So the government has, as planned back in Beazley times, decided that ISPs in Australia must now implement blocking of “pornographic and inappropriate” websites. Customers must opt out, rather than opting in, to a blocking system that is likely to be at least some of: slow, ineffective, expensive, and nonspecific. Labor reportedly hasn’t even finished its feasibility studies on a “clean feed” plan, but this has been rushed on through, perhaps in an attempt to slip it in while most people are distracted by New Year’s Eve.
Electronic Frontiers Australia offered an analysis of Labor’s plans back in 2006. Read it here.
Even attempts to block only the most vile and illegal sites on the internet on a content/keyword basis will result in false positives. There is simply no way out of that. To think otherwise smacks of utter ignorance and hubris. So here are the options: we are either going to have a content-based system blocking unreasonably, or we are going to have a tokenistic URL blacklist system that will be completely ineffectual. And either way, we’re all paying for it, and parents who rely on automated filtering to babysit their children are guaranteed to get a nasty surprise.
Content-based censorware has in the past blocked people from accessing sites on mushroom biology (war on drugs filter), feminist sites (they mention sex and rape), youth suicide prevention sites (where you can catch teh gay), survivor sites (child molestation!), birth control information sites (abortion), sites campaigning to stop prison rape, AIDS information sites, a blind children’s centre, a Jewish youth network, centres for religious tolerance, major newspapers, human rights campaigns, TIME magazine, literature routinely read in schools, the British Conservative Party, and the Vatican.
I’m guessing a blacklist-based system is more likely, but only from hints dropped about ACMA prohibited sites. I just can’t find enough detail in today’s news to be sure about that.
I’m also concerned about the opt-out nature of this filtering. If we opt out, who gets notified? Who’s going to be making a list, and who’s going to be checking it twice? In the age of the War On Terrah, it is hardly paranoia to be concerned about a government breaking privacy laws in order to find out who has chosen to maintain full internet access in the face of filtering of “pornography” and “violence”.
This should go without saying, but just to dot all the Is: “inappropriate” is in the eye of the beholder. One person’s rude words is another’s well-crafted snark. In another recent example, it is reasonable to assume that a working-as-designed GFoA would block a site like the (munged) four*ch4n. If that were the case, feminist bloggers would be unable to track the planning of an organised campaign of attacks against them. Are we happy with blocking university professors in certain social sciences (linguistics, say, or English, or women’s studies) from accessing research data that contains naughty words or pictures?
As the news.com.au article says, “It is unclear exactly what will be deemed inappropriate material”. No, really?
It’s a shame my Peacefire shirt is all worn out; now would be a good time to start wearing it again. Conroy has just plain got it wrong on this one. You can tell him so on his Myspace page, if you like.
Happy New Year.
Categories: culture wars, gender & feminism
Abortion will remain in the NSW Crimes Act 
96th Down Under Feminists Carnival 
Don’t read Paglia, read Ivins 
Dawkins stirs the pot again 
Hoyden About Town 
Thank you! I was trying to put a post together on this, and generally just spluttering.
This is just sooooo stupid. Pablum for the “what about the children?” crowd that won’t do a lick of good.
Spot on again Lauredhel!
It’s worth reviewing some of the attitudes to this in the Senate Committee Report on the Content Services Bill 2007, and the Labor Party’s minority report (including Conroy), which is scathing about the Howard government ramming things through… yet here the ALP is doing the same thing without even a token inquiry!
As I said in my submission (pretty shoddy – but the inquiry was too short to right a proper proposal), the objective is great, but there are huge practical problems. Opt-in blacklists, and whitelists, with audited rulesets and transparent appeal processes (if you get blacklisted without cause) are much needed.
I totally agree with your analysis of “false positives”.
The submission by Electronic Frontiers Australia to the Senate is here, and makes observations on political point-scoring: "Ministerial statements trumpeting the success of the scheme have been, by the Minister’s own admission, based on erroneous statistics." It’s worth reading in conjunction with their 2006 review.
Well done keeping an eye on things!
Dave Bath’s last blog post..A New Year Thought – Bach on Peace
Excellent Dave, thanks for those links. Tigtog, I wondered if this was a shout-out to Rudd’s Christian base, but then realised it predates him. I suspect plain stupidity off the top of my head, but given the submissions, it appears to be wilful stupidity.
Lauredhel’s last blog post..Astronomy Pictures of the Year for 2007
Grrrr. I hate mainstream p0rn and all, but this sort of blockage ain’t cool. I believe in fighting these battles by changing people’s opinions, rather than through censorship*, even if my way is the slower and longer way.
*The exception is of course p0rn (or anything else) whose production involves actually committing or directly inciting a crime against another person, but as you point out so well, even blocking this stuff on the internet is going to be ineffective.
I just love the presumption that *everyone* who has an internet connection has or will have children in the house. It annoys the hells out of me, because I’m childfree by choice, so is my partner, and we’re both internet junkies. But because J Random Parent can’t be bothered using the number one built-in filter supplied to all humans (ie the adult brain), we’re going to have to damn well explain (repeatedly) that no, we don’t have children; no, we don’t want children; no, we’re not going to let our nieces or nephews look at the internets on our computers (my nieces are 13 and 8 this year, his nephew is 3), and no, we’re not in the habit of leaving the house wide open so some kid who’s just wandering by can sneak in and look at the internet while we’re not home.
