Senator Conroy will debate ISP filtering with Colin Jacobs from Electronic Frontiers Australia, network engineer Mark Newton and Professor Catharine Lumby on Radio National this Monday the 29th of March at 6PM AEDT. Michael Grace from Internet filtering and web access company Netsweeper will also be on. The full details are on the Australia Talks website, but remember you can listen online here or call in on 1300 22 55 76.
8 comments
trog says:
Mar 28, 2010
Wow. This is ballsy. It will be interesting to see if this is going to be the bloodbath I expect or if Conroy can hold his own.
lol says:
Mar 28, 2010
he will do what he traditionally does, answer none of the questions and crap on just like when ludlam asked him some questions.
Stuart says:
Mar 28, 2010
I’d like to hope he won’t, but I suspect he’ll do exactly the same thing he always has – deflect, misrepresent, outright lie, and slur his opponents, rather than making any honest attempt to address issues raised. It isn’t like he hasn’t had the opportunity to debate the issue before, so why would this occasion be any different?
If he’s not going to bother debating honestly, then I do hope that they rip him to shreds. It will certainly be interesting to see him in the same room as Colin Jacobs without the benefit of parliamentary privilege.
Egads says:
Mar 30, 2010
In today’s The Australian …
“Child sex abuse websites hard to track”
Australian Christian Lobby managing director Jim Wallace said the Refused Classification filter was a step in the right direction.
“We know there are many doomsayers out there,” Mr Wallace said.
“We recognise it won’t be perfect in the first instance but we have to start somewhere.”
Mr Wallace is committing the logical fallacy of assuming that, since something must be done to fix the problem, doing anything is better than doing nothing. Even if it’s totally ineffective. Only he is saying it won’t be perfect. Everybody else is saying it won’t work _at all_.
Michael says:
Apr 1, 2010
With the filtering, are they blocking the URL, or are they blocking individual IP addresses?
If they are blocking URL address, what happens when the leasing of the website URL runs out, and another company buys it? If i have the IP address to a blocked URL, can i still access it?
As it has been mentioned elsewhere, the internet is far too dynamic for it to be effectively filtered.
In order to effectively block every URL, people that update the list would have to visit EVERY URL out on the internet.
However, if the government decided to spend some time into developing software that helps PARENTS choose accessible websites, and software, this would not be an issue.
FREELY distribute to households, and provide some training/documentation regarding how to use said software, and parents would have no reason to complain, as a means has been provided to “protect the children”.
Australia is a great country, but it is slowly going down the drain with ministers like Conroy. The classification system here is a joke.
Where are the parents in all this? What are the parents doing to prevent their children accessing illegal/questionable material?
Daniel says:
Apr 1, 2010
I totally agree with Michael.
I just found out that “video.yahoo” for example hosts horrific clips of people having their hands and feet amputated as punishment for breaking Sharia law in Moslem countries, stuff that I hope no kid would accidentally stumble on, but which is of course that much easier to accidentally stumble on than WWW child porn existing only in Senator Conroy’s fevered imagination
(I accidentally did – I was actually looking for video footage about Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno in relation to her caning sentence being commuted.
Click…redirected by search engine to hk.yahoo.video.
Click…hmmm…all the text is in Chinese, wonder what this one is…and, presto, my whole evening is befouled.)
So what on earth is a filter going to achieve? Nothing. Because sites like Yahoo! video will not be filtered in the first place anyway.
I now think it’s actively going to achieve exactly the opposite of what it sets out to do. Instead of kids being protected, many parents will sit back and trust the filter which won’t protect them from anything.
I don’t have kids, but if I did, there’s simply I’d let them surf around unless I was actually there with them, not with the amount of actual content out there with the real capacity to affect children very badly.
Ryan Bullard says:
Apr 3, 2010
Definitely agree with you Michael, especially about educating rather than taking away the responsibility. @ Daniel, seeing feet getting amputated is something that no child (or anyone for that matter) should have to see unwillingly. However I’m sure that the opportunity for Australian children to learn about what happens in the world around them (in your example, Muslim countries and how they enforce the law) will be stifled by the Australian Government because the content will be too violent for their precious eyes. We are already a island in the middle of no where with little to no knowledge of the cultures around us, I hate the thought of our kids being even more cut off from the rest of the world than they already are. If a parent wants to censor their child from violence, so be it but it should be a private decision, not a national one.
Crash [Paul] says:
Apr 10, 2010
This whole ‘debate’ is as fascicle as a two party election. If as a nation we truly want to ‘protect’ the children, the answer is simple. Make the internet R18+only – period.
Don’t give me all that tripe about how the internet is for education or for ‘information’ and then squeal like a stuck lesbian at a catholic convention when these same children look up ‘inapropriate’ content.
Parents, not governments should be responsible for children.
From pool fencing legislation to proposed warnings on fast food – more and more people are absolving themselves of personal responsibility – an act that any government is only to happy to exploit.
You wanna protect children? – treat them well, take them fishing etc, listen to them and encourage them to think for themselves – give them confidence and support as well as boundary’s and discipline.
But leave me out of it – they’re your bloody children, and they may be the future – but I am the present – so they can wait their turn.
here endeth the lesson …