Apparently when he’s finished saying something, that’s all there is to say.

Sadly, said Observer has not rematerialised to participate in follow-up debate — hoping you have better luck

If so, it would explain the fairly high volume of similar commentary you’re posting at the moment, and it’d precisely fit the scenario I described in Angry geeks: “Don’t waste money on internet filters” back in January:

Real-world experience in everything from spam filters to the record industry’s futile attempts to stop copyright violations always shows that filters only block casual users. Professionals, the desperate or the persistent will always get through.

However if a politician demands a filter, pretty soon a shiny-suited salesman will appear, ready to sell him a box with “filter” written on the front. It’ll work — well enough for the demo, anyway.

“Look, Minister! Nice Minister. Watch the screen. See? Filter off, bad website is visible. Filter on, bad website gone. Filter off. Child in danger. Filter on. Child happy and safe. Filter off. Voter afraid and angry. Filter on. Voter relaxed and comfortable. Cheque now please.”

Failing to disclose a conflict of interest or other potential source of bias in a discussion is unethical, wouldn’t you agree? If the allegation is true, of course. It may not be. Is it?

1. ‘I have read NO-WHERE in Conroy’s statements that he interchanges “illegal” and “inappropriate”‘ is the ol’ fallacious argument by personal ignorance. The inconsistent language in Labor’s policy has been well documented by Irene Graham. The terms “illegal” and “unwanted” and “inappropriate” have indeed been used in different contexts without clarification. You’re not looking hard enough.
2. The ACMA “blacklist” is not necessarily “illegal” material but includes, say, MA15+ material that is not protected by an age verification mechanism. That the blacklist is “mostly child pornography” is an assertion which has not been backed up with evidence, as the blacklist is not publicly available and indeed a specific law was passed to exempt it from Freedom of Information requests.
3. Material on the blacklist has, by and large, not been through the Classification Board (formerly OFLC) classification process, but is simply deemed by an ACMA functionary that it could “potentially” be classified — not the same thing at all. This is a common misunderstanding of the process, and again Irene Graham’s comprehensive website outlines Australia’s actual Internet censorship process.
4. Decisions of the Classification Board have not be without controversy. Your assertion that “I do not see anyone arguing about their work on those mediums as yet” is, again, the fallacious argument from personal ignorance.
5. I’d be interested to know your criteria for “works fine” in the implementations you mention. What were the systems’ stated goals? What are the false positive and false negative rates? What rates were stated to be “acceptable” before the systems were built?
6. “And if you believe that parents should not be deciding what their kids see” is a furphy. Parents already have mechanisms available to “decide what their kids see”, through the industry’s Family-Friendly ISP program, through the free filters of NetAlert (at least until the end of the month), through any of the commercially-available filters, or just by supervising their children like parents are goddam meant to.

First of all the proposed censorship is totally consitutional. In fact Conroy is in breach of the consitution by not applying existing censorship laws to the Internet.

As great and fabulous as the Internet is, and it is my job too, it is not outside the law folks. Censorship has existed for around a century in Australia, and is now being applied to the Internet.

And why? Simply because industry self-regulation has failed miserably. We all had our chances to provide a modicum of regulation ourselves and avoid this pain, but we were all just too smart and smalmy for our own good, and now we have the government doing it… Thanks guys.

I have read NO-WHERE in Conroy’s statements that he interchanges “illegal” and “inappropriate”, but I read it in blogs a dozen times a day. He is mis-quoted and has his statements mixed around on a regular basis, and then people base their attacks on the mis-quotes.

Sounds like a Sarah Palin method to me… lol

There are two levels of filtering proposed, there always have been, and the ISP I work with will be testing both.

1. Illegal stuff. Mandatory and a blacklist. Now all you ISP and Internet savvy guys KNOW that you cannot have a false positive from a blacklist, as a blacklist system does not categorise. Manual entries. Sure you can argue about what is on the list, but remember the blacklist stuff has been deemed illegal by the same dudes who review flms, books, TV etc. I do not see anyone arguing about their work on those mediums as yet?????

2. Inappropriate stuff: “Optional Cleanfeed”, Opt-in/Opt-out system. Who for crying out loud compares that with China? No limiting what adults want to see, as long as it is legal. And if you believe that parents should not be deciding what their kids see then I can recommend a couple of good therapists for you…

“China” style censorship? Don’t insult the people in China who lose life, limb, freedom and dignity in opposing that truly repressive regime by comparing this application of censorship to what they suffer. Sorry folks, but that is demeaning to the Chinese and utterly selfish. Give us a break. You wouldn’t even be able to read or create this blog in China, and Stilgherrian would have been carted off to jail and a worse fate long ago.

Get some reality into the discussion before make such ridiculous comparisons. I have associates in China. Try their shoes on for a while and you may rethink such claims.

As for you Internet savvy folks, you know as well as I do that the Australian government will never, as long as we have our democratic society, never be able to secretly block content without us knowing it immediately. Crickey, there will be notices… Now I do not know if you know anyone overseas, but I can get the contents of a webpage checked within minutes. So let’s drop those unreal suggestions of the Internet being hijacked..