Honestly, I think it’s time to revive that long-dead term “information super-highway” in connection with the internet – as an analogy for why it’s not a safe place for the kiddiwinkles to be playing.
I can’t believe so many people are protecting the porn industry? We are talking about porn and violent websites here not freedom of speech. I know alot of people are saying the government won’t stop there, but that is ridiculous. You’ve all brought into the scare mongering being generated around this issue.
Deborah Robinson’s last blog post..‘Right to Life’ Bias in Pregnancy Counselling
Who is protecting the porn industry?
I want to protect my right to access non-porn sites which these ineffective filters are going to block because of the Scunthorpe problem, without having to place my name on an opt-out list that I don’t trust the government not to misuse.
Deborah Robinson must have rocks in her head if she thinks the government won’t censor political websites. The little Helmsman, Chairman Rudd already has form for trying censor the media in relation to himself. It is trusting little possums like Robinson that a Labor government depends on when wanting to “protect” the little people.
Darrin Hodges’s last blog post..Afghanistan, Australia?s new Vietnam
The clean fead will not be using keywords to block websites. There will be a blacklist of websites distributed to Internet Service Providers, so your fears that non-porn sites will be inadvertently blocked are completely unfounded.
Deborah Robinson’s last blog post..Debate on ISP Filtering Heats Up and Gets Nasty
That’s the first time I’ve heard any sort of delineation about how the clean feed is going to be implemented. Do you have a source for your assertion?
ETA: Again, how is that going to be technically effective? Porn sites morph sites continually, so how is the blacklist going to be kept up to date? How reliable can it possibly be unless staffed at an extraordinarily high level of employees to monitor the entire web.
Also, if one’s non-porn site somehow ends up on the blacklist, how does one go about getting it removed?
These are important questions.
You can find the source for the blacklist I referred to above on all the newspaper websites.
“Senator Conroy said the Australian Communications and Media Authority would prepare a “blacklist” of unsuitable sites.”
This appeared in the Courier Mail on 30 December 2007 and you can find the complete article at the url:
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,22989336-952,00.html
Unfortunately with all the opposition against the clean feed on the web, many of the facts have been overlooked.
Deborah Robinson’s last blog post..Debate on ISP Filtering Heats Up and Gets Nasty
Deborah, if you read what I have previously written, I have contemplated both possibilities – blacklisting and content-filtering. Both are untenable. With a blacklisting system, as well as the risk of scatter (again, do you want Livejournal, Facebook, Flickr, Youtube, and Myspace all blocked? ALL of these contain “porn”.), there is the issue of the blacklist blocking being utterly ineffective. Do you seriously, seriously believe that a small government department is going to sit there updating their blacklists to block every single porn site in the world? How many sites do you think they’ll be able to block? 90% of them? 10%? 2%? At what level do you think parents can site back and happily wash their hands of the matter?
Blacklisting is tokenistic, expensive, will slow internet access significantly, and will ultimately be completely useless. Go read some of the technical critiques of this, please.
The truth is we don’t know enough yet for so many on the web to be scaring people like they are. That’s what I object to.
Deborah Robinson’s last blog post..Debate on ISP Filtering Heats Up and Gets Nasty
And you know that this blacklist is definitely not going to be generated by content-filtering? How?
“And you know that this blacklist is definitely not going to be generated by content-filtering? How?”
I don’t know, but neither does anyone else at this stage. That is my point, too much fuss over worse case scenarios that in all liklihood will never happen.
Deborah Robinson’s last blog post..Debate on ISP Filtering Heats Up and Gets Nasty
I wonder if pictures of breastfeeding mothers would be considered p0rn and blocked?
I beg to differ that advocacy from lobby groups over worst case scenarios is “too much fuss”. Pointing out the worst case scenarios is how lobby groups prevent others from making expensive and ineffective mistakes.
Deborah, I may not now exactly what the governments plans are (and nor does anyone else, and I think that even goes for Senator Conroy himself, who seems to have a lot of vague ideas that are very confused on the details), but I can tell you what the technical possibilities are.
Some possibilities
a) blacklist only includes child porn and other actually illegal sites. Not bad from a censorship point of view, but largely pointless, and despite Conroys use of child porn in his rhetoric, doesn’t seem to be what he plans – such sites shouldn’t be ‘opt-out’ filtered, they should be shut down. Unfortunately, they are very good at avoiding blacklisting, and a blacklist is likely to be much less effective.
