Alex White has posted on what he describes as soul searching in the campaign against internet filtering about its direction. White’s post is replete with useful links, and is well worth a read. He disagrees with the focus on censorship, arguing that there are few points of connection with the lived experience of the public to shift opinion.
I’m not sure I agree.
White’s alternative messages focus on the ineffectuality of the filter, and its expense. However, that’s not, in my view, a persuasive theme for a public campaign. A lot of what the government does is ineffectual and expensive, and pointing this out also doesn’t necessarily create a public. It’s really just akin to the everyday niggling of oppositions and newspapers.
Any campaign does need an overarching theme, and this angle should be a subsidiary message.
The other question that needs to be posed is that of the audience. It’s no doubt right that few votes will shift in the right places to enable an argument to be made about an adverse electoral impact on Labor. White cites Possum and Bernard Keane. More broadly, findings from the AES over many years suggest that even the biggest issues only account for a few percentage points in vote switching at elections. For instance, the final data on the impact of WorkChoices (an issue which connects with lived experience, if there was ever one) on 2007 voting patterns hasn’t been fully analysed, but it’s unlikely to have been worth more than a couple of percent of the vote to the ALP. Labor strategists and pollies are well aware of this sort of thing.
The actual target for the No Clean Feed campaign needs to be non-Labor Senators. There, the issues of civil liberties and censorship are well chosen for their resonance with small l Liberals and The Greens. It’s also necessary to demonstrate that concern exists in the community beyond those who are active in the campaign itself, but this doesn’t need to be a clincher argument about seats falling in droves, which no one would believe. Rather, a point of connection with the messages particular parties want to send is necessary, and the best way to find that theme is to test it via polling and focus groups rather than speculate in a vacuum. The dilemma, though, that this causes for the campaign is that the most germane themes may not be the ones that resonate with activists in the campaign itself. So that needs to be balanced as well.
It’s a bit of a case study on the limitations, as well as the benefits, of crowdsourced campaigning.
I agree. Costs and inefficiency aren’t camapaign generators until you get to NSW Govt levels of incompetence. The thing about filtering is:
1. The people who care about it will circumvent it easily
2. The people who don’t care about it will never even notice it
Making it a liberties issue + higlighting the slow speeds that will result will generate a far greater uptake – and crucially an uptake that could make business perk up its ears. People think fast speeds just mean more warcraft or something, but it’s so much more than that.
Further to that, I would add three more points:
1. The NBN – when it arrives – will make questions of speed and bandwidth almost completely redundant
2. Filtering is only likely to become more challenging, not less, and they can’t even do it properly now.
3. This said, the internet has had a very good run, but the current freedom is somewhat analogous to the wild west in frontier times. It would be naive – and arguably not good – to let it remain as the net continues to expand and develop, both in content and infrastructure. This is not to say that filtering is the way to deal with it.
The most pressing issue for the “campaign” is the fact that there is still not one single coordinating body. There is little point worrying about the “key messages” when there are so many messages and no-one coordinating the activists. I totally agree with your sentiments that this campaign needs to be aimed at the Greens and small ‘l’ Liberals. I also believe business should be lobbied ahead of the Greens ( who have already indicated they don’t support the filter regardless of Hamilton’s pre-selection in the recent Higgins by-election) and the small ‘l’ Liberals.
Fundamentally though the “campaign” is not a campaign but many small ones with no coordination. And it is this flaw that gives Conroy all the confidence in the world that the filter will go ahead. This is something I’ve also explored on my blog.
Yes, I think that’s a real problem, Alex. Another downside of crowdsourced campaigning.
Based on its internal discussions, the No Clean Feed grassroots mainly see their campaign as a defence of white liberty against Oriental despotism. This is obviously felt in a very unclear and confused way, but the majority of the rhetoric, both written and visual, seems to revolve around Chinese-speaking Kevin, the lover of China and Mao-Zedong-thought, trying to turn Australia into China so that we can all live like Chinamen. I think this is because NCF involves a lot of previously apolitical people who have been rapidly drawn into a political campaign that – have to say it – has no leftist centre of gravity.
