{"id":531,"date":"2008-10-27T21:28:35","date_gmt":"2008-10-27T12:28:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/2008\/10\/27\/internet-censorship-in-australia-letter-from-mark-newton\/"},"modified":"2008-10-27T21:28:35","modified_gmt":"2008-10-27T12:28:35","slug":"internet-censorship-in-australia-letter-from-mark-newton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/2008\/10\/27\/internet-censorship-in-australia-letter-from-mark-newton\/","title":{"rendered":"Internet censorship in Australia &#8211; letter from Mark Newton"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Mark Newton, who works for an ISP, has written a letter as a private citizen to his local member of federal parliament about Senator Stephen Conroy&#8217;s proposal to apply mandatory (opt-out only)\u00a0 &#8220;clean feed&#8221; filters to the internet in Australia.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/nocleanfeed.com\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/nocleanfeed.com\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/nocleanfeed.com\/nocensorship.gif\" width=\"180\" border=\"0\" height=\"60\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>It is a well thought out, well researched letter that Mark has made available in the public domain. It is here and well worth reading in full: <a href=\"http:\/\/users.on.net\/~newton\/ellis-2008-10-20.pdf\">Mark Newton&#8217;s letter to Kate Ellis about Internet filtering and censorship <\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>His main points are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The government has not demonstrated a need for an online censorship system<\/li>\n<li>The government has not demonstrated that mandatory online censorship is technologically feasible<\/li>\n<li>The government has not demonstrated that online censorship is effective<\/li>\n<li>The government has failed to consider the unintended consequences arising from the policy<\/li>\n<li>Senator Conroy has invalidated the government&#8217;s claim for a mandate by lying to the Australian public about the scope of the policy<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If you want to find out more, you can check out the <a href=\"http:\/\/nocleanfeed.com\/\">No Clean Feed<\/a> pages set up by the Australian <a href=\"http:\/\/www.efa.org.au\/\">Electronic Frontiers Federation<\/a> or the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.somebodythinkofthechildren.com\/\">Somebody Think of the Children<\/a> blog.\u00a0 According to the No Clean Feed page, here is the current state of play:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p> The Government is keeping its cards close to its chest on the plan. However, we know that ISP-level filtering has been ALP policy for some time and is still being zealously pursued by the Minister. What has been confirmed so far:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Filtering will be mandatory in all homes and schools across the country.<a href=\"http:\/\/nocleanfeed.com\/#f1\" onclick=\"showDiv('footnotes')\" class=\"footnote\"><sup>1<\/sup><\/a><\/li>\n<li>The clean feed will censor material that is &#8220;harmful and inappropriate&#8221; for children.<a href=\"http:\/\/nocleanfeed.com\/#f2\" onclick=\"showDiv('footnotes')\" class=\"footnote\"><sup>2<\/sup><\/a><\/li>\n<li>The filter will require a massive expansion of the ACMA&#8217;s blacklist of prohibited content.<a href=\"http:\/\/nocleanfeed.com\/#f3\" onclick=\"showDiv('footnotes')\" class=\"footnote\"><sup>3<\/sup><\/a><\/li>\n<li>The Government wants to use dynamic filters of questionable accuracy that slow the internet down by an average of 30%.<a href=\"http:\/\/nocleanfeed.com\/#f4\" onclick=\"showDiv('footnotes')\" class=\"footnote\"><sup>4<\/sup><\/a><\/li>\n<li>The filtering will target legal as well as illegal material.<a href=\"http:\/\/nocleanfeed.com\/#f5\" onclick=\"showDiv('footnotes')\" class=\"footnote\"><sup>5<\/sup><\/a><\/li>\n<li>$44m has been budgeted for the implementation of this scheme so far.<a href=\"http:\/\/nocleanfeed.com\/#f6\" onclick=\"showDiv('footnotes')\" class=\"footnote\"><sup>6<\/sup><\/a><\/li>\n<li>The clean-feed for children will be opt-out, but a second filter will be mandatory for all Internet users.<a href=\"http:\/\/nocleanfeed.com\/#f7\" onclick=\"showDiv('footnotes')\" class=\"footnote\"><sup>7<\/sup><\/a><\/li>\n<li>A live pilot deployment is going ahead in the near future.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>What we don&#8217;t know is just as important.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>What age level is the country&#8217;s Internet to be made appropriate for? 15? 10? 5 years old?<\/li>\n<li>Who decides what material is &#8220;appropriate&#8221; for Australians to see? How are lists of &#8220;illegal&#8221; material compiled?<\/li>\n<li>Who will maintain the blacklist of prohibited sites?<\/li>\n<li>How can sites mistakenly added to the list be removed?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>There are a few things you can do if , like me, you think that it is contradictory to spend heaps of money on a filter that cannot work technically and\u00a0 is likely to slow down &#8216;net speeds &#8211; while also professing a policy to *increase* broadband speed.\u00a0 You can contact your local member of parliament, look at some of the <a href=\"http:\/\/nocleanfeed.com\/takeaction.html\">suggested actions on the No Clean Feed pages<\/a>\u00a0 or <a href=\"http:\/\/petitions.takingitglobal.org\/oznetcensorship\">sign the online petition<\/a> about it (8977 signatures so far around 9pm Mon 27 October 2008).<\/p>\n<p>Last time I looked, the professional association for librarians in Australia, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.alia.org.au\/\">ALIA<\/a>, had sent <a href=\"http:\/\/www.alia.org.au\/media.room\/2008.01.09.html\">10 questions about internet censorship<\/a> to Stephen Conroy&#8217;s office for answering, back on 9 January 2008. I probably just missed it, but I don&#8217;t remember seeing the responses published anywhere on the ALIA web site, and can&#8217;t find it now.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m a very bad searcher tonight, as I can also no longer find the news item on the ALIA home page from 10 October where ALIA announced that Senator Conroy would be opening Information Online 2009 .\u00a0 It&#8217;s not on the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.information-online.com.au\/\">Information Online 2009 conference<\/a> site, it&#8217;s not in my RSS feed anymore either &#8230; and I would have thought I&#8217;d imagined it if it wasn&#8217;t for the <a href=\"http:\/\/inezha.com\/p\/9904336\/item49?hl=en\">archived feed at INEZHA.com<\/a> . Here&#8217;s hoping that the idea of someone with policies like Senator Conroy addressing a group of librarians at a technology conference&#8230;..just fades away too &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mark Newton, who works for an ISP, has written a letter as a private citizen to his local member of federal parliament about Senator Stephen Conroy&#8217;s proposal to apply mandatory (opt-out only)\u00a0 &#8220;clean feed&#8221; filters to the internet in Australia. It is a well thought out, well researched letter that Mark has made available in&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3BXdd-8z","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}