Internet filtering

According to some of Australia's most widely published journalists and many opinion polls, the Liberal and National Parties were thrown out of office largely because of voter objections to their policies, notably their anti-union "Work Choices" laws.
Despite this, less than three years since Australians repudiated the ruling Federal Liberal and National Parties' policies and laws, the same polls and commentators say that they may soon become the government again. There are issues behind the issues which the mainstream doesn't cover.

According to some of Australia's most widely published journalists and many opinion polls, the Liberal and National Parties were thrown out of office largely because of voter objections to their policies, notably their anti-union "Work Choices" laws.

Despite this, less than three years since Australians repudiated the ruling Federal Liberal and National Parties' policies and laws, the same pollsters and commentators say that they may soon become the government again. There are issues behind the issues which the mainstream doesn't cover.

According to some of Australia's most widely published journalists and many opinion polls, the Liberal and National Parties were thrown out of office largely because of voter objections to their policies, notably their anti-union "Work Choices"laws.

Despite this, less than three years since Australians repudiated the ruling Federal Liberal and National Parties' policies and laws, the same pollsters and commentators say that they may soon become the government again.

If media 'prediction' comes true, Labor will have turned into a one-term government party and the Liberal and National Coalition will have effectively become the natural parties of Government.

The mainstream media are like obedient cattle-dogs barking at the heels of the public, herding us en masse one way, then sending us wheeling in the opposite direction, yet somehow we always end up back in the same dull paddock with lousy feed and the same old farmer Brown.

Animal Farm

Julia Gillard has incurred the farmer's wrath because she has publicly rejected former Prime Minster Kevin Rudd's "Big Australia" policy to hugely swell Australia's population, mostly through immigration. The press have called her 'populist' (oddly, their greatest insult) , insinuated that she is racist, and trotted out article after article saying how terrible it would be if our population stopped growing. They have also tried to condemn her on the pretext of her allegedly ruthless deposing of Rudd. The unfavourable treatment of Gillard over this and other issues may be the reason why opinion polls and some widely published journalists are predicting that Labor is now more likely to lose than to win the election.

Manufactured media dramas overshadow major democratic and environmental issues

This swaying of an election by emphasisizing in a negative way such aspects of the campaign is an illustration of just how the media can unfairly decide the outcome of elections. Those, who have been persuaded to vote against Labor through exposure to this repeated narrowly focused media-disapproval, may not have based their decision on far more critical policy issues, including the need to strengthen and preserve democracy and our long-term sustainability as a civilised and prosperous society, which are both issues at stake. Mainstream media focus virtually ignores democracy and ecological sustainability.

Julia Gillard's ousting of Kevin Rudd could provide a way for the Labor Government to much better govern in the interests of ordinary Australians than under Kevin Rudd's leadership. Under Kevin Rudd's leadership, a lot of policies which were harmful to the interests of ordinary Australians and which had never obtained their informed support, were being imposed dictatorially. The most resented, we are learning as the population debate explodes, was Kevin Rudd's decision to unhealthily bloat Australia's population to suit some vested commercial interests. Successive recent governments,
including John Howard's, had been ramping up population growth, but Rudd opened up the throttle to a rate where the harm to existing Australians and the environment was plain for all to see.

Ruddbank and Building the Education Revolution

In addition, the Rudd Government was criticised for crudely implementing major programs of Government expenditure.

The most widely criticised of these crude schemes was in relation to the squandering of money on school infrastructure, which has been blamed on Julia Gillard, because she oversaw the grandiosely named $16.2 billion "Building the Education Revolution" scheme. The main basis of this criticism was that projects which could have delivered to many schools, simply through through repairs of or the extension of existing buildings, using local firms and labour, were scrapped in favour of arbitrarily selected new buildings delivered by large, remote construction companies.

This program should really have been criticised within a larger policy, as a mutation of Rudd and Swann's
Ruddbank bill, which was thrown out of Parliament at the last moment. Ruddbank was Rudd's first reaction to the global financial crisis. He saw banks pulling out of financing more property development, and thus the pins being pulled from under the construction and development bubble which Australia has been dangerously reliant on now for years. Rudd and Swann rose to power from humble political beginnings in 1986 when they worked in Wayne Goss's office in Queensland. There they traded ALP investments until they had built a huge ALP self-financing tradition on land-speculation and finance largely in property, banking, and insurance. Rudd and Swann are wed to that kind of economy; so was the ALP under them. Those financial attachments have driven laws in parliament to privilege development and infrastructure finance with public money, and to exclude democratic rights to oppose unwanted development.

If the mainstream media hates Gillard so much, can she be all that bad?

It is hard to believe that Gillard's government will not remain bound by those financial ties, however the fact that Gillard has piped up about not being a big population person makes her government unusual. Many of us wonder if she is sincere and if she is able to deliver democratically on this.

Perhaps the biggest indicator that she may be able to is that the mainstream media are so consistently opposed to her. Going by their disapproval of her population statements this is because they truly believe she may cut down on population growth and the huge immigration program they have been responsible for marketing on behalf of the corporate sector and their own corporate investments.

Indeed, her object may actually be less a democratic one than to avoid incurring more public debt through more taxpayer funding of shortfalls in infrastructure finance at a time when no private institution wants to invest in infrastructure expansion. She may be responding to ALP corporate advice that the so-called Global Financial Crisis is only just beginning.

So, should we trust our instincts which tell us that to vote for the people the mainstream media most objects to, and therefore vote Gillard back in?

Would the Libs carry on Rudd's infrastructure investment policies and exploit Labor's bad state laws?

