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The Use of electronic media and communications: Early childhood to teenage years report brings together ACMA’s research on media use by 8-17 year olds and new findings about 3-4 and 7-8 year olds from the Australian Institute of Family Studies study Growing Up in Australia; The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children.

According to the report, the majority of parents of younger children found it easy to manage their child’s internet use (97 per cent of parents of 7–8s including 69 per cent very easy; 92 per cent of parents of 8–11s including 50 per cent very easy). Only twenty-two per cent of parents of 12–14s and 24 per cent of parents of 15–17s found it very or fairly difficult to manage their child’s internet use.

The report also states that the majority of parents in both studies (86–95 per cent) found it very or fairly easy to manage their child’s video/computer gaming.

Maybe it’s time politicians stopped using that old excuse about how censorship is needed because parents don’t know how to manage their children’s access to the Internet and video games. I think it’s long overdue.

1) ‘Filtering in Oz: Australia’s Foray Into Internet Censorship‘ by Derek Bambauer at the Brooklyn Law School in New York argues Australia represents a shift by Western democracies towards legitimating Internet filtering and away from robust consideration of the alternatives available to combat undesirable information.

Bambauer writes:

Australia’s decision to censor Internet content pre-emptively is likely further evidence that the debate over filtering has shifted, from whether it should occur to how it should work. Cyberlibertarianism is alive and well, as the discussions in Australia’s press and Parliament prove, but it is no longer ascendant. This shift disguises an important change in focus for regulating information. Filtering looks easy and cheap, and calls to block access to material that is almost universally condemned – such as child pornography, extreme violence, or incitements to terrorism – are hard to resist. But this focus confuses means with ends. The key question is what set of measures best achieve the end, or combat the evil, at issue – and how tolerable their countervailing drawbacks will be.

EFA has a review of the report here.

2) The Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University: ‘Enhancing Child Safety and Online Technologies’.

New York Times writes:

A high-profile task force created by 49 state attorneys general to find a solution to the problem of sexual solicitation of children online has concluded that there really is not a significant problem, despite years of parental anxieties and media hype.

The Internet Safety Technical Task Force was charged with examining the extent of the threats children face on social networks like MySpace and Facebook, amid widespread fears that older adults were using these popular sites to deceive and prey on children.

But the report compared such fears to a “moral panic” and concluded that the problem of child-on-child bullying, both online and offline, poses a far more serious challenge than the sexual solicitation of minors by adults.

Regular STotC updates will begin later this week when I arrive back in Australia.

‘Child pornography is one of the fastest growing online businesses generating approximately $US3 billion ($3.43 billion) each year. It is estimated that 100,000 commercial websites offer child pornography and more than 20,000 images of child pornography are posted on the internet every week.’

Irene writes:

‘This ‘$US3 billion’ figure has no credibility and even if it was factual as at January 2008, (when it appeared in an opinion article by Bernadette McMenamin, CEO of Child Wise/ ECPAT in Australia, with citing a source), then it could be regarded as ‘good news’ because it would mean (based on previously promulgated ‘statistics’) that there had been no increase at all in the five years to 2008, therefore ‘child pornography’ could not be one of the fastest growing online businesses.’

The origin of that particular statistic is traced here.

And GetUp’s Save The Net campaign which launched only this afternoon has nearly met it’s goal of 15,000 signees.

At this stage, the Rudd Government proposal would restrict blanket mandatory ISP filtering to the illegal RC content, based on the ACMA’s ‘black list’ of prohibited websites. The details are unclear, but it seems adults would be able to ‘opt out’ of the filtering of other levels of ‘prohibited content’, containing material that is either offensive or unsuitable for children.

I must add that RC content is not illegal, unless you’re selling or exhibiting it (or you live in WA or some parts of the NT/ or the content is child pornography). That aside, the report also examines the state of filtering in other countries often used as examples by Senator Conroy.

With the limited exceptions of Germany and Italy, mandatory ISP level filtering is not a feature of any of the countries reviewed. In place, rather, are voluntary ISP filtering schemes designed to prevent accidental access to a defined list of illegal sites containing child pornography. However, in the UK the position seems to be that the internet industry is encouraged to participate in this scheme, under threat of regulatory intervention should it fail to do so. The line between mandatory and voluntary participation is not clear-cut.

