A cleaner, slower internet for all
It’s Friday, time for a Mat Rant.
For some time now the Australian Government has been talking about filtering the internet at ISP level here in Australia with a supposed ‘black list’ of websites with what is termed ‘illegal content’, I’ve even discussed it on this website before here and here.
Well there has been some amendments made to the original proposal and now the Australian Government has decided that there is no ‘opt out’ of the filter, all ISPs will be forced to comply with this legislation.
The filter will be a two-tiered system, the top tier will be always on whilst the second-tier will be opt-out. At this stage there is no full confirmation on what the top-tier filter will actually stop, or what websites will be on the blacklist, however one thing is for sure that it will restrict what we are allowed to see online and it is going to slow down our already crap-tacular internet speeds in Australia, not to mention the $44.2 million dollars that will come out of tax payers pockets to fund this.
I’m all for protecting children from pornography, violent videos, and all of the other crap that can be found on the internet however I really don’t think this is the best way to approach this, oh and by the way this filtering system wont be applied to email, peer to peer networks, or even bit-torrents, coz you know kids don’t use those technologies at all.
If this system is to work and not negatively effect how many of us work on the internet, bloggers, freelance website designers, etc. then it needs to be an opt-in service. How hard would it be to ask people when they sign up for a plan “Would you like your internet access filtered to stop certain types of ‘offensive’ materials being available on your computer?”. It’s really not that hard, shoot even Foxtel allows me to put a ‘parent barring code’ on certain channels.
C’mon Senator Conroy, wake up to yourself. This legislation will hurt Australians, it will hurt businesses, it will make us look like a pack of idiots who need protection from the ‘big bad internets’. Ohs nos!
Andrew Beeston says it best here.
Big Brother Down Under - part II
My post the other day criticizing the Australian Government’s decision to filter all incoming internet content in an ‘opt out’ system seemed to get quite a lot of hits, around 500 odd actually. Normally my traffic is around the 200 - 250 mark but something about that post brought in quite a bit of extra traffic, probably because it’s just a bit of a restriction on our freedom of speech..who knows…hrmm
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