Well, that’s a kind of INSANE and racist comment. Got any evidence?
That’s interesting, skip.
I think it’s true that the majority of #nocleanfeed activists lack experience in political campaigning. To go back to Alex’s point, that’s also something Conroy will be counting on.
I’d like to see a little bit more coordination from: http://nocleanfeed.com/
It’s all a bit doom and gloom, and not enough positive rallying and unifying the people.
Excellent point that the NCF campaign should be focusing (at the moment) on the Senate. I also wholeheartedly agree with Alex Schlotzer that the campaign is suffering from a lack of coordination.
My main point (as far as key messaging for the campaign) is to point out that the filter won’t catch pedophiles, but that the Federal Police will (http://bit.ly/7yR1C0).
The pro-filter message mainly revolves around cyber safety. They say that a small slow down in speeds, loss of liberty, no access to refused classification material, or faulty blocking of legitimate sites is acceptable since it will protect families and kids.
My view is that a major attack point should be that the filter won’t actually stop, catch or prevent pedophiles. Instead, the $43 million should go to the Federal Police high tech crimes unit to actually catch pedophiles.
I also think that the economic arguments are strong. The filter could adversely impact on productivity gains from the National Broadband Network.
These points, in my view, would be compelling to Liberal and cross-bench Senators. You don’t need to lobby the Greens (they are opposed to the filter) or ALP (they are bound by party discipline to support it).
Cheers
Alex
On No Clean Feed coordination – there are some central figures, such as prominent tech bloggers and the Electronic Frontier people (and the “Pirate Party”). Unfortunately, these people are fairly hostile to “outsiders”. That is, they don’t like taking advice, and see outsiders offering suggestions as opportunistic “fame seekers”.
patrickg – apart from the many funny images of KRudd in Mao jacket and cap, here are a few comments from the biggest Facebook NCF group (16,000+ members). Not one of these comments attracted any critical response. Even in the shorter comments, it seems to be taken as read that “Chinese” is a perjorative term meaning collectivist and totalitarian.
“One day I woke up in China”
“What depresses me most is that this isn’t actually a joke and is already being set in motion. kim jong kevin rudd ftl.”
“Australia != China”
” just some more of our mandarin speaking pm’s plan to turn us into china.”
“Fuck Rudd is want to turn Commonwealth of Australia to People’s Republic of Australia…”
” Fuck your filter off mate how the fuck can you stop information of whatever nature what happened to freedom of interest ,, and another thing how the fuck can you follow a country like china that is over populated and full of aisans that wanna fuck off to australia its bad enough that you wont let people of the same sex… get married i dont know about this filter shit you can go get fucked and plug your fucken filter up your arse you might even like it…”
“This first and then what next? … Like china? Government is gonna block out political / religous rant? What about the basic right for freedom of information?”
” I refuse to live in the New People’s Republic of China. Who has the fucking right to tell us what is appropriate – if I want to look at anti-labour party websites or whatever ‘they’ deem inappropriate I should be allowed.”
Once committed to stupidity any government will “run with it” a long way.
Down the path I see:
People will be able to reverse engineer the blocked list (see here http://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org/projects/maps/).
I can’t wait to see the aussie version of this appear: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China
The government will look at banning technlogies which can be used to circumvent the filters – proxies / tunnels etc.
The confidentiality of the list will be regularly exposed because this is so unpopular with the people who will be implementing it. There will be political and educational URLs on this list. It will be embarrassing.
I foresee that people will – as they have for time immemorial – still love smut!
Successive Australian goverments will continue to due stupid things to appease Senate minorities.
Family groups will demand more action/stupidity because people will still get porn, through straight disk copy, bluetooth transfers, sites not filtered, and by going around the filter.
A recent forum post mentioned they had the ear of a federal politician (they didn’t say who) and asked for a simple point or two about the issue.
My simple point is this: why is the list secret? Forget the technical limitations and the straight censorship arguments, why is it important that we not know the urls we aren’t supposed to be able to reach anyway? As with good cryptography, even knowing the details should not invalidate the filter, if it works.
