[AusNOG] Happy new year / New rules for age-restricted internetand mobile content after the 20th of january 2008

[Matthew Moyle-Croft]

Bevan Slattery wrote:
> Hi 'nogers.
>
> Sorry if I offend people with my contrary popular views on the matter,
> but in the interest of providing discussion points here we go :)
>
> Technically providing a clean feed isn't as hard as everyone makes it
> out to be.  
What is a "clean feed"?   Is it merely a list of offensive URLs or is it 
a type of content?   If it's a type of content then to what level will 
we be required to identify it?  (List of words, phrases etc?)

P2P classification requires identifying flows only and acting on those 
flows - this is a statistical thing that doesn't require .   Providing a 
"clean feed" requires analysing the CONTENT of ALL flows.
This is actually a much harder problem - not technically impossible, but 
difficult and VERY costly.  A much smaller ISP than us has indicated 
around half a million for just a few POPs.   So, we'd be up for many 
millions of dollars just to identify flow levels (around a dozen ADSL 
POPs), let alone the content.

> The fundamental issue here is one which Government is completely
> clueless on the problems they are creating.  It is PRACTICALLY
> impossible to guarantee a clean feed.  If you can't guarantee a clean
> feed, then you are providing parents with a false sense of security
> thinking they have.  Ultimately, parents will still have to install
> filtering software on their computers and supervise their kids.
>   
So, you're saying providing a clean feed isn't hard, above, but here you 
claim it's practically impossible to actually achieve in a centralised way!
> Like most of the new government Internet policies, they are big on
> ideas, even bigger on hype and will be huge on collateral damage.  This
> will be an absolute failure and I would feel that any ISP that is forced
> to provide a 'clean feed' should be afforded indemnity by the Federal
> Government for the class action that will follow when parents sue for
> false and misleading advertising when they realize a clean feed is not
> actually a clean feed.
>
> It is the governments responsibility to provide the list and a suitable
> indemnity from legal prosecution.  Like everything else the government
> is proposing, we need to get them to push out the details on how it is
> going to be implemented and the framework associated.  We should hit
> them with a list of questions in the absence of the framework.
>   
Pretty much the point - it's pointless and won't get us anywhere.

MMC