Google, which has recently been involved in a censorship spat with China, has been one of the filtering policy’s harshest critics. It has identified a range of politically sensitive and innocuous material, such as sexual health discussions and discussions on euthanasia, which could be blocked by the filters.
Last week, it said it had held discussions with users and parents around Australia and “the strong view from parents was that the government’s proposal goes too far and would take away their freedom of choice around what information they and their children can access”.
Google also said implementing mandatory filtering across Australia’s millions of internet users could “negatively impact user access speeds”, while filtering material from high-volume sites such as Wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter “appears not to be technologically possible as it would have such a serious impact on internet access”.
“We have a number of other concerns, including that filtering may give a false sense of security to parents, it could damage Australia’s international reputation and it can be easily circumvented,” Google wrote.
Conroy, unsurprisingly, instead of defending his policy against these criticisms simply attacks Google for uttering them.
630 comments, most of them calling him a dill, 96% opposition on the online poll (not scientific, as we know).
Conroy is – for my money – the weakest, most visible member of the front bench. He’s an idiot – and not just because of this. I don’t know how he keeps the job.
The only reason to be pleased with the election of Rudd’s mob in 2007 was that they weren’t Howard’s mob. Conroy, being every bit as creepy and detestable as anyone on Howard’s front bench, demonstrates how comparatively inconsequential the change really was.
Does anyone sincerely expect the new Broadband project to be anything other than a monumental multi-billion dollar cockup? But we poor long-suffering mugs will just sit and watch it happen, powerless to do anything about it.
Bring on the filter. I salute Conroy for standing up to those who value internet speed over stopping the spread of illegal images and sexually violent content. Grow up and get a real battle rather than running a “My right to porn” campaign. What are you, teenagers?
Spana, if you think that Conroy’s folly will stop any traffic in ‘illegal’ images, you’re completely deluded. VPNs, proxies and peer-to-peer filesharing will not be filtered.
And by the way, you can go burn your strawmen somewhere else. What are you, illiterate? Nowhere in this post is any reference to a ‘right to porn.’ That’s the 4chan mob, take it up with them.
Weez:
Don’t feed the trolls.
Err,Spana @ 3, if this imbecile spends all his and the govts resources blocking who knows what from who knows who, and us poor bastards in the bush are still stuck with dial-up that gets us no-where we are not going to be very happy.
The Rudd Govt. promised those of us who live without broadband that service, that promise has been dumped in favor of a neurotic obsession with censorship. And I don’t even live in the back-blocks of no-where but I can’t get a broadband service here, and I can’t get a wireless service here because of crap mobile service, and I get really pissed off and wish that they would deliver on the promise they made but they are so bloody obsessed with censorship they don’t give a rats.
Jesus, Spana, gives us all a rest.
The filter won’t work. It’s technically not possible to do what Conroy intends.
Spana, read Google’s objection carefully (my emphasis):
Do you get it Spana? Conroy is playing you. Like Howard played the electorate in 2001 who were terrified of the terrrst boat people.
This is “We will decide what pixels come to this country, and the manner in which they come”.
A. False. Sense. Of. Security.
And you’ve swallow the bait. Hook, line, sinker.
So what if it won’t solve the whole problem. Stopping some people from accessing horrific abuse material featuring sexual violence which is currently available on line is a good thing. Of course some people will be able to get around it. Most will not. Some people will always get around any law or system. Does that mean we just don’t fight against what is evil? Of course it is not a perfect solution but it is far better than the extremist rubbish of the no censorship brigade who are happy to argue for people’s right to have access to this revolting stuff. It should be part of a wider startegy. This stuff is censored on tv so why not the web? Why are you anti censorship mob not complaining about the TV censorship laws? Not that different. Or do you believe that if someone wants to broadcast this stuff they should have the right? The arguments assisting these criminals are appalling as is the fake sense of freedom claim to be defending. Truly sickening.
Good grief. It’s like deja-vu all over again.
I’d pay good money to be able to filter Spana out of my web-feed.
Spana’s right – this is great news for Tony Abbott.
Very good satire – however, the thing about impersonating a simpleton is that it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish ironic impressions of one from the genuine article.
It’s bad policy, very simple. If it’s costly and doesn’t stop the problem that it’s meant to fix then why are we doing it?
I was only reading an article today about governments/oppositions focusing on short-term skin deep responses for media headlines to problems instead of well built/executed long-term policy.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one, hey Tigtog?
PinkyOz
Ps. I think your dead right in both articles, but what to do?
Spana,
If you want to see porn etc on teh Internet, you HAVE TO LOOK FOR IT. It doesn’t just pop up on the screen with the wallpaper – unless the gremlins get to your computer overnight. The kind of computer savvy pervs who are into the kind of porn any government would block will be able to find their way round Conway’s filter in a couple of minutes, and the rest of us who aren’t remotely interested in the stuff will end up with very slow internet speeds when the raciest thing we’ll be looking at will be Old Bailey transcripts or Abbott’s Pink Lycra, just so Conway can feel good/powerful/pure/get a pat on the head from Pell etc etc.
No Paul Burns. Wrong. There is a growing issue about the effects that extreme porn is having on developing teenage male’s sexuality. We are not talking child abuse. We are talking about violent adult pornography which is freely available at the click of a mouse. Some feminists are beginning to raise this issue as the effects of porn culture on immature developing males is emerging. Now, make an argument all you like for the free availability of this stuff. However, I will gladly say I accept the community’s and government’s right to say, No, we will not allow sexually violent pornographic pictures, bestiality etc to be freely available because as a society we have higher standards of respect for women and higher expectations about members of our society’s behaviour. Freedom to view what you want sounds like a sad, spoilt response in the face of the horrific violence in some porn. I am proudly pro censorship and will gladly see your right to this stuff taken away. Other things are more important.
Spana is clearly imitating daggett on the Thread of Doom – immune to argument and reason, he keeps making the same irrelevant points over and over and over and over and over …
Spana, did you read my comment. Sure, a very long time ago when I first got on teh Internet I had a bit of a look at some ordinary X-rated porn. It was very, very, very boring. It is my impression that most sane people find it so very very quickly. A preoccupation with it such as you seem to have indicates either a very immature or very unhealthy mind. Unless you get rid of the US First Amendment, which is never going to happen, it won’t go away. Clever internet people will be able to bypass Conroy’s filter, so its pretty pointless.
And it will continue to be available at the click of a mouse after the filter is put in place.
The internet genie is out of the bottle, there’s no putting it back in.
Spana
The money and resources being spent on the filter would be much better spent on actually catching the criminals that devise and promote the dreadfull stuff. Our law enforcement agencies need more support, not placebos and a public that is lulled into ‘feeling good because it is safe from seeing something admittedly unlawfull and potentially most upsetting’. Better education for our population about how the nasties out there are created would be a sound investment as well because most people when things are explained sensiubly to them are revolted by predators. Banning things drives them only further underground. Conroy is on a mission and shamefully, it’s as good as dog whistling as anything the Rodent ever did.
Spana, you are being obtuse. We already don’t have a right to see this stuff. Sexually violent porn is already illegal, has been for decades. Anything that gets a ‘Refused classification’ from the OFLC is stuff we already don’t have a right to see.
I used to work in the OFLC and as early as 2002 they were already assisting in the successful prosecution of people who accessed this stuff online. If people seek it out, the law is already waiting for them. Policies like this actually make it harder for law enforcement agencies to collect the evidence they need to mount a successful prosecution. Not that you care, you just want the warm inner glow that comes from knowing that we decide what pixels come to this country and the manner in which they come.
You want this false sense of security so bad, you’re willing to vote for a policy that won’t work and will cost a fortune. You’re as wrong-headed as the Howard sheep who voted for the $3 billion Pacific “Solution” to a non-problem back in 2001.
Well, I object to your dogmatic insistence that the rest of us taxpayers must foot the bill for the false security blanket you so badly want (when the real thing is already working), just so you can get your jollies from a false sense of security to go with your puffed-up sense of righteousness and moral vanity. You wanna spend money on a bad policy that won’t work? Pay for it yourself.
If I did a post on my blog about eighteenth century connoisseurs of continental pornography and erotica in Italy on the Grand Tour (always a likely possibility if I read up on them) would my blog be blacklisted under Conroy’s scheme?
Spana:
Freedom to view what you want is not a sad, spoilt response in the context of political speech or commentary, or dissemination of legal information, both of which have I believe found themselves on the trial blacklists. Personally that is not a tradeoff I’m prepared to make.
There are other possible responses to porn (such as, eg, not looking at it) but there is no way to legitimately discuss government actions if access to information concerning them has been banned. Conroy’s scheme, as currently formulated, contains nothing that prevents this from happening.
Apart from that, I will add to the chorus of limited syllable explanations of this: the filter will fail to prevent anyone who wants to view violent porn from viewing violent porn. But it will make life harder for the rest of us, for little positive effect, at great cost. What part of this do you not understand?
Spana, the last people to be stopped by the internet filter will be the extreme pervs, who will know how to get the material they want.
The second last group of people who will have any difficulty with the internet filter will be teenagers. If they can’t work out the ‘trick’ to get around the internet filter, then they will have a mate who will, and will teach them.
Teenage boys (and girls for that matter) will find a way. And part of that ‘way’ involves exploiting the ignorance of their elders, who think they have locked away all the bad things.
I think you misunderstand why a lot of people hate the filter. Its not because we want ‘freedom’ or to access porn, or to protect our internet speeds. Its for a much simpler and universal reason: we HATE seeing a botched job, esp when it is being touted as a good job, esp by our own government. This filter isn’t even a semi-effective attempt. It simply will not work. The methods of circumventing it don’t require advanced hacking skills, they are very easy. Even the daily newspaper has published how to get around it.
“We are talking about violent adult pornography which is freely available at the click of a mouse. ”
It will still be available at the click of a mouse after the filter comes in.
Mercurius. I have asked this question a number of times before but no-one will answer it. The argument against the filter is that it won’t work. My response is, Will you support a filter that would successfully block this stuff? If technology could effectively do it would you support it? If you won’t then your initial argument is just words and one you don’t mean. And the anti filter lobby should show some honesty and stop making this argument. The honesty in this campaign went out the window the second the comparison was made between this and China. What a lie.
Secondly, I don’t believe that most people are anywhere near as able as some on this site make out. There is a tiny minority that can do tech stuff. Most have no idea. Using Facebook and email does not mean you can crack a filter.
It is o.t. Ken but we need to catch up with the rest of the world on this front. It is not going to happen if we leave it to Telstra and the liberal stupid is wireless.
I reckon Conroy has got that one right unlike the filter.
Spana asks “If technology could effectively do it would you support it?”
Of course I would. AND I’d like a pony while we’re at it. Meanwhile, back in the real world, there is no technical solution for what is, in essence, a social problem.
The thing is, Spana, this is theatre, like all the security bullshit they do at airports so you won’t go all catatonic and shit yourself with fear on their nice aeroplanes. I’m with Mercurius on this one: if you want theatre, you pay for it.
Speaking for myself, Spana – IF there was a way to effectively block it (very big if) and if there was a way to ensure that ONLY violent porn was blocked, then fine, whatever. But that is not what is being proposed.