Resorting to secrecy damages public confidence in the filter itself, and the government’s refusal to answer questions about this directly is suspicious to industry professionals, who are being forced to implement a filter they distrust and keep secrets on the government’s behalf. Inevitably, the consumer pays the bill in more than monetary terms.
The secrecy provisions make fair oversight impossible: we have no mechanism for detecting false positives, prevent institutional abuse or allow fair public comment on what is after all being implemented on our behalf. Serious questions need to be asked about this. The “child pornography” gambit is going to fail the minute another dentist gets blacklisted.
Reading that I figure I should offer up some better solution:
Try this:
Lock the network settings on your PC and/or modem to use something like opendns (http://www.opendns.com/) for DNS lookups – sounds techy, but is simple. They have a host of options for filtering sites based on certain criteria. Google will be setting up something similar. Make it so only the responsible parent can change these settings.
Put computer in open area in house.
Set up some form of logging on your home router so your kids know that you know what they have been doing.
Get a techo to help
Tell your kid’s friend’s parents to do the same.
Porn will still be got, but this is 100x more effective than an ISP filter.
It’s not a vote changing issue by itself, but attached to something bigger it could be – Rudd couldn’t stop carbon pollution but he can stop us talking about it, or some such.
I also think we need to be asking what Tony Abbott would block, given the chance.
Holy crapamole, skip, that really is 100% insane and racist. Wow. Good luck with the filter campaign, guys. I can’t see a lot of credibility there.
This is all been done under the ruse of Peds under our beds.It used to be reds under our beds.Paedophila happens mostly within families.The Christian Coalition pushing this should get the Peds out of their ministries first.Internet Peds can have direct computer to computer contact and circumvent the web and Kevin’s filter.
Every family has available their own filters that come with anti-virus software.All this will do is slow down our already too slow internet and have no effect on our children’s moral or physical well being.
I think there are other agendas here concerned with silencing the masses who don’t like facist corporate organisations buying Govt favours.This is the thin end of the wedge and we will be the first western nation to fall in line with China.
…and right on cue:
“I think there are other agendas here concerned with silencing the masses who don’t like facist corporate organisations buying Govt favours.This is the thin end of the wedge and we will be the first western nation to fall in line with China.”
This is all far too intellectual for a simpleton like me.
But all I would say is this. If the filter is intended to filter out stuff that is already illegal (like child porn) then what is the point?
It’s already illegal to have that sort of material in one’s possession anyway.
Anyone that downloads or distributes it at the moment does so at their peril.
Just as with the ETS, I think the Government has failed to explain to ordinary people why they are so convinced that this internet filter is necessary in the first place.
It’s like “Here’s a solution we thought of earlier” when no one has actually identified a problem.
I’m completely disillusioned with what Labor is meant to stand for these days.
It’s an election year. Traditional pressure tactics would involve awareness raising (PR) beyond the in-crowd, formation of ginger groups that run candidates and threaten to direct preferences, lobbying of all the parties including the ALP, etc.
The message needs to be clear, consistent and delivered through the MSM as well as the web. Any pressure group (or organisation supporting candidates) that aims for broad appeal will need a better name than “No Clean Feed’.
If I may be permitted to don my tinfoil hat for a monment and wheel out my own pet conspiracy theory. (everyone should have one).
It is my strong personal belief much of the push towards filtering in such a manner is being driven by the copyright issue.
Its either that or Im to believe that the same file swapping networks blocked to “SaVe Teh KIDS!!”, are co-incidentaly the same ones you are likely to download a song or film from. I used a certain file swapping network a couple of years ago, and apart from giving my anti virus software a workout, I also learned never to type any work related to children on it…. So yes its out there, but some of the biggest busts of real live peds have been when law enforcement have “broken” file swapping networks. Surely closing them down would have 2 effects. Lessen the amount of CP on the net (good), lessen the chances of catching offenders (bad)…
I watched a programme on this bust a while back, Im not all that computor savvy, but would a network like this be caught by a “clean feed”?
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/itmanagement/0,1000000308,2084388,00.htm
Im pretty sure the clean feed is aimed at stopping the casual downloader of music/movies, far more than it is to save the kids.