On the other hand, What would happen if the Liberal National Coalition regained majority in Federal Parliament?

The question this article raises is, could we be better off with a Liberal government? Or would a Liberal government simply do the same thing as the Labor governments, relying on the suppression of democracy at law which has been accomplished at parliamentary level by Labor State Governments in their efforts to promote infrastructure expansion in tandem with international immigration?

To our knowledge, the only Liberal opposition which has actually criticised the way that Labor has gone about financing infrastructure expansion and population growth with tax-payer money and suppressing democratic objection by changing laws and abolishing local government power, has been the Queensland Liberal-National Party. See "John-Paul Langbroek and why the Liberal National Party won't survive unless Labor Governments reform." This article, whilst supporting Queensland Liberal-National Party leader, John-Paul Langbroek's condemnation of the structural corruption of government in Queensland, and proposing useful ways to combat this corruption, also acknowledges that it is perhaps only the Liberal-National Party's need to survive which drives these reform attempts. Despite these doubts, what else do we have to begin to deconstruct the diabolical machine that the Labor Party has constructed against democracy?

Langebroek's bills need to be repeated in every state and Federal parliament and supported by all parties. Yet we hear almost no discussion of them.

Role of Media and of Internet Censorship in Australian politics

The ability of the public to monitor what is going on and to act to make the government and opposition politicians represent them better lies in the quality of the mainstream media. Much hope in this regard lies in internet-based alternative media and our ability to harnass this for public benefit.

An important related issue is Gillard's decision to delay internet censorship and the Liberal Government's policy platform of cancelling it, with the support of the Greens.

Even though the Liberals opposition to #filtering">mandatory internet filtering is a welcome development in Australian democracy, many voters will still have to weigh this against the likelihood that a re-elected liberal government will act similarly to the last Liberal government of which most current Liberal members of Parliament were members. That government behaved undemocratically and in many instances against the interests of most Australians, particularly poor Australians. The most striking example was its anti-union "Work Choices" legislation.

In fact the issue of mandatory internet filtering is bigger than just the question of censorship; it is really about government-monitoring and control over every Australian's behaviour on the internet and goes to the heart of intellectual and personal privacy. As James Sinnamon said, "If a government really wanted to outlaw child pornography over the internet, it would do much better to make it a criminal offense to consult certain sites, and publish the addresses of those sites and its reasons for outlawing them. In that way it could avoid the extraordinary financial, bureaucratic, hard and software outlay required to monitor every click made by 22 million plus Australians on the internet, whilst achieving the same objective."

This needs more discussion.

Several news outlets reported yesterday that Google and Verizon are about to cut a deal that would allow giant corporations to control which websites load slowly, quickly, or not at all. The upshot would be that the multimedia and governments would once again hog the internet to the exclusion of democratic alternatives.

ColorOfChange have put out a press release which says "If you value the free, fair, and open Internet, then you need to act now, before two corporate giants deal it away."

It is well referenced, so we are republishing it here.

Google may permit giant corporations to control internet accessibility

If you value the free, fair, and open Internet, then you need to act now, before two corporate giants deal it away.

Several news outlets reported yesterday that Google and Verizon are about to cut a deal that would allow giant corporations to control which websites load slowly, quickly, or not at all.1,2,3 Google used to oppose this kind of corporate control over the Internet, but now it looks like they might be changing their tune. Google’s motto is "Don’t be evil," but it looks like their pursuit of profit might be getting in the way of living up to that ideal.4

Thankfully, it's not a done deal yet -- and with enough pressure, we can stop them from acting. That's why we're joining our friends at CREDO, MoveOn, and Free Press to demand that Google back off this corporate takeover of the Internet. Will you add your voice, and then ask your friends and family to do the same?

http://www.colorofchange.org/google/?id=2432-1205225

The basic promise of the Internet lies in the guarantee that information you put online is treated the same as anyone else's information in terms of its basic ability to travel across the Internet. Your own personal website or blog can compete on equal footing with the biggest companies. It's the reason the Internet is so diverse — and so powerful. Anyone with a good idea can find their audience online, whether or not there's money to promote the idea or money to be made from it.

This is critical for Black communities and others that have had our voices compromised by corporate-controlled media. For the first time in history we can communicate with a broad audience, educate, politically organize, and create new businesses — without prohibitive costs or mediation by gatekeepers in government or industry. It's the strength of your ideas, not the size of your budget, that largely determines your success. In television, radio, and print this can't happen because access is determined by big media corporations seeking to turn a profit.

This deal could take the Internet in a different direction. It could end the Internet's level playing field by allowing rich corporations like Google to pay for faster-loading websites and services. It could destroy the potential for independent voices to compete with giant corporations for an audience — big corporations who can pay for preferential access to Internet users would drown out the smaller voices online. And it could mean that you'll start getting less Internet service at a higher cost.

We expect the big telecommunications companies to try to stifle freedom and equality on the Internet — they've hired an army of lobbyists to do just that. But Google has always said it supports a free and open Internet. Google likes to portray itself as a corporation with principles that go beyond profit, and it would be disappointing to see Google abandon them.

