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

[Mark Newton]

On 13/01/2008, at 1:06 PM, Curtis Bayne wrote:

> EDIT: I apologize if this double posts - I think the first message  
> may have been dropped for its size.
>
> ----
>
> 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

And the LTE I sent in response (which also hasn't been published):


Dear Editor,

Bernadette McMenamin's ridiculous puff piece in your newspaper should  
not be allowed to pass without criticism ("Filters needed to battle  
child porn," January 8 2008,http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,23021828-5013038,00.html)

Firstly: I invite your readers to apply some critical thinking to the  
statistics she included in the article opener.  Does anyone seriously  
believe that something which is illegal in every jurisdiction on  
earth, and which attracts the death penalty in some jurisdictions, is  
actually so wildly popular that it's a US$3b industry on 100,000  
websites?  Perhaps she ought to explain how she defines, "child  
pornography," whether it's the same definition adopted by the law, and  
the source of her statistics.  Indeed, perhaps all readers would have  
been better off if The Australian performed that questioning first...?

Bernadette writes, "In my experience and according to our research,  
Australians do care and want something to be done," then continues  
with the Sir Humphrey-esque conclusion that the thing that must be  
done is the thing that the new Government has proposed.  That proposal  
happens to be largely identical to the one which the previous  
Government abandoned in 1999 after confirming (with the assistance of  
industry, CSIRO and the independent Ovum Report) that wide-scale  
Government mandated ISP-side censorship was too expensive, too  
ineffective and carried too much of a performance penalty to be  
applicable to the Australian marketplace.  After Australia's moral  
foundation seems to have avoided slipping into the abyss in the 8  
years since the previous Government found that realization, is it  
worth questioning why various special interests think it's so urgent  
to suddenly change policy direction now?

Bernadette cites "clean feed" systems in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and  
the UK as examples to emulate;  If they were half as good as she has  
proposed, that'd imply that there'd be no online traders of illegal  
material in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and the UK, and that Internet  
users in those countries would actually be prevented from viewing it.   
Both of those conclusions would be false.

The UK "clean feed" system she cites is also in no way comparable to  
what the Australian Government has proposed:  It's a purely voluntary  
commercial system provided to ISPs by British Telecom (BT), which, to  
date, has enjoyed somewhat lacklustre market acceptance.  If  
Bernadette seriously believes that the provision of an optional system  
which isn't very popular is an Internet pornography panacea, then I'd  
respectfully point out that Australia already has systems like that  
from vendors such as Optus and WebShield, and if her battle has  
already been won perhaps she can stop fighting it.

Moving past the particulars of the wrongheadedness of her argument,  
though, I want to take particular issue with the way she has portrayed  
people who oppose mandatory Australia-wide censorship of Internet  
content as supporters of child pornography.

This debate has swung back and forth across the Australian political  
landscape for nearly 20 years, ever since the first Senate Select  
Committee into Online Services examined the BBS industry in 1990.   
Over that time, a few useful datapoints have emerged:

Firstly:  Every time the issue has been revisited, fortellers of doom  
and gloom have suggested that failure to ban various types of Internet  
content will inevitably lead to the end of society as we know it.

... and yet, with 20 years of hindsight, we can see that the children  
who were being brought up with unfiltered Internet access in 1990 are  
now productive adults in 2008, with firmly calibrated moral compasses,  
steadfastly refusing to be stereotyped as child molesters and axe  
murderers;  and the parents who are portrayed as having such a  
terminally inadequate grasp of technology as to inhibit their child- 
rearing obligations are, in 2008, some of the same people who used  
Google to help with their physics projects in high school.  Nearly  
twenty years of history shows us that society isn't harmed by  
unfiltered access to the network.  I believe most people, even the  
politically motivated ones who flog this dead horse every few years,  
understand this reality.  Considering all the water that's flowed  
under this particular bridge, it's hard to believe that two decades of  
campaigning could leave any serious observer with cause to believe  
filtering is actually necessary.

Secondly:  The many responses to Government enquiries, Senate Select  
Committees and newspaper letters to the editor from Industry, civil  
libertarians, technologists and concerned citizens should, after all  
this time, make it patently obvious to even the most uninformed  
observer that there are reasons to oppose these schemes which have  
nothing to do with support for child pornography.

If Bernadette's accusatory offensiveness is to be believed, Telstra, a  
paragon of Corporate Australia who just happens to also be an opposer  
of this Government's filtering plans, supports child pornography.

Now which alternative is easier to believe?  That Bernadette is right,  
and those who oppose filtration are closet child absusers?  Or that  
there are serious, well considered, legitimate technical, legal and  
public policy questions which need to be answered before these  
proposals should be allowed to pass?

Bernadette McMenamin has joined Senator Stephen Conroy in directing  
personal abuse at those who dare to ask those questions.  Quite aside  
from the effect that insulting behaviour has on the public debate,  
it's worth asking whether that kind of outrageous conduct has any  
place in the pages of this newspaper.

Mark Newton



--
Mark Newton                               Email:  newton at internode.com.au 
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