b) ACMA maintained black list expanded – this appears to be Conroys plan. He also appears not to have thought about it very hard, as in practical terms this is impossible. ACMA can maintain a black list with a small number of sites on it as it does now, but blocking all porn on the internet would be an absurdly large undertaking – in order to rate the tens of millions of sites ACMA would have to expand to become one of the larger government agencies, would still have its work cut out to deliver it fast enough to be useful. Even if it worked, it would be undesirable – ACMA doesn’t tell anyone what it filters, so all manner of free expression might be blocked (what if ACMA decides feminist lesbian or GLBT sites that include some explicit sexual content are ‘worse’ than the equivalent mainstream ones, and they receive more aggressive blocking? Given their veil of secrecy and aggressive resistance to FOIA requests, we might never even know), and technical considerations might still lead to huge problems as it attempted to block porn available on social networking and blogging sites like livejournal and blogger. And censoring violence has been used to block, for example, dissidents documenting violent abuse by authority figures – all, remember, under the ACMA system with no legal way to even find out what is blocked. This option is Conroys unrealistic fantasy world – but its still a pretty scary one.
c) given that ACMA can’t possibly rate and block the entire internet for adult, and resorts to automatic rating and nannyware programs. Which are notoriously bad at blocking access to porn (it takes only a minor amount of computer savvy to work around most of them, and spammers etc are very driven and resourceful), and notoriously prone to throwing out an awful lot of baby with that bathwater. Worry about access to sexual assault services, GLBT services, frank feminist discussion, etc This one has many of the same censorship problems that manual ACMA filtering does, only its more pervasive (because its not limited by available resources in the same way, and this mysterious automated process is making all the decisions rather than a bureaucrat that we could at least hope will look into context (though still in as mysterious, and unappealable, way as before).
d) what we have is a modest expansion of what ACMA blocks and they don’t attempt to block mainstream porn, with enforced ISP level blocking – for example ACMA doesn’t try to block all porn on the internet, just a subset that is ruled unusually troublesome, though not illegal – so, we get a crackdown on the nasty stuff (which remains avaialble on mail order, though), but also (and probably mostly) on the kinksters and the body modders, but misogynist, objectifying, mainstream porn remains largely untouched. So, the internet becomes slower and more expensive for all, but we still get the porn, just slanted a bit more to mainstream and conservative. Also, deeply unappealing.
And in all cases, it doesn’t block porn access by anyone who wants it and has a tiny bit of computer savvy. Download compressed files from a file-sharing site, for example (and see how the slippery slope is very slippery indeed? Now we have a justification to block all filesharing sites, and the fight against porn has suddenly turned into the fight to help the record industry)
I’m no fan of nannyware software on the client PC end myself. I wouldn’t install anything with automated content filtering for all porn (as opposed to spam/ad filtering, which would block a lot of unintended porn) myself, though I might use something that demands more active involvement by the parent/guardian. But it is a lot more effective (because it can try to block porn as it is displayed, not downloaded), is not a ‘one size fits all in the household’ solution, its easy to switch if you don’t like the way it blocks sites that might have progressive content prone to blocking (like sexual assault and GLBT sites), and its far more technically feasible, not slowing down all internet use. That WAS the Howard governments policy until campaign desperation set it, and its a pity that Conroy felt a need to compete by stealing policy from Family First.
Open Admission of my bias: I’m a board member of EFA.
dave: thanks heaps for commenting here to elucidate the different filtering possibilities and the issues with each of them.
Yes that is great information to have, Dave. It is a big leap from free blocking software to opt-out ISP level filtering and I wasn’t aware of a lot of the issues before.
Deborah: I fail to see how objecting to my internet experience being filtered out the wazoo is “protecting the porn industry”. I fail to see how protesting against the government of Australia treating voters as though we’re not competent to make our own choices is “protecting the porn industry”. I also fail to see how getting irritated over a public, governmental response to a private childrearing problem is “protecting the porn industry” either.
There are other issues in this debate than pornography, and to focus entirely on one issue in such a complex matter belittles not only that issue, but also all of the others involved.
Since Deborah won’t debate me on her blog – she deleted the comment tracking back to my response – I feel entitled to debate her in other forums in which she chooses to engage me.
She claims that she deleted my comment because I was launching a personal attack on her. I claim it is because her arguments are made of straw.
I invite other people to read my note and judge for themselves.
Jon Seymour’s last blog post..An Annotated Response to Deborah Robinson
BTW: her other claim is that I am trying to drum up readership for my blog. I don’t see any point denying it, and since she will try to use this to denigrate me, I may as well be up front about it.
Jon Seymour’s last blog post..An Annotated Response to Deborah Robinson
The funny thing about Deborah’s complaint about use of unlikely worst case scenarios is that is exactly what the proponents of this plan insist on doing. Unless _everyone’s_ internet is filtered, _all_ children in Australia are in mortal danger of _always_ having pornography shoved down their throats _every_ time they venture out on the internet and there is _nothing_ responsible parents can do to about it, absent of Government imposed censorship.
The fact is, normal users of the internet are rarely involuntarily confronted by pornography. The fact there is so much out there is because a lot of people, children included, want it. Moreover, these people actively seek it.
As long as people want to view pornography there is no way a technical block is going prevent them getting it – it’s a simple fact of the technology: “the internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it”. The UK clean feed won’t prevent it. Nor will Conroy’s Great Firewall.
