Here’s a couple Monday filtering coverage recaps for those who missed them. First up Mark Newton writes in his article for ABC Online that it’s not surprising that filtering advocates who misunderstand technology get the facts wrong when Conroy himself has ‘blazed a trail of such colossal blinding wrongness.’

“In my observation, it’s obvious that the debate has polarised into two camps. One of them is largely populated by people who know what they’re talking about and who mostly oppose the ALP’s censorship plan; and the other is dominated by woolly-headed adherents to the principle that it’ll all be alright if you just close your eyes and wish hard enough.”

Mark points his finger largely at Anh Nguyen from the Australian Family Association who last week said “ISP level filters are being trialled due to the difficulty of securing PC-based filtering solutions.”

“While I’m sure the writer has a deep understanding of the needs of his cause, he clearly doesn’t have a grasp of the technology he’s talking about. To put it simply: There is no security difference inherent in taking filtering from the PC and moving it to the ISP.”

He goes on:

“To supporters of the Government’s proposals, I have to ask: Do you honestly believe that Australian parents are so uniquely incompetent that we, unlike literally every other Western democracy on the planet, need to go down the ALP’s proposed path to protect our own children? After spending 30 years proving that our nation can successfully raise children in an environment of ubiquitous access to uncensored online services, are you able to explain how profoundly Australian parents must have failed to justify this radical proposal?”

Meanwhile, author of The Blogging Revolution, Antony Loewenstein, has written an article for The Age which draws attention to the hypocrisy:

“Before this year’s Beijing Olympic Games, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd chastised the Chinese authorities for blocking full access to the internet for the assembled world media: “My attitude to our friends in China is very simple”, he said. “They should have nothing to fear by open digital links with the rest of the world during this important international celebration of sport.”

Although Rudd expressed no concern for the average Chinese web user being unable to view tens of thousands of banned websites, his intervention was nevertheless a welcome call for transparency and greater democracy.”

Loewenstein, like everyone else but the Government, also knows how hard this will hit ISPs.

“Furthermore, has the government even considered the massive financial burden on ISPs, especially the smaller ones, forced to play the role of Big Brother for Rudd’s obsession with “protecting the children”? It seems clear that the will of small, unrepresentative Christian groups, including the Australian Family Association and the Australian Christian Lobby, are increasingly able to dictate social policy to Rudd ministers with little transparency as to their real role and influence.”

And according to ZDNet, NetRegistry chief executive Larry Bloch says small businesses will be hurt, not just ISPs. I couldn’t agree more and point out a couple of reasons why in this ABC article, but Bloch makes reference to user experience:

“We think that there might be implications on how small businesses invest in their websites. For example if broadband speeds are going to be slowed down by 15 per cent, then businesses might react by removing content from their sites,” Bloch said.

“There are implications on broadband speed… there are implications on the speed of e-commerce … we all know that consumers online are intolerant of slow download speeds to e-commerce websites, they’ll move.”