While we, the citizens of Australia, have made it blatantly clear that we neither want nor require the nanny-state of Australia to impinge on our rights further by restricting our access to the internet in the name of "child protection", Conroy continues to soldier on with his censorship plans regardless of what the majority thinks.

http://www.zdnet.com.au/insight/security/soa/Conroy-s-filter-just-the-be...

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EDITORIAL – FINAL 19/12/2009 – 11:31am
The views expressed below are those of a member of the Pirate Party and are not
necessarily those of the Party as a whole.
I used to believe that democracy was a process whereby the representatives we elect are there to
represent the people. Stephen Conroy, the Minister for Broadband and Communications has taken
this concept and trashed it in new and exciting ways. While we, the citizens of Australia, have made
it blatantly clear that we neither want nor require the nanny-state of Australia to impinge on our
rights further by restricting our access to the internet in the name of “child protection”, Conroy
continues to soldier on with his censorship plans regardless of what the majority thinks. As the vast
majority of Australian citizens can see, Conroy’s insane plan to censor the internet – or as he puts it,
“filter” – is a blatant attempt to restrict our freedoms and enforce his brand of ‘morality’ on us all.
Consider that Conroy’s proposed filter is a blindfold, metaphorically speaking. It simply hides the fact
that bad things are out there. Instead of actively fighting the issues within society, he labels those
who oppose blatant censorship as paedophiles and criminals, and attempts to enforce his fascist
regime against us. There are a large variety of ways that child pornography can be halted, such as
actually tracking down and arresting those who facilitate the production and transfer of such
materials, or sending a takedown request to the host of these illicit sites to have them removed.
Conroy is a bright man, so he wouldn’t be so ignorant as to not know that, so it begs to question,
why censor us in the name of “child protection”?
Protecting children is a very important aspect of a parent’s job. Simply the suggestion that Australia
requires an internet filter when all Western societies deem this kind of social control inappropriate,
is a joke and an insult to parents everywhere. The Howard Government offered a perfectly viable
home application for parents who believed they needed software assistance to protect their
children. The Rudd Government’s regime differs significantly in that it is not optional whatsoever,
and will be enforced across all ISPs. The statistics of the uptake of the Howard Government’s
application clearly show that Australian parents do not need such applications to protect their
children from the internet, so why enforce a nanny state when the vast majority of Australians are
opposed to it?
Most of Australia is opposed to this filter, as can be shown through various polls, news articles, blog
posts, protests and twitter tweets. If this is a representative democracy, then why is it that Conroy
refuses to accept that Australia does not want the filter? 96% of Australians [Polls from
TheAge.com.au and SMH.com.au with 20,000+ votes] have stated they believe the censorship
regime “impinges on their freedom”, so why does Conroy insist on implementing such a draconian
censorship scheme?
Conroy is a bright man, and this is the dangerous thing about him. He is representing himself and the
ultra-conservative minorities. He knows how to play the political game. Releasing the trial report
near Christmas knowing full well that people will likely miss it is a dirty tactic. Even his horribly
distorted view of “100% accurate” when the trial report clearly shows that the accuracy “dropped to
between 78.8% and 84.6%”[2] when using a list of just over 2000 sites is just insane. If this is 100%
accuracy, then this man needs a new abacus.