If your argument is that we should be in favour of the filter which doesn’t work, on the basis that it is possible to imagine a magical filter made of fairy floss that does work, then I doubt you’ll get far. We’re trying to discuss Stephen Conroy’s existing scheme, not your imagined one.
This is still my favourite: Conroy plans speed humps for Australia’s freeways.
I think an SMH poll had 20000 votes with 95% NO as well.
Meanwhile, when you get a US VPN for $50/year at least you get Hulu free.
And in any event, the broader point is this. While one certainly doesn’t want to enable serious criminal conduct, the overheads of an internet regime that does enable it because it is permissive are not nearly as great as the benefits flowing from such a regime.
Spana, google ‘bypass australian internet filter’.
it’s that easy. to work it out.
Let’s turn Spana’s question around:
Spana, there is a ‘perfect internet filter’ that will successfully block horrible content: turn off the internet completely. Cut all the cables. It will completely block all access to violent pornography and other illegal material. Would you support such a perfect filter?
Spana’s statement @ 23 that ‘The argument against the filter is that it won’t work’ demonstrates conclusively that s/he is either not bothering to read anyone else’s comments or is incapable of understanding them. Either way I have no idea why people are so furiously trying to argue with him or her.
Andrew @ 31 explains a much more potent objection, which is that a secret blacklist can be used to block pretty much whatever sites the owners of the list decide, without anyone even knowing. Anyone who trusts Australian politicians and their public servants not to misuse such a powerful censorship weapon has a naive faith in our political masters that I find quite touching.
If Senator Conroy wants to do some real fucking good, he could tackle the real dangers for computer users: Viruses and Trojans.
And complete control comes at a cost. For example, it could turn the PC into a zombie with its own hard to find mail server – for distributing the spam that pesters you and me. Or the cost could be financial. Many trojans come with key loggers for reading passwords. What if one is unlucky enough to do Internet banking on an infected computer. What if someone is running their own business on an infected computer? They could find their money transferred out to the bank account of “money mules” – willing or unwitting individuals hired through work-at-home job schemes over the Internet and lured into helping the attackers transfer the funds to Russia or the Ukraine.
I think everybody here is aware of these dangers [**] – but then Larvatus Prodeo individually and collectively is more tech savvy than the norm. If
Conroy wants to help, he could actually put resources into protecting Australian citizens being hit. For example, rather than filtering HTTP traffic, why not try filtering dodgy SMTP? After all, isn’t spam 90% of all email these days? And while money muledom isn’t a problem in Australia as far as I know, it is starting to become a big problem in the States. Making the practice illegal here would be helpful, if it isn’t already.
[*] Not really ironical. Many porn sites are unethical, or have unethical affiliates pushing adware and spyware. But not all.
[**] I’ll make an exception for Spana, but then he refuses to learn.
SCPritch, I think you have it wrong. A few people oppose the filter, not many. The majority of Australians have no issue with this content being blocked. Getup is hardly a representation of Australian opinion! The majority want this violent filth off computer screens and care little for the carrying on of people who would compare the right to access porn with the right of freedom and democracy campaigners in China. Your average Australian middle class leftie is carrying on like a spoilt brat in search of a cause whilst those fighting true tyranny in China end up in jail. The right to violent porn campaign is yet another example of out of touch progressives pushing a socially unpopular campaign. Get with it. Australians support the filter. There is no public outcry and we are too smart to believe we will become like China.
The thing is, I would not be in favour even of this perfect filter if it existed, if it were mandatory. Because mandatory filters slow down the internet for those of us who don’t want to watch porn, for no good reason, because anybody else who wants to access porn will still be able to do so.
There are plenty of voluntary commercial products, and there were until Conroy changed tack plenty of (now-defunct) government-subsidised *free* voluntary products in Australia, which blocked porn sites for anybody who didn’t want their children or their employees to access porn while they should be doing other things. These end-user filters worked well, certainly much better than Conroy’s proposed ISP-filter solution, and they didn’t slow down access to the Internet for the whole nation while they worked.
As to the idea that only a few elite geeks will be able to access the non-http content that the filter won’t catch? When I first started on the web in the early-90s, the only way to access discussion forums and a whole heap of associated content was using other ways – http hardly existed yet except in the most basic form.
None of this is at all difficult, despite Spana’s claims – it is a simple matter, as others have said, to google bypass methods which take only a few clicks to activate. So why spend the money, and slow down a commercial infrastructure, for something that can be bypassed in a few clicks?
@Ken Lovell,
Word.
@ Down and Out of Sài Gòn
If a law was passed mandating that ISPs worldwide charged a small amount for anything beyond a reasonable number of emails sent per day, a reasonable number that only hurt those who send thousands and hundreds of thousands of unsolicited commercial emails per day, the Internet worldwide would have the bandwidth to spare to address the pornographers, who would be even easier to track down under such a system.
Why aren’t you fighting for such a system which would work, Spana, instead of Conryoy’s system which will not?
It fascinates me that the vocalists in support of Mr Conroy’s filter proposal just seem incapable of understanding that the internet has the mathematical model that when encountering “damage” will re-route the signal packages around the damage.
The filter proposed by Mr Conroy WILL be seen as ‘damage’ by the system, and be routed around by those nifty little ones and zeros that don’t really care what information they are carrying.
A far more cost effective way of spending the same amount (or possibly less) money to do a similar job would be to provide access to filtering programs to be installed on individual computers as the users desire, provide money for a standardised education for both parents and teachers on the use and monitoring of children and young people online, and then spend some money on the police so they can use existing perfectly adequate legislation to throw the proverbial book at individuals who do access this stuff that the majority of people online DO NOT GO LOOKING FOR!
Why should the rest of us be punished by a proposed reduction in service for the wrong doings of a minority of perverted people?
I sometimes wonder if Mr Conroy is attempting the 21C equivalent of hiding the virtual lower limbs of a virtual table.
BTW – working in agriculture or medicine one already finds standard spam filters applied in most organisations a jolly nuisance as certain Necessary Words are blocked because they ‘might be rude’.
Spana, as I understand the Conroy scheme, the government could, if it chose to, and without any notice to anyone, be legally permitted to prohibit anyone from accessing or linking to this very web page, containing your own words in the comments. And they would have no obligation to explain why.
In other words, you are enthusiastically supporting the government’s right to censor your comments if it wants to. Laws don’t just apply to other people.
We all get that you don’t like violent porn. Neither do I. Conroy’s intention to get rid of it is not what I object to. It’s the fact that his attempts to get rid of it have massive adverse effects far beyond porn, and don’t even solve the problem they purport to address. The existence of cockroaches in a city does not justify dropping an H-bomb on it, especially if the roaches will survive anyway.
(Meanwhile, I’m off to march with the Right to Violent Porn Campaign. We’re visiting the Wicked Witch of the West and travelling by gryphon.)
Spana in the works has a good point which I’ll support but not necessarily for the same reasons. Because I’m unable to figure out how to link to prior LP posts here is part from a prior thread:
Oh I get it spana, another ‘War on …’ and this time insert ‘… internet porn’.
Have we won any of the wars on anything or stopped throwing more money at them yet?
The thing is Spana’s talking points as shallow as they are, are also effective.
Am I against this current filter? Yep. Because it doesn’t work, slows the net down etc.
Will I protest about it either in writing or on the street? Not on your life. Because Conroy (and Spana) have the best meme in town. Against the filter? Your choice. But why huh? Why? Hmmmmmmmm?
It’s the sort of mud that sticks. It’s like a varition on the wife beater question. “Yes or no only please, have you stopped downloading extreme porn? Yes or no only don’t evade the issue.”
And the best bit is that once Abbott (or whichever Lib leader gets in) is in power they can extend the filter to religious or political sites.
“Ooops! Accidently put the ALP on the black list. Oh well. Must fix that sometime before the election.”
This is the sort of issue Spana is raising and the failure of the broad left to develop any sort of critical towards it is a total abrogation of critical thinking that vacates the intellectual space. Libertarians don’t want to address this issue but they are not necessarily of the left. Hopeless.
Firtly, the issue isn’t confined to adolescent males. You may be surprised at what adolescent females get up to these days.
Secondly, there’s a growing body of of leftist literature on this and related topics. See, for instance, a book by blogger and academic Nina Power, which touches on some of these points:
http://www.o-books.com/obookssite/book/detail/354
Incidentally, desire was never in anybody’s ‘social control’. If it were, homosexuality would be practically unthinkable.
Let me add, for clarity, that I’m adamantly opposed to Conroy’s filter because of all the usual reasons and the major reason that it will enable covert political censorship at the twitch of a url.
For what it is worth no-one on this thread has made the slightest attempt to address Spana’s central point which is similar to mine: access to images/footage of the sort readily available on the front “teaser” pages of fee for view porn sites is potentially highly damaging to young persons. In addition it is my unsubstantiable contention (no data/no research) that it is highly influential in the age inappropriate sexualisation of children.
Net nanny filters work where the family in concern has sufficient cultural capital to care what their kids see and therefore deploy such a filter. Plenty don’t and if youse all don’t give a stuff about the impact of that material on the children of the lumpen- and sub-proletariat then there is something seriously wrong.
For your edification, Spana: Script kiddies And there’s a salutary example of how pornography is used as weapon to silence and intimidate included.
We geeks will do what we’ve always done when the small-minded insist on playing in the sandpit: invent another one. I’ve largely given up trying to educate even those who are incapable of seeing the technical issues of the filter, much less the flag-waving neanderthals like Spana and the preposterous paternalistic social engineering anthony nolan seems to be suggesting . HTTP is just a protocol, it can be altered, bypassed or superseded. But the minute you start doing deep packet inspection, you’ve reduced effective bandwidth by orders of magnitude, it’s a wasteful blunt instrument. And the porn argument is really a cover for what they really want: signals intelligence on every internet user.
What we really need is more funding to the AFP who were doing a fine job tracking down internet pornography rings until idiots like Conroy stuck his beak in. It’s not as if this is a secret, there have been at least two 4corners stories I can remember for a start.
Spana’s attitude reminds me of Fred Nile a bit. Years ago. there was a movie called Caligula. Some porn producer hired some of the world’s best actors – John Geilgud, Peter O’Toole, Helen Mirren and the like and persuaded them to take part in this movie. After the shoot he inserted a lot of X-rated material before public release. I only saw the R-rated movie in Sydney and it wasn’t very good, really. Anyway, Fred kicked up a real fuss about the cut – note that, the censored – version of the movie, and out the front of the Barclay he said words to the effect -”Oh it was terrible.” When asked what he did after he’d seen the movie, he said he went and had a cup of tea. Then – He went and saw it again because he couldn’t believe it was so bad.
Seriously.
ewe2 @44: well done for the first response that totally ignores the content of what I wrote and for the first response that minimises genuine concerns by describing me as “the preposterous paternalistic social engineering anthony nolan”. Traffic rules are social engineering too, right? So you drive around without a seat belt to signify your rejection of social engineering do you?
Did you read what I wrote before you dislocated your knee? The issue isn’t the production and distribution of sexually exploitative material using children. It is the psychological and developmental consequences of exposure of children to graphic sexual images.
I’ll reiterate once more before pretty much just keeping score on shattered kneecaps as this develops: the failure of the broad left to address reasonable concerns expressed by many people over the impact on children and adolescents of exposure to sexualised images, many of them gross in anyone’s terms, leaves the intellectual field open for Citizen Conroy to make a bollocks of things.
ewe2 – impressive widget talk but wide of the mark.