Mandatory ISP-level filtering is bad public policy because it simply can’t hope to meet the stated objectives of the policy unless it is so thoroughly draconian that freedoms seriously are in danger because of the collateral damage a necessarily imprecise filter will wreak.
You can have a fast and free internet or a clean one, but not both.
Jon Seymour’s last blog post..An Annotated Response to Deborah Robinson
Good points, Jon. My kids use computers in the family room and kitchen, where family life continually passes them by. They have never suddenly and unexpectedly been confronted by pornography.
STATISTICS:
The largest consumer group of internet pornography are children aged 12 -17 years , vol. 61, no. 16, pp. 72-77.]
90% of 8 – 16 year olds have viewed online pornography
26 Children’s character names are linked to thousands of porn links
79% of youth unwanted exposure to pornography occurs in the home
84% of boys and 60% of girls have been accidentally exposed to pornographic material on the internet .
Deborah Robinson’s last blog post..Mom’s Blogging Carnival – Jan 7, 2008 Edition
Deborah,
Thank you for those statistics. Let me say that I have absolutely no reason to doubt the veracity of those statistics you have quoted.
However, all you have done is provided a convincing argument why the Government should support parents who feel threatened by these statistics in their desire to obtain effective, opt-in filtering services.
These figures in themselves do nothing to support your contention that the Government should filter my connection. Sorry for using the 1st-person pronoun in this case, but my desire to be unmolested by Government censorship is currently directly under-threat by the Government and all those who support it and I feel that I have the right to take this personally.
Your Sincerely, and in the spirit of rational debate,
Jon Seymour
Jon Seymour’s last blog post..Deconstructing Stephen Conroy, peddler of filters.
Please tell me more about this, since HaT isn’t a write-only medium.
How was “pornographic” defined, and by whom?
How was “accidental” defined, and by whom?
In what way were they exposed to “pornographic” material? Please be precise. Was this on email, instant messaging, the web, Usenet, or by some other means? If the web, which *EXACT* sites were they viewing?* Do you have reasonable grounds to believe that all of these sites will be selected and filtered by ACMA effectively and with no false positives? Were they viewing the material themselves, or looking over someone’s shoulder? Where were they when this material was viewed? Was there any filtering in place at the location, and if so, which filtering?
For someone who has whined about how she doesn’t want to debate this any more, you seem to be doing a good impression of having a shot at it.
While not doubting the veracity of the figures, I do note that the quoted figures do not indicate of the children at risk, how many of their parents used PC-based filtering technology.
If you are serious about advocating ISP-level filtering you need to first determine whether the cheaper alternative of universal PC-based filters might better obtain the desired objective.
Again, in the spirit of rational debate,
Jon Seymour
Jon Seymour’s last blog post..Deconstructing Stephen Conroy, peddler of filters.
Let me ask you. If the government decided to create an “opt-in” system, would this resolve all of your opposition to a clean feed?
Deborah Robinson’s last blog post..Mom’s Blogging Carnival – Jan 7, 2008 Edition
Lauredhel – I listed the sources so you can find the answers to any further questions you may have. In relation to the statistic you specifically asked about here, it is a commonly quote statistic based on a survey published in 2003 and was repeated recently with similar results.
Deborah Robinson’s last blog post..Mom’s Blogging Carnival – Jan 7, 2008 Edition
Deborah,
From a libertarian perspective, I have absolution no objection to the notion of an opt-in feed. Indeed, I think this could very well be a good thing, since it might take the heat out of the current debate.
However, there are still technical and economic questions about whether such a feed would ever be viable. There is also a valid question about how large the Government subsidy should be. That said, if a commercial organization was able to successfully develop such a feed, then all power to them.
Seriously, if Hillsong – which I understand to be quite affluent – and/or the AFA should consider developing such a feed, then that’d be fine by me. However, if it started to censor articles about evolutionary biology or heavily promote climate change deniers, I would reserve right to criticise it on those grounds.
I am fundamentally not opposed to giving parents the control they seek. I just wish to oppose any attempted over-reach into control over my life.
jon.
Jon Seymour’s last blog post..Deconstructing Stephen Conroy, peddler of filters.
I never said I supported censorship Jon. I only ever talked about restricting access to pornography. It really doesn’t bother me whether the system is opt-in or opt-out because either way, I would want a clean feed. I would prefer an opt-out system only because this brings the Internet in line with offline media. But if it is opt-in, so be it. As long as there is still the choice of a clean feed for families who want it, I would support it.
By the way, I don’t support Hillsong (yuck) or Australian Family Association (yuck and eek). I published the AFA’s media release on my website re: the clean feed. But I do not support any of their other policies. Just like I’m sure you don’t support all the views of everyone who agrees with you on this issue. So please do not make comparisons with me and religious and hate organisations like Duncan Riley has done (who I will be suing for libel if he isn’t careful). Don’t sink to Duncan Riley’s level, stick to the issue and so will I.
Deborah Robinson’s last blog post..Mom’s Blogging Carnival – Jan 7, 2008 Edition
We already have opt-in filtering. The Government doesn’t need to “create” anything, and I have no objection to people using whatever filters they choose, so long as they don’t impose them on others.
