In the meantime, if The Great Firewall of Conroy gets up, the Yanks and Google will invade to knock it down again. Here’s something for Conroy to put in his pipe and smoke.

On the other hand, everyone in IT (except the vendors of filtering products) can see what an unworkable dog Conroy’s ISP filtering scheme is. We know it will never achieve its stated aim.

However, as I’ve said in other places many times, the “Stop Wasting our Taxes on Ineffective Censorship” cause is lost if we think it can be won by online polls, blog posts or just being technically correct.

All of us geeks need to get offline, go out there and talk to Australia’s mothers, fathers, grandparents, uncles and aunts – Lauredhel’s mum excepted. Glad to hear she’s already onside.

It was an attempt to explain the issue in terms our mothers could understand.

It’s clear from Spana’s comment that I ought to have made it clear: even if you accidentally stumble across something horrible, the chances are still going to be very low that the filter will actually catch it. It will be caught if somebody else found the site first, took the trouble to complain, it was deemed to be RC, was added to the list and the list was up to date at the ISP. Out of millions of dodgy web pages, a list of a few thousands sites is going to be a broad, but very coarse, net.

The Peaceful Pill handbook, the euthanasia site run by Philip Nitschke’s Exit International was on the current ACMA blacklist for reasons that would get it onto the new list, so that’s far from a hypothetical concern.

Andrew’s post was spot on. The debate isn’t a trade off between free speech and child safety, it’s a trade off between free speech and a false impression that something is being done about child safety. Once you understand that, opposing this policy is really a no-brainer.

Ken – indeed, it is bad for our reputation. I wrote about that in Crikey here, and Conroy’s only response was to dismiss it blaming the loss of reputation on the filter opponents for making a fuss!

I’m usually not much of a fan of the ‘damaging our reputation overseas’ line as a reason not to adopt something (not that I don’t agree it’s a problem, but the main issue domestically is whether a policy is a good idea or not – whether it pisses off/worries or gives bad ideas to people in other countries doesn’t usually worry most voters). I agree it is a valid concern – I just don’t think it helps sway voters or the government.

The ‘turn the boats’ back and ‘pay a poor country to warehouse refugees’ policies adopted by Mr Howard undoubtedly influenced policy in other countries in a bad direction – both developed and poorer countries. It also undoubtedly made it harder for Australia to have any meaningful impact internationally when arguing a human rights line – still does I imagine, especially when it comes to refugee issues.

Anyway, while I think the comparison to China is overkill (I can’t see our government ever trying to block Facebook or the BBC – secretly or otherwise), the fact that people and governments in other countries might think we have might provide extra encouragement for them to suggest the same thing.