16 Comments

  1. As someone whose blog has been ‘filtered’ from different companiies/ libraries at times for being ‘Adult content’, I just wonder about how it all works, and how we know it works/doesn’t work right.

  2. Having used the internet since 91 here’s my 2cents:

    A complete waste of taxpayers money and government resources.

    There are many tools for filtering content or imagehosting you can use and also whole software companies built around traffic monitoring already.

    Please let people decide for themselves, the internet was built to be free and un-hindered, keep it that way.

  3. The debate last night was interesting and obviously everyone loved Peter the GetUp director.

    If it does get passed through the government, we can use our own opt-out system through companies like http://www.vpnsecure.me

    seriously, the government can’t win this battle.

  4. There is what we call freedom of speech. So, I agree with Sean, let the people decide and not some entity. With filters like this, then there’s already a hindrance to freedom of speech.

  5. Why does the question need to be “filter or no filter” ? Surely a better way is simply to get the RIGHT filter implemented. My understanding is that the key driver behind the filter is to reduce child sexual abuse by cutting off access to that type of material, and therefore reducing the market for creation of the material. As we all know, the filter is not going to keep the kiddies safe from bad stuff online anyway, that’s what personal filters are for.
    So the key issues are freedom of speech / what gets blocked and who manages the list. If you make the filter ONLY about child sexual abuse, then the line is pretty clear – most of us agree about what that is, and there’s no issues around blocking out content about euthenasia etc. And then, you create a non-government group to manage the list. And no, that doesn’t mean it’s a quasi-gov department, but a properly representative bunch of people. The ISPs implement the filter (because it’s a relatively small group of sites, it’s pretty easy to do), the list is monitored by people that know, and we can all sleep easy in the knowledge that we’re doing something about it, and we’ve taken away the gov’s excuse to implement a filter across everything.

    This is happening in the UK and has been for 14 years (www.iwf.org.uk) – seems to work pretty effectively for them, why not us ?

    (as an aside, it’s not like we don’t have massive filters on our internet already – all our email is “filtered” by 3rd parties who won’t share their lists (spam filters), Google filter their content for us, etc. etc. There are lots of people who already decide what we can and can’t see – not saying it’s right – just a bit of perspective)

    1. “(as an aside, it’s not like we don’t have massive filters on our internet already – all our email is “filtered” by 3rd parties who won’t share their lists (spam filters), Google filter their content for us, etc. etc. There are lots of people who already decide what we can and can’t see – not saying it’s right – just a bit of perspective)”

      You can still have your own mailserver without built in spamfilters and therefore control ALL of the mail yourself.
      This allows mail to go directly to your server through any ISP then out onto the internet.

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