotely interested in dealing</div><div>with ISPs in good faith. Conroy treats the ISP industry with total contempt</div><div>right now, how could it possibly be any worse if the industry was actively</div><div>opposing what he's doing?</div><div><br></div><div> - mark</div><div><br></div><div><div><div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="'Andale Mono'" size="1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 9px; "><br class="Apple-interchange-newline">--</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#000000"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="'Andale Mono'"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 9px; ">Mark Newton Email: <a href="mailto:newton@internode.com.au">newton@internode.com.au</a> (W)</span></font></font></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#000000"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="'Andale Mono'"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 9px; ">Network Engineer Email: <a href="mailto:newton@atdot.dotat.org">newton@atdot.dotat.org</a> (H)</span></font></font></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#000000"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="'Andale Mono'"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 9px; ">Internode Pty Ltd Desk: +61-8-82282999</span></font></font></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#000000"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="'Andale Mono'"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 9px; ">"Network Man" - Anagram of "Mark Newton" Mobile: +61-416-202-223</span></font></font></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#000000"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="'Andale Mono'"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 9px; "><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></span></font></font></font></div></div></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></span>
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