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ISP Filters">A Pragmatic Proposal: ISP Filters

By Nick Hodge | November 14, 2008

Dear Aus­tralian Fed­eral Politicians

re: Aus­tralian ISP Inter­net Filters

As a par­ent, a tech­no­logy industry vet­eran and cit­izen who works via the Inter­net, I feel it is my duty to provide a prag­matic per­spect­ive on the Fed­eral Government’s pro­posed plans to adopt Man­dat­ory Fil­ter­ing of Aus­tralian Inter­net Ser­vice Pro­viders (ISPs) for the bene­fit of Child Safety.

Cur­rent state­ments from Sen­ator Con­roy high­light the need to pro­tect Aus­tralian Chil­dren from undesir­able corners and con­tent found the Inter­net. This is a worthy ideal, but Sen­ator Conroy’s pro­posed solu­tions go nowhere near far enough to truly keep our chil­dren safe. Any half-hearted attempt at fil­ter­ing exposes the Gov­ern­ment to legal liab­il­ity and voter dis­con­tent when their kids see any undesir­able mater­ial that will fall through the cracks of a pure technology-based solution.

The block­ing of inter­na­tion­ally recog­nised child p-rn sites; and addi­tion­ally adding warn­ing bells to people access­ing these sites is a must. Whilst the need for secur­ity, and the seques­ter­ing of these sites for crim­inal invest­ig­a­tions is under­stand­able — to counter claims of “cen­sor­ship by stealth”, these sites should be reviewed by an Ombuds­man on a reg­u­lar basis.

The cur­rent rhet­oric from the pro-filter lobby pur­posely asso­ci­ates chil­dren online with rep­re­hens­ible child p-rn. I ser­i­ously doubt that chil­dren are going to pur­posely or not stumble on child p-rn. Rather, undesir­able people will find chil­dren in the “clean” inter­net. This online safety aspect requires more than 1,000 or 1,000,000 sites on a fil­ter list: it requires strong poli­cing, par­ent­ing and school edu­ca­tion: just as road safety is taught. Con­nect­ing two dis­par­ate and highly emotive issues obfus­cates and politi­cizes the real need of parents.

How­ever, the call for “undesir­able” sites to be cen­sored does cause alarm. “Undesir­able” is an emotive, and very sub­ject­ive defin­i­tion for each par­ent and fam­ily: based on their own moral, reli­gious, cul­tural, eth­nic and many other highly per­sonal considerations. 

Today, Edu­ca­tion Depart­ments provide Children-safe Inter­net access. This is treated much the same way as Kids-safe play­grounds and excur­sions: The legal prin­ciple of In-loco Par­entis applies. To imple­ment a Kid-safe fil­ter of any less qual­ity for kids at home seems counter pro­duct­ive. Experts in the field of internet-based edu­ca­tion also note that these fil­ters are very dis­rupt­ing and sig­ni­fic­antly slow down access to the Inter­net: but it is a cost that is born out of necessity.

By hav­ing a laud­ible goal of imple­ment­ing an Opt-out, com­pletely filtered truly Kids-safe Inter­net, the uniten­ded impact to Aus­tralian busi­ness and the eco­nomy will great. There­fore, fil­ters should be Opt-in for ISPs and Consumers.

Both a “Kid-safe Inter­net” needs to be cre­ated as an Opt-in for Home access; backed by a strong edu­ca­tion cam­paign from the Gov­ern­ment to Par­ents, and a stand­ard speed Filter-free Inter­net for the Aus­tralian Economy. 

Also, a “Kid-safe Inter­net” is much more than just what can be seen or read: there must be a code of con­duct for advert­ising, safe social com­munit­ies and busi­ness when inter­act­ing with our Chil­dren. For instance, the new phe­nom­ena of Cyber-bullying.

Any imple­ment­a­tion of Opt-in Fil­ters, Author­it­ies and broad-based edu­ca­tion cam­paigns should also real­ise that there is no abso­lute in safety. Just like pools, bicycles and cars: acci­dents can and will hap­pen. The Inter­net itself is in con­stant change: there­fore, any man­age­ment sys­tem must be cre­ated with con­tinual improve­ment as a stra­tegic imperative.