The Internet Industry Association clarifies that statement at ZDNet:

…While the authors said that Italy had imposed mandatory filtering, it was “in fact subordinate legislation — not law per se. It gives effect to an agreement that was previously reached by ISPs and the relevant regulator. To that extent, Italy has not enacted mandatory ISP filtering, either.”

The IIA added that Germany’s regulation of search engines was implemented by agreement.

Queenslander’s can legally watch and purchase such material, but it is illegal for QLD stores to sell it. That creates a big problem and not just for retailers in the Sunshine State — for stores in all Australian states. If customers can order X-rated material from the ACT (where it’s legal to sell) and download videos online, what incentive do they have to buy locally?

Map displaying restrictions placed on the sale and possession of X18+, RC and Restricted material in Australia. It does not cover areas such as exhibiting or producing such material, or importing such content into Australia.

One adult industry insider I spoke with today who wished to remain anonymous said Queensland adult shops sell banned material because they need to in order to make a profit. He said owners don’t want to sell illegal content, but they are often left to choose between selling it or losing their business.

Competing with adult business in the ACT isn’t the only problem either. He said a frustrating problem is competing with the illegal mail order operations where a QLD business will get an ACT post box and then pretend to be operating legally, but will actually be operating out of QLD.

Despite QLD Attorney-General Kerry Shine’s claim the the Office of Fair Trading took breaches seriously and would continue to carry out spot checks, it appears some in the state government know the pains local retailers face. I’m told some stores are so familiar with the Office of Fair Trading that they sit down and have a coffee together when they visit to investigate or seize materials. Other times raids are conducted for the sake of numbers, but the cases never make it to court.

It doesn’t take a genius to see that what a joke the law is when an adult living in Queensland can buy an X18+ DVD from the ACT, but not from a store in QLD.

Fiona Pattern of Eros says bans on X-rated material by state Labor governments are untenable when the Federal Labor Government approves of their sale.

‘It is illogical and ideological madness for state Labor governments to argue that people should not be able to sell legal X-rated films when federal Labor says they can run a business with the product.’

These restrictions let black markets thrive while legitimate Australian adult producers and sellers pay the price for the State and Federal Government’s refusal to implement crucial changes.

With the exception of areas in the NT, we can already purchase and watch X18+ films so what reason does the Government have to continue to infringe upon our freedoms and cause financial hardship for Australian businesses? None.

’80-90% of Australia?s Internet traffic goes to the USA, a considerable distance and a large amount of latency. This is not simulated in the network design – rather the testbed assumes that all the content is local to Australia and thus of low latency. Effects like jitter and loss become exponentially worse as latency increases, so the testbed understates by orders of magnitude the performance effects on traffic. This single error is so huge that its effect swamps the results, rendering the performance results of no value at all.‘

Glen also says that the trial focused on the performance of the Ethernet protocol, when it is the performance of the TCP protocol which dominates a user?s experience when encountering a bottleneck like a filter.

‘TCP performance is determined by latency, jitter and loss. Nowhere does the report measure the effect of the insertion of a filter middlebox on those essential variables. In short, these amateurs have measured the things that don?t matter and not measured the things which do.’

Read more of Glen’s concerns in the comments at the bottom of this page.

What Senator Conroy says: The performance or ‘network degradation’ for one of the tested products was less than 2%, whilst three products were less than 30% and two products were in excess of 75%.

What the report really says: The filter that showed less than 2% network degradation was also one of the least accurate filters at identifying illegal and inappropriate sites. The more accurate filters showed a larger drop in network performance.

What Senator Conroy says: Successful blocking (the proportion of illegal and inappropriate content that should have been blocked that was successfully blocked) was between 88% and 97% with most achieving over 92%.

What the report really says: It probably won’t take any more than 12 or 13 clicks before a filtered user can access a site containing adult or inappropriate content.

What Senator Conroy says: Overblocking (the proportion of content that was blocked that should not have been blocked) was between 1% and 6%, with most falling under 3%.

