Somebody Think of the Children
Posts tagged "mandatory filtering"

Is Conroy deceiving the public about what his filter will ban?

Senator Conroy says awarding him the title of Internet Villain of the Year is misguided and that the people have been mislead into what the Government is doing in terms of filtering the Internet. However, in doing so the Minister for Communications has shown he is either deliberately misleading the public about the type of...

ACL calls for bipartisan support of mandatory ISP filtering

Nothing unexpected here: The Australian Christian Lobby has called for bipartisan support of ISP filtering, saying that in the interests of children this issue should be placed above party politics and the impact on speed is a small price to pay. ACL says Australia is taking a huge step forward with filtering. Here’s a snippet from...

With a public intellectual like this, who needs barbarians?

Guest post by Jon Seymour In a year or two from now Australians may wake up to find themselves living in a country unique amongst Western democracies – a country that has imposed mandatory filtering on all residential ISP feeds. It is unlikely that most will notice anything unusual about that particular day – any...

Interview: Internode’s Mark Newton talks filtering

Ben Grubb (who copped a bit of flack for his interview with Tim Marshall) has interviewed Internode network engineer Mark Newton. Mark is the guy who confirmed our suspicions that there wouldn’t be any way to completely opt-out of ISP filtering. In this rather in depth interview, Mark notes that ISPs not taking part in...

Filters mandatory for all Australians: DBCDE

Computer World is the first media outlet to question the Government’s ISP filtering opt-out policy. Two weeks ago Internode network engineer Mark Newton confirmed there would be two black lists and adults would only be able to opt-out from the list containing inappropriate content for children. They would not be able to opt-out of the...

No opt-out from ISP filtering: Two black lists and you can only opt-out from one

This is as close we have come to confirming early information that no Australian will be able to completely opt-out of the Government’s clean feed. Mark Newton, who works for one of Australia’s largest ISPs Internode, writes on Whirlpool that there will be two black lists: One list that contains content that is unsuitable for...

Mobile filtering: ISPs choose technology, Gov set minimum level?

Hoping to ease concerns mobile service providers have about mandatory ISP filtering, a spokesperson for Senator Conroy said the Government does not anticipate prescribing what technologies can and can’t be used to filter Internet access, ‘rather it is anticipated that a minimum level will be set and ISPs required to meet it.‘ Australian IT writes:...

Clean feed won’t protect children

Colin from EFA has written an article about the Government’s filtering plan for the MacTalk.com.au community that would be worth showing to any friends you have still unsure of what Stephen Conroy has in store for Australia. It covers many of the problems that exist with the plan, but none more important than the fact...

Will your blog be banned in Australia?

Pornographic websites won’t be the only sites blacklisted in Australia if mandatory ISP filtering is introduced. Your blog might be as well. The recent trial of ISP filters in Tasmania showed that at best 1 out of every 100 websites were incorrectly identified and blocked. That’s bad news for bloggers. The very nature of how...

Blogger reaction to filtering trial

It’s been nearly a week since Conroy hailed the Tassie ISP filtering trial a success. Here’s an overview of what other bloggers are saying about it: ‘The mainstream media in Australia has been outraged by the Internet censorship in China, but seems to be paying no attention to its rise in their own backyard.’ –...

Why the Tasmanian filtering trial is a failure

Senator Conroy’s office could spin a thread of gold from a lump of crap, I’ll give them that. But if you’ve read the Tasmanian filtering report, it probably didn’t take long before you noticed red flags. I decided to compare the report to what Mr Conroy says in his press release and show why the...

Media reaction to filtering report

It’s a shame that some major news organisations were happy to run a rehash of Senator Conroy’s can-do-no-wrong press release about the Tassie filtering trial report. Thankfully, not all media was so accepting. In Crikey, Stilgherrian points out that even though the report found ‘most’ filters achieved over a 92% success rate in blocking sites,...