SubscribeConroy backs down
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.
The Gong Show
A fortnight ago I posted on the greatest of all political dangers: being laughed at. Stephen Conroy, your time is up:
The Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, has admitted that Bill Henson images were added to the communications regulator’s list of prohibited websites in error, while blaming the addition of a dentist’s site to the blacklist on the “Russian mob”.
Meanwhile, the website of the Federal Government’s censorship body, the Classification Board, was hacked last night and defaced with an anti-censorship screed.The admission by Senator Conroy on ABC television’s Q&A program last night casts significant doubt on the Government’s ability to filter the internet without inadvertently blocking legitimate websites.
Q&A was inundated with 2000 questions from the public about the Government’s hugely unpopular policy, and the audience last night ridiculed Senator Conroy by laughing at a number of his responses.
Senator Conroy, under siege after this website’s report yesterday afternoon that an innocuous link containing Henson’s artistic photographs of young boys had been added to the blacklist, said “the classification board looked at this website and actually said it’s PG”.
“A technical error inside ACMA I’m advised included it … but it was actually cleared by the Classification Board so it shouldn’t be on the list,” Senator Conroy said.
“I’ve asked ACMA in the last few hours to go through their entire list again to see if there are any other examples of this.”
What’s surprising in all this, is that Conroy always struck me as one of the sharpest and most IT savy politicians Labor has. I remember watching him in estimates committee hearings using his laptop to help question public servants and witless ministers. Whilst they squirmed or quibbled, he (and his office staff via email) were quickly google & hansard searching for contradictory statements or alternate evidence. It was effective, and back in 2003 & 2004 an original step.
Conroy will last until the next reshuffle, but expect Rudd (likely 6 months before the election) to move him somewhere new. I hear defence might soon be open?
What you cant say online
There’s been much lighter posting recently as I’ve been busy helping organise the Digital Liberty Coalitions protest against the Rudd Governments Online Internet Filtering scheme. Whilst I’ve already posted here about the Howard Governments 2004 legislation (supported by the Labor Party) to make it illegal to discuss suicide techniques online, it turns out there’s already a whole raft of online censorship occurring, well before Rudd’s filter is implemented: (H/T Catallaxyfiles)
SMH.com.au : The Australian communications regulator says it will fine people who hyperlink to sites on its blacklist, which has been further expanded to include several pages on the anonymous whistleblower site Wikileaks.
Wikileaks was added to the blacklist for publishing a leaked document containing Denmark’s list of banned websites.
The move by the Australian Communications and Media Authority comes after it threatened the host of online broadband discussion forum Whirlpool last week with a $11,000-a-day fine over a link published in its forum to another page blacklisted by ACMA – an anti-abortion website.
ACMA’s blacklist does not have a significant impact on web browsing by Australians today but sites contained on it will be blocked for everyone if the Federal Government implements its mandatory internet filtering censorship scheme.
But even without the mandatory censorship scheme, as is evident in the Whirlpool case, ACMA can force sites hosted in Australia to remove “prohibited” pages and even links to prohibited pages.
… Already, a significant portion of the 1370-site Australian blacklist – 506 sites – would be classified R18+ and X18+, which are legal to view but would be blocked for everyone under the proposal. The Government has said it was considering expanding the blacklist to 10,000 sites and beyond.Electronic Frontiers Australia said the leak of the Danish blacklist and ACMA’s subsequent attempts to block people from viewing it showed how easy it would be for ACMA’s own blacklist – which is secret – to be leaked onto the web once it is handed to ISPs for filtering.
1370 sites. No debate, no notice, no chance for the media or other politicians to question the wisdom of any of the selection of any of these web sites. This site, for instance, a fairly graphic but politically orientated Anti-Abortion site is on the list:
In a test of Senator Conroy’s claims that the ACMA blacklist contains only illegal content, whirlpool community user xFoadx sent a random page from abortiontv.com to the ACMA complaints department. This was the response he received:
Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2009 15:45:00 +1100
From: online@acma.gov.au
I refer to the complaint that you lodged with the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) on 5th January 2009 about certain content made available at:http://www.abortiontv.com/Pics/AbortionPictures6.htm
Following investigation of your complaint, ACMA is satisfied that the internet content is hosted outside Australia, and that the content is prohibited or potential prohibited content.
This is why the campaign against the internet filter is so important. Not only does our Government already censor such material, but with a filter in place it will make it impossible for anyone to access such sites & let anyone but the bureaucrats judge what is suitable and unsuitable content. And whilst most of the debate has been about pornography (especially featuring children), it’s only a short step to start banning political content as well.
We wouldn’t tolerate this offline, why should it be ok online.
So if you are in Canberra or the surrounding region come let your voice be heard in opposition to the filter:
http://marchinmarch.org/
Saturday 21st March
1pm
Federation Mall Canberra (the Grass right in front of Parliament House)
With music (Super Best Friends are playing) and other entertainment for the crowd.
Score one for the independents
A few weeks ago, I dismissed the worth of the independents in the senate. This doesn’t exactly make up for it, but it is a sign they have some uses: (Though again well behind the major parties of the Liberals & Greens)
The Government’s plan to introduce mandatory internet censorship has effectively been scuttled, following an independent senator’s decision to join the Greens and Opposition in blocking any legislation required to get the scheme started.
The Opposition’s communications spokesman Nick Minchin has this week obtained independent legal advice saying that if the Government is to pursue a mandatory filtering regime “legislation of some sort will almost certainly be required”.
Senator Nick Xenophon previously indicated he may support a filter that blocks online gambling websites but in a phone interview today he withdrew all support, saying “the more evidence that’s come out, the more questions there are on this”.
Hopefully this spells the doom for the Governments ridiculous plans. As I mentioned in just my last post, liberal ideals are too rarely defended by those who claim to govern in their name (Labor may be social democrat in orientation, but its membership and political base is increasingly going in that direction), and the temptation to embrace a conservative idea (net filtering, maintaining bans on homosexual marriage) for political benefit, offers neither popular support or policy reward.
Rudd woudn’t have lost any votes or support for rejecting the Coalitions plan to filter the internet, and he wont gain any should by some chance (Xenophon has already indicated he is well open to bribery*) the plan pass.
*Actually the reason this is news is that most political observers had presumed Xenophon would support the governments policy if they also sought to severely restrict Online Gambling, a bugbear of the new Senator for South Australia. He may still be willing to change his view.
But for the moment, and those who’ve been involved in protesting this (Watch out for the March in March held here in Canberra) this is good news.