Google has tried to downplay this story. They issued a short, carefully worded statement that says they're still committed to an open Internet, but they haven't denied that they are in talks with Verizon to cut a deal that would give corporations more control over Internet traffic.5

By speaking out, you can pressure Google to walk away from this deal. But time is running out — please sign our petition to Google today.
http://www.colorofchange.org/google/?id=2432-1205225

Source: James, Dani, William, Gabriel, Milton, and the rest of the ColorOfChange.org team
August 9th, 2010

References:

1. "Google and Verizon Near Deal on Web Pay Tiers," The New York Times, 8-5-2010
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/347?akid=1539.1194428.vwNvfC&t=6

2. "Google, Verizon Try to Shape Net-Neutrality Law," Wall Street Journal, 8-52010
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/348?akid=1539.1194428.vwNvfC&t=8

3. "Google, Verizon Said to Strike Deal on Web Traffic Rules," Bloomberg, 8-5-2009
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/349?akid=1539.1194428.vwNvfC&t=10

4."NYT: Google Just Killed Net Neutrality (UPDATING: Google and Verizon Deny Internet Traffic Deal)," Gizmodo, 8-5-2010
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/350?akid=1539.1194428.vwNvfC&t=12

5. See reference 4

According to software engineer Arved von Brasch the danger posed by Senator Steven Conroy's Mandatory Internet Filtering is that it will confer upon the Federal Government the capacity to censor internet content it considers a threat, in exactly the same way that the Chinese Government now uses the same technology that Conroy proposes to introduce to censor views of its critics. Arved von Brasch also shows there are overwhelming reasons to reject the legislation on technical grounds alone.

Originally published as "The consequences of filtering", with discussion forum, on 4 Mar 10 Online Opinion. Republished under the terms of the Creative Commons License. See also: Internet censorship, Citizens Initiated Referenda and the Greens - an open letter of 23 Dec 09, Online Opinion forum discussion contribution: Why won't Greens move motion to put filtering to a referendum?

The Government is proposing a system to filter the Internet. The proposal is a complaints-based system that would block specific URLs only after they have been brought to the government's attention and also deemed to be Refused Classification. It would operate using a secret list and make it mandatory for all ISPs to block sites on the list for all Internet users in Australia.

"Refused Classification" and "illegal" are not the same thing, and the problems of having a mandatory, secret blacklist should be readily apparent. The consequences to the wider Australian society if this filter proposal succeeds do deserve discussing. This proposal doesn't have a single redeeming feature that will make Australia any better than it currently is.

There are also obvious known drawbacks to the proposal. The first is the cost of the system. Filtering products are expensive to purchase and run. Smaller ISPs will not be able to easily carry the cost, and will be forced to immediately pass them on to customers. Larger ISPs, with more capacity to absorb the cost, will be able to strongly compete on price for a short time. This will force competition out of the market. It will mean even more expensive Internet for Australians, especially as the government intends for ISPs to carry the entire cost of the proposal. Access to the Internet in Australia is already among the most expensive and inadequate in the developed world.

While the technological issues are minor compared to the political and civil liberties issues, they should be enough themselves to scuttle this proposal. The Internet is currently running on a backbone of IPv4. Every computer connected to the Internet has a unique number assigned to it. IPv4 only allows for 4 billion computers to be connected simultaneously, and the pool of available numbers is rapidly diminishing. IPv6 is already starting to take over, and within two years almost every ISP will be forced to support IPv6. The trouble is that most current filtering systems are incapable of supporting IPv6. The proposal will saddle ISPs with expensive, inadequate equipment.

The next technological issue is latency. The government is making big claims about speed, but it is confusing itself on the difference between speed and latency. While it may be true that speed decrease for individual website loads is negligible, the compounded effects have not been measured. This is particularly important in high bandwidth applications, such as video games, film distribution and teleconferencing. Minor reductions in speed have a cumulative effect, and this could dramatically affect performance in such applications.

This issue is particularly important given the government's proposed National Broadband Network. The maximum speed tested in the Enex trial was 8 Mbps. The NBN's speed is expected to be 100 Mbps. There is little reason to think that the trial results are applicable to a higher speed network. Additionally, at least one participant in the Enex trial reported they had less than 15 households in the trial. Telstra didn't even bother to test using any real people. There is no reason to think that such a small sample is representative of the result of filtering the millions of connections across Australia.

High traffic sites cannot be blacklisted as there will not be the capability to deal with the huge number of requests for sites like YouTube. There is a lot of material on YouTube that would be considered Refused Classification because the rest of the world doesn't attempt to ban such material. As recent events have shown, Google is not keen on the idea of removing such material. This means that only sites that have softer voices will be blacklisted. This is inherently discriminatory.

There is also the Streisand Effect to consider. On the Internet, attempting to censor something inherently focuses attention on it. A site that is considered low traffic at the time it is added to the blacklist may quickly become a high traffic site when its presence there is discovered. Slashdotting is a similar effect. This is when an extremely popular site links to a far less popular site. The large number of people who then visit the low traffic site often bring it down by their volume. Both effects could significantly degrade Australian Internet performance as low traffic sites become high traffic to the point the filtering equipment may not be able to cope.

There is no real possibility that the blacklist will not eventually be leaked again. Mandatory censorship of this scale will motivate large numbers of the tech-savvy to reverse engineer the list. It is relatively easy to do. If the list truly is the "worst of the worst", and its security can't be assured, its publicly availability is unconscionable. If the list is as poor quality as the current ACMA blacklist, then leaks will do little more than be a continuous source of embarrassment to the government as the edge cases are brought to light by the media. A more disturbing thought is that the list is reconstructed but not made public because those who reverse engineered it were seeking out the illegal material which is also encompassed by Refused Classification.

The government has not provided any figures on how much of the total Refused Classification material on the Internet it expects to block. This is an important consideration. If the government only ever expects to cover a small percentage, then there seems little point in even having the policy. The web contains more than 1 trillion unique URLs. The current ACMA blacklist contains less than 1,500 URLs. And the government has admitted that performance will degrade if the list becomes too long.