Thats probably a fairly strong angle to attack the clean feed system from, that Lab is doing the bidding of Sony/etc…
Election year! This is why we all need see what the Coalition’s policy on clean feed censorship.Nail them down now!Don’t trust any of them, since both parties are beholding to the large corporates.
Kevin Rudd has his umbilical cord connected to the UN.The UN is financed by facists.He is a Globalist and cares not about national sovereignty as witnessed by the fact he would sign us up to a world dictatorial Govt at Copenhagen, without our knowledge or consent.He should be charged with treason.
According to Lord Monckton, the UN under the wisdom of the IPCC had an addendum not disclosed in the actual agreement but was put on their website in an obscure attachment that gave all those who signed abdication of all sovereign rights via the ETS scam. see http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/
Wow, Arjay. Let me guess, you think he’s secretly a lizard as well?
Razor; I think your theory is an extremely plausible one, esp when married to the whistleblower appeal. I hate slippery slope arugments, but I do worry about net neutrality in all this.
Also, the govt doesn’t give a toss because the know the onus/cost will fall mainly to ISPs.
@22 – sort of proves the point being made by a few commenters on the thread, doesn’t it, patrickg?
I back the clean feed and view the whole cause as a storm in a teacup. I think the anti censorship brigade has run one of the most dishonest and misrepresentative campaigns in a long while in its desperate attempts to compare it to China. This is rot. It is nothing like China. Furthermore, it is unclear why they oppose it. They like to say it will not work, that the technology is poor etc. So does that mean that if a system that could work with good technology was developed they would support it? Those who argue that child abuse should not be blocked are simply pushing an ideological point of view with little reference to reality. It is banned on TV so it should be blocked on the web. You have lost the battle. Most Australians support this.
“Those who argue that child abuse should not be blocked are simply pushing an ideological point of view with little reference to reality.”
Sorry to put a Spana in the works but no one is arguing this.
Next.
Umm, yes joe they are. There are many arguing that nothing should be blocked because the internet is somehow “special”. It is not.
This is a good resource on what it will and won’t do:
http://nocleanfeed.com/learn.html
Spana the powers that be,can already trace everything we do on the net.They can see what every Ped sees if they want.This is all about censorship of the masses since they are more of a threat to Govt/Corporate power then any Ped.
Human beings are basically very insecure beings.They become obsessed by power as a means to ameliorate it.Thus we have a constant battle of oppression V’s freedom.
The internet, is our modern day French Resistance.The US out of control.Obama has not rescinded the patriot act,he still uses Bushes’ presidential directives that makes him autonomous from congress.The patriot act allows Obama to suspend the constitution and implement martial law on a whim.These are the same powers that idiot Bush instigated.
Obama has expanded the war into Pakistan,conducted raids into Yeman and wants to invade Iran under false pretenses.
The USA in reality is in control of corporate facism.This is facism via the Federal Reserve and Wall Street.see http://www.wearechange.org/
For the movie of the century see “Fall of the Republic” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VebOTc-7shU
Spana@26, child abuse sites are illegal and blocked, when found, already. I have seen no one argue for that content to be allowed.
Maybe you should be careful about the kind of forums you visit if they are calling for that material to be available. You may be tracked down for possible complicity.
The copyright theory is not a conspiracy theory – it is fact. Like so many things it all comes down to money and the big corporations forcing the Governments to enact laws so they can make even more money.
Negotiations are underway which the Australian Government is part of. These are happening in secret and the public is not being told. The EU has asked for the related documents to be released to the public but the US Government refused on grounds of national security. Part of the Anti-Counterfeiting Treaty is that the Governments have to filter the net – the 6th Round of the Negotiations is being held in Mexico in January 2010. See here for more details
http://www.laquadrature.net/acta
“Since Spring 2008, the European Union, the United States, Japan, Canada, South Korea, Australia as well as a few other countries have been secretly negotiating a trade treaty aimed at enforcing copyright and tackling counterfeited goods (Anti-Counterfeinting Trade Agreement). Specifically, leaked documents show that one of the major goal of the treaty is to force signatory countries into implementing anti file-sharing policies under the form of three-strikes schemes and net filtering practices.”