My think­ing and research on this mat­ter has led me to the fol­low­ing struc­tured recommendations:

Toward A Kid-Safe Internet:

  1. Chil­dren must have access to the Inter­net. It is a fun­da­mental part of our world eco­nomy; cent­ral to our future as humans in the 21st Cen­tury. Ignor­ing the Inter­net will ser­i­ously dis­ad­vant­age future Aus­trali­ans from the world eco­nomy: sim­ilar to neg­lect teach­ing math­em­at­ics or lit­er­acy skills. Simply ban­ning the Inter­net would be a dra­conian move that only a lud­dite minor­ity would advoc­ate. (Recent study on Child­hood cas­ual access to the Inter­net)
  2. The world is a large and poten­tially dan­ger­ous place for young humans. That is why today Gov­ern­ments across the world reg­u­late what/when chil­dren can see in movie theatres, read, smoke, drink, engage in sexual activ­ity and drive. There­fore a strong pre­ced­ent has been set for the Gov­ern­ment to equally pro­tect chil­dren when using the Internet.
  3. The Inter­net is unlike other pre­vi­ously inven­ted medi­ums, modes and tech­no­logy of com­mu­nic­a­tion: highly dis­trib­uted, uncon­trol­lable, two-way, multi-faceted (for instances: video, text and sound in a myriad of formats). There­fore, a unique admin­is­trat­ive mech­an­ism for pro­tect­ing those who need pro­tec­tion is required. Simply “list­ing” web sites with movie rat­ings will not work as will miss other con­tent. A cent­ral fil­ter for all inter­net traffic into and out of Aus­tralia is tech­nic­ally not eco­nom­ic­ally nor tech­nic­ally feas­ible with cur­rent com­puter technology.
  4. Equally, the Gov­ern­ment should not be in the busi­ness of cre­at­ing fil­ter­ing soft­ware for all inter­net con­nec­ted devices a child has access to. These devices num­ber in their hun­dreds of mil­lions, across thou­sands of ver­sions shapes and sizes: PCs, Macs, non-Windows OS PCs, the wide range of internet-able mobile phones, Game sta­tions and Music play­ers. The Net­Alert pro­gram of the pre­vi­ous Gov­ern­ment has shown to have a low install­a­tion rate, and also misses the Inter­net con­nec­ted mobile phones many chil­dren cur­rently posses.
  5. Hav­ing Kid-Safe fil­ters at the ISP level seem to be a sound and logical solution.
  6. If the Gov­ern­ment ini­ti­ates the pro­cess of pro­tect­ing our chil­dren whilst they are on the Inter­net, and makes a pub­lic prom­ise that “the inter­net is now safe for our Chil­dren”: simply rely­ing on exist­ing the exist­ing static list-based sys­tems provided by ACMA as pro­posed by Sen­ator Con­roy the Gov­ern­ment will ulti­mately fail.
  7. Sen­ator Con­roy talks of a list of ~1,500 sites, and is test­ing fil­ters with a list­ing of 10,000 sites. If you assume 1% of the 1 bil­lion web pages are not suit­able for chil­dren; Sen­ator Conroy’s plans is a few orders of mag­nitude out to safely restrict inde­cent sites.
  8. Basing fil­ters purely on HTTP/HTML pro­tocol (that is, just Web browser traffic) will res­ult in a fil­ter­ing fail as the Inter­net com­prises many pro­to­cols. Adding other pro­to­cols such as instant mes­saging (chat rooms), file down­loads, sound and video doubles the load on fil­ters for each new pro­tocol added.
  9. Keep Chil­dren “safe” on the Inter­net must be more than just block­ing static pages, sites, pro­to­cols and streams. True Online Child safety must include Cyber-bullying, Social Com­munity codes of con­duct, Inap­pro­pri­ate Advert­ising (sim­ilar to Child TV advert­ising guidelines) and many other asso­ci­ated issues with a broad, two-way com­mu­nic­a­tions system.
  10. Of greater con­cern is what our kids: either acci­dently, or on pur­pose; pub­lish to the inter­net. With rampant iden­tity theft, and the abil­ity for people to pub­lish video and images to the world: we need to ensure this is addressed by any kid-safe inter­net.

