The nanny state begins

Is it just me – or are we being herded down the path of communism and the nanny state?

In Australia, Broadband Minister Senator Stephan Conroy has announced plans to make censorship of the web compulsory by forcing internet service providers to install filters to prevent access to illegal material. The filtering will be compulsory and will ban things such as euthanasia, pro anorexia sites and sites which contains adult material. However at this stage, they are unable to filter exactly what is pornographic or undesirable ad the programs are unable to analyze sites or pictures context. Breast cancer advice would be flagged as pornographic material and disallowed.

I am sorry – did I lose the vote to my free choice and just didn’t remember it? I certainly support parents making choices for their family and installing programs to filter certain websites – but to blanket this decision for all Australians.. its just not Australian!

This sort of filtering is already in Government departments where if any words are contained in the website or emails it is barred. This is particularly problematic for those who work in the health industry. I have a friend in womens health and she is unable to access their own website on breast examination tips as it contains too much pink colouring on the page– thus banned.

Do people have such short memories? If you live in China , I believe it is still impossible to google Tiananmen Square and come up with anything other than a tourist guide and happy snaps of sunshine falling on the stoned area. Their government is protecting the populous against inflammatory information… hummm

Once again this is a bull in the chinashop/ knee jerk solution, - not fully thought through or tested. I read an article looking into the filters and almost two thirds of website traffic is peer to peer, where filters won’t monitor it at all. People can go complexly offshore where there are no filters and they are then able to bring encrypted data in. It won’t stop people accessing the “wrong” type of material ( and who gets to chose what this material is?). It seems to be the same as when they legislating guns – it hasn’t stopped illegal guns or people shooting others. It has just ensured that only the criminals have access to guns now.

Of particular disturbance is that the government own figures indicate that all the systems trials would impact on the internet performance as well as the availability of legitimate services.

ISPs will have no choice but choice to pass on the increased cost to customers, as well as having he access speeds being slower. The conservative estimate is a 3 percent slowing of access, but that would depend upon how much material is going to be filtered out. Obviously more material, will mean slower access.

So to get this straight – the government wants to introduce filtering which they cannot really control, that if you are IT savy you can circumnavigate, it will make the painfully slow speeds available in most parts of Australia much slower AND they will be charging us for it.. did I get that right?

Comments anyone?

If you agree with what I have just said please visit the following site No Censorship

Here is some aussies on youtube discussing the issue..

Here and Here

Oh and there is a facebook group which has a good forum and some up to date info on rallys etc.. please join! Here