So Joe2, can we agree that some sites should be blocked then and that this debate should be over which ones rather than if it should occur at all? Just as with TV, the internet should be subject to censorship. By all means let’s have a debate about what Australians believe is appropriate content. The free speech extremists arguing for no regulation are in effect saying that everything should be allowed. I believde this is an undefendable position and while it may not be yours there are many in the anti clean feed lobby who put this argument.
Thanks Mia. Interesting link.
The list of countries you mention seem to be similar to the countries already covered by some corporate arrangments with youtube.
Content owned by UMG for example, is allowed to stay on youtube in the form of user-generated content, but with restrictions such as which countries it can be viewed in.
I can’t find the list of countries that are covered or the agreement or the reasoning behind it? But all the countries that are mentioned in your article are on it based from my recollection.
Spana, to repeat, the system we have more than adequately blocks out illegal content.
For those that seek child abuse material, currently, there is a huge worldwide dragnet of law enforcement agencies breathing down their neck. What is proposed, is likely to get in the way and drive this criminality further underground.
Senator Conroy is a man with a solution in search of a problem. Which is a nice way of putting it, I read somewhere, that sums things up succinctly, for campaigning purposes.
Mia good link.In this trade treaty they are talking about stopping leaked documents from getting on the net.So if we have a whistle blower as in the climategate affair,it would never reach the public.Govts and corps can then do illegal things with impunity.They are not going to stop China illegally ignoring copyright,so what’s the point?The alarm bells should be ringing.
The original point here was the well intentioned incompetence of the ‘no clean feed’ campaign which, so far, hs been unable to generate much support. It is a difficult call given the kind of visceral repugnance that a lot of people expereice to child pr0n and to some of the more revolting things that are readily accessible on the tubes under the guise of sexuality. The problem with libertarianism is that it is apolitical and this is evidenced by inadequate emphasis by the campaign on the political uses to which net filtering can and probably will be put. Say farewell to wikileaks.
Why not focus on the small business angle. The small guy whose off shore hosted web site traffic drops off inexplicably for no reason because of an erroneous NC classification.
Or the internet user who gets a suggested URL from an OS friend and cannot get to it
And the person who publicises what they believe may be a banned URL and gets arrested for doing so.
There is a list of the countries participating in the Anti-Counterfeiting Agreement on Wikipedia here. There is more than I thought originally.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Counterfeiting_Trade_Agreement
Also it says there that all these multi-nationals below have access to the documents but the public does not.
DFAT should make public the negotiations – the public have a right to know. Especially if the net filtering is setup under the guise of child protection when really it is about protecting the interests of mega- national corporations.
There is obviously a lot of monetary gain to be made if these companies can get most of the Governments of the developed world to filter the net.
“While negotiations are secret, a number of corporations are part of advisory committees of the USTR and have access to classified documents.[32][33] These include The Gorlin Group, Time Warner, Merck & Co, Entertainment Software Association, CropLife America, Monsanto Company, Recording Industry Association of America, IBM Corporation, Intellectual Property Owners Association, Motion Picture Association of America, Association of American Publishers, General Motors Corporation, Generic Pharmaceutical Association, Abbott Laboratories, DuPont, Johnson & Johnson, FMC Corporation, The Dow Chemical Company, Pfizer, eBay, Oracle Corporation, Sun Microsystems, The Procter & Gamble Company, Verizon Communications, Intel Corporation and Independent Film & Television Alliance.”
It is highly unlikely that the filter will ever be used to censor political material, by either side of government. When Howard had the sedition laws, groups like Socialist Alliance weren’t shut down; nor were crazy, extreme white supremacist groups. It is Hoekstrian to equate internet filtering to political censorship.
It is far more likely that the filter would be used to block access to political sites advocating for violence or terrorism – such as Jihadist propaganda sites.
In my view, hate-speech should be censored.
mia: this looks like the money to me. I daresay that at least the big pharmaceuticals corps woud have very good economic reasons for prohibiting damaging discussion of their activities. Then there is the matter of eco-SLAPS. Thanks for the above. The issue has now become much too significant to be left to the libertarions.