Would I support a ‘perfect filter’? Dunno. Depends who’s operating it and how soundly it protects the privacy of innocent people from monitoring by the state. If my aunt had testicles she’d be my uncle. Get back to me when my aunt grows balls and I’ll let you know.
Meanwhile, I support the law enforcement officers who are already quite capable with existing laws and technologies of identifying and apprehending the producers and end-users of sexually violent and illegal material. Your one-note ardour to hand more power to police and the state for no net gain is bewildering and frankly pathetic.
You reckon people support the filter? Fine, go ahead. That support will last five minutes before the media leap upon it, like GroceryWatch, FuelWatch, Roof Insulation and BER as another “waste gone mad” story.
We didn’t need more anti-terrorism laws because we already had adequate laws. We didn’t need the Pacific Solution because mandatory detention was already (sadly) in place. Even Amanda Vanstone admitted the country’s approach to domestic airport security was theatre designed to make people feel better. This filter is in the same category as all those other white elephants.
Christ, no wonder the placebo effect is a medically-recognised phenomenon. You really can give people a sugar pill and in 30% of cases people will say they feel better. Spana, go take a sugar pill.
@anthony nolan
How about a different plan for folks who need a net nanny? How about the government requires all ISPs to offer an opt-in filtered HTTP feed for their customers, and it’s a mandatory checkbox in the sign-up process – do you require a filtered feed? Govt can subsidise free filtered feeds for private residences to protect the kiddies, commercial ventures can pay for their filtered feeds to stop employees perving when they should be working (unless they take the advice of their own IT specialists and pay less for an unfiltered feed and spend instead on their own filter software, in the interests of bandwidth, processing speed and customisable filters – you know, a filter like our departments of education and our libraries are already using).
The net-savvy will still be able to bypass HTTP and get their violent illegal porn, but all the rest of the vulnerable will have access restricted to violent illegal porn, and general bandwidth will hardly be affected.
As for restricting access to the teaser pages of legal fee for view porn sites, that’s a whole other ball game, and rather a derailing one for a discussion of policy which is being sold to us as being about restricting access to illegal pornography.
I see what you did there. First we were having a perfectly sensible discussion about the measures we need to stop and punish the production, distribution and viewing of illegal, violent, pornography – and you suddenly elide that into a piece of concern trolling about an undefined catch-all category you call “sexualised images”, the vast bulk of which consists of legal, non-violent, art or commercial images.
Furthermore, having conflated the discussion onto a very broad base, you would like to suggest that it’s our fault Conroy is behaving like a dick, and it’s our fault that children have seen boobies.
Not buying it, buddy.
Yes it bloody well is. Ask a cop: Anything else is a side-show. Like the Taliban trying to ban music because it encourages dancing, while they stone women to death for being raped.
You know, why didn’t the “broad left” do something to stop my friends and I finding a stash of discarded Penthouses by the creek down the back yard when we were 7 years old? And why didn’t the “broad left” stop my other friends from bringing a hard-core German mag to school to share around the back of English class when we were 13? And why didn’t the “broad left” stop some other kids I knew from showing an X-rated vid at a house party when we were 15?
The impact of all these “sexualised images” on me was pretty profound. Why, at the age of 7, I felt disgusted and a bit sickened by them. At age 13, I was curious. At age 15, I wanted to have sex! If only the “broad left” had managed to save me from the “impact” of this “exposure to sexualised images”, I might now be a healthy, well-adjusted, married man (oh, wait…)
Spana a year ago wikileaks was on the ACMA blacklist. To the best of my knowledge that hasn’t changed.
How does banning that site protect anyone from child porn?
You want to stop illegal porn fine, do it in a way that stops illegal porn.
At the moment you want to limit my access to something I consider vital to “freedom and democracy” because of your moral panic.
Thanks for that.
The filter will do nothing to stop darknet activities and that is where most of the festy stuff we all object to is, but as soon as something like wikileaks, or a euthenasia site appears on it (well doesn’t appear because of it) … well whatever semblance of legitimacy it had is gone.
I wonder if any attempt to put info on the Nimbin mardi grass will be subject to the filter and blacklists? After all it might be a law reform rally, but its actually concerned with something illegal.
Sometimes I wonder if those folks who campaign vociferously against pr0n are a little like those American evangelicals who campaign against teh gays – and turn out to be closeted homosexuals themselves.
What they are really saying is, “Please, somebody, stop ME before I look again!!”
Methinks the peeps doth protest too much.
I’m also willing to bet that some people’s definition of “violent, illegal pr0n” is someone else’s vanilla BDSM.
tigtog @48: excellent suggestion re. an opt in filter and one that could be applied (as you note it already is in public spaces like libraries) to any form of pirn site. A mandatory opt in check box would go a long way to addressing the issue.
Mercurius: a sophisticated response but the effort may well require a hip rather than a knee replacement. The evidence for this is your apparent inability to distinguish qualitative differences between the contents of “a stash of discarded Penthouses” from five years ago and the sort of images that led to the line in South Park the Movie: “What’s wrong with the Germans anyway?”. Talk about disingenuous. Are you seriously claiming that the tubes don’t make a difference in the delivery of sexualised images? Tha there is no difference between the click of a mouse and entering “restricted premises” to access this material?
Yes, Merurius, I am suggesting that Conroy is bein’ a dick and the reason his policy vacuum has expanded to occupy centre stage is because pomo education has convinced a lot of libertarians that they are lefties when in fact they are really right wing anarchists who share more in common with Nozick than anyone else.
Clive Hamilton, one of Conroy’s most influential supporters, makes no bones about the issue being unlimited access to pirn as much as the production and distribution of child exploitative material.
“I wonder if any attempt to put info on the Nimbin mardi grass will be subject to the filter and blacklists? After all it might be a law reform rally, but its actually concerned with something illegal.”
Good point Jules. Equally sites like “The Shroomery” or “Erowid”, which have probably saved lives with the information they contain on the safe (well…safer anyway) use of drugs, could be blocked.
This is simply an attack of our freedoms, nothing else.
Anthonly nolan it would be helpful if you could explain just what point you are trying to make. You oppose Conroy’s filter, but you also want to do something about ‘graphic sexual images’, which goes wildly beyond anything Conroy is proposing. And somehow it’s all the fault of the ‘broad left’, despite the fact that Howard’s mob was in power from 1996 until 2007.
So apart from having contrarian fun, do you actually have a coherent proposal to put? Or are you just engaged in a bit of hand-wringing?
And btw I just love the condescending crap about the masses not being smart or moral enough to use filters so us elites have to take responsibility for raising their children for them. This resurgent strain of paternal welfarism amongst conservatives, epitomised by income management for dole recipients, is just as nauseating as Howard’s pandering to bigotry.
Spana, as you often do, you are getting your own obsession with sex and your equally apparent obsession with ‘the left’ mixed up. As far as I can see (I mean in general, not on this thread) the most violent opposition to the filter is coming from the libertarian Right. There are no clear-cut left-right issues with this one, much as you wish there were so you could demonise Teh Left some more.
As an older feminist who’s mildly appalled by some of the things young women now think it’s not just normal but necessary to do to their bodies, some of which are clearly in response to male expectations created by pr0n, I was at least listening to you till you started banging on about ‘lefties’. If you don’t want to be dismissed as a fanatic then you really need to keep your various obsessions separate.
Anthony Nolan, you move the goalposts every time I kick a goal. It’s getting tedious.
No, Antony, you brought up the expression ‘sexualised images’ – which is a catch-all category that includes the Penthouses, the German magazines, (some of) Bill Henson’s photographs (maybe, depending on who’s got a dirty mind), billboards with scantily-clad women on them, and the priceless Utamaro woodblock print currently on display in the Art Gallery of NSW that depicts, at 3 times life-size and with unflinching biological realism, a vulva being vigourously masturbated by two fingers, presumably those of its owner, but it’s not entirely clear. All of the things I just listed are legal, and only the first two are restricted from viewing by minors, BTW. If you have a problem with that, come out and say so instead of using all your concern-trolling to brow beat us about some ‘failure’ we are apparently all guilty of in your imagination.
You grouped all these things together, along with the violent illegal porn, using the catch-all phrase ‘sexualised images’ and then accused me of being unable to distinguish the difference. Talk about disingenuous.
Not from a legal perspective, they don’t. That’s not me making the claim, either. That’s a long-established principle that laws are or should be designed to be media-neutral, which is the only sensible approach to take to this stuff, so that as new technologies come along the same restrictions apply in the same way.
Of course the intertubes make a difference. When kids access this material online, it is possible to record the fact that they have done so, and the source of the material. My parents never found out about the stuff I accessed, because the creek down the back yard, and the back of the English class, and the party I went to, didn’t have a cache.
Anyway, what ‘restricted premises’ are you talking about? Other people’s houses the kids visit after school, where the parents keep a copy of The Joy of Sex on their bookshelf? Parramatta Road where there’s a half-naked chick advertising vodka on a bus shelter every 2 miles? The inside cover of their Year 8 Geography textbook where some wiseguy the previous year drew a crude picture of the English teacher doing it with a horse? Or how about when they turn on to Nova FM or watch VH-1 and get Rihanna singing…
Wake up to yourself, Anthony.
Actually no, “the reason his policy vacuum has expanded to occupy centre stage” is because one-note obsessives like you and Spana won’t let it die from the lack of oxygen it deserves.
Well given Hamilton’s stunning electoral success in the Higgins by-election, I’d say you’re on a hiding to nothing with this legislative folly. The Sex Party will probably pick up a few extra votes in this year’s election, but.
Ken @54: a pox on Conroy’s filter but notwithstanding that view Clive Hamilton makes the general point that for him and the policy makers the issue is exactly access to “ordinary” pirn.
Ken again: “…the masses not being smart or moral enough to use filters so us elites have to take responsibility for raising their children for them”. Good grief man why do you think we have child protection legislation and that each state spends gazillions on child protection except to take some human responsibility for protecting those in need of it.
Mercurius: I did introduce the issue of sexualised images and deliberately in order to tear the blinkers off the poor old draft horse that the libertarians have been flogging around the place so that the broader issue can actually be seen. See Hamilton’s cited article @57 for why our political liberties are under threat from a net filter. He makes a good argument.
His electoral failure doesn’t devalue his argument, BTW. If it did we’d never develop critical thinkers in Australia at all.
Score: three knee’s and Mercurius’s hip that looks like it might end up a spinal fusion operation.
Thanks anthony @ 57 for confirming
(a) That you are not arguing with anyone on this thread, but with Clive Hamilton (wouldn’t you be more at home over at Catallaxy? The remaining three regulars there decided Clive Hamilton was a convenient proxy for ‘the broad left’ a long time ago and just mentioning his name is guaranteed to get you a sympathetic hearing), and
(b) You have no constructive proposals of your own.
Your own confusion is amply demonstrated by your reference to child protection legislation, coupled with your rejection of Conroy’s filter. What then are you suggesting ought to be done? I mean is that such a hard question?
Good point Duncan.
I heard erowid and the lyceum were on it at one point, but I could still access them.
