I’m always rather taken aback when people suggest this sort of thing as a “solution” to harassment. Is it not obvious that the stripping of all anonymity and pseudonymity wouldn’t magically create an internet utopia? What it would achieve is to is drive a huge number of people off the net altogether, because of how easy it would make it for crims to “go real life” with stalking, harassment and violence. No thanks.

The Points I’ve take into consideration:

A) Block child Porn.
B) Yes great idea but it’s not a be all solution. This filter has been proven not to work and could ban legitimate web sites and if the result is a big enough company gets banned then you could possibly be looking at a class action Law suite e.t.c and then you have the SSL issue which is a big problem. If this traffic becomes un-encrypted your going to have more than just a child pornography problem your going to have every scam artist in the world focusing on Australia.

A) Block all other porn
B) this has not been verified but by the way Mr Conroy has added P2P to the trial i feel hes only one frigid statement away. What is next!? I can only make love with the wife in the standard missionary position.

A) P2P Blocking
B) Fair enough block P2P but you cant tell whats legal and whats not? I.E. you can tell a Linux Distro from a Movie or TV show. So what do you do?, block torrent sites?.. new ones will open. Block the standard BT port?, the user will change it and the list goes on and so does the expense for maintain any sort of list.

So with all the damning facts against the purposed mandatory filtering why is it still even being considered? and what ever happened to educating our kids and monitoring what they do on the Internet. I for one will not let any of my children use any social networking sites such as Facebook, bebo or the like where i can not directly see what they are doing and they have been told that if anything inappropriate happens that they are too come to me immediately.

Now… with all my above rants seemingly in favor of anti-censorship i have to say that i would be all for stopping the depravity that child porn entails but the facts are it’s just not going to work and its going to cause all sorts of other problems.

You must have very forgiving standards.

> so I don’t think they are going to come in with a “ban every piece of porn on the net” type solution. I could be wrong.

I doubt anyone’s seriously suggesting they will. However, it’s not unlikely that a large amount of general and adult content could be blocked due to both Aust’s arcane ratings standards and regulatory technicalities. That’s all I was saying.

Also on the 10K an you reply, I think from what I have read that (although some think the whole filter idea is a bad one) Conroy and the government aren’t over the top saying stupid things and aren’t out of hand dismissing what people are saying about the filter, so I don’t think they are going to come in with a “ban every piece of porn on the net” type solution. I could be wrong.

to see what I mean, look at this tv tropes page. (warning contains the F-word) http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GIFT

http://www.acma.gov.au/WEB/STANDARD/pc=INT_IND_CONTENT_ABOUT

To quote: ” Under the Act, the following categories of online content are prohibited:

* Any online content that is classified RC* or X 18+* by the Classification Board (formerly the Office of Film and Literature Classification). This includes real depictions of actual sexual activity, child pornography, depictions of bestiality, material containing excessive violence or sexual violence, detailed instruction in crime, violence or drug use, and/or material that advocates the doing of a terrorist act.
* Content which is classified R 18+* and not subject to a restricted access system that prevents access by children. This includes depictions of simulated sexual activity, material containing strong, realistic violence and other material dealing with intense adult themes.
* Content which is classified MA 15+*, provided by a mobile premium service or a service that provides audio or video content upon payment of a fee and that is not subject to a restricted access system. This includes material containing strong depictions of nudity, implied sexual activity, drug use or violence, very frequent or very strong coarse language, and other material that is strong in impact.”

My point was simply that sites will be blocked that have done nothing more egregious than fail to read *every* regulatory checklist in *every* country likely to visit their site. Even if I were to exclude the occasional porn site I visit; in a given day, I probably visit a multitude of international sites which do not meet the ACMA’s requirements for content hosted locally. Going *only* by what was said on the gov’t, “blog”; it would seem to indicate that the gov’t intends to block international sites until such time as they review their own content policies to bring them into line with every (21mil strong) insignificant countries’ policies.

> Okay, after answering that, rant away.

I don’t believe I’ve ranted yet and I don’t intend to start now. You entered this discussion with decent enough manners. I hope you’re not now resorting to personal attacks and general condescension.

> I would have thought that there would be a lot more then 10k urls that had that sort of porn on it and if the first tier filter is only blocking 10K max

The 10k number is *only* for the closed network, “live trials”. It’s a number pulled out of Labor’s hat, under the (likely intentionally) mistaken impression that filtering speed/reliability scales linearly.