Australian ISP's rebuff filtering plan

The Australian governments plans to filter internet use have being rebuffed by Australian ISP's (Internet Server Providers). According to the BBC Telstra, which is the largest ISP in Australia has stated that it will not be joining trials for filtering. Which this blog spoke about in an earlier post regarding the planned filtering of Australian internet traffic. The initial trails of the filtering technology was due to take place before christmas. But with major ISP like Telstra going against it, this may be just the spanner in the works that the general public has being hoping for.

On the opposite side of the fence Optus has stated that it is going to take part in the trial in early 2009, but they said that they would only apply the filters to block access to 1300 sites hosting illegal content. This brings up the question of who is going to deem the sites that Optus is blocking as illegal, and what type of guideliness are going to be used to determine what is illegal and offensive. By doing such a thing is just going to open up a whole grey area of what should be blocked and what should not be blocked. Again it raises the question of who is to determine what items are on the blacklist that the Rudd government is keeping secret from the general public.

Optus has also stated that it would not block access to the 10,000 sites that the Rudd government is demading. Nor will will Optus impose the second tier of filtering that blocks sites deemed to be unsuitable for childern. It seems what Optus is really saying here is that they are going to use this filter on their terms  to block what they fill needs to be blocked. On the other hand they are not going to block other items that they deem to be ok. So basically Optus is sitting on the fence and only taking the bits that Optus likes.

At the end of the day it is great to see that Telstra is taking a stance against the filtering of the Internet. Once the Internet starts to be filtered you lose your right to the freedom of information. This leads me to the question does Rudd what to filter the internet like how Internet filtering is done in China?

Australian Governent is planning to install ISP filtering

It is scary to think that the Australia Federal Government under Kevin Rudd is planning to install internet filtering at the ISP level. According to the Getup website:

"The Federal Government is planning to force all Australian servers to filter internet traffic and block any material the Government deems ‘inappropriate’. Under the plan, the Government can add any ‘unwanted’ site to a secret blacklist."

What Kevin Rudd's government is trying to install is the type of internet censorship that happens in China. Where a Government chooses what is appropriate to view and what is inappropriate to view. Then it is only a small step away from getting to the stage where if the Government does not like what is being said about it, the government will just filter it away. Removing an individuals right to freedom of information and people's civil liberties.

According to the nocleanfeed website:

This plan will waste tens of millions of taxpayer dollars and slow down Internet access. Despite being almost universally condemned by the public, ISPs, State Governments, Media and censorship experts

APC states that the top 5 reasons why this plan should not go a head are:

1. It will slow everything down (meaning that recent trials showed that by using Kevin Rudd's ISP filtering technology it was 30% slower to view sites etc then it was with out Rudd's technology.
2. Offensive is in the eyes of the beholder
3. It pressumes families care about this stuff
4. It makes Australia look stupid on a global scale
5. The people supporting it don't like mounting rational arguments (for example why not make the blacklist public and debate on what should be on it or not on it)

The reason why I find what Kevin Rudd and the Australian government is doing scary is because in recent times in Papua New Guinea we have seen members of the National Parliament trying to dictate to the Papua New Guinean media what it can say and can not say. A good example of this is what our PNG Finance Minister did to Post Courier at the 2009 National Budget lockup. Where reporters from Post Courier were locked out of the budget which according to Post Courier was to teach them a lesson because they had printed something that he did not like. Now if the PNG Government was to install laws like what the Australia Government is doing I fear that this technology would be used for Government propaganda in Papua New Guinea, to filter out anything from the press that the Government did not like.

Should Papua New Guinean's be scared of what is happening in Australia? I really think we should. The PNG Government may follow the Australian Government's lead and use this technology to regulate the media in Papua New Guinea.