    My sug­ges­ted approach:

  11. A new Author­ity is cre­ated; resourced to keep Aus­tralian Chil­dren Safe Online.
  12. This Author­ity is com­mis­sioned to address all the above issues, using the know­ledge that already exists in the community
  13. This Author­ity has the power to Cer­tify Kid-Safe Inter­net Fil­ters at both end Device and at ISP level. For the sake of this doc­u­ment, these are named Fil­ter Devices.
  14. This Author­ity also has the import­ant respons­ib­il­ity to edu­cate and com­mu­nic­ate Inter­net Pub­lic Ser­vice Advice for Parents.
  15. The Author­ity own a cent­ral policies and pro­ced­ures to con­trol the Fil­ter Device Cer­ti­fic­a­tion; and pro­cesses of con­tinual man­age­ment of the Fil­ters. The Author­ity has the power to Cer­tify and de-Certify Fil­ter Devices installed at any point in Aus­tralia. Sim­ilar stand­ards exist for toys that show child safety breaches. Par­ents rely on thse stand­ards, recalls and Author­ity vigil­ance to offer a greater level of pro­tec­tion to children.
  16. The Author­ity would have exec­ut­ive over­sight over a dis­trib­uted Fil­ter Man­age­ment Body. This body would be crowd-sourced, and be the clearing-house of fil­ters, codes of con­duct, industry best prac­tices and con­nec­tions with local Edu­ca­tion depart­ments and law enforcement. 
  17. A cent­ral registry of what a Fil­ter Device must clean, and other child-protection guidelines is man­aged by this man­age­ment body. This registry may con­tain pro­scribed (child p-rn) sites, but to a lar­ger extent all the child-inapproprate mater­ial on the inter­net. This list will be lar­ger than the pro­posed 10,000.
  18. Addi­tion­ally, there must be Industry-based codes of con­duct for online for­ums; age veri­fic­a­tion; phish­ing and other internet-related com­munit­ies. This body would could use inter­net tech­no­logy for rapid response, vot­ing and shar­ing best-practise amongst all ISPs.
  19. As much a leg­ally pos­sible, this body of fil­ter­ing know­ledge must be trans­par­ent to bona-fide inter­ested parties, and would reflect com­munity “norms” as the inform­a­tion comes from the community.
  20. Every ISP who has a com­mer­cial wish to mar­ket and sell “Kid-Safe Inter­net” must com­ply with the Author­it­ies policies and pro­ced­ures (ie: Each ISP chooses to Opt-in).
  21. And ISP may only sell a Kid-safe Inter­net con­nec­tion if cer­ti­fied by the Author­ity. This could also apply to Edu­ca­tion depart­ments and private school groups where their con­nec­tion to the inter­net should also be through a Cer­ti­fied Fil­ter Device.
  22. The know­ledge of what is to be filtered/codes of con­duct must be col­lect­ively shared so smal­ler, regional based ISPs can provide an equity of pro­tec­tion for rural chil­dren. These smal­ler ISPs will not have equal resources avail­able to their own fil­ter managers.
  23. Par­ents and oth­ers interest parties have an internet-speed mech­an­ism to report and escal­ate breaches to the Author­ity; all parties must have trans­par­ent access to these reports; and like Wiki­pe­dia: a his­tory of decisions made.
  24. The Author­ity also has the import­ant respons­ib­il­ity to edu­cate Par­ents and Guard­i­ans about the Inter­net. Par­ents have per­sonal exper­i­ence of mor­als, road rules, social norms, cul­tural expect­a­tions passed to them from their par­ents. The inter­net, being extremely new, is alien to today’s par­ents , and is incor­rectly feared. Like in pre­vi­ous times where the Gov­ern­ment has provided inform­a­tion on AIDs, cur­rency changes (to decimal) : it also has a respons­ib­il­ity to edu­cate today’s Aus­tralian par­ents on the Inter­net. The Author­ity must embark on a cam­paign to edu­cate Par­ents as they are the last lines of defence. Par­ents must also be encour­aged to pur­chase a Kid-safe Inter­net con­nec­tion from their choice of ISP.
  25. Par­ents who are internet-savvy could opt-out of the Kid-safe Inter­net sys­tem; thereby tak­ing the respons­ib­il­ity for the pro­tec­tion of their chil­dren, or a range of fil­ters based on a range of clas­si­fic­a­tions could be cre­ated. A teen­ager will not want to view the inter­net as if they are 6 years old.