Of course that would piss me off if they were unavailable, even tho i haven’t used an entheogen for nearly 10 years. Ultimately imo its a matter of personal freedom wrt those sites, but they do contain info that may save lives.
But if sites like wikileaks and cryptome end up on the list … those sites are dedicated to releasing documents that are not available to the public, and some people feel they should be.
Here’s a blast from the past when LP covered the wikileaks thing:
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2009/03/19/the-first-rule-of-censorship-is-that-you-cannot-talk-about-censorship/
Paul Burns, being compared to Fred Nile is a new one. I have been called a communist and a fascist but never compared to Fred Nile! Thanks!
Anthony Nolan and I seem to come from slightly different perspectives but I endorse his concern over the effects of violent and extreme porn on developing youth’s sexuality. It is a very real issue and its repercussions are only just starting to be felt. Those who would deny it, I suggest, have little contact with young people and have no idea about how it is permeating youth culture. It is a very serious issue and ducking behind the issue of free speech is a cop out. There needs to be a little more courage to address the issue by the likes of some on this discussion. Past ideolgy may need to be abandoned in the face of increasing social harm.
Comparing the issue to Playboy is innacurate. The internet and playboy magazine are worlds apart. Extreme porn including acts of sadistic violence against women is now available on most computers at the click of a mouse, literally. The filter may not be perfect. But it wil stop a lot of stuff getting to some people. I also agree that the AFP should be funded to track down the criminals behind some of this stuff. The two are not exclusive.
To those who argue that the filter may (may!) lead to political censorship, I say does that mean we abolish the police in case we become a police state? The filter is not about political censorship. You know that. And if it was used for that I would be right alongside you in defending your right to say things that I strongly disagree with. I support free speech. I do not support the right to publich violent pictures of the abuse of women. We ban these from shops and TV. hey should be blocked from the web too. The filter should procedd with support from those who seek to raise the standards in society. Is it social engineering? Well, many things are in politics and policy. Is compulsory schooling social engineering? Yes. Do we get rid of schools? No.
A little more maturity and credit where credit is due is needed. Conroy should be commended for having the courage to take on the criminals who are running large parts of the web. He should be commended for being willing to tackle the issue of extreme sexualisation of youth through porn. Confusing the issues of violent porn and free speech just makes the anti filter brigade look illogical.
tigtog @ 36 – well a nice idea in theory but you’d never get worldwide agreement to do this. Not withstanding that you don’t really need your ISP to send mail anyway – most larger businesses for example don’t go via their ISPs mail servers instead running their own and there is absolutely no chance of getting worldwide agreement to block SMTP ports for but ISPs.
Regarding an opt-in system, as much as I would prefer an opt-in system to an opt-out system I think the best that we can hope for is an opt-out one (which is being lobbied for inside the government by Senator Lundy). Its not without precedent – many ISPs by default block windows file sharing and SMTP ports for residential customers because it reduces the spread of viruses. But they then have an opt-out system where you can have your connection fully exposed to the wilds of the internet.
One thing to ponder is that if the filter was even half decent at blocking material then there would be no problem in releasing the blacklist of sites. It may be as Conroy claims be an address book of illegal content – but hey the filter will stop people in Australia accessing them won’t it?
Peter @ 27 – yes if this goes through I predict a bit of a market in easy to use software for people to setup a VPN to route all their browser traffic through. Its not like they can make VPNs illegal without killing the IT industry in Australia.
I would be first in line to congratulate Conroy for doing exactly that Spana, if. that’s. what. he. was. doing. He’s not.
I’ll agree on you with one thing Spana:
Except it ain’t coming from you.
Comparisons between the proposed filter and the police are facile. There is oversight and accountability of the police – Conroy’s proposed filter is a Super Secret Squirrel List, with no way of knowing what is on it.
And don’t go getting started on “social engineering” or this thread will get Godwined fast.
Spana the filter itself is a tool, its not about anything. Its how the filter is used that is the issue.
Your arguments are illogical.
OK there is a BDSM community in australia, there are probably several – LGTB and straight – made up of consenting adults. If the filter stops them even having an online presence then its doing what you want it to do and being used for political oppression at the same time.
And seriously, if we want to have a healthy attitude toward sex in this country then its gonna take more than the filter. We could follow Iceland’s lead and ban strip clubs I spose. (I’m sure that wouldn’t cause any problems either.)
Social engineering, dear anthony, is when
and st anthony of the graven images comes along and says “I’ll decide what pixels they look at”. After all, if those proles don’t care about that FILTH, us born-to-wooden-rulers will have to care FOR them! Stands to reason, don’t it? Of course this has to be the failure of the broad left, it’s always someone else’s failure with authoritarians. Gotta keep fixing the world until it don’t think like youse. Go back to your latte and complaining about the gardener, anthony. And fixing that inexplicably dislocated limb you have.
anthony nolan – impressive trollery but the smell of burning books.
This much repeated claim has got me curious – where’s the link on this page that will connect me to one of these extreme pr0n sites? Or is it hidden somewhere on the Windows desktop?
‘The filter is not about political censorship. You know that.’
Oh well that’s OK then. Carry on.
I guess the source of this information would be who … politicians? Honestly.
But I suppose we can draw comfort from our great and powerful friend across the sea, whose citizens know its government would never torture prisoners, or illegally wiretap people’s telecommunications, or detain innocent people indefinitely without charge. Or at least if they do do it, it’s in a GOOD CAUSE, just like stopping kiddieporn, so nobody should be alarmed by it.
And of course our own Australian politicians and police forces and security services would never ever dream of locking up an Indian doctor and lying about the reasons, or pretending that asylum seekers had thrown their kids into the water, or misuse anti-terrorism search and surveillance powers to arrest people for drug offences. And senior public servants would never even contemplate fabriccating evidence for political purposes. Perish the thought. Or once again, if they did ever do that kind of thing it would be in a GOOD CAUSE and they are just trying to make us all safer in our beds at night and leftie tree-hugger latte sippers should just STFU and let the government get on with things and stop COMPLAINING all the time.
The idea that an Australian politician or public servant would ever misuse the power of the state is obviously absurd and I apologise even for raising it.
W.T.F.?
Mate, you are becoming quite the obscurantist in your dotage. You have succeeded only in confusing me and everybody else about precisely what is bothering you. And I suspect it’s wind.
This is not a good website to visit if you’re looking to pick a fight with libertarians and Clive Hamilton fans. Both are a rare breed around here, and even those of us who might have leanin’s wouldn’t really die in a ditch for either. You seem to have stormed into a bar with the intention of glassing everybody, only to find the broom closet.
Enjoy!
Spana, a lot of people here have no issue with extreme pron being censored, they are more worried about the social and political impacts as well as the infrastructure issues. It’s you that keeps trying to bring this back to ‘teh left defending pornographers and their right to view porn.’
I would encourage you to engage with the other parts of the debate.
Hang on, what am I saying? Stay on message. Seriously. The left being the left will be distracted into debating these side issues or get tired of debating it or (in my case) be wary of entering a debate where they get pilloried for defending the rights of paedos where no such intent exists.
Just keep repeating it over and over. Because in the end it doesn’t matter. This filter will be applied. And the best thing Spana is this. If the Libs get in they won’t change a thing. They might even take it further. And why not?
Someone raised the BDSM community earlier. Yep, I reckon a lot of BDSM hookup sites will be blacklisted. Because quite frankly it’s denying economic opportunities to those who would tend to people with those tendancies. The adult industry and the church.
(I’m speaking from experience here. A lot of people I know who are into odd but harmless fetish’s and/or BDSM are lapsed Catholics.)
Gummo said:
This claim “at the click of a mouse” is staright from tabloid TV voiceovers, but it is laughable. You get almost nothing with one click, (unless you are already there). And even several clicks are no good unless you click in the right places.
This is the problem — how does one know where to click to find stuff to be offended or titillated by? Nobody is getting there by accident — that is certain. And every parent who is worried about their kids going places can easily download utilities with an admin password that stop the PC in question from going to places with metatags that imply the kinds of things the priggish wouldn’t like, including of course the stuff Conroy claims to be bothered about.
In the end though it comes down to parents taking control of their kids’ online experiences rather than expecting the state to engage in a technically impossible exercise which will inevitably stuff around large numbers of people who aren’t interested in this stuff and make those who are engaged in serious criminal activity harder to put the arm on.
The thing is a lot of teens will seek out online porn. I know I would have had the technology existed back then.
There is a huge reason why the adult industry is firmly onside with Conroy on this one.
The filter is coming. My only real annoyance is that it’s really going to make it difficult for us PC gamers out there. However if Spana was to say “oh boohoo to you, what’s more important, protecting your right to play games online manchild or protecting innocents from sicko images?” I would have to agree with Spana despite knowing the filter will not to a damn bit of difference.
Why is everybody still feeding the troll? Sure, parts of it are amusing, but… there’s not many ideas exchanged there. :p
Um, literally? Does that mean you have it as a shortcut in your web browser?
YHBT. YHL. HAND.
Pretty much.
I’d like to direct you all to this (possibly NSFW) article from the SMH
http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/games/rape-simulator-game-goes-viral-amid-calls-for-censorship-20100331-rcpz.html
Sadly the existance of this game not only makes the net filter pretty much a done deal, it also destroys any hope I had for a decent rating system for games in this country. (I’d love for there to be an R rating for games in which games like this would still be banned for being X rated and vile to boot but I’d say that this article means game over, case closed QED.)
I’m saddened to see that there are still some people, Spana being one of them, who let their emotions get in the way of rational thought.
One comment that I’ve seen plenty of pro-censorship myrmidons make time and time again is that ‘there are more important things to worry about’.
What exactly are they Spana? Could it be the terrorist threat? Could it be the ailing standards of education in this country? Is it that our hospitals are breaking under the weight of too many patients for not enough funding?
I agree that these things are more urgent, but I disagree that they’re any more important than open information. How do we know about the education standard here? Open Information. How do we know about the hospital crisis? Open Information. How do we know terrorism is occuring around the world? Open Information.
How do we know that child abuse is a problem that needs to be solved at the cause level (not just the symptoms)? How do we know that children are being abused? How do we know to pressure the government for more funding for police when abuse is on the rise? Open Information.
Information doesn’t just pop into a journalists magic bag ready for civilian consumption. It needs to be sought out, it needs to be open enough that we can see what the real issues are.
Spana, this isn’t about porn, it’s about the openness of information and preventing the government from establishing the machinary for keeping it closed. If you believe anything else you are short-sited and ultimately doing more harm to your children than you would prevent.
Stop abusing your children with ignorance.
tssk@76
It is interesting to note that this RapeLay story only got legs because of MP Keith Vaz in UK (http://www.gamepolitics.com/2009/02/11/british-mp-keith-vaz-criticizes-japanese-rape-game039s-availability-amazon).
It was for sale through Amazon’s second-hand market, they pulled it quick smart, and there it should have ended. But it is a rallying point for the pro-censorship demographic (and, tellingly, the only real rallying point they use!?)
It was effectively banned in Australia beforehand – it is still banned.
Interested folks could obtain it beforehand – even after this filter is put in place they will still be able to obtain it.
The current so-called demand for the game is built on the controversy.
The proposed internet filter won’t do anything to stop that demand.
