Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Internet censorship in Senate Question Time today

Lauredhel of Hoyden About Town has posted a transcript of Greens Senator Scott Ludlum's question to Communications Minister Stephen Conroy about the government's proposed mandatory ISP level internet filtering. There are further links and discussion in the comments over there too.

Every time I think about this my head just goes all asplody with the stupid. It's so bloody OBVIOUS that it can't work the way they hope it will, that any filtering measures put in place will be bypassed by those who want to before you can say boo and that the attempt to restrict access to "unwanted" internet content is problematic at best (as Senator Ludlam asked in his supplementary "Will the Minister provide us a definition of what he means by “unwanted content” and where we might find a definition of “unwanted”?"). And then there's the issue of degraded internet performance.

Gah!

5 comments:

Lisa66 said...

I just don't get this idea at all. It is sooooo stupid. It would be comical if it were not so stupid.

ozFinn said...

I'm fairly certain that when I voted last year that I didn't vote in Hu Jintao and the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party...
The Chinese have the Great Firewall, if this goes through, we'll have their back fence.
Frakking ridiculous...

Shrinking Tardie said...

The whole situation with government here at the moment is doing my poor head in.

As far as censorship goes, we've just installed a filter so that Miss 7 can safely surf from her bedroom - but I'm in control of that...as for me and my net usage, I'll surf what I want, when I want.

It does make me giggle about the 'unwanted content' tag - for me, unwanted content is anything to do with statistics :-)

Oh, and as for net performance - don't get me started! I swear to god I got better download rates back when I had a 2400 baud modem in the dark ages of 1992 before the world wide wait! Imagine what it will be like through a fricking filter.

Maybe those that drop out of society are on to something.

N

Ariane said...

I've been playing ostrich with this, hoping that if I ignore it long enough, there'll be a molecule of sanity pop into someone in the Labor party's head and it will all go away.

And every time anyone mentions internet filters, I just remember the woes of the British government employees attempting to get to the websites of Counties Sussex and Scunthorpe...

Eternal Lizdom said...

I can hear and feel and understand the frustration. Like you said, people who want the blocked stuff will find a way to get it.

Asplody... what a great word!!