I assumed you were quoting the statistics in support of your own argument in favour of opt-out universal filtering. In which case, the onus is on you to make the link convincingly, and you haven’t.
I’ve read the study report. Very little detail is given. It appears they are talking of the world wide web, but this is not made clear (many people use the word “sites” to speak of all sorts of online content). No information is given on which sites supposedly led to this “accidental” exposure, what the exposure consisted of, whether it was damaging, or whether the sites were filterable.
The source appears to have been a Newspoll telephone survey. It is unimaginably foolish to believe that anyone can get accurate, applicable, usable data on “accidental pornography exposure” from teenagers, particularly female teenagers, from random telephone calls.
Which is, of course, censorship: the practice of examining texts and restricting access to content judged “objectionable”.
Splendid. I’m taking this to mean that you’ve learnt something from this debate – which is terrific.
Lauredhel – As many have argued during the course of this debate, current content filters are ineffective and are easily bypassed. The big problem I have with existing content filters is that they use keywords and can inadvertently filter out websites which are not porn. I think someone from your blog has already pointed this out.
Expanding the existing “blacklist” which is maintained by the ACMA is more effective than content filtering. Yes, there is already a ‘blacklist’ in existence which the former government never told anyone about. It is made up of child porn sites.
In regards to kids accidentally accessing pornography. Are stats from the US government acceptable? Visit the http://www.cp80.org website because these stats are not unsimilar to those that I quoted but are from sources you are more likely to accept.
It is unreasonable for you to expect me to write an essay complete with references and a bibliography here in the comments of your blog. What I recall of my university days I was given a few weeks at least to prepare and write an essay. So don’t ask me to do it a few minutes love.
Deborah Robinson’s last blog post..Mom’s Blogging Carnival – Jan 7, 2008 Edition
Lauredhel – you have to have some limits or there will be anarchy. Surely you agree that pornography should be restricted to adults only.
PS. Good news. I just contacted Duncan Riley by email and we agreed to end this silly war because it was getting beyong a joke.
I am a reasonable woman, always have been and if you look around my blog you might be surprised how many values and beliefs we do share Laurel.
Deborah Robinson’s last blog post..Mom’s Blogging Carnival – Jan 7, 2008 Edition
Deborah, an opt-in system would go a long way (though not completely) to resolving the civil liberties problem with the ‘clean feed’. But there are a number of other reasons why I would continue to be opposed – if nothing else, why would I want the government to spend millions of my tax dollars on a program I this does a very bad job of solving the problem, as well as imposing technical restrictions on ISPs that will impact other usess even if they opt out? Its completely rational to oppose the government spending money on a bad idea.
And you own confidence in value of the clean feed is a good example of one of the reasons I dislike it as policy – it promises the technically credulous something it can never deliver, and giving concerned parents like yourself a sense that they have meaningfully protected their children that is largely false. For exzmple, it simply can’t block spam email at the server/host level, so the ‘clean feed’ is likely to do a far worse job at protecting children from accidental, unsolicited, porn viewing than filtering software. There are two basic reasons to object to any policy – because you disagree with the objective of the policy, and because you feel its a bad way to achieve that objective. Making the filtering opt-in would do a lot to settle disagreement with the basic objective of the policy – but ISP filtering will remain a very poor way to achieve that objective.
And to be more politically blunt
I never said I supported censorship Jon. I only ever talked about restricting access to pornography.
Everyone is opposed to censorship of things they approve of. Porn is speech too, just because you disapprove of porn doesn’t mean that censoring porn is suddenly no longer censorship. Of course, society has decided that porn is an area where we do compromise between censorship and what is appropriate viewing, and only a radical fringe would say it should all be unrestricted, but increasing censorship is still increasing censorship.
Exactly. For all the reasons Dave lists above and in his guest post, this proposal is simply not technically feasible and will not solve the problem via ISP filtering whether opt-out or opt-in, therefore taxpayer money spent on it will be taxpayer money wasted.
Dave – technology is not stagnant, it evolves and improves all the time. Those employed in IT innovate to develop solutions to those problems you have outlined in your argument. Look at the internet when it was first introduced, it wasn’t perfect and with only dial-up access, it was painfully slow. But broadband was developed in response to this problem and I have no doubt it will keep evolving and improving in the future. Any produce or service you can name has evolved and improved since it’s introduction and ISP filtering will do the same. To suggest it won’t, contradicts the history of technology. And before you ask, “So why haven’t they done that already?”. Because until ISP filtering is introduced there is incentive to do so. Mobile phones were not introduced in their current form, they have elvolved to what they are today through innovation and improvements in technology. ISP filtering will be no different.
Censorship – like it or not, community standards have dictated that pornography and most levels of violence are not appropriate for children. Censorship already exists in Australia, that’s why movies and TV are rated. The government just wants to bring material on the internet in line with offline material. If by advocating the clean feed that makes me a ‘censorship fan’ then fine, I will wear the label along with millions of others in this country.
