It’s hard to discuss until there is actual legislation – so I know what I am defending or not.

Isn’t the truly pointy point that Conroy doesn’t need to pass any legislation whatsoever in order to get the filter through? So far it’s mostly about ministerial regulation not openly debated legislation at all.

Doesn’t strike me as democratic.

I do support filtering of criminal material ie meterial that is the result of violence etc. My intent is to damage the market that could reward people for abusing highly vulnerable people in ineffective jurisdictions. I understand there are always going to be backdoors. Even wide open side doors. Just as in “real” life. We can’t stop crime. We should always hinder crime.

It’s hard to discuss until there is actual legislation – so I know what I am defending or not.

I don’t know the source, so I guess it could be wrong, but a quick look at the URLs on the list tends to support this. Andrew Brooke in a letter to Crikey writes:

“As revealed when the ACMA blacklist was leaked, less than half (49.2%) of the URLs on the ACMA blacklist relate to illegal RC material.

So — what about the other 50.8% of the 1370 URLs on the ACMA blacklist?

37% (506 URLs) is R18+ or X18+ content — thus not illegal for Australian adults to access, view or possess. A further 14% (190 URLs) is ‘RC’ content not in the child abuse sub-set — thus not illegal for Australian adults (except in WA and parts of NT) to access, view or possess.”

“A boy comes home from school and logs on to the computer. He types in a search for, say, ‘sex pictures’. Thousands of sites appear and he starts exploring. He sees pictures of naked women in all sorts of positions, some using dildos and various devices. He surfs to sites showing men and women having sex. Some are straight sex; others show women being penetrated by two men at the same time. Still others show women engaged in oral sex.”

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/web-doesnt-belong-to-net-libertarians/story-e6frgakx-1111118869227

I could go on, but you get the idea. And how does Hamilton start the article? “HERE is the kind of situation the Government’s proposed internet filter is aimed at.” Sure Hamilton goes on to talk about more extreme things, but most of what he covers is at least portrayed as consensual.

Now you can make a case that much of this material is made in exploitative conditions and should be banned for that reason. But that’s not the case most people are making, and I’d certainly argue the filter isn’t the best way to do it anyway. Hamilton is saying this is sick and children must not be allowed to see it, and the solution is to create a filter that will block everyone from seeing it.

If the original source isn’t enough for you, check the rhetoric of those who support it. I’m not sure how far I’m supposed to range, so let’s just look at what the advocates are saying on this thread.

Spana @23, talking about the effect of “adult content” on cognitive development, and @164 wanting to ban non-abusive material from the net.

Ok so Spana is just an anonymous supporter, but roam around. Pretty soon all the supporters come back to this. They’re trying to stop children accessing “adult content” and think the filter is the way to do it. But the only way the filter can do that is if adults can’t access the same things online children can’t.

But for final proof, just take a look at the leaked blacklist. Grab a random sample of sites. Most of the names certainly sound like mainstream pr0nn. Some of them are brandnames big enough that you don’t need to be a pr0n aficionado to recognise them. Some names may be deceptive, and I’m sure as hell not planning to check them all out, but clearly much, if not most, is the sort of stuff you can buy legally in the ACT or NT on DVD, and illegally but easily anywhere else. In some cases this might be mistakes, like the accidental blocking of a school tuckshop. But they didn’t block Seymour butts by mistake. They blocked it because that’s the point.

wbb, yes it is. You seem to keep missing this point.

That is certainly true!

So, accepting your claim that the true & covert purpose of the blacklist filter is to stop pornography being available on the internet, can you please provide links and examples so I can finally get this all straight, feral sparrowhawk.

Of course introducing something that filters out all prOn is too big a jump, so the advocates say they’re just trying to shut out the really nasty stuff, but they’re not really hiding the agenda that hard, and if you look at the things that actually made it onto the blacklist, heaps of it is ordinary prOn.

” Gender: Males not only are exposed to more pornography inadvertently as they undertake activities and socialise within environments that place them at higher risk, but also will more actively seek out sexually explicit material than females will. When they do so, they tend to consume pornography at greater rates than their female counterparts. Though possibly affected by the willingness to disclose, a telephone survey of 200 young Australians aged 16 to 17 by Flood and Hamilton (2003) found rates of exposure as follows:

* X-rated videos: 73 percent of males (5% exposed weekly; 16% exposed every three to four weeks), compared with 11 percent of females (all exposed less than once every three months);
* Inadvertent online exposure: 84 percent of males (24% exposed weekly; 22%, every three to four weeks) compared with 60 percent of females (7% weekly; 6% every three to four weeks);
* Deliberate online exposure: 38 percent of males (4% exposed every week; 7%, every three to four weeks), compared with two percent of females (less frequently).

Males may also differ from females in how they prefer to engage with pornographic media. Though media-usage patterns change rapidly, males in many cultures are more likely than females to seek pornography on line, with females demonstrating greater attraction to regulated markets, e.g. videos (Flood & Hamilton 2003; Wallmyr & Welin 2006).

Age: Methodological difficulties such as sample heterogeneity, generational changes in social norms and mores, increased availability of pornography, and lack of longitudinal studies hamper attempts to describe how pornography exposure varies across the human lifespan.”

This was from the article cited @194. Small sample so pretty weak. Anectdotally it appears that exposure of children to online (including downloaded and cached) porn (child < 16 years) happens in three broad categorical circumstances:

i) exposure by family members or close associates of the family with the intention of grooming;
ii) inadvertant exposure while online;
iii) exposure by peers who have themselves been subject to grooming or inadvertantly exposed.

Such exposure is frequently (almost uniformly in fact) behind what is described by child protection workers as "age inappropriate sexualised behaviour" by which they mean that the conduct of children is more informed about sexual practises than is usual for the age. This is treated as a 'risk of harm'.

Sometimes, of course, such behaviour is actually informed by sexual experience. Where this occurs in a situation of coercion, ignorance of the biological reality, ignorance of the affective impact or where it is outside of the rule of thumb used by some for 'peer sexual relations' (an age difference of < 2 years but where the participants are above the age of 12) then the results are usually very serious forms of psychological harm.

Back to the point: the availability of what I see as "public domain" (ie http) pr0n does appear to be a major factor in the increasing sexualisation of children. It wouldn't bother me if people who wanted to purchase Pr0n were put to some inconvenience, the equivalent of walking off the street into restricted access premises, in order to make the purchase.

it behoves the pro-filter side to provide actual evidence of mass numbers of young children in this country being exposed to pr0n online

The blacklist filter is not directed against pornography, jo.

I must say I’ve never understood how Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, both of whom have such limited infrastructure, apparently manage to ensure all their young men have easy access to online porn. Or perhaps there really are other factors contributing to rape.