I agree with Kevin @ 19 – the slogan “No Clean Feed” sucks as a rallying cry.
Something like “Stop government secret internet censorship scheme!”, while not as punchy, certainly tells the story and would actually mean something to those punters who currently aren’t aware of what’s being proposed.
After you’ve got their attention, then you can tell them about the other negatives of the scheme: its ineffectiveness, its cost, how it will reduce net speeds and so on.
Yairs, I reckon most people see cleanliness favourably.
The competition has begun for de nu slogan!
This should be good.
Conroy, ya puter rooter.
Yes I agree FDB ‘clean’ sounds good/positive and people will perceive it that way.
If the net filter is really part of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement – then maybe it would be worthwhile to look at how similar agreements have been defeated – such as the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MIA) which was proposed in the late 1990′s but people rose up and fought it and they won. It basically gave multinationals the right to sue Governments if they enacted laws which impacted on their profits.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multilateral_Agreement_on_Investment
I think if people knew this was the motivation behind the net filter then maybe they would care. hopefully…. There have been a few articles about the ACTA agreement but I haven’t seen any directly linking it to the net filter and from what those other links I posted above say it is the direct cause the Govt is doing it. Maybe thats why they want to keep it so secret – all the ACTA negotiations.
So it’s not so much about the kids, not about taking away free speech but about money. That is easier to present a clear case on that people will get behind and support maybe? (Although the censorship side of it is what bothers me most).
Yes Arjay – the alarm bells should be ringing!
Its gotta be: “Conroy’s con”.
Alex White: I want to be able to read Al Jazeera under any circumstances. I imagine that there may be some circumstances where such a source could be closed off because of its reportage of public comments from Jihadist groups. I would want to be able to make up my own mind. This, notwithstanding my similar distate to yours re. hate speech sites. It is the old problem of ‘free speech’ advocates defending the space that was occupied by Larry Flint.
Focusing on the detail at any level is problematic – once you start talking in detail and technical stuff you’ve lost the average voter. The headline should be this: it’s a tool of tyranny.
Whatever sympathies you may have for protecting children from bad stuff, we can all agree that the Government should not have in its power a tool to block Australians from accessing information *secretly*. There are already political sites on the blacklist – or at least there were on the leaked list. It won’t take much for them to start blocking more legitimate political sites – and my bet is the first to be blocked will be pro-euthenasia sites. Not that we’ll know.
I don’t think having multiple crowd sourced campaigns is a problem – and I certainly disagree with the above statement from Alex White that EFA are hostile to outsiders – they have been very helpful with the Australian Democrats’ No Internet Censorship campaign (www.nointernetcensorship.com – which is essentially the #nocleanfeed argument for an outside audience) and the Great Australian Internet Blackout. I think what is important is that each campaign and organisation picks its role to play in this. The Australian Democrats have taken the role of communicating to the average voter: EFA has taken the role of talking to net users about the issue – what’s missing in the mix is the IIA or similar working with its members to oppose something which is bad for their industry. And the truth is, until you get the money and the weight of the industry saying no, the whole thing is unlikely to get far.
The problem with this kind of line is that most Australians are comfortable with censorship. They experience it every day – on TV, buying DVDs and print media. There have been few major mainstream controversies revolving around the current arrangements. The classification system and censorship laws don’t affect Australians’ day to day, lived experience, and since most Aussies aren’t political, political censorship isn’t a bogeyman.
Furthermore, when people on the internet complain that the filter is “secret censorship”, normal people think that internet nerds are complaining about not being able to download p-rn. This is especially the case when they see the list of refused classification material (most of which is weird fetish p-rn, violence inciting Jihadist propaganda, etc).
The whole “secret” black list is also easily dismissed. The point of the blacklist is to stop people from accessing RC material. You don’t want to create a “vice list” that is easily accessible for people to find where to find child p-rn (given that bypassing the filter will be trivially easy for determined pervs).