Deborah Robinson’s last blog post..Duncan Riley and I Call a Truce
Deborah, I am, as it happens, an IT professional with a lot of knowledge of the detailed workings of the internet. Innovation does, its true, improve what is possibly – but innovation also changes what solutions are appropriate, and some technical limitations are inherent. The issue is not that ISP filtering can’t achieve more than it does now – the issue is that PC filtering is a more appropriate technology, and will improve faster than ISP filtering. It will always be a more flexible, more adaptable, more powerful and cheaper alternative.
Secondly, choices of technology have policy implications. Its nor completely inherent in the choice of technology that the ISP will be a centralised ‘one-size-fits-all’ list, but its both certainly Conyroys intent, and made far more likely/practical by choice of technology.
Lastly – on censorship, sure, I accept the inherent compromises etc, and for the most part I just wanted you to admit that you were arguing pro-censorship and not pretend otherwise. But be aware that changing mechanisms of enforcement DOES change the balance between free speech and other concerns – more censorship enforcement is more censorship. And spare a thought for who those ‘millions of others’ are – this is a Family First policy before Conroy picked it up, and there may be millions of people on the social conservative side of politics who are censorship fans for you to march alongside, but that isn’t convincing me to march along side.
And also, if you think the governments intent is to ‘bring the internet into line with offline material’, you are very wrong. The OFLC process for rating movies and literature is quite an open one (if occasionally a stupid one, particularly on video games), about which there is often public debate (that sometimes has seen the classification of films like None Songs change). By contrast, the ACMA one is an incredibly opaque and secretive one, where the public is not permitted, even if they make an FOIA request, to even know what is banned. If the government was to actually make banning websites more similar to the OFLC process, I’d be very pleased.
Dave
If you are in the IT industry you would know how far and fast we have come since the first home computers were invented. By your own admission earlier in this discussion, private PC filtering just doesn’t work, so I don’t know why you are arguing for it now. Using keywords blocks out websites such as this one and my own, who discuss sexual exploitation of women and other topics which include the NetNanny keywords. That is why the ‘blacklist’ proposal is being introduced because the government doesn’t want to block out these websites (not if they want more than one term in government anyway).
I have faith in the IT industry that they will innovate and improve ISP filtering. Of course they won’t make everybody happy, but there are always bound to be those who want no government interference what so ever.
Censorship – there are limits to Freedom of Speech otherwise there will be anarchy. Of course there is censorship, there has to be or we will have a society where people can insite violence and hatred and I’m sure you agree, we do not want to go down that road. You don’t have to be a member of one of these religious groups or a member of a conservative party to be against porn and violence. I’m sure you don’t agree with unrestricted access to porn and violence for kids and you’re not a religious fantatic or social conservative are you?
Correct me if I’m wrong, but you want things to stay just the way they are? Well, they can’t Dave and they won’t. Governments around the world are moving to place limits on the web.
By the way–what job do you have in the IT industry?
Deborah Robinson’s last blog post..Sexism alive and doing well in Australia
Actually, while Dave said that simplistic nannyware programs based on content-filtering blocked too many false positives, this is what he actually said about PC filtering generally (with more sophisticated filtering software) in comment #18:
There are some excellent filter programs available for PCs which don’t rely on the broad axe of context-free content filtering, and which can’t be defeated in 15 minutes by high-school kids. These are the sort of programs the Government should be looking into subsidising.
Thanks tigtog. Do you know the names of any of this PC filtering software? I would like to check them out and do some research why the government hasn’t considered them as an alternative to the controversial ISP filtering. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I couldn’t see the names of this software mentioned in any of Dave’s posts and I want to take a look at if.
Deborah Robinson’s last blog post..Sexism alive and doing well in Australia
I didn’t argue that PC filtering worked really well, just that it worked better than ISP based filtering. PC filtering mitigates the worst problems with ISP filtering, can filter in several ways that ISP filtering practically (in some cases absolutely) can’t, and is a much better fit for Australian needs. There are certainly major faults with most existing packages, but these problems are not inherent to the technology, and could be addressed by a determined government (eg a determined government could make a condition of being put on a list of government supplied filtering software supporting government supplied black and white lists, and passing certain tests for non-stupid keyword matching, or be adjusted for appropriate responses when it does). In general, the faults of PC filtering are the faults of the current PC filtering vendors, rather than faults of the technology itself.
Personally, I favour systems roughly like the Apple Parental Controls system that encourage parents to take an active interest and involvement in what their children see online. I believe the biggest problem with children seeing porn they don’t want to see is spam and effort is better spent dealing with spam as spam rather than as porn, I think children will manage to see porn if they want to see it (teenagers or older children will show it to each other, and ISP filtering is almost pointless in stopping this, while PC filtering will at least make some difference), and educating our children is by far the most important priority. Compare the promotion of abstinence vs actual sex education.
And personally, as I’ve made clear I think the idea that ACMA will rate and black list more than a tiny percentageo of pornographic sites without resorting on an automated process is absurd, an idea quickly demolished by back of the napkin estimates of how much it would cost to do so. My practical expectation of Conroys plan is a mildly expanded black list but enforced on ISPs, supplemented by the existing PC filtering scheme.
