[AusNOG] Happy new year / New rules forage-restricted internetand mobile content after the 20th ofjanuary 2008

[Curtis Bayne]

Hello Everyone,

Just to keep the discussion alive - I found this article floating around today.

http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,23021828-15306,00.html

QUOTE: "IT is beyond belief that some representatives of the Australian internet service provider industry are reluctant to install filters that would prevent access to child pornography."

"In my experience and according to our research, Australians do care and want something to be done. In late 2006 Child Wise commissioned AC Nielsen to conduct a survey of 1497 Australian internet users over the age of 18. The key outcomes of the survey were that: 83 per cent believe that ISPs should block all child pornography, 76 per cent would change to an ISP that blocked child pornography and 64 per cent are not confident that home-based internet filters are effective. Surprisingly Child Wise has also received calls from child sex offenders who support mandatory ISP filtering stating that this blocking mechanism would have reduced their desire to abuse children."

...with no citations of statistical sources either. Handy.

Nothing ground-breaking, but certainly enough to make my blood boil (as it will for a few others I am sure)


- Curtis



-----Original Message-----
From: ausnog-bounces at ausnog.net [mailto:ausnog-bounces at ausnog.net] On Behalf Of Barrie Hall
Sent: Saturday, 5 January 2008 12:05 PM
To: Mark Newton; Adrian Chadd
Cc: ausnog at ausnog.net
Subject: Re: [AusNOG] Happy new year / New rules forage-restricted internetand mobile content after the 20th ofjanuary 2008


>
> I think the key point here is that everyone in the industry will
> need to "clean" traffic themselves, making clean feeds from upstreams
> mostly worthless, and removing acquisition of clean upstream feeds
> as an option for small providers.
>
> That means even a small ISP will potentially be up for a large
> financial outlay in equipment, software and developer time.
>
> This is something that respondents to the inevitable industry
> consultation phase would do well to remember, and draw attention
> to when they're dissecting the cost model that underlies the
> Government's model.
>
> While we're having this entertaining little diversion, lets be
> careful do avoid doing what we geeks do all the time, which is to
> exhaustively investigate some kind of technical overview of how
> the whole scheme should work as if it's some kind of intellectual
> problem that requires a solution.  If the Government wants consulting
> to determine the feasibility of this stuff, they need to pay for it.
> Don't give them anything for free, not even opinions on how it
> could be done.  The rest of the industry isn't going to respect
> your expertise and insight if it results in Conroy saying, "Gee,
> thanks for that!  I'll be sure to quote you in my next press
> release!"
>
> There is, as yet, no technical model from the Government describing
> how their stuff is supposed to work in the real world.  There's
> no statement from them saying whether they want URL filtering,
> flesh tone recognition, diversions to third party filtering service
> providers, or a signed stat dec saying we'll all try our very
> best to avoid sending porn to customers but make no guarantees.
> It is not our job to develop these alternatives for them;  it's
> our job to demolish their proposals, not feed them raw materials.
>

Yes, I think we are all going to have to clean the traffic ourselves based on scenarios being
put forward.

Some solutions I have looked at wont scale well and aren't proven (n x 10GE). Vendors have
been reluctant to commit to much based on our lack of requirements (bandwidth, filtering
depth, size of list, etc).

Another point of concern would be any requirement to maintain a per-customer black list in
addition to what ever is mandated.

I would like to gather thoughts from all on:

1) How we might actually provide a "clean feed" (HTTP vs everything). (Appliances,
trans-proxys, ????)
2) How much do we really think this is going to cost?
3) What are timelines going to look like? 3/6/12 months ?
4) How we would respond to a "per customer" blacklist requirement?

Happy to contribute back what I can.

Cheers,
Barrie
+61 400589508


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