    The Cost of Filters

  26. Any reas­on­able Adult Aus­tralian does not want a child-like view of the Inter­net as described above,
  27. If left Opt-out, the res­ult­ing ISP Fil­ter­ing speed-tax will reduce invest­ment in Aus­tralian busi­nesses, and due to the inter­na­tional nature of the inter­net drive employ­ment and invest­ment offshore.
  28. As the deeper level of fil­ters and codes of con­duct as described above are enabled to rightly pro­tect Chil­dren; there will be a slow­ing down of inter­net response for these filtered users. And just as alco­hol, smoking, vot­ing and other rules are relaxed for adults:  the same must apply to inter­net access.
  29. Gen­eral ISP con­nec­tions should there­fore be unfiltered, and Opt-in. Turn­ing the inter­net into a pure-children’s play­ground will only hamper Aus­tralian busi­nesses and gov­ern­ments as they con­duct oper­a­tions in the emer­ging global Digital age. Busi­nesses do not con­duct busi­ness in a playground.
  30. The impact of Australia-wide man­dat­ory fil­ters would hurt Australia’s eco­nomic future across all sec­tors of industry. Email traffic, online bank­ing, busi­ness to busi­ness com­merce: will all slow due to man­dat­ory filters.
  31. Other com­pet­ing eco­nom­ies do not have the same ISP Filtering-speed-tax, and can there­fore out-compete Aus­tralian businesses.
  32. There­fore, the fil­ters must be Opt-in and kept sep­ar­ate from the grown-up, busi­ness inter­net; but to a deeper level as the Gov­ern­ment takes on par­tial respons­ib­il­ity of In loco par­entis

    Vigil­ance

  33. Apart from child p-rn, there are many other insi­di­ous dark corners of the inter­net that impact all Aus­trali­ans. Nigerian scams, phish­ing attacks on bank accounts, gen­eral spam, cyber bul­ly­ing: all drain our eco­nomy. The Aus­tralian Fed­eral Police must be given more exper­i­enced and trained officers with strong Inter­net skills to pro­tect all our cit­izens by poli­cing those who embark on illegal activ­it­ies. The Gov­ern­ment must address these increas­ing risks, too. (ref­er­ence: Online fraud­sters ‘steal £3.3bn’)

The cur­rent con­fus­ing state­ments of policy by Sen­ator Con­roy strikes me as policy-on-the-run with a dearth of grass-roots (elect­or­ate) demand and little to no pub­licly artic­u­lated strategy. There­fore, fear-mongering and ad-hominem attacks from all sides of this argu­ment have arisen. At this stage, it is in Sen­ator Conroy’s hands to clearly artic­u­late the strategy out­side of pure tech­nical “tri­als” and emo­tional and glib “child p-rn” arguments.

The lack of clar­ity and trans­par­ency is of deep con­cern as it thrusts at the heart of people’s desire for the free­dom access to inform­a­tion as adults: uncensored and unfiltered.

Now that the Pandora’s box of a Kid-safe Inter­net is opened, it is in the Government’s hands to do the right thing for our kids without hurt­ing the eco­nomy and freedoms we all enjoy. For the sake of Australia’s col­lect­ive future.

Nick Hodge

Inter­est­ing Links

Notes:

Topics: australia, politics | 19 Comments »

19 Responses to “A Pragmatic Proposal: ISP Filters”

  1. Andrew Mitchell Says:
    November 14th, 2008 at 8:23 pm

    Hate to say it but that sounds rather mature and workable.

  2. mike seyfang Says:
    November 15th, 2008 at 9:43 am

    As a par­ent, an aged tech­no­logy vet­eran (with at least one more lap around the pad­dock than young Nick) and cit­izen who works via the Inter­net, I feel it is my duty to …

    Print this post, sit down over a bowl of corn­flakes and work on a con­sidered response to this sig­ni­fic­ant work in progress.

    UncleMike

  3. Nick Hodge Says:
    November 15th, 2008 at 12:14 pm

    @UncleMike

    There needs to be some cool hard logical thought applied at a Policy level; and an Industry solu­tion to defin­ing on what a Kid-Safe Inter­net is.

    The cur­rent com­ments from Sen­ator Con­roy seem to not fol­low industry best practise.

    Nick

  4. mike seyfang Says:
    November 15th, 2008 at 12:35 pm

    UncleN­ick,
    I’m with you on the approach — ‘If you want to get ser­i­ous about pro­tect­ing kids, here is are some things to con­sider, do and get right’.
    Here we go:
    First, a re-statement of fang’s golden rule of inter­net fil­ters:
    1. any fil­ter can be cir­cum­ven­ted
    2. cant black­list enough sites to make the web safe for kids
    3. cant whitel­ist enough sites to keep the web useful

    1 & 2 show the FUTILITY of fil­ter­ing
    3 points the the DANGER of break­ing the inter­net (and the severe con­sequences for inter­na­tional competitiveness)

    Second,
    The ‘default’ state of any fil­ter­ing is not a con­ces­sion to be traded. There is a world of dif­fer­ence between Opt in and Opt out of man­dat­ory fil­ters at the ISP level. I know you are aware of the dif­fer­ence, but I’m not sure your lan­guage is clear/strong enough here (I was con­fused after first quick on screen reading).