So, I don’t think this makes it a “done deal” for the filter any more than the usual “think of teh childerenz!!1!!” malarkey.
tigtog generally and chris @62: those are interesting ideas that at least inform the discussion. Bilateral international agreements would be a good start on that project.
Spana: inflammatory as ever but stand back boy and watch this – I don’t think many readers have actually bothered to read the link I posted to Hamilton’s article in which he disparages too ready access to online porn and makes a solid argument as to why it ought to be hindered. I think he makes a good case but am also aware, as he points out, that the filter will fail to block access to online porn so Conroy’s filter is a major fail.
The point here is that so far the left has merely mounted a half assed libertarian response (freedom = good; the state = totalitarianism) which leaves the centre ground unoccupied. But, at least we see some wavering around the issues of the impact of pornography on children. Don’t we? Anyone want to address that yet?
The rest: strewth. Not so much kneejerk injuries as lookin’ like a scene from J G Ballard’s sstudy of the eroticisation of orthopaedic surgery in “Crash” (book or movie, don’t matter).
Special mention for Gummo: are you kiddin’? Is that an invitation to post links here on LP to the sort of sites that Hamilton and Spana are on about?
So what Anthony, kids will go back to doing what Mercurius did. How are you going to do anything about that if it is so injurious to children? Aren’t children also influenced by billboards loudly proclaiming “Want longer lasting sex?”, half naked women supposedly advertising something, the crap that they go on with on the Footy Show, almost all kids shows having a male protagonist with girls only as hangers-on. It’s all injuring kids, yet you only worry about something they have to search to find on the internet. My seven year old is pretty net savvy, yet he hasn’t found it yet while surfing the net. Probably because he’s not looking for it.
Here’s the killer arguement though. I know where I stand on the classification of electronic entertainment. And on the net filter. And my line is about…here. (Draws a line in the sand.)
Now the problem is that Conroy and Spana have similar ideas. But they want that line drawn here. (Draws another line in the sand a little further but not too much further to the right.)
we both agree a line needs to be drawn somewhere. And that something needs to be done. Where we disagree is where the line should be and the method of line drawing.
And of course they have the ultimate draw to drag me closer to them or to silence me. Conroy’s counter arguement is still really really effective. “You’re entitled to your opinion. And hey, argue for the rights of monsters to continue to exploit women and children.”
In the end the things that concern me is net speed (and hopefully that will increase in order to make up for the drag the filter will cause) and the rating of computer games.
And I won’t die in a ditch for either. Because in the end I’ll learn to deal with the slower speed and I’d happily play Tetris over Manhunt any day of the week.
tssk @ 76 – and Conroy’s net filter will have little to no impact on its distribution. It’ll still be available on bittorrent which any self respecting music and video downloading teenager knows how to use. It’ll also be available on many websites but the filter won’t be able to keep up to actually stop its distribution. The Streisand effect of people protesting its existence pretty much guarantees even more widespread distribution.
I agree Chris. But it’s the same thing I deal with everyday in other areas of my life. I don’t pirate DVD’s and get rewarded with having to sit through ad after ad telling me not to copy DVD’s while the people doing it can skip right to the movie. As my mother said, no good deed ever goes unpunished.
Mercurius:
“Mate, you are becoming quite the obscurantist in your dotage.”
Oh come on. You’re not even trying.
Look, you takes the gloves off and put them back in nana’s dress up box and I’ll take me teef’ out and we’ll have a real (hypertextual) go.
Anthony said:
Personally, I see no evidence at all that p*rnography per se has any effect on children. And even if it does, I rather doubt that the kind you can easily acccess on the internet is a serious factor in child subjectivity, except perhaps in cases where it is part of some abusive/neglectful adult-child setting.
Long before we got anywhere near p*rnography we ought to be addressing a whole bunch more salient issues — support for good early childhood practice, early intervention, supply of child and adolescent health and counselling serrvices, quality housing and education, out-of-hours school care up until at least 16 years of age etc …
And as others have noted, public culture hardly presents adulthood in a constructive and inclusive way.
Get this done properly and most of the stuff kids will run across will be so much passing decontextualised noise.
That’s the thing isn’t it really. “Think of the children!” Remembering my childhood with a single parent I’d ask you do the following first as a politician. Make sure the kids out there are properly sheltered and have enough food.
Fran:
“Personally, I see no evidence at all that p*rnography per se has any effect on children.”
Oh, that’s credible. I believe that Captain Cook reported that he didn’t see any natives either, didn’t he?
Fran:
http://www.apa.org/monitor/nov07/webporn.aspx
Google < 30 seconds for a good review article. One eye good, two eyes better.
Anthony, that review you linked to:
1) Stated that its findings were correlational only and causation could not be inferred.
2) Found no evidence of criminal conduct arising from legal pornography viewing.
3) Described a bunch of attitudes that teenagers held about sex. Some of the attitudes are objectionable. Yes, you read that right. Some teenagers have objectionble attitudes about sex. Shocking, isn’t it?
The synthesis of findings appeared to be that teenage boys seek out more porn than girls, they seek out more porn as they get older, they tend to view sex as recreational and treat women as sex objects. You could’ve knocked me down with a feather when I read that.
All those are attitudes that predate the internet by millennia. They were here before the internet and they will be here after Conroy’s filter goes live.
I can confidently predict that Conroy’s filter will not improve the prosociality of Australian teenage boys’ attitudes towards sex one jot.
How much public concern do you think should be expended upon a cultural product for which there is no causal evidence of harm, no evidence of criminality, but which is associated with antisocial attitudes as old as humanity?
You’re asking us to accept the restriction of a cultural product because you attribute it as the origin of some bad thoughts you don’t want people to think. You’re getting into thought-police territory mate.
Key findings (prepare to be shocked, people!)
In other news: the sky is blue!
Horrors! Teens like sex! I long for the good old days when they had a fearful, guilty, apocalyptic attitude toward sex.
Shocked! Shocked I tell you!
If only we were back in the pre-internet era, when women weren’t treated as sex objects, and people had sex exclusively in the context of a loving relationship for the purpose of procreation.
If you want to socially engineer teen attitudes toward sex, hire some social workers, pay them properly, and you might get the improvement in attitudes you’re looking for.
I’m not sure why you pointed at this link Anthony, but it doesn’t advance your claims one iota. Really, it’s a collection of banalities and to the extent it claism anything it suggests that children may have benefited from it
And this stunning insight was there too:
Gosh, Imagine that.
So really, what they are syaing is that kids seek it out, but occasionally they report stumpbling across it unintentionally, but report no harm.
Much of the areas of concern adopts the old passive “communication effects” model popular in the US in the 1950s, but it acknowledges that they can’t actually draw any conclusions. It is after all possible that the coreelation between what are seen as undesirable attitudes to sexuality in kids accessing porn reflect the fact that those who already bear these attitudes seek out porn or respond to it more enthusiastically if they come across it.
No, Anthony, it was a satiric rebuttal of the hyperbolic claim that these sites are “just a mouse click away on most computers”.
YHBT. YHL. HAND.
PS – can anyone tell me where the hell on the Windows desktop I can find this shit? I’ve been searching the Windows help system for “Really vile nasty pr0n web-sites” all afternoon to no avail. Purely for research purposes of course.
Spot on, Fran. Arrows of causation haven’t been established.
I’m starting to wonder whether Anthony has read the link he recommended…
And the whole thought police angle has really come to the fore, here.
Harm done? Nup.
Criminal activity arising? Nup.
We don’t like what they think? Do something! Nanny state, save our kids!
Well look kameraden how the discussion has shifted. The article is merely a review article and I had read it before linking it. There is content suggestive that viewing porn is harmful as well as suggestions that co-relational conclusions only are available at this point and that this is a weak basis for social policy. Agreed.
Nevertheless it is an improvement on “I can’t see a problem” ain’t it?
Now, because the data is not in and may in fact never be sufficiently in to serve as a solid platform for social policy due to the difficulty of gaining authentic disclosure from research subjects, we have to fall back on discussion based on probabilities, experience, preferences and ethics. Which is where Clive comes in, I reckon. His point, among others, is that it is likely to be deforming for the children to young adolescents demographic to view explicitly sexualised images of women defecating into each others’ mouths. Oddly enough, I think he might be correct.
That’s why the net filter will be electorally successful – it is called the nana effect. That’s why we need to be thinking about other technical ways of curbing access to such material as have been suggested already on this thread.
Homework: if you trust your antiviral enough find some pirn, any pirn, that you think a 12 year old shouldn’t see. Hint: think of an “out there” act and google it.
Given the interest in my political arc of late the current debate recalls another Spartacist slogan:
Viva Nina Hartley!
I think I’ve already said this, but it bears repeating.
The desire of the young to access pr0n is a social problem, as is any (possible) negative effect it will have on them, and any unfortunate attitudes that boys already have towards women.
Now, could the slow-of-learning among us repeat after me, “Social problems cannot be addressed with technical fixes.” Just keep saying it until it sinks in.
Gummo @ 91 – just open all the email attachments you’re ever sent and follow all the urls in your email – before long you’ll end up at some rather alternative websites and probably end up with some content you’d rather not see on your computer
Anthony nolan if we all agree that children should not be exposed to porn – for aesthetic reasons, if for no other – will you STFU and go away? Alternatively, will you explain how your interminable comments are relevant to Conroy’s proposed filter, which you say you oppose and which is not intended to eliminate the vast majority of porn sites?
Chris @ 96:
So, the only way to access this cr0nuc0pia of pr0n is to disable my spam filters and start reading the stuff? Sod that! I’ll stick with what I can buy down at the newsagent.
A few years ago there was a heap of spam emails from Russia inviting the recipient to click on a link which would take them to a porn site. Embedded in the email was a little video preview of a dog licking a woman’s vagina. Chacun a son gout, but I thought it was truly disgusting.
I doubt this would be picked up in Conroy’s filter.
Ken, I can tell you’ve been reading Hobbes again despite all best advice to the contrary. STFU seems a trifle harsh for someone who supports freedom of speech.
My own preference is for Google to support freedom of responsible speech and refuse to support searches for commercial sex sites. They can be there, be located, but not displayed. They know they can do it too. That way, if you want your ero-jollies, its off to the restricted premises where they ask for proof of age before entry and purchase. I know it is old fashioned but why not? Or is the convenience age too much to give up?
Anthony – Google provides a password protected search result filtering service which parents can, should they wish, set up on their own in all of 30 seconds.
That is to say, they provide for those who wish to access porn, and for those who wish not to do so. Seems like a sound business model to me.
Even if Google disallowed porn searches, there are a lot of search engines. Given the worldwide popularity of web porn, the other sites would see this as a great opportunity to take market share from Google.
Hence, Google won’t do it.
@anthony nolan
OK, by bringing up the freedom of speech canard on a blog which is private rather than public property you have now officially done enough derailing of my post. Stick to discussing the filter’s proposed restriction of illegal content or you will be sinbinned.
Sam I think you’re being a bit negative. Anthony you write to Google and let them know what you think. ‘Freedom of responsible search’ sounds like a terrific slogan to me.
BTW you might want to explain to Google why ‘commercial’ sex sites are bad whereas not-for-profit sex sites are OK. Can’t quite see the point myself but maybe it’s got something to do with Clive Hamilton.
Let us know how you get on. Glad you acknowledge your comments have SFA to do with the thread.
