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OT: Government Internet Filtering 25-Nov-2008 At 3:38:23 PM Atomic_Tomatoes

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This topic was discussed on the 7.30 report last night.
http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2008/s2428304.htm

Child pron is bad no argument there, but it seems to be the only argument conroy can come up with and doesn't allow anyone to participate in a reasonable debate without being accused of being a child abuser or being for kiddie pron. (check his responses to senate questions or debate he has participated in).

To my knowledge only China and Saudi Arabia have mandatory filtering, all other countries that participate in isp level filtering do so on an optional basis (and pretty much only child pron).

The problem with mandatory filtering is who is going to maintain the blacklist? Who is responsible for it and who decides what sites are unwanted and should be blocked?
We went from optional to mandatory

Further reading
http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/biztech/labors-net-gag-worse-than-iran/2008/10/23/1224351430987.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

ACMA released a report in July detailing the results of laboratory tests of six unnamed ISP-level filters.
Only one of the filters tested resulted in an acceptable speed reduction of 2 per cent or less. The others caused drops in speed between 21 per cent and 86 per cent.
The tests showed the more accurate the filtering, the bigger the impact on network performance.
However, none of the filters were completely accurate. They allowed access to between 2 per cent and 13 per cent of material that should have been blocked, and wrongly blocked between 1.3 per cent and 7.8 per cent of websites that should have been allowed.

Full acma report can be found here
http://www.acma.gov.au/webwr/_assets/main/lib310554/isp-level_internet_content_filtering_trial-report.pdf

Mark from Internode continues the debate at Whirpool
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=967413&p=45#r883

The Australian government can't even get it's act together on proper rating system for electronic games (a whole other debate) so they get banned instead given a proper rating like movies, to make them R rated. There some games that would have received a R rating (under a proper system) instead of MA15+ to protect the children.

I think this is a great quote from the 7.30 report
If you want to keep your children safe on the internet, the only way to achieve that is to actually sit with them while they're on the internet. You wouldn't drop your kids in Kings Cross and say, "I'll be back in two hours. See how you go." You would walk with them through Kings Cross and make sure that they're safe.