    So,
    Can I sug­gest you tighten up the lan­guage in 14–20 to make it crys­tal clear that:
    – 14 does not say its OK to fil­ter every citizen’s ISP con­nec­tion by default (you are sug­gest­ing that Web Savvy (?Cer­ti­fied — WSC!!) par­ents can be ‘licensed’ out of the entire regime of pro­tec­tions you sug­gest.
    15– ‘child-like anaemic view of inter­net’ implies that rule 3 has been viol­ated (and that it is pos­sible to fil­ter con­tent without break­ing the inter­net). Go spend some time at a uni or tafe cam­pus and see how use­less the wire­less net­work is for con­nectiv­ity to and par­ti­cip­at­ing in the social web — as exem­pli­fied in my recent key­note to tafe edayz08.
    17– indeed — this is a state­ment of default=unfiltered, filtering=opt-in (which might be man­dat­ory for non-savvy or ‘unli­censed’ families/educators?)
    18-speed-tax — inter­est­ing sound-byte that needs solid defin­i­tion. speed-tax meta­phor holds true if and only if the default for inter­net con­nec­tions is unfiltered and is then pro­por­tional to the num­ber of people using filtered feeds. If the default for all ISP feeds is filtered then the inter­net becomes as busted-arse as it is on cam­pus and it’s game over for inter­na­tional com­pet­it­ive­ness (not because of per­form­ance or cost but because its BROKEN).
    19. you bet — see above. We waste a lot of money put­ting fil­ters at ISP’s, the per­form­ance hit slows our already abysmal band­width, the cool/emerging web prac­tices are BROKEN & only geeks (and kids) can cir­cum­vent, many circumvention’s will require tech­niques like tun­nel­ling which add another per­form­ance over­head. If inter­net con­nectiv­ity is like the ship­ping lanes of old, we have just turned all our ports into shal­low back­wa­ters.
    20. amen — fil­ters must be opt in. don’t quite fol­low your argu­ment for in loco par­entis (made me instantly react to my loath­ing of encroach­ing nanny-state legis­la­tion — deflect­ing from a so far rational argument).

    Good on ya for hav­ing a go at pro­pos­ing a way for­ward.
    I just wish the whole thing would go away so we can use the web to build inter­na­tional value in the approach­ing eco­nomic tur­moil.
    I remem­ber being in a room with both Con­roy and Coonan just before Coonan announced the liberal’s ‘free fil­ter’ fiasco and wish­ing I could artic­u­late some of this stuff in a way that would pre­vent all the churn and waste this this stuff has unleashed.

    I think if I had that chance again, with the bene­fit of hind­sight I might sug­gest some­thing like:

    “sen­ator Con­roy, if you want to save face now that you have opened Pandora’s box, and you really are ser­i­ous about pro­tect­ing chil­dren then you must look deeply into the role of tech­no­logy in any solu­tion (and nick hodge has some good advice there!). Do NOT break the inter­net for all aus­trali­ans and jeop­ard­ize our inter­na­tional stand­ing. And, please, do not be fooled by the snake oil sales­men who say they can sell you tech­no­logy that will take care of your civic responsibility.

    Fang — Mike Seyfang

  5. Nick Hodge Says:
    November 15th, 2008 at 2:58 pm

    Mike–

    Thanks for the feed­back and your brain cycles to read my meanderings.

    After writ­ing this, and read­ing your com­ments — I need to strengthen two things

    - The pandora’s box is open, and the more you look inside, the darker and dif­fi­cult it is to cor­rectly filter.

    - To beef up the fil­ter­ing, the cost is a slower but rel­at­ively safer inter­net results

    - The cost(s) of this is too great for all Aus­trali­ans bear

    - do some more on the mech­an­ism side

    Nick

  6. Riayn Says:
    November 15th, 2008 at 3:35 pm

    Nick what you have come up with is a sens­ible, logical and feas­ible approach to inter­net fil­ter­ing. This almost guar­an­tees it to never be imple­men­ted by the Government.

