I read today (via Wikileaks) that Conroy’s Internet filter is on hold. Well, actually:
A spokeswoman for Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said yesterday the legislation would not be introduced next month’s or the June sittings of parliament.
So that means?
With parliament not sitting again until the last week of August, the laws are unlikely to be passed before the election.
Soooo … passing it before the election would be very bad politically. After the election either they won’t be in power, or if they retain power and pass it straight away there might be enough time before the next election that most people will have forgotten about it. Right?…
… But this gets me:
But the US government, Google and free speech advocates have said any efforts to censor the internet would slow download speeds, stop the free flow of information and be ineffective.
When the issue returns after the election, as I’m sure it will, can we all start putting the “ineffective” bit at the top of our arguments? Help everyone to understand that this is pointless? Seriously, if someone wants to find kiddy porn on the internet he doesn’t go to www.iwantkiddyporn.com or something. He doesn’t go to google and search for it. He uses torrents and IRC and such – which are outside this filter’s reach. This filter is simply aimed at stopping the legal but naughty/kinky/fetishy/explicit-y/scary-to-prudish-conservative-wowsers-like-Conroy kinds of stuff. What we all might think as individuals about any of that stuff is irrelevant: as I’ve written before, if it is legal to engage in a certain act, there can be no ethical or moral justification for preventing access to depictions of that act:
Again: these are not illegal acts being talked about. These are things that people are (currently) allowed to do with each other. – But they’re not allowed to buy/sell/rent any material relating to them, and if/when Conroy gets his way they won’t be able to find them online either. So … they can do these things (currently) but they’re not allowed to look at these things. I do not see that there can be any reasonable justification for that position. If something is legal to do, what is the logic or justice behind making it unavailable to view or read about? I submit if something is legal to do, it should be legal and available to view – albeit appropriately restricted in some cases.
So no, child porn shouldn’t be available. It’s already illegal, so there’s an avenue. It’s not bouncing around in Google searches (I admit that’s an assumption, and one I’m not about to test 
), and the consensus I’ve read is that it’s not going to be touched by this filter, because it is predominantly shared via torrents and irc and such. So it should be seen clearly that the filter is pointless. This should be top of the list of objections raised when (and I’m pretty sure it’ll be a “when”) its ugly head is raised again. This is because it is not aimed at child porn etc. Whether intentionally or through a (fairly incredible) lack of understanding and logic, its aim is fixed squarely on perfectly legal acts that don’t fit with conservative notions of acceptable behaviour.
As such, I believe it is ethically, morally, and logically unsupportable, and also unjust. As I wrote before, if people are allowed to do something to each other, what is the logic behind preventing them from viewing that something? And what ethical justification can there be? To be honest, a more consistent approach would be to outlaw the behaviours you’re preventing access to … but let’s see them getting that through parliament. 
Popularity: 1% [?]