Cheers
Alex
A quick check reveals that one of the spokespeople for Electronic Frontiers Australia is also the digital/technology policy advisor and official “no clean feed” campaigner for the Australian Democrats (Geordie Guy). Little wonder why the EFA and Democrats campaign messages to date have been almost identical. So, in this respect, the Democrats are “insiders”.
This is laughable. It’s like equating the guillotining of parliamentary debate with Australia becoming a one party state.
If the internet filter is a tool of tyranny, what is the current classification system? How much worse is the Australian Building and Construction Commission (which materially reduces the civil rights of 1000s of Australians)? What about the Howard era sedition laws?
Internet filtering is bad. It’s not tyranny. It’s not censorship.
Alex White’s logic is totally flawed.He pre-supposes that all authority from his perspective is better than anything the masses can imagine or hope to achieve.
Right here we have the seeds of dictatorial facism that are totally inflexible.If we let people find the true path of worth through survival,then we will not have to pay taxes for useless bureaucracies to address what they cannot fix.
We have all fell for the trick of socialism.The Corporates love it since we all pay taxes for their inefficient system via substidised drugs.The big drug companies love Obama’s socialisted medicine.The banking side also love socialism,since our Govts borrow from them to pay for the waste.
JD Rockerfeller said that competition is a sin.The big corporates just want a few players so there is only the illusion of competition.
We all get sucked into this left/right side show,and the elites play one off against the other reaping huge profits.They have so much power now that they determine who the US President will be and where the next war will be fought.
I still find it hard to understand why this campaign is limited to the net. If some people are so outraged by censorship then why have they not been campaigning for removal of the current censorship laws regarding television, videos and DVDs. As I have previously argued, the internet seems to have been allocated this semi sacred category by some. If current laws regarding censorship are acceptable there is absolutley no reason why they should not be applied to the web. And if they are unacceptable to the No clean feed mob then why are they not campaigning against the general censorship laws. Just seems very inconsistent to me.
Update: Colin Jacobs of the EFA responds on LP.
Spana, censorship of TV against pedophilic, bestialic etc material is successful. Therefore those of us that are against such stuff support it. Censorship of the web against such stuff is not successful since there are so many ways round it. And further, as we most of us know, the kids are the most tech savvy of all of us.
So the choice is: spend lots of time, money and effort to achieve nothing by net filtering, or spend that same amount of time money and effort in resourcing the Federal Police and achieve something.
Pedophiles will naturally choose the option of the net filter since it will not stop them at all, and will divert resources away from the Federal Police who can.
Pray tell. Why do you support a net filter that doesn’t work, rather than promote those resources going to the Federal Police who will catch offenders?
Pray tell. Why is the Labor Party supporting a strategy that benefits only pedophiles?
Base electoral reasons, marks. Symbolism over substance. Throwing a bone to the Christian vote. Because it was a promise. Etc.
marks, I do support funding the Federal police to arrest these people. We can do both. Also, would you support a filter if it was technologically successful? Is it that you are only concerned because you believe it will not work? If it did work would you be okay with it or is the technological argument just a smokescreen?
Spana, in the real world, resources are limited. Increasing resource use in one area always means that somewhere else resources are cut. You cannot argue that ‘we can do both’ unless there is a bottomless bucket of money to do both.
So it is pretty simple, if the $$ expended in creating this filter were diverted to the police, I believe there would be a better outcome. ie no effect against criminal activity vs increased effect against that same criminal activity.
Therefore the answer to your question boils down to, if you could prove that spending the money on the filter produced a better outcome in reducing that specific criminal activity then I would support it.
However, at the moment, it won’t work, the money would presently be better spent on the Federal Police in catching offenders, everyone will suffer, except the pedophiles.
I ask the question again. Why does the ALP pursue a policy that favours a less effective policy against this sort of crime?
Mark @ 55
While I am an avowed atheist, I am not happy to see Christians (who in my experience are well intentioned in this matter) duped in this way. In the longer term too, when they come to see that they have been duped, the ALP (and the Libs if they go down that path) will suffer for their duplicity. Oh, and I think it a reasonable point to put to the ALP that they are helping the pedophiles, and when people suss that out, to inquire what spin are they going to put on it.