Australian Internet Censorship

The Australian Government (headed by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd) has created a great deal of debate and controversy recently due to Its proposed Internet Censorship Legislation. For those unaware of the details, The Australian Government has proposed a nationwide firewall restricting access to certain websites from the users of any Australian Internet Service Provider (ISP).

This proposed Internet Filtering scheme as the government explains it, would protect children and the community from illegal, immoral, pornographic, or any other content which does not fit into the current censorship model for other media. For example if a movie cannot meet the ratings requirements for R18+ or younger then it cannot be legally sold in Australia. Likewise in the proposed scheme, any online content that is deemed inappropriate will be unable to be viewed from Australia.

The benefits of such a noble scheme do seem, on the surface, to be quite desirable. I doubt there are many people out there who would not support giving greater powers to end child pornography, or prevent the spreading of harmful information such as terrorist guidebooks and drug manufacturing guides. Anybody who has ever spent a considerable amount of time on the internet would know that there is a great deal of content that would be considered highly inappropriate or unacceptable in mainstream society. Sadly however, this is the cost of total, unregulated freedom and in my opinion it is a very small price to pay. The internet is such an important and influential tool BECAUSE of the freedom and anonymity it provides and yes, it does allow joe public to create his community of people sexually attracted to desk lamps, or people who believe the U.S. president is a actually a swarm of bees in the shape of a person, but for every weirdo, deviant and social drop out there are hundreds of people speaking out against oppressive governments, people exercising free speech which they have every right to but would otherwise be unable to receive, people who are segregated or social outsiders can reach out to others, all the scientific and academic knowledge in the world is accessible to anyone. Can such a tool retain its freedom and neutrality if world governments start regulating and controlling the flow of information to its citizens?

While the Australian Government claims that the blacklist of banned websites contains only 1,000 to 10,000 entries relating to child pornography, it has been revealed in a copy of the list leaked to http://wikileaks.org/ in March 2009 that the list contains "Only 18% of the URLs on the current blacklist contain child sexual abuse material (212 of the 1,175 URLs). The rest of the material is X18+ content (41%), R18+ content (5%), and 'other' (36%)." The "Other" category was found to include things such as the websites of a Queensland dentist, a tuckshop convener, kennel operator, and topics such as abortion, and euthanasia. The Government has made no comment on these allegations. Under australian law, the only content on that list that is actually illegal to possess is child pornography. The rest is open to the discretion of each individual adult, so why is the government trying to take that freedom away?

It is argued that such extreme sacrifices must be made to protect children from evil and insidious content such as dentistry and politics. The internet filter proposed will only filter unencrypted HTTP traffic, something which will be easy to bypass for those who know how and will do nothing to stop peer to peer networks, IRC servers, bittorrent and other forms of online distribution where such content may be more prevalent. This system will do absolutely nothing to prevent sexual exploitation of children. Nor will it protect children from viewing inappropriate content. The internet is so vast, with so much content that a mandatory filter would be largely ineffective. The list of 2,000-10,000 websites is only a tiny tiny fraction of the over 150 million websites on the internet. The greatest threat to children on the internet is not harmful content, but inappropriate contact with others that causes concern. This scheme would take responsibility and freedom of choice from adults and create a false sense of security in a system that simply will not work which could put children at far greater risk from online predators.

So why should anyone be concerned about a system that will put children in danger, take away the freedom of adults to choose for themselves and their children, cost millions of tax payer dollars, and allow the government to decide which content you can and can't see? Why is any of this a concern if it essentially accomplishes nothing, is easy to bypass and only affects those with something to hide?

The reason to be concerned is that this will effect every single internet user in australia. The internet clean feed will be a technical disaster, it will be easy to bypass, will miss the majority of actual undesirable content due to it being limited to unencrypted HTTP, it will be less effective than home PC internet filtering software, and as reported in CSIRO tests, ISP studies and private consultancy, the internet filtering could slow down average user speeds by as much as 60%, this is completely unacceptable especially given Australia's already slow and hideously underfunded communications infrastructure.

In conclusion, the Australian Internet Censorship plans are bad policy. It robs Australian adults of the ability to make their own decisions about what content they view. Support for this proposal is nearly non-existant with only 2.9% of people supporting it in a poll of ISP customers. No other democracy on earth has implemented or even considered such broad censorship legislation. I would rather the tens of millions of dollars being wasted on this program be better spent on real world issues instead of pandering to old, out of touch ALP supporters trying to legislate their fear of change and technology.