Good news in the freedom stakes:

THE Rudd Government has indicated that it may back away from its mandatory internet filtering plan.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy today told a Senate estimates committee that the filtering scheme could be implemented by a voluntary industry code.

Senator Conroy’s statement is a departure from the internet filtering policy Labor took into the October 2007 election to make it mandatory for ISPs to block offensive and illegal content.

Responding to questions from shadow communications minister Nick Minchin on how the government may go about imposing the internet filtering scheme, Senator Conroy said that legislation may not be required and ISPs may adopt an industry consensus to block restricted content on a voluntary basis.

Not yet time for celebrations, but as someone who has been involved in organising national protests against the internet filtering scheme, this is a very very welcome sign. The usual suspects are of course annoyed that they might not get to control what the rest of the population is doing. Such policies are at best foolish substitutions for real acknowledgement of the way our society is being changed by the introduction of the internet. I liken it to the effect of women in the workplace post WW2. Whilst it significantly changed the society, the leaders of the time did not seek to mandate or force society back into the comfortable form it had previously had, but instead sought to work with and support those changes, recognizing the many flow on benefits. The internet likewise is disrupting and changing society, and rather than impose past world solutions on it to control, we should seek to educate and unleash societies options.

Cautious, but welcome news.