Stephen Collins, who obviously understands a lot more about the technical issues and who is also a parent has a well balanced piece discussing the proposed internet filtering plan.
Yesterday’s announcement verifying the Australian Federal Government will be mandatorily requiring ISPs to filter the nastiness from the ‘Net is plain and simple stupidity. Not only is it simply not achievable, it’s nanny stating at its worst and significantly limiting of free speech (something we don’t have a guaranteed right to in Australia AFAIK).
I am all for protecting children. We do it by only allowing internet access in our living room with parental supervision and talking openly about any slightly off the wall stuff that inevitably comes up.
Personally I think that this is just a smokescreen to mask some of the really hard decisions coming up about how to proceed with the huge promised broadband investment and the fight with Yanqui Sol and the boys from Telstra as they set about their plan to reestablish the Telstra monopoly on the the most profitable parts of the telecommunications infrastructure in Australia.
Duncan Riley from Techcrunch also has some thoughts including some good links and a very robust comment thread.
And here is the Public Announcement from Teh Department of Internets (Interwebs??)
