Put an end to the mandatory filtering farce

The leader of the Opposition has said that even though Senator Conroy may be too embarrassed to admit that they have failed he should still release the results of the live internet filtering trials immediately.

Any plans for the “mandatory voluntary” internet filtering should be ended once and for all by Senator Conroy according to the leader of the Australian Opposition in the Senate and the Shadow Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Nick Minchin.

In a poorly planned effort to “protect the children” Senator Conroy put together a heavily criticised scheme for the “mandatory voluntary” filtering of Peer-to-Peer, pornography, gambling websites, “offensive and illegal material” and even online gaming site, which was recently added to the filter.

In a recent press release Senator Minchin said “Almost two years after coming to office with a plan to censor the Internet, Senator Conroy has not even managed to release results for long overdue filtering trials, let alone come close to actually implementing this highly controversial policy.”

An initial agreement to take part in what it considered to be a “ridiculous” filter trial was made by iiNet, the third biggest broadband service provider in Australia just to prove how stupid it was, although after it discovered that the trial “was not simply about restricting child pornography or other such illegal material, but a much wider range of issues including what the Government simply describes as ‘unwanted material’ without an explanation of what that includes,” it decided to quit the trials.

The likelihood of the trial producing any kind of meaningful result was considered by many to be low due to the fact that just 9 small ISPs remained in the trial, with one of these ISPs only having 15 people participating.

Senator Minchin advised “Senator Conroy has also failed to explain what metrics he will use to determine if the trials have been considered a success or failure, further undermining their credibility.”

He went on to add “Previous trials of filtering technology have exposed serious problems with both the over-blocking and under-blocking of content and concerns also remain about the adverse impact a national filtering regime could have on Internet speeds.”

Source – Zeropaid