I have faith that the ISP ndustry will improve and innovate with regards to ISP filtering, and will continue to be a poor solution to the problem, just as the communications industry has improved and innovated with regards to fax technology and it continues to fall behind other technologies that improve and innovate faster. Satellite internet is another example, innovating and improving by leaps and bounds, useful for a minority of uses, but a very poor choice for most people – sometimes, technologies simply are not a good fir for some niches. ISP filtering just has some things it literally cannot do (for example, filtering on the contents of encrypted files/streams) that will make it worse, and some things that simply make it a bad solution by economics (computing power in routers is expensive and scarce, computing power on home PCs is in massive oversupply for most normal tasks). You can make a bad solution less bad, but you can’t always make it the right solution.
And on censorship in general – you made the ‘but plenty of people are on my side’ argument, and I shot it down by pointing out who most of those people were. Tacit agreement with the status quo does not consitute favouring increasing censorship.
And FWIW, I think there are many individual problems with the status quo. For example, I believe there should be less censorship of video games in this country, as the majority of computer gamers are now adults, and the laws assume that there are no adult gamers. And I believe the ACMA process should be more open, at least as much as the (still flawed) OFLC process is. But in general, when it comes to things like filtering hate speech and pornography, I generally think the quest for technological solutions to social problems is mostly a pipe dream, favoured by two major classes of people – the naive and the people selling them. And poor policy remains poor policy, no matter how many times someone tells us to think of the children.
DAVE
I’m a parent and I have my PC in the living room, always have and always will. I never wanted a babysitter and I am well aware of EFA’s argument that ISP filtering will make parents lazy. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. It takes a village to raise a child, Dave. Children are not raised in a vacuum, they interact with the world and all it’s influences good and bad. Children access internet on mobile phones and PDA’s–what is your alternative to that? ISP filtering is the only thing that will work with all forms of internet.
You still didn’t answer my question — names of PC filtering software that will effectively block access to porn and violence without blocking other websites? I know you mentioned Apple, but what about PC sotware? Most people have a PC, not Apple.
Deborah Robinson’s last blog post..Sexism alive and doing well in Australia
Thanks Dave for your informed commentary. I’m curious about the public support for this plan – has there been any reliable polling yet?
Google results on [PC “filtering software” review]
Should be a few there to check out.
tigtog – thanks for the link but it doesn’t work. I received this message:
Deborah Robinson’s last blog post..Sexism alive and doing well in Australia
Sorry, I bollixed the link. I’ve fixed it now.
Thanks tigtog I will take a look at the PC filtering software in the next day or two.
In my own research this afternoon, the Howard government looked at the issue of PC filtering software in June 2006. Apparently, the cost to the taxpayer would be AU$116 million:
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/communications/soa/Aussie-taxpayers-to-fund-porn-filtering/0,130061791,139260546,00.htm
There was support for PC filtering software back then from the IT industry so I promise I will do the research and look at this option in depth. I must admit I wasn’t involved in the debate when Howard was in charge and I have been so angry about the backlash againse Conroy being misdirected at me, I haven’t had the opportunity to research the other side of the debate.
If the Australian government are trying to deceive parents like myself who have only just joined this debate, I will be happy to switch sides and join the protest to block the ISP filtering idea. I am a reasonable person and I will look at the other side of the debate.
I will get back to you.
Deborah Robinson’s last blog post..Sexism alive and doing well in Australia
Lauredhel, I haven’t seen any real polling so far. I’ve been quite pleasantly surprised by the almost universal negative reaction from the press for it, though, including influential media like the SMH and Aus.Conroy being the political beast he is, I’d be very surprised if he doesn’t either distance himself, or go for a very minimalist compromise.
I have spent the last couple of hours looking at PC filtering software (not a comprehensive study I know) and they all have “overblocking” problems and any tech-savy kid can get around them with ease. EFA supports greater parental control. And yes, there should be parental supervision, but greater parental control is only part of the solution. It must be remembered that not all parents will do the right thing and these kids must also be protected. We cannot afford to say, ‘oh well, it’s their parents responsibility, not ours’. Any society who takes that attitude will have to live with the consequences when these kids get older.
So what is the answer? I don’t know what the answer is. So I’m not going to say anything more at this stage. I have resigned from this debate. I may revisit the issue when the government gives us more information. But until then, I’m out of this.
Take care everyone.
Deborah Robinson
http://www.australianwomenonline.com
Deborah Robinson’s last blog post..Sexism alive and doing well in Australia
In my experience it is as Dave suggests – the first battleground is the spam filter. It will always be virtually impossible to stop a determined tech-savvy teen from accessing internet porn if they really want to, but for the average web-user the various links to porn overwhelmingly come in spam emails (and for blog-owners it’s in the spammed comments to our blogs – if it wasn’t for checking the spam queue to see if anyone’s got caught there who shouldn’t be I wouldn’t see a porn link in my normal web-browsing most months of the year).
Even though Deborah has chosen to retire from this debate, I think she has raised an interesting point
It must be remembered that not all parents will do the right thing and these kids must also be protected.