Wth yr ndlgnc tgtg t ws th hrrbl Lrr Flynt wh lnkd prn nd frdm f spch rnd Hstlr mgzn. Ths s th sl nt-cnsrshp pstn nd m sggstng tht frdm f spch s rltd ss pprs t b n knd f brd t m. vr t y, hwvr.
[disemvoweled by moderator ~tigtog]
Spana,
Would you support a Government administered voluntary internet filter?
Google to shut down Australian office and move to New Zealand if Conroy filter isn’t abandoned.
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/171000,memo-google-threatens-to-pull-out-of-australia.aspx
Child porn is already illegal. The sites that offer such material are typically heavily encrypted, buried under peer-to-peer torrents or otherwise unavailable under Google. Suggesting that (a.) random surfers will easily find them, or (b.) that Conroy’s filter will eliminate the problem is at best ignorant and at worst deliberately evasive. Conroy (and maybe Rudd, who knows) sees the kiddie porn issue as a convenient method to bring in net censorship, hence the labelling of critics as supporters of child abusers. Maybe they think this will increase their share of the Family First vote.
Interpol, ASIS, ASIO, the FBI and other government intelligence and investigation agencies have long-standing procedures in place to track and arrest people that offer such material on the web. They tend to not muck around once alerted to the presence of that material. Is it logical that Conroy has a static list of websites containing illegal material, and that such material is accessible to regular web surfers, but out-of-reach for prosecution to the above noted agencies? Not to me.
Ah, disemvowelling. Yossarian’s strategy. However, Kiwi readers will be under no handicap and if, as PB suggests, Google relocates to enzed then tigtog could be well employed as a translator.
I will try very hard to make a contrite contribution on the subject of “the filter’s proposed restriction of illegal content” without in any way testing what appear to be the boundaries of the discussion.
[reams of deliberately obtuse content deleted - tl;dr ~tigtog]
Has Conroy ever offered an explanation of why the blacklist needs to be kept secret? Why can’t there be a transparent process by which a watchdog – preferably one independent of the executive – applies to a judicial officer for a suppression order? I have no idea why it all needs to be done behind closed doors. The process is a perfect cover for political or ideological censorship. I suspect that’s why most people are so vehemently opposed, although if it significantly slows down connections that will also be a serious concern.
Ken @ 110 – he’s said it needs to be kept secret otherwise people would be able to use it to get to the banned sites. Which is pretty much an admission that the filter doesn’t work.
The filter is all about being seen to be doing something rather than doing something that actually works, perhaps because they know in practice there is not a good technology solution. And legal and social approaches are harder to sell than saying they have a magic bullet.
Ah, but Ken, if the blacklist is publicised it will just mean the perverts have a handy list of places to visit once they circumvent the filter!
Really Mr Nolan? Scat? Won’t someone think of the poor children who innocently type “scat sex” into Google on their parent’s unfiltered computer!!??!?!!
Really though, it was TL;DR and I only skimmed through.
I seeee … so we can’t tell people which sites have been filtered because they haven’t been effectively filtered at all, but the evil perverts who want to find them will be too dumb to get around the filter unless someone helpfully provides a link.
Makes perfect sense.
Anthony I thought you wanted to eliminate ‘sexualised images’ in case they corrupted kids. Now you’re banging on about scat sex (thanks for helping me learn one new word a day, by the way). Let me put a hypothetical to you: say the people publishing all this scat sex get the devilish idea of doing it using the Facebook platform. Google has already pointed out that ‘ filtering material from high-volume sites such as Wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter “appears not to be technologically possible as it would have such a serious impact on internet access”‘.
What’s your next step? Ban Facebook?
Conroy’s argument that the internet is the same as other media demonstrated his profound ignorance. It’s sui generis, which is why governments everywhere hate it so much and why they are determined to find ways to censor it and control it and find ways to monitor the activities of everyone using it.
“Why is the internet special?,” [Conroy] asked, saying the net was “just a communication and distribution platform” ….
“I think in Australia we have a vibrant democracy and anyone who wanted to try to expand beyond existing banned material – RC – would have one hell of a fight on the floor of Parliament,” he said.
Sure … like any politician or public servant would dream of secretly misusing a censorship tool for political advantage in our vibrant democracy without getting the permission of parliament first.
Link.
The guy is a complete creep. He reminds me more and more of Richard Alston every day … maybe it’s something in the portfolio does it.
No Ken. Tigtog restrained me to address illegality so I did. The hypothetical you propose is beyond my comprehension because the mechanics of Facebook and other social site defeat my competence.
Spooky: I’ve been meaning to address a comment of yours @51 to which I say that I was fortunate enough to read Herbert Marcus’s “Eros and Civilization” the year it was published and was fortunate enough to find a significant number of others who took his central message seriously. That theme was that industrialised capitalism depended on libidinal repression. We tried, rather well but ulimately unsuccessfully, to bring western capitalism down through rooting in all manner of ways and frequencies. So the suggestion that all pro-censorship people are vanilla beans is absurd.
Well thats one reason the filter proposal has any popularity at all. It sounds like a great idea unless you know how the internet works in which case it sounds like a horrible idea that won’t work and cause harm. Sometimes you have to be willing to either learn more about the topic, or alternatively trust the experts.
Conroy of course is the genius whom we have to thank for Senator Fielding. The more I see of them both, the more I incline to the view that Conroy engineered the preference deal more because he thinks Fielding is a kindred soul and less out of pure anti-Green sentiment.
Someone should ask Conroy where he sits on AGW and creationism.
Jules, I might have introduced the red herring about Erowid and Lycaeum being filtered; I have no experience of them being so, but was concerned they might be.
The reason being I am confused as everyone else about the obfuscations coming from all dept’s of the internets and Conroy in particular about the differences that exist between Refused Classification content and illegal content.
I was under the impression not only would several pages probably fit the description of RC, but if you downloaded say instructions on how to identify and prepare mushrooms growing in your own backyard safely, you could be found guilty of criminal offense under the Qld Drugs Misuse Act which is punishable by up to 25 years gaol. It has in the past been used but obviously not to the extent allowable.
Perhaps the filter is to protect us from our own laws; even the stupid ones which make it illegal to purchase x-rated consensual pornography (and people wonder why the internet is awash with porn?) But Conroy arguing that Euthanasia advocates need to change the law before their freedom of speech on the internet is threatened, just doesn’t cut no mustard.
Really? How about operating lifts? Opening jars? Was that an April Fools’ joke you were attempting?
All of your commentary on this subject makes sense to me now in a way it didn’t before.
The internet filter is designed to assuage the delicate sensibilities of people who can’t understand the internet, and apparently have little interest in it beyond logging on to tell people how wicked it is.
marcuse got so much right foucault had to tip the ol’ cap now and again…
conroy…capitalist pig dog servant of a evangelical christian right wing master hellbent on regulating us unbelievers back into a time before one dimensional man was even thought of, let alone published.
i reckon big w and target junk mail catalogues sexualise children openly and far more effectively than the intehwebs….and gee that’s all legal isn’t it?..and involves large advertising agencies and multi-national corporations…errrrr…easier to make a big deal of revolting art or an internet filter that does nothing about anything (illegal or legal actually but allows us to moralise endlessly about how responsible for all gods little children we are…..
meanwhile in a letterbox near you: see thru bikinis for 5 year olds anyone?…on special this week only…..hurry while stocks last.
On a broader front the filter exemplifies and is embedded within the problem of national sovereignty and the relationship between the sovereign state and global economic cultural markets.
To be even briefer, at the risk of mystifying others further, I suggest that debate could be informed by the work of Ernst Johannes Wigforss, the leading figure in Swedish social democracy, who argued that the state had an ethical obligation to act as a guiding hand in bringing into being citizens fit to inhabit a genuine social democracy.
Please don’t bother to tell me all about Sweden’s laws on pornography. I know. It doesn’t change my contention that access to illegal images needs to be regulated and that Hamilton’s reasons for such regulation are sound.
I find it interesting that anyone expressing a view deviating from the group consensus is labelled a troll. So much for debate. I guess I would just add that if the filter is so easy to get around then why are people so worried? Won’t you just be easily able to get around it? Or is it actually a lot more effective than people will let on?
Mercurius and Fran, what you are failing to realise is that it is not a choice between the nanny state and freedom. It is a choice between the state setting some boundaries and handing over control to porn syndicates to dictate what sexual relations are to immature young people. You may be more comfortable siding with power being handed to these syndicates. I am not. I wil back the state in this battle any day.
Jacques de Molay: No, I would not support a voluntary filter. I have no problem in saying that society via government has a right to say that certain images and sex acts, particularly as they relate to violence should not be allowed to be viewed by anyone. I believe most Australians would have no issue with certain extreme and violent sex images being filtered out. I don’t care for an individual’s rights to view this filth. And don’t give me the porn has no effect rubbish. Why do advertisers pay billions to advertise with images? Because they change people’s minds and persuade them. As will violent porn.
@121: oh, teh lulz.
1. Are you suggesting conspiracy? (zomg! They’re hiding the data! All the experts are lying, LYING to us!)
2. People watch porn to work out how to relate to other people? They don’t learn through contact with real people? O rly.
3. Wanna give quotes in this thread (because that’s what and who you’re arguing against, rite) where people support 1. child, and 2. violent porn?
“Jacques de Molay: No, I would not support a voluntary filter.”
Thanks Spana, as I suspected. You want to push your moral values on to everyone else. Leaving aside teh child porn rubbish, violent porn and beastiality for a moment but where do you stand on people being able to view consensual non-violent sex like using the example above of scat sex? That can’t get an X rating in Australia so will be banned.
You do realise that Conroy’s filter is designed in conjunction with suprise surprise the extremists at the Australian Christian Lobby and as Yahoo have said anti-abortion websites could be banned. Is that all good with you? What about pro-euthanasia websites? How about sites that offer educational tips for safer drug use?
Jacques de Molay, yes, I and the majority of Austraians do want to impose some minimum standards on publically available images. So do most on this site. As has been pointed out it is just a matter of where to draw the line. There are really only two positions.
1. You oppose all censorship.
2. You support censorship. The debate then goes to what should be censored.
I suspect that the vast majority of Australians and indeed contributers to this board support censorship. We must then argue our cases for where the line is drawn.
My personal view is that adult material that passes Australian censorship laws as they currently stand should be subject to a pin number style system whereby users can access it through a pin issued by the service provider. To anyone without the pin access is blcked. The technology could easily be applied. Any sexually violent material should be blocked by the filter. he aim should be to prevent minors viewing sexually explicit material on the web and secondly at blocking anyone viewing sexually violent material outside classification standards in Australia. I am pro censorship. No apologies. And I care little for the whinging of those who claim their rights to view extreme porn are being violeated. I don’t care. The well being of the majority of society and the standards we expect trumps your fetishes. No apologies.
So Spana you admit that this is all because you share the same religious faith as Conroy. You’re either with us or you’re against us hey?
Got any evidence to back up your disingenuous “I and the majority of Austraians do want to impose some minimum standards on publically available images” spiel even though as you know child porn is already illegal? Soon they might be able to even start catching some of these (religious) people involved in child porn, oh wait.
Clearly it’s not really about child porn or violence against women is it now Spana?
Move quietly towards the door folks, being careful to make no sudden movements.