  7. Jeremy LeBard Says:
    November 15th, 2008 at 3:49 pm

    I think that the your pro­posed Author­ity should be trans­par­ent. Extern­ally audited to ensure all link block­ing clas­si­fic­a­tions are legal and reas­on­ing behind them clearly outlined.

    Obvi­ously pub­lish­ing black­lis­ted links to the pub­lic would some­what defeat the pur­pose of not advert­ising them. So it would be best to involve reput­able NGOs (mul­tiples) to verify fil­ter­ing and ISPs to confirm.

    That said, I still don’t think the tech­no­logy required for such fil­ter­ing at ISP level is well thought out and tested for accur­acy and per­form­ance. Which means a tech­no­logy put in place that threatens demo­cracy as well as reduces the ease of access to valid information.

    A pos­sible chok­ing of the Internet’s arter­ies to cure a disease.

  8. Nick Hodge Says:
    November 15th, 2008 at 4:06 pm

    Jeremy–

    Firstly, my argu­ment is that to cre­ate an opt-in truly safe inter­net for kids requires a default no-censorship pos­i­tion for the adults. Not law­less, but as it cur­rently exists.

    Presently, Edu­ca­tion Depart­ments (act­ing In Loco Par­entis) heav­ily fil­ter inter­net access to their stu­dents. We should take the best prac­tices here and provide the oppor­tun­ity for par­ents to rep­lic­ate this at home.

    Of the Govt starts down this pro­cess, they will need to “cer­tify” the linkage.

    I agree the Author­ity, and the codes of conduct/filter list; policies and pro­ced­ures should be transparent.

    I am attempt­ing to NOT make a tech­nical argu­ment as this is clearly polit­ical issue; but we in the No Cen­sor­ship world may be fail­ing in see­ing the big­ger pic­ture — and are not offer­ing a viable alternative

    Nick

  9. Ben Buchanan Says:
    November 15th, 2008 at 7:19 pm

    I’m pretty sure you’re sug­gest­ing an opt-in sys­tem, but the lan­guage needs to be a bit clearer on that point.

    My thought is that fil­ter­ing must be opt-in, first because most of us don’t want to be cen­sored; but also because it vastly reduces the resources required to run the sys­tem. The sub­set of people who want it will have slowed inter­net, every­one else is hope­fully unaffected.

    I’m also think­ing the opt in needs some sort of graded options. eg. cut down whitelist-only access for young kids (ie. “we’ll deal with the walled garden nature of it”); whitelist+filter; blacklist+filter.

    So as kids grow/mature their access can be changed. OR so house­holds with dif­fer­ent aged kids can cope — the little ones get lock­down, the teen­agers just get the black­list fil­ter, etc.

    The Con­roy on/off model will be a real prob­lem for some house­holds, I’d guess. Younger kids in the house, but teens need­ing to research their uni assign­ments, etc.

    It’s all a logist­ical night­mare and still won’t make kids “safe” in the way Con­roy seems to sug­gest all the time.

  10. Nick Hodge Says:
    November 15th, 2008 at 8:16 pm

    Ben–

    Yes, I will clear up and tighten the lan­guage of Opt-in. Opt-out is going to require a major invest­ment by all ISPs *if* the Gov­ern­ment is con­sid­er­ing a Fil­ter that approaches some­thing that will actu­ally work.

    the Gov­ern­ment will need to match their Fil­ter­ing to the cur­rent best-practise in the industry. There are places where fil­ters are imple­men­ted today: some Corp­a­tions, all Edu­ca­tion Depart­ments and Schools.

    I do not think the Gov­ern­ment has sought advice from the experts within these areas on the cost of man­age­ment of Fil­ters that work.

    The “range” of fil­ters is also an inter­est­ing point. Its is more than an on-off style problem.

    Yes, if you really think about it — The Gov­ern­ment has opened a Pandora’s Box here.

    If the pub­lic expects a totally Kid-safe/Clean Feed as pro­moted by Sen­ator Con­roy, they will be dis­ap­poin­ted in the cost.

    Thanks for commenting.

    Nick

  11. Phillip Molly Malone Says:
    November 17th, 2008 at 5:08 pm

    I have had a quick read of this, and from what I see you don’t dir­ectly address that there is two levels of fil­ters pur­posed that are fil­ter­ing for dif­fer­ent reasons.