As for the law: ACMA may only mandatory block what has been deemed illegal by the censorship board, just like any other communications medium we have here. So your complaints should be directed at the censorship board… I am sure that you are all doing that already…

Right?

Now the “REAL” question will be the performance degradation issue. All previous trials were a joke, that is true. However, this is now an application of real-world testing with real products, well at least some. It is a problem that the testing contractors do not have much experience in this area. But this time it is wide open, ISPs are running the tests, ENEX and ACMA will be involved but the setup will come from the ISPs and their vendor partners.

I would be suspect of anyone fearing or attacking the trials. Just what are you afraid of?? That it works? If not, then just let it happen.

We are testing a technology that works fine in a 5 million user group of a 9 million customer Asian ISP, and also works fine (7th year) in a 1.5 million user schools network in Europe.

My 13 years in the Australian ISP industry have shown again and again that the greatest performance limits and degradation here is a result of Telstra’s policies and strategies. Significant limitations and slowness created across the whole industry. And it is their strategy to keep it that way until you pay through the nose. If you truly have concerns about Internet speeds here, then complain to Telstra, or write to your Senator about getting Telstra split. And yes I have worked for and with Telstra, and I have provided networking gear to them.

BTW: Great blog Stilgherrian, and no offence meant to any of you guys!!

You’ve identified the jumbling-together of two issues here, though:

• Stopping the transmission of child pornography, because it’s illegal; and
• Preventing children seeing material which their parents do not think it’s right for them to see.

Then on top of that, all sorts of lobbyists want to add other material which they think shouldn’t be on the Internet because it’s “bad” in some way. They seem to believe that because they don’t want to see it, or they don’t want their children to see it, then everyone should have that option removed. By the government.

The government’s plans are a shambles because the politics is a shambles. As I said somewhere before, you can’t come up with a technical solution for anything until you’ve clearly defined what it is that you want to do. And this is a separate issue from whether what you propose to do is even technically possible — and they must be defined clearly before there can be a meaningful discussion.

In the case of Internet censorship, there is no clear plan whatsoever — and Conroy isn’t helping by muddying the waters further, using the terms “illegal” and “inappropriate” and “harmful” and “unwanted” interchangeably. Yet these terms must mean different things — even if they don’t have any clear legal definition.

Senator Conroy may or may not know much about the Internet, but then very few Australian politicians do. It continues to amaze me that people whose very life is about communication and managing networks of influence can be so remarkably ignorant of the new tools of their trade.

It’s not as though paedos hang out at childpr0n.com or some obvious URL. That material gets swapped through private, P2P networks which the filtering isn’t even attempting to address. They’re not trying to recruit kids at a child pr0n domain. They’ll be luring them through MySpace or Bebo or chat networks. So even the optional child-safe filtering is bound to fail, even if the child isn’t already managing to circumvent it by a dozen or more really obvious, easy methods.

Senator Conroy has such limited knowledge and understanding of the internet and frankly technology in general, that it is not possible to explain any of this to him. He is a blinkered zealot.

1. Secure the parliamentary support of Steven Fielding and Nick Xenophon.
2. Maintain the majority vote of the bulk of the electorate who use the internet.

Classic servant of two masters stuff. The nearest analogy I can think of is one of those cartoon scenes where some knucklehead, with each of his feet on the roof of a different train carriage, comes to a junction and finds his footing beneath him veering off in either direction. Now in the cartoons, legs stretch, bodies are dismembered and heads get lost — but no one seems to have actually died by the time the credits roll. But the real world doesn’t work that way, as Sen. Conroy is by now no doubt discovering.

The situation with this internet censorship thingumy is reaching a point of critical mass. The tendons in Stephen Conroy’s inner thighs are at breaking point. Which way will he go? Well, if I were a politician with my arse to the wall between Fielding/Xenophon and the majority of internet-using voters, I know what I’d do. But the way he’s going, Conroy’s on track to publicly tear himself a new arsehole by Christmas.

I reckon Conroy knows the filters are a dud. When that report dropped, he “welcomed” it and was “encouraged” by it, but only The Australian used the word “success”. Not Conroy — a fact his office confirmed to Crikey this morning.

I reckon he’s just going through the motions with Coonan’s timetable to keep Family First Senator Steve Fielding happy. Fielding’s Senate vote is desperately needed for other matters, as is überpopulist Nick Xenophon’s — a man who knows the value of words like “kiddie p-rn” in stirring the voters’ emotions. Until that much-anticipated double dissolution election, anyway, after which Conroy can renegotiate with the somewhat-more-rational Greens.

The Australian’s spin may not have indicated a pro-censorship angle on their part. I suspect it was just the sub-editor follishly simplifying Conroy’s “welcoming” of the report into a welcoming of the filtering itself. Conroy has certainly been back-pedalling ever since.