@Spana
You’re not being labelled a troll for deviating from any consensus. You’re labelled a troll because you keep on kicking strawmen through moving goalposts on a slippery slope.
Why are you so keen to have a FALSE sense of security about blocking illegal porn on the internet? Since this filter is NOT going to block illegal porn, why should we meekly accept this white elephant of an impost on a technology which is central to our personal, professional and commercial communications?
I know that newspaper polls can be manipulated but I’ve never seen one with a result or number of votes like this:
Yesterday’s SMH with 45,154 in which 96% are against internet censorship.
http://www.smh.com.au/polls/technology/technology-news/internet-censorship/20100330-r9ft.html
I really Conroy and the ALP are on a hiding to nothing on this and I just can’t understand why they’re pushing ahead.
Nice backflip with a one and half twist there.
DD. I did not see the poll. But I refuse to believe the result. I would suggest a more likely explanation is that a anti filter lobby group has emailed members and they have flooded the poll online. I have been part of these groups who email or text whenever a poll is online and this causes the sample to be skewed. Any staticician will tell you this result is invalid.
DD, The whole thing is about sucking up to the Australian Christian Lobby and trying to lock in the Christian vote. The ALP are only concerned with one thing these days and that’s holding onto power.
“I have been part of these groups who email or text whenever a poll is online and this causes the sample to be skewed.”
I never would’ve suspected that Spana.
Jacques de Molay. We seem to agree that the ALP is only interested in hanging on to power at any price but this does not make this policy bad. I opposed the Howard government but supported their anti gun legislation.
Also, not sure of Conroy’s religion. Is he Catholic and is he practising? Perhaps I share his values. No argument there. I am not afraid of having standards and requiring people to rise to them rather than surrendering our world to the lowest common denominator in the name of hands off libertariansism that looks only at ideology and not at reality. No one has yet explained why this filth should not be blocked on the web but not allowed on TV.
The internet is not sacred. It is not a “special case”. Why is the anti filter lobby not campaigning for less censorship on tv too? All we hear is “It won’t work!” over and over again. It will work and only a tiny minority will get around it. Please explain your solution. Or you simply are prepared to have this stuff freely available in order to protect your ideological purity.
@Spana,
Yet that poll was published over 48 hours ago, and nobody has rounded up the myrmidons on your side of the issue to try and skew it back the other way, Spana? Or does your side simply not actually have enough myrmidons to skew this one?
Or could it be possible that for many of the same technical reasons that Conroy’s proposed filter will not actually do what it says on the tin, that a few basic script-kiddie ‘bots set up by the tech-savvy can be easily configured to ping the poll repeatedly and leave the efforts of your group of myrmidons lost in the noise?
Just imagine what people can do with script-kiddie ‘bots deliberately set to flood the proposed filter with HTTP packets at 100000% the capacity of the system so that our entire internet banking system falls over, just for starters? Yet, anybody not using HTTP will just whistle on by to their illegal porn images and videos hosted overseas while the rest of us can’t access our pay cheques. Yippee!
Tigtog, you are sounding a little over dramatic. The sky is not going to fall!
Spana, of course the sky won’t fall forever – once the filter’s switched off as a result the system capacity will expand nicely to cope with the threat of DDOS attacks as normal.
It will still be wasted time (and money) for many people and businesses, and it still won’t block illegal porn.
Perhaps this analogy might get through to you: Conroy’s HTTP-only filter is like only blocking illegal pictures on billboards without inspecting what’s available in bookshops, let alone what people are sending each other in the mail or passing to each other around their neighbourhoods. It’s emperor’s-new-clothes-don’t-look-at-the-man-behind-the-curtain stuff. Again, what’s the good of a false sense of security other than purely political grandstanding or misdirection about the true use of the filter?
So, instaed of being all criticism and no solution what do you propose? I am not convinced the filter will not woork and believe the anti filter brigade is involved in a deceitful and dishonest campaign. However, that aside, wht is you solution?
There seems to be teo camps.
1. The first thinks it shuld all be available becaue they oppose censorship.
2. The seconf thinks it should not be there but have disempowered themselves to do anything because of an allegiance to an outdated and irrelevent free speech ideology.
Please don’t say fund the AFP or have parents monitor computers. We can do both these as well.
Tigtog why are you doing this to yourself?
Spana has two points which s/he has made about 15 times so far:
1. Porn is horrible, will nobody think of the children?
2. Suck it up lefties, even though your mob won the election you’re still losing the culture wars.
S/he has studiously avoided even acknowledging arguments that explain the dangers of secret government censorship, presumably because s/he couldn’t care less. All s/he wants is the warm inner glow of self-righteousness that comes from anonymously ranting at a bunch of perverted hippies. I mean do you seriously expect to have a rational discussion with this person?
However I do confess Spana’s bit about other people being over dramatic made me smile.
I’ve just read most of this thread in one hit and the only thing that could possibly explain it is that Spana isn’t actually reading anyone else’s comments.
it’s like forumwarz, for real!
Spana@134 – “The internet is not sacred. It is not a “special case”.”
Oh yes it is.
For the first time ever in human history we have a dirt cheap, global and fully interactive communications, data management and storage medium that’s opened up a world of knowledge to the world, that’s turbocharging some existing industries and businesses, killing off others and creating trillions of dollars in new ventures and one that’s also transforming how people deal with eachother socially, economically and civically and how we generate and manage intellectual property.
Three quick examples.
If communism had done to capitalism what the internet did, there’d have been a shootin’ war.
Imagine making sense of this ten years ago. “By twittering selections from his iPod playlist along with his FourSquare account we could crowd source the dead man’s identity.”
http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/28/reputation-is-dead-its-time-to-overlook-our-indiscretions/
I can give you many more examples of what does make the internet a special case. Try googling (hah! When was the last time a company became a verb?) how third world folks are using their mobiles to replace physical currency.
It’s a profoundly transforming technology in so many ways that are only just becoming clear. And like any such tech, especially one with minimal access barriers, it’s gonna reflect the best and worst of the primates using and hacking it. The internet’s a big, humid, fast growing tropical swamp with lovely flowers and foul worms all bubbling up together. And no one is in charge.
Conroy waving his little whipper snipper at this throbbing, evolving and expanding feral ecosystem and crying “It’s for the children!” is gonna have as much effect on the future of the beast as well …fuck all really – to use a technical term.
The genie has well and truly left the bottle and is now flogging it on eBay. Things are gonna change all over the place because of this whether you like it or not. Some of it’ll be good, some’ll be bad and lot will be just different.
But as the man said “When the world turns upside down, so do you.”
Hmm, speaking of shifting orientations, I think I’ve had enough sundowners. Time to fluff the whiskers and polish the fangs for the last ever night of a Melbourne legend, Dante’s.
Don’t wait up. I may be some time.
PS: I agree with some above the term “troll” is being overused here. You kids today just don’t know what real trolling is.
Ken Lovell. Since when is the ALP the left?? The ALP ceased having anything left about it over a decade ago. Labor/ Liberal. One party, two factions. Callng the ALP left is like calling China communist. A joke.
Nabakov. The internet is just the latest advance in the long history of humans. Once they invented cars too. People were not just allowed to drive wherever they wanted because it was a new technology that changed the world. Road rules of all kinds were put in place because we realised that without them there would be bad consequences. Yes, most of us could drive responsibly but a minority wrecked it as with everything. Laws are really only for the minority taht can’t get on but that does not make them not essential.
There is a lot of swweping generalisations and rot spoken in this debate. The following myths are amusing
1. The filter just won’t work! Then why the fuss!?
2. Teenagers are these superhuman creatures who know more about technology than is even invented and can undo anything. Rot. Most use facebook an itunes. Peple who work with kids know that many know little more than that.
3. The internet is special. Rot. Just another human invention that can be good or bad and needs regualtion. Any libertarian nonsense about free speech is just handing power to the criminal syndicates that are seeking to control it.
“All we hear is “It won’t work!” over and over again. It will work and only a tiny minority will get around it.”
Spana, the government’s tests were performed on a thousand blacklisted sites. That’s no more than a drop in the ocean of sites that Senator Conroy and yourself would like to see blocked.
Bump the filter up to one million websites, check each and every data packet received by each and every internet user, and guess what? You’ve slowed the internet down by a lot more than 87% – the speed at which Clive Hamilton decided it really wasn’t worth Australia attempting to prevent our children and young adolescents from being “deformed” after all.
So – you’re forever stuck with only filtering a few thousand sites, which is bugger all in the big scheme of things. Surely you can understand that?
Your ‘opt-in to view adult content PIN’ suggestion suffers from precisely the same problem.
The government’s proposed filter, and/or any extension of it, is not, and never will be, the solution to your moral and ethical concerns.
By advocating blindly for it – ‘it’s a step in the right direction/something has to be done’ etc, you fail to see that it’s not a step in the right direction, since it can’t achieve anything you actually want from it.
Least cynically, it’s nothing but a minority vote-winning security blanket, and nothing will be done except to divert valuable public resources (upwards of $30 million a year, iirc) that could instead be used *effectively* to work to solve your moral and ethical concerns.
Nick, these are not moral and ethical concerns. Websites featuring the violent abuse of women are criminal. So many on here fail to grasp that this is not a campaign to stop naked pictures being seen on the web. It is a move to stop extremely degrading and violent material. Maybe to you this is simply a moral issue. To me it is a criminal matter.
Once again, the question that everyone refuses to answer, Whay won’t you campaign for abolishing TV censorship if you believe this stuff should not be blocked on the web? Why is it okay to block it from TV or billboards but not the web? I still await answers for this double standard. Too hard basket??
Once they invented cars too. People were not just allowed to drive wherever they wanted because it was a new technology that changed the world. Road rules of all kinds were put in place because we realised that without them there would be bad consequences…
And the first ever of those very sensible road rules was the UK’s Red Flag Act of 1865 which required every car on a public highway to be preceded, at a distance of 50 yards, by a man with a red flag. It was intended to regulate the movement of steam traction engines (lovely beasts). This act was one of several attempts to legislate mechanically powered vehicles out of existence. It failed, thanks to Karl Benz’s invention of the internal combustion engine.
Conroy’s internet filter is another attempt to legislate a technology out of existence, similarly doomed to failure. The internet isn’t a printing press – you can’t send in the bully boys to smash it, and burn the printer at the stake when someone publishes stuff you don’t like. It’s not a radio or television transmitter. It’s not a physical thing at all.
It’s a set of communication protocols for transmitting digital information between any two computers, anywhere over an intervening communication network. Take one bit of hardware out of that network, cut one cable and the internet will re-route the signals sending them via another route. That’s why you can’t, in the end, censor it. The internet will defeat Conroy, just as surely as the internal combustion engine defeated the instigators of the Red Flag Act.
So Gummo Trotsky, why can’t the internet defeat the Great Wall of China and their censorship? The Chinese government seem to be pretty effective. Maybe because the internet is just another invention, which can be controlled.
Gummo:
“The internet will defeat Conroy, just as surely as the internal combustion engine defeated the instigators of the Red Flag Act.”
And then we’ll all be free. Technology to the rescue. Just like the telegraph and the wireless made us free.
It does. That’s why it has to be backed up with repressive regulation.
Spana 2 147,
surely you’re not supporting the priest-killing nun-raping godless Communists in Red China?
anthony – sneering sarcasm is not much of a substitute for argument.