If you believe that 3% is not all that much, consider the size of the internet. Pretend for a moment
that the internet consists of ‘merely’ 100 million websites. If 3% of these were accidentally blocked,
that’s 3 million! That’s not a small number now is it? Now you understand how it feels to live behind
the Great Firewall of China[4].
And while these trials were only conducted on speeds up to 8mbit, articles have popped up stating
their fear that this will ruin the Government’s own national broadband network plans [1], as it will
completely cripple the speeds of this service, which is planned to be capable of “delivering speeds of
100 megabits per second”[6], at least 10 times that of most residential connections. These speeds
will no longer be feasible. Just wait until Australia must implement the new version of the internet
protocol, IPv6. This would become extremely unlikely, as IPv6 supports encryption from computer to
computer as a required part of the protocol. How would this possibly be implemented when the
government fears the ‘abuse of the internet’ so much? Once again, Australia would be left in the
dark as has happened many times in the past in regards to technology. In this global society, we
cannot afford to be left behind.
And now that we’ve considered the technical points of this flawed plan, it is time to consider the
cost to implement such a travesty. A government report from 2004[5] provides an estimate of the
cost of running such a complex censorship regime:
“On the basis of Ovum’s estimates and factoring in the most recent ABS data of ISP numbers
in Australia, the total cost of implementing ISP-level filtering would be over $45 million for
initial setup and over $33 million per annum. Details are at Table 5.1.3.“
Why cite such an old report you may ask? Well, it’s because the Rudd Government didn’t even
consider conducting a financial feasibility study, which is absolutely absurd. And who do you think
gets hit with the cost of such a costly regime? The Australian taxpayer and consumer. First we’re
slugged with a censorship regime that makes little sense, and then, to pour salt in the wound, they
charge us for the privilege of being silenced! The audacity of this government is absolutely terrifying.
All fascist regimes have to start somewhere. This is just the beginning. While Conroy has stated that
he only intends to block “unsavoury content”, he has not ruled out further blocking in the future, nor
in the present. Note the constant use of “RC” in each of the articles related to the filter[2][3]. Note
that these articles also state that Refused Classification content includes "child sex abuse content,
bestiality, sexual violence and the detailed instruction of crime and drug use". Nowhere does it is
state that RC is limited to these things, which infers the fact that the censorship regime will broaden
to encompass a wide range of websites that an extreme minority of people are opposed to, thus
nobody should be allowed access to them. This belief that they will expand the censorship is only
hardened by the fact that the ACMA blacklist leaked to WikiLeaks contained a dentist’s website,
legal pornography sites and other non-illegal websites, such as anti-abortion sites.
The correct definition of RC contains anything rejected by the OFLC (Office of Film and Literature
Classification) as an ‘insult to morality’. In this country, due to the failure of representative
democracy, the Attorney-General of South Australia, Michael Atkinson, has the power to block the
right of adults of Australia to determine for themselves whether or not they are allowed to play
games that contain mature content. This insanity continues to manifest, but when will we force it to

stop? Why is the extreme minority of ultra-conservatives so much louder than the vast majority of
Australian citizens?
Is it honestly that difficult to promote safe use of the internet, and educate parents and children on
how they keep themselves safe on the internet, instead of treating Australian citizens like a bunch of
uneducated morons who can’t think for themselves? Self-determination is what defines freedom,
and this is the first step in taking that out of our hands.
In any case, censorship is by far the worst way to go about anything. Without a doubt, attempting to
implement a censorship regime in a country that thrives and promotes their freedom is most
definitely political suicide on an epic scale. The Labor Party is now much more likely to suffer a swift
defeat in the elections if they don’t quickly realise how out of touch they are with the Australian
public, or have they suddenly forgotten about using this very argument against the Liberals in
regards to their IR reforms? The worst part about this is, the intended goals of the censorship
regime are completely unachievable, yet they continue to power on with their struggle to control
and censor their own people. All it causes is freedom of speech issues, possible abuse mechanisms
by politicians, and in the end, will not curb any of the unlawful behaviour on the internet as is
apparently intended.
We are not alone in our fear of government censorship. Former High Court Judge Michael Kirby has
actively spoken against the filter, saying it is "the thin end of the wedge of the Government moving
in to regulating the actual internet itself". Even Google has spoken out against the filter, stating that
the scope is “far too wide”[7]. All the experts agree and so does the Australian public, and yet
Conroy continues on his ill-guided crusade against freedom.
Great citizens of Australia, it is time to speak up and fight for your rights and your freedom. It is time
to act. If we don’t act now, we might as well give up any notion of freedom or privacy that we have.
Prepare for the dystopia. It can only get worse from here on.
For specific cited reasons for why the censorship regime cannot and will not work, see this page:
http://www.efa.org.au/censorship/mandatory-isp-blocking.
Brendan Molloy, Member of Pirate Party Austraila [http://pirateparty.org.au]

[1] http://www.news.com.au/technology/web-filter-will-compromise-national-br...
say-providers/story-e6frfro0-1225811213048
Published 17th Dec, 2009

[2] http://www.inquisitr.com/52298/australia-confirms-censorship-plans-tells...
trial/
Published 15th Dec, 2009, viewed 17th Dec, 2009

[3] http://www.news.com.au/technology/government-pushes-forward-with-interne...
e6frfro0-1225810826659 16th Dec 2009
Published 16th Dec, 2007, viewed 17th Dec, 2009

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_People%27s_Repub...
Viewed 17th Dec, 2009

[5] http://www.dcita.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/10920/Online_Content_Revi...
Viewed 17th Dec, 2009

[6] http://www.dbcde.gov.au/broadband/national_broadband_network
Viewed 17th Dec, 2009

[7]
http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/330012/google_concerned_over_aus...
Published 16th Dec, 2009, viewed 17th Dec, 2009