What the report really says: Even if you choose the best result (1%), out of every one million websites, 10,000 will be blocked when they shouldn’t be.

What Senator Conroy says: All filter products tested were able to block traffic entirely across a wide range of non-web protocols such as instant messaging and peer-to-peer protocols. However, most filters are not presently able to identify illegal content and content that may be regarded as inappropriate that is carried via the majority of non-web protocols.

What the report really says: The only way the filters could block traffic on non web protocols was to ban access to them completely. That means if you want to chat to Gran about her garden or drinking habit on Messenger, you wouldn’t be able to. No matter how innocent.

Those are just the starters. Here’s the main course:

1) The number of simulated users was too low. Large ISPs have hundreds of thousands of customers and even small ISPs have thousands.

2) During the trial, only 3930 URLs were filtered. When you consider Mr Conroy wants to block ‘inappropriate content’ to children, 3930 URLs is simply too low and doesn’t show the potential real impact on network performance or filtering effectiveness. The Internet contains hundreds of thousands of websites not appropriate for children by our classification standards.

3) The report claims all but one of the six filters was able to ‘filter’ HTTPS traffic. That means the Government could intercept your private and secure banking details (or PayPal transactions) and leave the door open to fraud and identity theft. Nobody wants their online purchases monitored by the Government let alone their banking put at risk.

4) There is no analysis of circumvention methods and that’s crucial to understanding why filters – ISP and software based – are ineffective. Filtering can be bypassed in minutes by a savvy net user and in hour by anyone following instructions.

5) There is no analysis of the costs of deploying and implementing a filter at ISP level, nor is there any analysis of the associated costs that will be passed onto customers.

That to me looks like a failure dressed up by a Senator with an obsession on controlling what you can and can’t see.

Visit NoCleanFeed.com to find out how you can take action. I for one wouldn’t want my blog or businesses website blocked for no reason.

Oh! If you spotted other doozies in the report, please post them in the comments. No doubt I’ve missed many.

Update: More flaws surface.

In Crikey, Stilgherrian points out that even though the report found ‘most’ filters achieved over a 92% success rate in blocking sites, 1 in 13 naughty sites are not blocked.

Similarly, the “low levels” of overblocking (incorrectly blocking legitimate content) are, at best, still 1%. With more than a million registered domain names in Australia (a loose measure of “sites”) even a 1% false positive rate means 10,000 perfectly acceptable websites are blocked. That?s with the best product. Under ideal lab conditions. The least successful of the products tested was eight times worse.

And Stuart Corner for iTWire writes:

Perhaps the most significant limitation of the trial was that it was conducted with a simulated tier 3 ISP, one that purchases outbound transport from other networks to reach the Internet.

ACMA said that it was not feasible in the trial to assess how the performance results for the selected products might scale to a tier 2 ISP – one which directly peers on the same level of hierarchy but must purchase outbound transport to reach some portion of the Internet – or a Tier 1 ISP.

As the latter account for the bulk of Australian Internet customers, one has to wonder just how useful this trial has been.

I also had the opportunity to discuss what I thought about the report with ComputerWorld Magazine. You can read that here, but in short I expressed concern over the high false positive rate of the filters (1 – 8%) and the miniscule amount of URLs tested (3390).

Dale Clapperton from EFA said in the same article that the government needs to provide more information on what content will be blocked. He ‘expressed concern that the blacklists in the trials were set to ban all material rated from R18+ to a “strong” M.’

Update 29/07/08 2PM: I’ll post tonight about some of the problem findings in the report that aren’t making mainstream media.

Here’s a sample:

1.50? The shock value of a term like ‘corporate paedophilia’ may help to stimulate debate on the general question of the targeting of children as consumers, of which sexualisation is a particularly damaging subset, but it also distorts that debate. Targeting children through advertising, creation of the ‘tween’ market and the presentation of inappropriately sexualised? images of children as part of these processes may be reprehensible and potentially damaging but it is not comparable to the criminal, physical, sexual assault of children.

Cheers to Irene on the STOP Censorship mailing list for the tip off.