The unintended social issues this proposal will create are deeply concerning. The filter is being sold as a way to protect people, particularly children, from accidental exposure to offensive material. There is no evidence of impending societal collapse from the decades at the current level of exposure. The reality is that a list of a few thousand will have a negligible preventative effect. It will, however, mean that parents will become complacent and oblivious to online dangers. If this proposal succeeds, the government will claim that the Internet is now "safer" in its advertising. That will be the sole message mums and dads will take away from the entire debate. This will mean less parental supervision, and will actually magnify our children's exposure to age inappropriate material. It will cause the very problem it attempts to solve.

The ACMA has conducted numerous studies over the years that show that Australian parents are well aware of online dangers and are happily managing their children's access. There are currently ISPs in Australia that specialise in providing filtered access, like WebShield. These companies have a filtered Internet service as a core component of their business model, rather than the cheap bolt-on after thoughts that reluctant ISPs will implement. Such companies do have low take up, despite the massive amount of free advertising the government has just provided. The previous government's NetAlert scheme similarly had low take up. It is clear that Australians understand the risks and deliberately choose to have unfiltered Internet. It is laudable to try and make their job easier, but this proposal will not do that.

Then there is the matter of privacy. Authorities require extenuating circumstances to eavesdrop on the telephone conversations of Australians. Intercepting private mail also requires a good reason vouched for by the judiciary. What the government is proposing, however, is a system where every packet of information sent by Australians is opened and inspected, before deciding if it should be allowed to reach its destination. It is not enough to say that those with nothing to hide have nothing to fear. Most people close the door when they go to toilet. While they aren't doing anything illegal there, that does not mean they particularly want to be observed doing so. Privacy is, and must be a fundamental right in a civil society.

There is also the future reaction of users when they encounter material which is potentially Refused Classification. If it isn't already blocked, are they to assume that the material is sanctioned by the government? Sexual explicit material, which isn't, and never could be covered by any blacklist is not Refused Classification. This is clearly material that is age inappropriate for children. Also, as a complaints-based system, the majority of complaints are going to be registered by our nation's biggest wowsers. Are we content to have what we see decided by the most easily offended? Such people will also be the loudest voices to keep increasing the scope of what is blocked.

Even more bizarrely, the government is proposing outsourcing censorship decisions to foreign countries. Incorporating foreign lists into the Australian blacklist without reviewing the content is handing another country the power to decide what Australians can and cannot see. Foreign lists have had their own embarrassments. The British Internet Watch Foundation, for example, has blacklisted material our Prime Minister might consider "absolutely revolting", but wouldn't bat an eye at the Classification Board. Properly incorporating foreign lists will turn into an expensive exercise. It already costs over $500 per URL for review by the Classification Board.

If the filter proposal passes, Australia would be the first and only Western democracy to introduce such broad and far reaching censorship on the Internet. Our actions thus far have already given comfort to more authoritarian regimes. Our filter model will end up justifying limiting freedom of speech among the most despicable governments. It would blacken our reputation, weaken trade, discourage discerning would be migrants and constrain our moral authority. Respected international human rights organisations are already expressing concern about Australia over this proposal.

There is a saying: "The Internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it." The whole concept of the Internet was to have redundant means of communication should any number of nodes be destroyed. Circumvention is thus not only possible but also exceptionally easy. Both the Enex and Telstra reports made this very clear. Even WebShield was unable to prevent circumvention and this is their core business. Thus, the filter proposal will do nothing to stop those who want illegal material from seeking it out.

The unavoidable conclusion is that the government's Internet filter proposal will be no more than an expensive waste of resources, delivering no benefits and having little or no value to show for it. It will magnify the social problems it claims to be attempting to solve, and destroy Australia's reputation into the bargain. It is well past time this idea was killed off once and for all.

#appendix1" id="appendix1">Appendix: Online Opinion Forum discussion contribution Why won't Greens move motion to put filtering to a referendum?

The following was posted to the forum discussion in response to the originally published article.

Excellent article.

Of course, I agree with Arved von Brasch that the main threat is the power that it gives to Governments to censor, at will, sites that it considers a threat, and that should be the major focus of the anti-Internet Filtering campaign.

Nevertheless it is most helpful to also understand the technical problems posed by Filtering and Arved must be congratulated for having explained them so well. Now, we can all understand what the truth behind Conroy's claims that the tests is.

---

Have any polls been taken on this issue? I believe I heard once that the overwhelming majority were opposed. Even if not, that would change very quickly if there was a proper public debate on this. So there is no way that this legislation should stand any chance of becoming law in a properly functioning democracy.

About three weeks ago, I learnt from a member of Scott Ludlam's staff that they are, in fact, expecting the Liberals and Nationals to back away from their previous strong opposition.

I had put in an e-mail to Senator Ludlam early last year that they simply move a motion in the Senate that it be put to a referendum. However when I phoned his office around September last year, I was told that opposition by the Coalition to filtering was practically guaranteed. Implicilty it seemed that there was not urgent need for a referendum motion to be put. This still made me nervous that at a coming election many voters would face an impossible choice between the Coalition on the one had with its past record of Work Choices, the Iraq War, Telstra privatisation, etc. and the Labor party on the other hand with Mandatory Internet Filterin. Nevertheless, I did not pursue further my request that a motion for a referendum be put at that stage.

Now, that has changed.

The serious risk that Internet Filtering could soon become law should be considered unacceptable, even, if, for example, the rough edges were to be softened by, for example, Labor Senator Kate Lundy's proposed amendments.

Yet, when I put to one of Scott Ludlam's staffers, two weeks ago on the phone that they should go ahead and move a motion for a referendum, as I had urged earlier, she told me that Scott Ludlam would not.

