Filter is Folly

It is amazing at how unbelievably stupid Senator Conroy is starting to look in this debate over the Labour Party’s proposed internet filtering scheme.  He says things that even people with very little common sense know are false.  Conroy is making the fool’s mistake in that he’s confusing the medium and the content.  I don’t think anybody in their right mind is in favour of child pornography – it is bad.  Conroy wants to do the right thing and try and stop access to this garbage, but because the internet is a truly global network and he’s merely a simple politician in one country, he overshoots the mark by trying to erect some sort of “virtual content border”.  Its simply misinformed and misguided on his part.

What he should do is spend that $40m on the Federal Police and give them better tools to sniff out the dirtbags who distribute this rubbish via Peer-to-Peer networks – something his filter won’t block.  That’s where there is a real win potentially, but it is not as high profile as building the “Great Firewall of Australia”.

As has been pointed out a number of times in this debate, the internet is like the telephone system or the postal service – the government doesn’t filter those.  Also, this is a much deeper form of censorship than anything else.  I find this internet filter to be quite disturbing – it is all a bit “Big Brother”.  I simply do not believe that Kev07 and pals know what’s best for me and I should just shut up and accept it.  How about this, you put the onus back on the individual not to break the law and traffic child porn and let me work out for myself which websites I go to.  If parents don’t want their kids “stumbling” onto Child Porn (which never happens!) then they should monitor and control their children’s internet usage.

I find this Rudd Government seems to spend way too much of its time telling me that it knows what’s best for me whether I like it or not and frankly I’m getting sick of it.