Australian Govt Backing Away from Plans to Censor the Internet?

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy now says scheduled "live" trials will be "a closed network test and will not involve actual customers," making the results worthless since they won’t indicate a real-world impact.

With Australians scheduled to hold massive rallies throughout their country this Saturday, December 13th, to protest govt plans for mandatory Internet filters, it’s welcome news to learn that their widespread opposition may have finally forced Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, the one behind the plan, and others to take notice.

For today it’s being reported that Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, has written to critics saying that the so-called "live" trials would be "a closed network test and will not involve actual customers." Considering that live trials were necessary to counter previous lab tests in which not only did the filters not block "inappropriate content" as desired , but whereby network speeds were diminished by up to a staggering 87%, the fact that live trials will no longer be conducted surely means that the govt is now backing away from the heavily criticized policy.

Australian ISPs have inflicted blows of their own to the mandatory filtering proposals with Telstra and Internode now saying that they would not take part in the trials, iiNet previously offering to cooperate only to show just "how stupid it is," and Optus testing only a heavily scaled model.

The plan is for a compulsory blocking of some 10,000 sites offering illegal, "inappropriate," or "unwanted material," but many are wondering what the definition of "unwanted material" is. Critics also point out that the govt’s plan to censor the Internet is ’stricter than Iran’.

The Australian Greens have called on the Federal Government to abandon its internet filtering trial, calling it "flawed and doomed to failure."

"These internet service providers are sending a clear message to the Government – they don’t think mandatory internet filtering will work and they don’t want to participate in it," said the Greens Communications Spokesperson, Senator Scott Ludlam.

"This trial is simply all show.  It won’t give any meaningful indication of how mandatory internet filtering would work in practice. One of the few Internet Service Providers participating is only doing so to prove to the government that it won’t work. We won’t even get a sense of the impact of the filter on internet performance, because the trial is not even going to be using real customers. "

Senator Ludlam has questioned Communications Minister Stephen Conroy about the filter in Senate Estimates and Question Time.

"It is clear that the community is profoundly concerned about the filter – its impact on civil liberties and the performance of the internet. The government’s policy is flawed and won’t work. It will slow down the internet at a time when they are trying to speed it up, especially in regional Australia," concluded Senator Ludlam.

Let’s hope the rallies scheduled for this weekend force the govt to back away from the proposal once and for all.

jared@zeropaid.com

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