[AusNOG] Rudd shelves Filtering legislation

[Mark Newton]

On 12/05/2010, at 5:20 PM, Richard Pruss wrote:

The thing that amazes me is that people keep telling the government that technology
is totally unsuited to what they want to do, real police is the way to go but they seem unwilling
to hear this. What part of it will not work do they not understand?

Like I keep saying, this is a political debate, not a technical debate.

If the Government legislates for something that can't possibly work, and
everyone tries their best to comply and fails, they won't modify the plan
or admit they're wrong;  They'll instead kick every ISP in the country in
the balls for being too incompetent to follow the law.

I guarantee that if this goes ahead there'll be a story on ACA or TT shortly
after implementation showing how batshit-crazy the scheme is by presenting
a wide-eyed impressionable 8 year old accessing RC content on a Rudd-issued
laptop out in front of a Julia Gillard Memorial Gymnasium, not bothered at all
by the presence of Conroy's rabbit-proof firewall.

And the Rudd Government won't say, "Yeah, right, we know, we goofed."
No, it'll call the child and their parents irresponsible and slam their ISP for
failing to do the impossible, then propose new legislative amendments to
criminalize circumvention.  And when people circumvent anyway the next
stage will be to make ISPs responsible for third-party circumvention, just
like copyright rightsholders want us to be responsible for third party copyright
infringement.  And they'll be egged on by their friends at the Australian
Christian Lobby every step of the way, because they've already made it
clear that their ultimate aim is to have all adult content banned from all media,
and that ISP censorship of RC content is merely a step on the path.

It's what they do.  The only way any scheme like this can ever have any
credibility is if they ratchet-up authoritarian controls until discrediting it is
considered dangerous and suspicious, and you can't get around it without
being a criminal.  Scope creep is built-in.

And none of that has anything whatsoever to do with whether it can ever
"work."  Indeed, the scope creep the ACL really wants to see is predicated
on it never working, so they'll always have an excuse to tighten the screws
more.  They know the scheme is a technical lemon, and they're counting on it.

Any questions?

  - mark


--
Mark Newton                               Email:  newton at internode.com.au<mailto:newton at internode.com.au> (W)
Network Engineer                          Email:  newton at atdot.dotat.org<mailto:newton at atdot.dotat.org>  (H)
Internode Pty Ltd                         Desk:   +61-8-82282999
"Network Man" - Anagram of "Mark Newton"  Mobile: +61-416-202-223





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