Stephen Conroy: “Aussie Govt Must Filter Internet to Protect Society”

Reiterates position that mandatory Internet filtering is essential to protect “all that is good about the Internet,” and that critics that compare it to the type of censorship seen in authoritarian regimes are “misleading the Australian public.”

Australian Broadband Minister Stephen Conroy is doing all he can to sway an skeptical public that mandatory Internet filtering is in society’s best interests.

First proposed as a voluntary effort to “protect children,” the plan quickly spiraled into an all out attempt make it mandatory for ISPs to filter the Internet of all “inappropriate content” and “offensive and illegal material.” It quickly deteriorated from an attempt to somehow safeguard children from things like child pornography to things like legal pornography, gambling, and even P2P traffic, making Australian citizens rightly upset.

It even caught the eyes of the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who told an audience earlier this year of the US’ commitment to online freedom.

“We have raised our concerns on this matter with Australian officials,” a spokesman then said a few weeks ago in an interview.

The heat was turned up yesterday when the US ambassador to Australia, Jeff Bleich, pointed out that the US has had considerable success fighting child pornography without having to filter the Internet.

“We have been able to accomplish the goals that Australia has described, which is to capture and prosecute child pornographers … without having to use internet filters,” he said. “We have other means and we are willing to share our efforts with them … it’s an ongoing conversation.”

But, Conroy doesn’t seem to care, asking in a speech yesterday delivered to the Sydney Institute if the Internet can “remain largely unregulated.”

“There are some who want to argue that on the internet, people should be able to publish anything they like — regardless of whether it contravenes laws in the off-line world,” he says.

He doesn’t seem to realize that critics aren’t trying to safeguard content which clearly violates the law – i.e. child porn, etc. They’re only trying to prevent the govt from instituting a filter than can be ratcheted up on a political whim.

“Having no regulation to combat illegal activity actually weakens all that is good about the internet,” he adds.

But, there is regulation covering all of the content he finds deplorable on the Internet, it’s just that it doesn’t have jurisdiction in other countries where it’s hosted and that’s what he hopes filtering will solve.

The problem of determining what’s objectionable is that the govt also doesn’t support Refused Classification content being available on the Internet. This means video games will be censored since the filter will target sites that host or sell ones that don’t meet the MA15+ standard (suitable for 15yos) rating. Australia doesn’t have an R18+ or X18+ adult classification and there aren’t plans to introduce one anytime soon.

“The Government’s proposal will bring the treatment of overseas hosted content into line by requiring ISPs to block overseas content that has been identified as Refused Classification,” he continues.

That’s where things get dicey. An unelected govt agency would be in charge of filtering the rest of the world from Australian eyes without affording censored sites the opportunity to plead their case, or for that matter, for the people to review what’s being filtered.

All of this is stacked up against the fact that there are tons of easily available workarounds (proxies, VPNs, etc.) and that the true criminals and purveyors of this objectionable material most likely won’t be affected.

Maybe Conroy should sit down and have a talk with Ambassador Bleich so he can point out how the US has been able to tackle the problem without having to “break” the Internet for everyone.

Stay tuned.

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Listen to Conroy’s speech…