Road Works Ahead on Information Superhighway

speakforme — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 11:58:41 +0000

The Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Stephen Conroy must really be feeling the heat. What started out as a genuinely sound plan pre-election, to ban all child pornography from being accessed over the Internet, the government’s proposed mandatory ISP filtering scheme has since been spiralling out of control. It has now come to light that a blacklist made by the government of 2,000 plus supposedly illegal websites, includes adult material that is legally available. In addition, 90% of Australians are now opposed to the idea of Internet filtering, along with very few of the 700 Australian internet providers signing up for the plan including the big three, Optus, Telstra and Iinet.

In a move that will be a first for any Western nation, you would think the Australian government would have done their homework on exactly how this ISP filtering is going to operate. The truth is, they really don’t have a clue. In fact, the belief that blocking offensive websites will bring consumers of child pornography and any other illicit material to a stop is wishful thinking. On ABC Radio National’s Background Briefing with Wendy Carlisle, Professor Bjorn Lamberg explains that the World Wide Web is not the source of the problem, as child paedophiles have moved on to more private and secure file transferring methods that the ISP filtering cannot control. Furthermore, the filters themselves are far from competent, not even being able to tell the difference between a black cat and a white cat.

If we knew that the filtering was strictly for illegal material only such as child pornography or pro-terrorism sites and if we also knew that the filtering was technologically savvy so that no other unrelated websites were compromised along the way, then the government’s mandatory ISP filtering scheme has the potential to be hailed a success. However at this point, we know none of this for certain at all.

The reality is, Internet filtering is not going to stop the circulation of content that is deemed inappropriate by the government. People will always find other ways to get their hands on illicit material and there is no quick solution to this problem. As much as the Family First Party and other likeminded communities and individuals may love to see the pornography industry out of business, mandatory Internet filtering may in the end be detrimental to their cause. It could be the case that Australia sees the formation of a black market to cater for such demands.

Perhaps all this time, energy and money that is going into fighting the losing battle of sheltering our children from the horrors of the Internet would be better spent educating them and making them more “street smart” when it comes to their online habits. After all, are we just mistaking innocence for ignorance? Let me know your thoughts.

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Road Works Ahead on Information Superhighway