BY JAMES MASSOLA
23/01/2009 1:00:00 AM

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/local/news/general/broadband-report-in-ministers-hands/1414483.aspx

The Federal Government’s trial of ISP-level filtering the ”clean feed” that will filter content for all Australian internet users was supposed to begin on December 24 last year.

But a spokeswoman for the minister could not provide a revised starting date.

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Perhaps this impassioned plea from Helen Razer (in an opinion piece in the Sydney Morning Herald) may help influence the Minister..

http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/hey-senator–leave-us-discerning-viewers-of-pornography-alone/2009/01/23/1232471591602.html

Helen Razer
January 24, 2009

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According to some, this particular ministerial blogger has been nothing short of bolshie. To those who fear their speech will be stifled, or their net access slowed, he has offered a stubborn response: if you’re opposed to the department’s cyber-safety plan, you are opposed to the protection of children.

His evangelical logic seems lost on many, and not only civil liberties groups who are unhappy with his Reverend Lovejoy decree. Much of the IT community is adamant the clean feed will slow our connectivity. Normally moderate thinkers are horrified that we’re taking cultural cues from China and North Korea. Even some child protection workers gently suggest that federal attention and funds would be better disbursed elsewhere.

Nonetheless, it remains difficult to counter the won’t-someone-think-of-the-children reasoning without being branded a perve. Upright people are trying, though. They’ve been loud and eloquent in their censure.

It’s time for the less seemly to have their say. It’s time for fans of Voltaire, and his civil biographer, Miss Hall, to defend to the death the tastes of people like me. It’s time to ask: “Won’t someone think of the porn fans?”

I enjoy pornography. Perhaps not quite so much as I enjoy living among citizens who take an entitlement to free speech for granted. But I do like it quite a lot. And it seems that my porn is endangered.

If Conroy’s clean feed works, which some tech sceptics argue that it cannot, it will prevent access to all pornography. According to the interpretation of Electronic Frontiers Australia and other advocates, the clean feed will mean that garden-variety X-rated material may not be viewed online in Australian territory. Further, R18+ content will be prohibited. And MA15+ sites hosted in Australia will probably go as well. According to the communication authority’s criteria, everything saucy must go.

This will certainly save many Australian adults thousands of hours. This will possibly save a handful of unsupervised minors from harm.

and the one time radio broadcaster continues..

The usefulness of the World Wide Web is threatened by Conroy. I have found the medium terribly instructive. When I am lacking culinary inspiration, I will browse a recipe database. When my writing is misfiring, I catch up with The New Yorker. And when my boudoir has become as flavourless as my writing or my food, I go to a website that propriety will not permit me to divulge.

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The Libs and Nats will vote for censorship because they started the ball rolling with the “Communications Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2002″ which puts ACMA behind a firewall against FOI requests. The Libs and Nats also sold out our patent law and copyright law to vested American interests. Labour is simply fulfilling its obligations under the AUSFTA and talking about CP as a distraction and Conroy can’t believe his luck. Everybody wants to talk about s*x.

The prohibited content that Conroy talks about has always been illegal file sharing which was criminalised as required by the AUSFTA, once again, a Liberal initiative. If you think that P2P can’t or won’t be stopped, guess again.

This legislation will go though, in more ways than one, so just drop your tweeds, bend over, and grit your teeth.

Your screwed!

The fact that those opposed to the filter are willing to write personal responses while those who are for it are not seems a good indication of which side knows what they’re talking about.

Now let’s see if we can get a Labor polly to see reason.