At no point did I argue that technology makes us free. Political freedom is determined entirely in the political realm. The internet genie – like the mechanically powered vehicle genie – is out of the bottle. No way to get it back in.
And going back to your suggestion that we all be Swedish style social democrats – but without their more permissive censorship regime – maybe it’s time that it occurred to you that instead of trying the impossible, the best way to protect the lumpen and the kiddies and especially the kiddies of the lumpen from adverse effects of nasty stuff might be a bit of social democratic innocculation.
One of the conditions for guiding people into social democratic citizenship is the belief that they’re actually capable of it. Your arguments seem to assume the opposite.
Reckon that might be enough displacement activity for tonight.
Spana @ 147 – just to backup what Gummo said, I visited China a few years ago and had no trouble getting an encrypted connection out through the firewall which would have allowed access to any site and uncensored search engines. I guess they rely on fellow citizens turning in each other and perhaps if there is too much encrypted traffic coming from a pc they can detect that and investigate in person.
(What is it with the internet and car analogies?)
Sure, we have rules for our cars, but the internet filter is not a rule, it’s (quite literally) a speed limiter. Car manufacturers are permitted to make cars with top speeds over 200km/h despite the national limit being 110km/h. If you break the law and get caught, the car manufacturer has no liability. Nobody complains much about this despite the obvious.
Yer innernets – same deal. If you do something illegal, you ought to be punished. The basic underlying ideal (I am innocent until proven guilty) applies to the internet like anything else. It is not up to Conroy et. al. to pre-emptively stop anybody from attempting to break the law by fitting a filter. They can do the same by monitoring (aka a speed camera) like they do now and punish appropriately. Otherwise, what I do in my car and what I do on the internet is none of his damn business and he should rack off. Sure I can route around his filter just like I could disable a car speed limiter, but I don’t bloody want to.
“So many on here fail to grasp that this is not a campaign to stop naked pictures being seen on the web. ”
Ok, Spana, I see what people mean. You’re perpetually shifting the goalposts, and you’re currently back to only wanting to block *illegal* content.
So, you regard completely legal and consensual pr0n videos as quite ok for children to have available at their fingertips? And you’re happy to concede the proposed filter can’t ever prevent that, and isn’t even a step towards preventing it?
“Whay won’t you campaign for abolishing TV censorship if you believe this stuff should not be blocked on the web?”
Oh, look. You just shifted them back again. Of course you don’t believe it’s ok for children to have legal and consensual pr0n videos available at their fingertips. Of course you want to see legal and consensual pr0n videos filtered as well – ideally via your PIN-based model.
Unfortunately, it’s not a matter of whether any of us believe this stuff should, or should not, be blocked.
It can be blocked on TV. No-one’s pretending it can’t.
It can’t be blocked on the Internet. You, and Senator Conroy, are pretending it can.
That’s the difference.
The whole tedious argument is uncannily like the one about responding to terrorism – fundamental human rights are dismissed out of hand in the name of suppressing Evil. Innocent until proven guilty? Nah, just let a public servant decide if they’re breaking the law. In fact don’t even wait for the law to be broken, just suppress someone’s rights if you think they might be up to no good. Right to privacy? You kidding? If you’ve done nothing wrong you’ve got nothing to hide. A transparent legal system that all can monitor? God no, Evil will only feed on the information to make itself even more Evil.
You object to the law? Oh well obviously you’re a terrorist sympathiser/child porn addict. What’s that you say – people might misuse or abuse their powers? Sheesh come on dude, this is Australia! We’re a democracy, ya know, that kind of thing could never happen here.
And useful idiots like Spana and anthony nolan happily cheer on the endless accretion of state power, smugly boasting of their superior morality. Pathetic.
The irony is that the filter and censorship policies like it are more of a threat to our children’s future than any thing they could ever see on the internet.
@ 156 Word, Ken. Thank you. Concise and bracing as always!
And you’re right desipsis, although this music video could prove to be a limit case:
This kind of filth is available to children literally at the click of a mouse at their fingertips at the touch of a button on their desktop in their web browser on demand in their bedrooms at home under their parents’ noses on their monitor on their laptops on screen on their computers at the click of a nose!!!1!1!!
Yes, well said, Ken. Jenny Macklin and her income management scheme has the smell of this heavy handed- we know best- bullying, as well. Just because someone has a need to draw down welfare they are assumed to be an incompetant piss pot hell bent on abusing children. Even if they don’t have any.
Mercurius,
Never mind the filf, wot about the spellin? Who’ll perteck the kids from on-line sleazes wot can’t spel “rehersal” proper?
We need a filter that spell-checks all web pages before download. Can’t have the little tykes learning bad English from the internet. That would just piss the Education Revolution up the wall.
Wot about the public dunnies then? Standard of graffiti has dropped something terrible with crap spelling of even basic organs. What’s with dic and unt? That never happened in our day
joe2, Conroy has a solution to that as well: dunny doors will be removed from all toilets. People who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear.
Barnyard would like that.
If kids really were getting into all that net pron, you’d at least expect to see some improvement in the anatomical accuracy of the drawings too.
Ken Lovell writes @ 156 that “fundamental human rights are dismissed out of hand in the name of suppressing Evil” but I’m wondering Ken which article of the The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) is threatened with breach by Conroy’s legislation?
You other boys there are welcome to try to answer once you’ve all disentangled yourselves from the toilet cubicle.
Moreover Ken which human right would you think trumps Article 29 s 1)and 2):
rebecca:
and
@165
Ah, the good old “The UN is the ultimate arbiter of human rights” argument – a continuing favourite of undergraduate debating teams.
Ken specifically cited an example of a right that’s central to the legal traditions of all English speaking countries – the right to due process of law and the presumption of innocence.
The problem with the internet filtering proposal is that, stripped of the moral pretentions, it’s an erosion of freedom of thought and freedom of speech. Should the government prevent people from accessing kiddy pr0n, bestiality pr0n etc? No. But the point is moot – the filter won’t close of access to those who’re determined to get to the stuff – as the 28% failure rate of The Great Firewall of China demonstrates.
Criminal prosecution if you do? Maybe. Criminal prosecution for the producers? In the case of kiddie pr0n definitely. Because the only way to produce that stuff is violate the basic rights of another human being – and a highly vulnerable one.
If you’re serious about freedom of speech, you have to accept that it entails (unfortunately) the freedom to lie, deceive and slander. And the freedom to advocate some ideas you find noxious. No advocate of free speech wants any of these things – but they come with the package.
Finally – wandering slightly off-topic – there’s a very nasty whiff of authoritarianism about the Rudd government these days. Internet filtering. Income management for welfare recipients. National literacy standards and benchmark testing of schoolkids to make sure that schools and teachers are performing up to scratch
Indeed Gummo – see the last sentence of my comment @ 54. National Review Online is currently promoting a feverish moral panic about internet pornography in the USA, which I have little doubt is where some of the commenters here have picked up their material (e.g. the peculiar expression of ‘deforming’ children’s sexuality). Labor, Liberal or Republican, conservatives love to travel in packs.
Desipis I await Rebecca’s response with interest. After a confident opening I suspect the best she will manage is a weak “but ‘meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare’ trumps everything”, which of course has been the standard defence of authoritarian governments for decades. Especially the public order bit, which leads back to me @ 156, which demonstrates what a depressingly circular argument one always ends up having with wowsers and bedwetters.
desepsis – in summary form as I’m late to work – on the assumption that Conroy’s legislation didn’t allow for the opportunity of censoring specifically political material but was limited to “classification refused” material being obtained in Australia from o/s ISP’s:
i) there is nothing arbitrary about legislation subject to parliamentary debate and subsequently passed and that is designed to obstruct access to “classification refused” material;
ii) the term “correspondence” does not equate to any and all forms of communication technology. For a start there has to be respondence which is to say a capacity for reply. Viewing “classification refused” material just isn’t “co-respondence”. Suggesting otherwise is an attack on language;
iii) what information and ideas are you seeking or imparting through viewing “classification refused” material?
No “Bingo!” for you Ken – rebecca went with “When did you stop beating your wife?”
I hope Conroy has budgeted for a substantial increase in staff once this system is in place. It appears that anyone can complain about a site in order to get it refused classification, which will then put it on the banned list. It doesn’t take much imagination to envisage the wowsers organising themselves into squads and flooding the system with complaints – anthony nolan’s got a quarter of a million already on his list and that’s just for scat sex. Imagine the carnage once someone lists all the gay boy (ZOMG pedophiles!!!!) sites thrown up by Google. Once the mad Muslim haters get started on sites they reckon ‘promote, incite or instruct in matters of crime or violence’ (exhibit 1: the Koran, in their fevered minds) the classification board will need a veritable army of evaluators. Maybe Conroy can pick up some of the backpackers Hockey used to assess AWAs back in the day.
And of course sooner or later ‘A Current Affair’ and Miranda Devine will combine to bring us the shocking details of a site that was the subject of a complaint but was not blacklisted – maybe one that’s the homepage of some terrorist suspect! – and the public outcry will so spook the board they’ll realise it’s safer just to add masses of stuff to the blacklist and avoid controversy. I mean it’s secret so who’s to know?
Meanwhile the purveyors of porn will go about their business, adding their material to a host of mirror sites that even Fred Nile’s resources will not be able to keep track of, but at least the wowsers will get a brief rush of self-righteous gratification that they’ve Thought of the Children.
All too Pythonesque:
As to Hamilton/Nolan’s assertion that pornography ‘deforms’ people, one should read this article
Me @173, that was about violence in media, but pron is equally applicable.
As to more studies on the effects of pron: libertus.net has lots of good pointers.
And more on the fallacy of media effects.
rebecca,
i) There may not be anything arbitrary about the legislative process, however the secret government blacklist is arbitrary, even if only because of the appearance of being arbitrary.
ii) While some sites may not be correspondence, many sites will be based around new media principles where there is communication back to producers effectively making it a form of correspondence.
iii) Many of the things discussed already: information on abortion, euthanasia, sex, drugs, human anatomy, etc. All of which is at risk of being censored by the filter. Why are you so afraid of people exploring their own bodies and sharing that experience with others?
I’m not suggesting double standards or anything but would like to note that freedom of expression, for which I was sinbinned and remain so because the notion has been deemed a canard in relation to this subject, has unsurprisingly reappeared.
It always does because corporate profiteers like Larry Flynt claimed to be champions of free speech years ago and the libertarians have been in awe of “Hustler philosophy” ever since.
I’m sure it is not the case that one set of standards regarding freedom of speech apply to those with whom one agrees and another to those with whom one is in disagreement or anything. Without equal rights to speech, however, debate can end up looking like Moe, Larry and Curly defending their right to view internet porn.
@anthony nolan, you are being a twerp. What I termed a canard was not just any reference to free speech on a privately-owned press such as this blog, but a particular reference from you where you specifically challenged another commentor for their comments towards you (“STFU”) as bad form given that they were defending free speech – that particular rhetorical trick was the canard.
Now stop being tedious i.e. STFU about people disagreeing with you somehow being inconsistent about free speech. Freedom of speech has never meant freedom from criticism, and even Larry Flynt’s legal argument never amounted to the idea that he was compelled to publish anything he didn’t want to publish in his own magazines.