I can see her point, but I am interested to know how far others feel we can go, as a society, with this and when we have to stop and say it’s the parents’ choice. If a parent decides that their 15yr old is old enough to look at nude pictures on the internet is society wrong to say no? Where does parental responsibility end and societal responsibility begin?
To make myself clear, I understand that Deborah’s statement above includes small children who need to be protected and I have no argument with that. What I am asking is should we also be seeking to impose blanket protection on teenagers whose parents may be happy for them to seek out soft p0rn?
Mindy’s last blog post..Why we should pay more attention to D&D
Okay, I got off my duff and did the post. Its available on the blog.
Molly
Phillip Molly Malone’s last blog post..Second Life, Skype, Even Google Won?t Blocked By The Australian Government?
That’s a very good question, Mindy.
Many people would argue that erotica can be part of a healthy non-exploitative sexuality (although the dividing line between porn and erotica is not as bright and clear as we could wish), so why shouldn’t older teenagers be allowed to enjoy erotic images when their parents judge that they are ready for them?
I’m not sure where the public protection position falls there.
I think, as you say, the dividing line isn’t clear and perhaps that is something that needs to be addressed in any legislation too. Otherwise why not just ban nudes from art galleries as well, or ban children from going to them.
Mindy’s last blog post..Why we should pay more attention to D&D
TigTog, It is an interesting question. Maybe I am over simplifying it but isn’t there lot of laws like that. If I am okay that my 14 year old daughter has sex with an 18 year old boy and the daughter is okay with it, should that still be rape of a minor?
Sometimes the laws are set out to protect us. Now I agree its a bad example and I think lots of parents ignore the ratings (especially MA15+ today) and they will have the choice to do that in future. One thing I haven’t seen is whether there will be criminal charges taken against people actively side stepping the firewall.
I also like that the conversation is back on the topic and off the personalities debating it.
Molly
Phillip Molly Malone’s last blog post..Second Life, Skype, Even Google Won?t Blocked By The Australian Government?
Deborah, EFA maintains a page with many links to information about both PC and ISP filtering, including reviews where available, though we don’t make recommendations ourselves. I think any recommendation would have to be fitted to the needs of the user anyway, including both mundanities like OS and requirements, and deeper issues like the ability to customise to fit your parenting style.
While I am not a parent, I’m certainly of the opinion that empowering parents to make decisions about what their children see is the right decision, just as usually a bad idea for the government to decide what adults should see themselves.
For example, for me, there is a world of difference between nudity and sexual display in a context that respects and values individual sexual autonomy and sexual choice like Burning Man, and in an exploitative and objectivfying context like Girls Gone Wild, but to the censor, there is very little difference, the censors having ended up relying on an oddly obsessive system of classification by anatomical detail in many cases. Like it or not, teenagers will pick up some of their ideas about how to behave in sexual situations from the media, and if it was my choice I’d much prefer to ensure they are exposed to good models of how to behave rather than bad ones.
Its even trickier with violence. Questions like the moral weight accorded to violent acts within a drama are the sort of questions that will become relevant when deciding what is suitable for older children – I’m glad the government, with the various censorship categories, ultimately leaves many of those decision in the hands of parents and guardians.
Which leads me to a point I meant to include earlier: this sort of mindset leads to absurdities like the banning of breastfeeding photo icons on Livejournal and Facebook. All breastfeeding icons were banned if they included even a glimpse of areola. Perhaps that helps clarify one reason why this feminist chooses to think critically about these sorts of censorship ideas, rather than embracing them as an obvious universal good.
Molly, as I said on your blog, you’re still conflating the ratings plan and the “cleanfeed” plan. They’re not the same thing.
I know I said I’d stay out of the debate. But after talks with representatives from the CP80 initiative in the United States, I might just have stumbled across a solution. I am interested in hearing your thoughts. I think at the very least, the CP80 initiative should investigated by the policy makers in Australia.
You can find the article proposing this solution at http://www.australianwomenonline.com/?p=132
I am trying to find a solution that will be fair for everybody and I hope this goes some what to achieving this goal.
Deborah
Deborah Robinson’s last blog post..The CP80 Initiative: a viable alternative to ISP filtering in Australia
Deborah: please don’t post the same comment on multiple threads.
i dont understand.
why do people without children have to be put through this? dont i have a right to decide what i should and shouldnt see. or should the government decide for me this isnt about porn they can just as easily block a website to the associated press as they can some porn site which by the way you will NEVER stomp out of the internet. because you cant filter images only tags and names. its about the freedom of information thats all this is about the ability to control the content you see. and i GUARENTEE if you opt out you will be put on a list and monitored this is evil. why cant parents be left to look after their own children they shouldnt be leaving children UNSUPERVISED on the internet in the first place if there so worried about the children there are a huge range of products that can be used to limit computer access (locks timers products that only allow computer usage at certain times in the day for certain periods etc.) not to mention personal firewalls why is the government making EVERYONE do this. for the sake of the minority. for the sake of huberis
its a joke. its evil. we should have the right to freedom of information. which is exactly what they will take away
weather you like it or not. thats what this is doing