    The child fil­ter which my under­stand­ing the gov­ern­ment will make opt-out (I didn’t read all of Mikes com­ment either so I don’t see the great dif­fer­ence other then if I default start­ing pos­i­tion. If by opt­ing out I get to the same state as not opt­ing in, no dif­fer­ence to me, yeah?) and the legal fil­ter which won’t be opt-out of (and when you think of it, why should it be. I mean I can’t choose to opt-out of the .05 alco­hol limit if I don’t like that).

    I think a lot of people are against the legal fil­ter, which I don’t get, but each to there own.

    On the thought of “You can’t make it com­pletely clean, so don’t do any­thing”, I am not sure that is a good argu­ment. I mean we aren’t going to stop all the drugs com­ing into the coun­try but I think we should make a reas­on­able effort to stop as much as we can.

    Any­way. Just some thoughts from a par­tial read. Sorry if you touch on some of the points. I applaud that you are look­ing at the issue sens­ibly rather then com­par­ing it to China like a lot of people do. Isn’t it funny that those people have a go against the pol­lies for scare mon­ger­ing with things like Ter­ror­ism but then use the same tac­tic themselves?

    JMTC
    Molly

  12. Brett Morgan Says:
    November 18th, 2008 at 7:48 pm

    Cen­sor­ship of mass media made sense when pub­lish­ing required cap­ital invest­ment to run print­ing presses, build broad­cast base sta­tions, buy cam­eras, and build recor­ing studios.

    Cen­sor­ship of per­sonal com­mu­nic­a­tion is viewed as 1984 total­it­arian state mater­ial and a threat to the proper func­tion­ing of demo­cratic state.

    The issue with attempt­ing to cen­sor the inter­net is that on the ‘net there is no dif­fer­ence between mass media pub­lic­a­tion and per­sonal communication.

    The truth is, this blog has equal stand­ing as wired.com on abil­ity to be viewed, and thus requires an equal level of mon­it­or­ing. But this site is just you rant­ing about stuff that mat­ters to you to a bunch of your friends.

    The col­lapse of this dif­fer­ence between per­sonal commnu­ic­a­tion and mass media pub­lic­a­tion leads to all sorts of insan­ity. Like 15 year olds being branded child por­no­graph­ers for send­ing each other mms’s of them­selves naked.

    Cen­sor­ship on the net won’t work, and any attempt to do so will just encour­age people like myself to code around it. The leaf nodes are re-programmable. The age of being able to con­trol the net­work by con­trolling the cent­ral nodes is over. That was actu­ally part of the design require­ments of the ori­ginal ARPANET.

    Wel­come to the new world.

  13. Tim Says:
    November 19th, 2008 at 1:27 am

    at last a well thought through approach — and that was as you say just a first crack at this.
    I would sug­gest that if sen­ator con­roy ever looks at this he will do one of two things — if he is polit­ic­ally smart he will make some excuse to drop the entire thing. If he is ser­i­ous about imple­ment­ing a child safe inter­net then he will look ser­i­ously at this and invest a LOT of money to make this hap­pen — know­ing that it wont come into fruition in this gov­ern­ments term.
    My cyn­ical guess is the first option.

  14. Nick Hodge Says:
    November 19th, 2008 at 2:21 pm

    Thanks Molly, Brett and Tim

    This is going to be an inter­est­ing ride.

    Am watch­ing and this page will change as I get thoughts. I am a mere citizen

    Nick

  15. Kate Carruthers Says:
    November 20th, 2008 at 5:58 am

    This is a sens­ible approach & one of which we should all encour­age dis­cus­sion as widely as possible.

  16. Lee Gale Says:
    November 22nd, 2008 at 11:59 am

    Hi Nick,
    Well done on a cohen­rent and real­istic strategy and doc­u­ment­ing that so lay-persons can attempt to under­stand the shear tech­no­lo­gical chal­lenge pro­posed by the gov­ern­ment.
    L

  17. The NoCleanFeed List | Man with no Blog Says:
    November 22nd, 2008 at 4:20 pm

    […] You can con­tact Sen­ator Conroy’s Office and com­plain, but really he is not going to change  his mind, best we can hope for is that he alters the pro­posal or waters it down somewhat. […]

  18. 2008 in Review | www.nickhodge.com Says:
    December 31st, 2008 at 9:15 am

    […] some time on the Pro­posed Aus­tralian Fil­ters. I still don’t think that the pro­posed fil­ters will work, and the Gov­ern­ment is miss­ing the point […]

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