Why I asked?

Because, she told me they did not expect that it would be carried.

I should have asked her how she knew that.

Furthermore, since then, Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard has suggested that her Government's health system reforms be put to a referendum at the Federal elections. Surely, especially now, a motion for a referendum on Mandatory Internet Filtering at this year's Federal Election could hardly be depicted as unreasonable.

If the Coalition were to vote against such a motion, then surely that would give the Greens a perfect opportunity to differentiate themselves positively from the Coalition and gain a large number of votes at their expense as well as at the expense of the Labor Party.

And if the Coalition were to agree, then better still. The public would assuredly drive a large blunt stake through the heart of Mandatory Internet Filtering at the referendum. The Greens should still expect do very well from a grateful public and certainly would do a lot better than if they were to remain on their current trajectory.

How could the Greens lose?

Why won't they seize this opportunity with both hands?

See also: (As mentioned above) Internet censorship, Citizens Initiated Referenda and the Greens - an open letter of 23 Dec 09.

So Australia's Rudd Government proclaims that some internet content is "simply not suitable in a civilised society".

Mmmm, smells of public communications consultant speak!

This latest Ruddism could possibly become broadest claim of the 21st Century thus far. Could thy Rudd-speak imply anything beyond banning child porn? Could it in fact imply that any website critical of Rudd and Ruddism be instantly labelled 'not Rudd suitable' and so excommunicated by his holiness?

Check out today's ABC news 'Greenlight for internet filter plans' 15th December 2009.

So when can I but my brown shirt and leather sash, Herr Rudd?

Das Goebbels speak is said to save our innocent children from harmful overseas sites which contain criminal content, including child sex abuse and sexual violence.

Sounds noble enough, but Rudd's censorship powers will be in their detail.
Is the Ruddnet being cast wide across a realm he fears he cannot otherwise control -the Internet and Blogosphere? Our Rudd is known for his clandestine flights to Afghanistan, but has he in the wee hours taken off to Fiji to get direct dictator advice on censorship from from neighbouring Josaia Voreqe Bainimarama or even Robert Mugabe?

Father Rudd is unprecedentedly stepping into the role of parental responsibility if people accept the spin that it is only about protecting children. To claim "the Government believes that parents want assistance to reduce the risk of children being exposed to such material" sounds no more than moralistic spin. But it could be read that parents have been found irresponsible and its time government took over parental responsibility!

Is Rudd capitialising on spin of noble child protection while extending Federal censorship to anyone online daring to criticise Rudd, Rudd Policy, Ruddnomics and any Ruddism? Are we about to witness unprecented government censorship on any opposition akin to what Howard and Bush did.

See also:"Greenlight for internet filter plans" of 15 Dec 09, Stop Internet Censorship! of 4 Dec 09.

What you can do: Attend an Anti-Internet Censorship meeting (see facebook). When: Monday 21 Dec 09, 7:30 PM; Where: Brisbane Square Library – Community Meeting Room

See also: "Pornography and the Celebrity Bestiality Report - Economic trends today" of 21 Aug 09, "Would you like porn with that?" by Catherine Manning of 7 May 09, Federal Government threatens Internet censorship of 16 Nov 08, "Australia facing loss of its language, culture and environmental sustainability to mass immigration" of 26 Jun 09 by Frosty Woodridge.

Sheila Newman's article "Pornography and the Celebrity Bestiality Report - Economic trends today" of 21 Aug 09 and, before that Catherine Manning's article, "Would you like porn with that?" of 7 May 09 have caused me to evaluate my attitudes to pornography and prostitution.

As with prostitution, of which pornography seems to be merely another form, it has become increasingly exploitative in our dysfunctional 21st century world.

How Australian women are being forced to turn to prostitution

One story I heard, maybe roughly 18 months ago now, on Radio National was how a woman, ironically, employed in a 'Human Resources' department, needed to go to University in order to get the degree necessary to get her past the glass ceiling that blocked career advancement for uncredentialled employees.

Unsurprisingly, once she left full-time employment, she didn't have the funds necessary to pay her living expenses. So, like many others in equivalent circumstances, she turned to prostitution.

This kind of story has become so commonplace that many of us don't give it a second thought, but if we do, it is clearly a damning indictment of just what kind of society we have become in the past thirty years, courtesy of the 'free market' 'revolution', as well as high immigration, imposed upon this country by the likes of Fraser, Hawke, Keating, Howard and, now, Rudd, Gillard and Immigration Minister Evans.

Before this 'revolution', nearly all capable and talented people could expect to find relatively easy paths to rise in their chosen career_#main-fn1">1. People who did not have degrees could still eventually expect to be promoted, and on a few celebrated occasions, all the way to the very top without even having completed High School.

Now that has become practically impossible for nearly everyone who has not had the good fortune to have had parents able to pay their way through University, and have chosen all the correct career moves at the correct moments, without their careers suddenly being set back by retrenchments or other personal misfortune.

Instead, they must not only obtain degrees, but, often, also, a succession of post-graduate qualifications that are deemed current and applicable to their narrow area of expertise, in their own time and at their own expense, and so they are often faced with no choice but to pay for it all by selling their bodies.

About a year before I heard the story of the HR employee who turned to prostitution, I heard another documentary_#main-fn2">2 on the ABC Radio National featuring a woman in Kalgoorlie. She would have been entitled to a disability pension before John Howard's 'reform' of our Social Security system. After that 'reform' she chose prostitution rather than jumping through all the stupid and demeaning hoops that unemployment benefit recipients are expected to jump through.

On 28 Jun 09,one site visitor, TrueFire commented in response to the article "Australia facing loss of its language, culture and environmental sustainability to mass immigration" by Frosty Wooldridge:

"It's all over the world news about Aussie women now working as prostitutes in record numbers to get by. How gutless can Aussies get? Does anything matter to you? Stand up to your politicians and their backdoor lobbyists."

Will censorship and prohibition make pornography and prostitution any less exploitative?

Prostitution and pornography are only two of many ways that vulnerable women are exploited. The fact that many women choose those livelihoods over working in sweatshop occupations is surely confirmation of that.

Far from reducing exploitation, outlawing or curtailing porn and prostitution is only likely to either force women back into occupations even less acceptable or to make earning a living through prostitution more difficult and hazardous.

A far more effective way to reduce the sexual exploitation of women is to give them back the economic choices that more than a generation of 'free market' ideology and population growth have taken away._#main-fn3">3

Is Porn inherently good or bad?

This brings us to that vexed question as to whether we should regard pornography and prostitution as inherently good or bad under more ideal economic and social conditions.

Clearly it meets a need, particularly for people who may be lonely, isolated or socially inept.

As long as no-one is physically or psychologically harmed and no-one is coerced to take part, and as long as children are protected from exposure to it, we should not cast judgement on those adults who choose to either make use of those services or provide those services.

However, about two years ago I found myself nodding in agreement with Clive Hamilton when he argued, as Catherine Manning also rightly does now, that our society has become over-sexualised and that our children, in particular, are exposed to far too much sexual imagery to allow their normal development into adulthood. In a debate on ABC Radio National over the controversy surrounding Bill Henson's exhibition of photos of naked, pre-pubescent children, he posed the question: "Does anyone here seriously believe that we are fighting the same old battles against censorship?" He went on to ridicule any suggestion that we might be faced with a re-run of the old fights to end the ban on "Lady Chatterley's Lover" and implied that those objecting to the ban on the exhibition of Bill Henson's photos of children had exaggerated views of the importance of the issue and of themselves._#main-fn4">4

At the time, I, too, found the suggestion ridiculous.

How reasonable objections to the over-sexualisation of our society can be used to increase control over us

However, a few months later in November 2008,I was incensed to learn that Clive Hamilton had, in fact, given his total and uncritical support to Federal Communications Minister Stephen Conroy's plan to impose Communist Chinese style mandatory filtering upon the whole of the Internet in Australia_#main-fn5">5, ostensibly to prevent access to child pornography. In order to prevent anyone accessing child pornography, every single request for any page anywhere on the Internet, that occured every time someone clicked on a link on a web page, would first have to be compared with a secret database of banned sites. The fact that there were ways that people with more money and/or knowledge could easily evade the filter and the enormous peformance costs that all of us would need to pay did not appear to concern either Hamilton or Conroy.

It turned out that the blacklist could well have included sites containing pornographic material that is currently legal, sites advocating euthanisa, as well as sites deemed 'terrorist' or anything else that the Government considered undesirable.

So, the answer to Hamilton's rhetorical question turned out to be, indeed, 'Yes', after all. We are, indeed, in a sense re-fighting those old battles. This time what is at stake is our freedom to access not just sexually explicit material on the Internet, but potentially any content which a Government might, at some futere date prefer that we do not see.

How could Clive Hamilton, the same person who co-edited the 2007 book Silencing Dissent_#main-fn6">6, which exposed the Howard Government's systematic suppression of dissenting views, then turn around and push for the adoption of laws to give secretive Government bureaucrats unlimited powers to tell us what we can and cannot view on the Internet? The Internet is the only mass media not currently dominated by corporations.

Clive Hamilton's embrace of the Federal Government's plans for a Communist Chinese_#main-fn7">7 style Internet firewall demonstrates how reasonable community concerns about the sexual exploitation of women and children can be twisted around in order to allow our Government to extend its control over all of our lives.

This example illustrates how, if we are not very careful, reasonable stances, such as Catherine Manning's objections to children being exposed to pornographic material at corner stores and newsagents, can be seized upon to justify censorship and control way beyond what is actually necessary to fix the problem.

I therefore think it vital that, whenever concerned citizens fight to protect children and to mitigate the exploitation of women, it be made clear that this does not entail support for measures to take away from adults their current rights to access sexually explicit material (as Catherine Manning has in her article).

See also: "Pornography and the Celebrity Bestiality Report - Economic trends today" of 21 Aug 09, "Would you like porn with that?" by Catherine Manning of 7 May 09, Federal Government threatens Internet censorship of 16 Nov 08, "Australia facing loss of its language, culture and environmental sustainability to mass immigration" of 26 Jun 09 by Frosty Woodridge.

Footnotes

#main-fn1" id="main-fn1">1. #main-fn1-txt">↑ In fact, this is a simplification. Before the neo-liberal economic 'revolution', which roughly coincided with the removal of many forms of legal discrimination against women, many women's career choices were limited. Nevertheless, even given the supposed additional freedoms that feminism has brought, many women, now working hard at their paid occupations in order to help their husbands meet massively increased living expenses, particularly housing, as well as attending to household chores, see themselves as worse off, rather than better off, than were their mothers and grandmothers.

#main-fn2" id="main-fn2">2. #main-fn2-txt">↑ Street Stories "Here for the Money" episode of 24 June 2007 currently, as of 22 Aug 09, available as a 14M MP3 file downloadable from here.

#main-fn3" id="main-fn3">3. #main-fn3-txt">↑ See #main-fn1">1.

#main-fn4" id="main-fn4">4. #main-fn4-txt">↑ The words I write are to the best of my recollection. They may not be precisely a video version of the debate I thought I heard is "Art Censorship And Pornography" dated 26 Jun 08 on the ABC Fora web site.

#main-fn5" id="main-fn5">5. #main-fn5-txt">↑ See "Federal Government threatens Internet censorship" of 16 Nov 08.

#main-fn6" id="main-fn6">6. #main-fn6-txt">↑ Silencing Dissent (2007) edited by Clive Hamilton and Sarah Maddison, Allen & Unwin.

#main-fn7" id="main-fn7">7. #main-fn7-txt">↑ I should acknowledge here that my disparaging use of the adjectives 'Communist Chinese', in the teaser to refer to the Government's planned Internet filtering, was opportunistic. The Government's mandatory Internet filtering plans modeled on the Chinese government's existing Internet filtering system would be more accurately described as 'Stalinist'. In fact a true 'communist' society, whether of the variety that existed prior to the emergence of agriculture, or the form that may have been theoretically possible if the Russian Revolution had not been so thoroughly corrupted by Stalin, would have little need to control its citizens in the way that mandatory Internet filtering appears intended to do.

Translated from an old cartoon by Pessin from Le Monde

For years Australians have had their elections run by a commercial media over which they have less and less control. That media also decided what the public got to hear and what it didn't. With the invention of the Internet, although the commercial media is still very strong, for the first time in human history, everyone in the world who is not part of a totalitarian State, like China, Burma, Saudi Arabia or India, for instance, has the possibility of finding out real news, real politics, of creating politics, of reporting politics, and of championing truth and justice.

This web site (candobetter.org) exists to report politics and promote political ideas and actors who the mainstream press would never report - like the Greens raising concerns about population growth in Parliament, or how there are real reasons to worry that Australia's natural resources departments aren't doing their job to protect Australian animals.

We exist to expose where politics profit big business at the expense of democracy.

We exist because the editors and writers think this kind of website is essential. You may not like it, but at least you can have a look and choose not to come here again.

But, obviously a lot of what goes up on candobetter.org also gets up politicians' noses. These new proposals to have a secret list of 'undesirable' internet sites, which might have nothing to do with sex or crime, scare us.

The reason should be obvious. If a government can have a secret list of 'undesirable' netsites, we might be on it, yet no-one would ever know. We would have no defense and our readers would have no defense. It would be just like having nothing but the Murdoch, Fairfax and CNN media to rely on again.

And maybe something like that is behind this idea of Internet censorship. I would like to know who will benefit from this, especially since, apart from controlling access to media, the proposal seems almost certain to fail in its stated objectives of controlling crime, for technical reasons which Senator Ludlam begins to explore in Detailed Questions to Conroy on Government's Big Brother Internet proposal.

The Big Brother Internet proposal will probably fail in controlling crime, but it could make it easier for you and me to look at the sites government wants us to watch, and instill fear in us so that we won't stray away from those government-friendly big-business benefiting URLs. The old commercial media chains and the big telecommunications providers are dying to be able to 'offer' services where you and I will pay a certain amount to watch their choice of the internet, but, if we want to look somewhere else - and it could just be at internet in another language from another provider - we will have to pay extra and maybe our browsers just won't find what we want.

Having the Australian Government put the fear of ... um... God ... into us about casually surfing the net without a Big Provider's toolbar guiding our journey, could be all it takes to send Australia's much bossed-around "Mums and Dads" scurrying back to the Big Name providers, to avoid being arrested for inadvertantly opening one of those netsites on the Secret list.

Yes, the internet isn't just about truth and justice. It is also possible to use the Internet to communicate evil, to spy and to lie. Yes, it is possible to steal over the internet and it is possible to make money through marketing pornography resulting from sex-slavery, child-exploitation and terminal violence.

But the problem of pornography and exploitation doesn't explain why the Government wants to be able to peer over your shoulder, tell you what you may or may not view, and make your internet provider enforce this, or else.

We already can access Internet filters for children and adults.
We already have laws to deal with pornography. The police already have powers to investigate crimes. They can already seize material and take you away to prison if you are engaged in downloading child-pornography. So what is this "Mandatory Internet Filter" really for?

#WhatYouCanDo" id="WhatYouCanDo">What you can do

Attend protests against Mandatory Internet Filtering in your capital city on Saturday 13 December. The following list has been provided by wearechange.org.au:

Melbourne: 12pm-5pm, State Library

Brisbane: 11am-3pm,Brisbane Square

Sydney: 11am-4pm, Town Hall
Check www.nocensorship.info forums for Sydney updates

Adelaide: 12pm - 4pm, Parliament

Hobart: 11am - 1.30pm, Parliament Lawns

Contact your Federal Parliamentary representatives and let them know where you stand on this issue. If they indicate that they will be voting against the legislations, give them your heartfelt congratulations. If they indicate that they intend to support censorship, then demand an explanation. In particular, demand answers to questions such as those put by Greens Senator Scott Ludlum.

Lists are to be found on the Parliamentary website:
   Members of the House of Reps are listed by name, electorate, party and state.
   Senators are listed by name, party and state.

http://www.getup.org.au/blogs/view.php?id=1560

Sign the GetUp on-line petition. So far, 74,304 have signed.

Participate in Online Forums such as on Getup Filtering at Odds with Broadband Revolution by Colin Jacobs
Online Opinion: Clive Hamilton the Net Nanny, Winning the war against Internet censorship, internet censorship.

Visit web-sites with current information about the campaign against Internet censorship including: www.stopthecleanfeed.com, wearechange.org.au, Electronic Frontiers Australia.

(original picture at http://astrubal.nawaat.org/index.php?tag=freedom-of-expression
There is also a great video there about the internet and amnesty international)

The Senate, Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia:

Questions on notice about internet censorship to Sen. Conroy, Min. for Broadband

Thursday 27 Nov. 2008. Notice paper No. 47 Pp 60-61
http://www.aph.gov.au/Senate/work/notice/snpf_047.pdf

Senator Ludlam, of the West Australian Greens, is almost alone in asking questions about Sen. Conroy's bizarre proposal to police what we read and watch on the internet without letting us know the details. His investigations on our behalf need to be publicised.

Here they are:

Senator Ludlam: asks the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy questions about the recently announced 'live pilot' of Internet content filtering:

(1) Why does the pilot aim to test the impact of filtering on Internet connections ranging up to 12 Mega bits per second (Mbps) when 12Mbps is the minimum speed which the National Broadband Network project is claimed to deliver.

(2) Why will the pilot test the capacity of the filters to 'detect and provide warnings on circumvention attempts'.

(3) What is meant by 'provide warnings on circumvention attempts'.

(4) Does the Government propose, or is it considering, the criminalisation of circumventing or attempting to circumvent the proposed filtering regime.

(5) Will Internet Service Provider's be required, or permitted, to apply any level of filtering to the Internet connections of people who have not volunteered to participate in the pilot.

(6) If the customers participating in the pilot are volunteers, how will the results of the pilot be of any worth when they will be affected by self-selection bias.

(7) How does the Government propose to prevent technological tools such as proxies, Virtual Private Networks, the Tor service and encryption from being used to circumvent the Government's filtering regime without adversely affecting the ability of Australian businesses and residents to conduct their online business in a safe and secure fashion.

(8) Are technological tools such as Virtual Private Networks, Peer-to-Peer applications and encryption, being used by persons trafficking in child pornography online; if so, how will the Government's proposed filtering regime prevent this.

832 Senator Ludlam: To ask the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy-

(1) On what basis does the Government claim that Internet service provider (ISP)-based filtering is more effective than personal computer-based solutions.

(2) What is the Government's justification for making the dynamic content analysis filtering component of the regime opt-out rather than opt-in.

(3) Why is it necessary to compel all Australian ISPs to supply a filtered Internet service when there are already some ISPs offering such a service in the market.

(4) If the demand within the Australian public for filtered Internet connections from their ISP exists as claimed by the Government, why has this not manifested itself in the market to date.

(5) What evidence does the Government have to support the claimed public demand for filtered Internet connections.

(6) Can details be provided of organisations that have assisted the department through providing advice, information and examples that have contributed directly to the Government's proposed filtering plan.

833 Senator Ludlam: To ask the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy-

(1) What is the current number of Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) on the Australian Communications and Media Authority's (ACMAs) list of overseas-hosted prohibited or potentially-prohibited content.

(2) How many unique domain names are within the URLs which are currently on the ACMA blacklist.

(3) (a) How many active URLs are currently on the ACMA blacklist; and (b) of these, how many have been, or in the ACMA's view would be:
(i) classified MA15+, (ii) classified R18+, (iii) classified X18+

Too many unanswered questions on net censorship

Media Release by Scott Ludlum, Greens Senator for Western Australia, 11 November 2008

The Australian Greens have warned there are too many unanswered questions about the government's internet filtering plan, as the government calls for Internet Service Providers to participate in its trial.

"We still don't know how this filter would sift through the billions of websites on the internet in search of the 'unwanted' material referred to in question time today by Minister Conroy," said the Greens Communications Spokesperson, Senator Scott Ludlam.

Last month at Senate Estimates, Senator Ludlam queried the focus of the filter and in particular, whether similar schemes have been implemented overseas. The Senator queried the issue again today to establish why the Government had compared Australia's proposed mandatory system with a number of other countries where net filtering is not mandatory. Again the Minister failed to answer the question directly.

"Unfortunately, the Minister did not respond to my question. He still hasn't explained why the proposed mandatory filter is being compared to optional filters operating overseas. It's like comparing apples to oranges. It doesn't advance the debate in any way."

"The internet has not traditionally been the focus of censorship in democratic countries, and the online community has been tenacious in its pursuit of straight answers from the Minister. I'll be doing what I can to get those answers on the record so we know what we're dealing with," concluded Senator Ludlam.

For more information or media enquiries please call Robert Simms on 0417 174 302

Robert Simms
Media Adviser to
Senator Scott Ludlam
Australian Greens Senator for Western Australia

Sitting weeks: Tel: 02 6277 3467 | Fax: 02 6277 5821
S1.36, Parliament House, Canberra ACT 2600

Non-Sitting weeks: Tel: 02 6277 3566 | Fax: 02 6277 3185
SG111, Parliament House, Canberra ACT 2600

Mobile: 0417 174 302

www.scottludlam.org.au

See also: "Filtering out the fury: how government tried to gag web censor critics" in the SMH of 24 Oct 08, #more-217">"Filtering Pilot and ACMA Blacklist - Not just 'illegal' material" on Electronic Frontiers Australia on 15 Nov 08, "Net censorship plan backlash" in the Age of 11 Nov 08, YouTube broadcast of Senator Scott Ludlum questioning Communications Minister Senator Stephen Conroy about the planned censorship, "Winning the war against Internet censorship" by David Jackmanson on Online Opinion of 17 Nov 08, Online Opinion Forum "What's happening about the internet censor?" of 13 Nov 08, "Australia Joins China In Censoring The Internet" on TechCrunch of 30 Dec 07, www.scottludlam.org.au