Broken Internet

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OK, I'm a family man with two beautiful girls aged 5 and 2.5, so when I talk about the proposed "Clean Feed" filtering system our government is looking to put on our Internet over here in Australia, I have a vested interest.

Even though I do a lot surfing, I seem to have missed the whole story re: the Great Aussie Firewall.  Or maybe I just dismissed it as another of those crackpot schemes thought up by bored Governments, that will never see the light of day.  Either way, the concept of a non-communist country deciding to lock down the Internet sounds ridiculous, not just from a freedom of speech angle, but also from a technical angle.

Won't somebody PLEASE think of the children?

Before I get all technical, I want to talk about the real issue of protecting children online.  The main reason for the filtering is to combat Child Porn, and other related abuses.  The Internet is a bad place, and can be a worse place.  But it is silly to think that we need to put things in place to protect kids online.  We need to be putting things in place to protect them before they get online.

The roads are a bad place, we know this because of all the deaths.  The way we protect our kids from roads is to educate and keep them away from said roads.  In the times when they have to use it, we are there to make sure they follow the road rules.  I know that it is unpopular to suggest that parents should be doing the parenting instead of governments, teachers, or the not quite right neighbor (who drinks a little to much and doesn't seem to notice that his fly is undone), but I can't help but think that if parents were having a crack at doing their job (child raising - the other full-time job) then maybe politicians wouldn't get silly ideas.

Now I'm the last one to defend the Internet as a bastion of wholesome entertainment, and a meeting place of virtuous minds.  However, I would hate to see it censored, as useful information would be censored as well.  I use the Internet as a tool and that should be the way that it is used, and like most tools, they are not put into the hands of children without supervision.

Protection or Censorship?

There is some comment that the whole Clean Feed is really just a play to censor the Internet, setting the foundation for further censorship down the track.  I'm not really sure how I feel about that.  As mentioned above, the Internet for me is a tool, so as long as I can get drivers, patches and updates for computers and other devices I'll be happy.  And there is so much censorship going on in most of the popular sites that we may not even notice.

It was amusing to read an article by Fergus Watts in the Herald Sun, which mentioned free-speech and YouTube in the same sentence.  We all know how upfront the big G (Google) is with information, I'm sure there isn't any filtering going on with any of their properties.

What if it does happen?

If it does happen, then my next heading, "No, of course it isn't going to happen, don't be silly" will look a bit silly.

They are proposing to implement the filters at the ISP end.  The Blacklist of bad websites/services will be made up in secret, by the government, and then given to the ISP's to enforce.  This means that all the content is to be filtered before it gets to your computer, thus making the filter nigh on impossible to get around.

This will have two major negative effects.

1. Us Joe taxpayer will have to pay educated people to organise the whole system and surf porn.

2. Having a spam filter on your e-mail program slows down your e-mail, imagine what filtering the whole Internet is going to be like?  Filters are like metal detectors and baggage scanners at airports, everyone is checked before being let though.

Other things to think about is that services like and including Facebook, twitter and myspace could be blocked if they perchance find porn there.  Or worse still, as Fergus Watts mentioned in his article, the filters may just drive these guys underground into such services like Facebook, Twitter and Myspace.  Not that there isn't a good chance that they aren't there already.  I mean, they have been pulling the animals out of the Disney Social networks since they started.

The cost to the ISP's would have to be a death knell.  The backlash from the users over any cost increases and poor speeds would kill many smaller ISPs.  Not to mention the exodus of websites and service to countries outside the filters.  If you are running a website, say like this one, where most of the readers are from the US and Europe, and all traffic into and out of the country is slow, then your site is going to be slow.  The only fix is to host the site offshore until this whole silliness has passed, in the meantime, all your hosting fees are also going offshore.

This is not to mention the censorship issue, and the fact that lots of legitimate content and services will be blocked as well.  If you are interested in the debate, or want to support the "No Clean Feed" side, check out Nocleanfeed.com.

No, of course it isn't going to happen, don't be silly

As noble as the idea of the filter is, it is too late.  This sort of thing needed to be done back when the Internet was such an important tool for business, government and our lifestyle.  Any major change/upheaval of this tool will stifle growth, not to mention what would happen to the existing growth.

I suppose if there is no Internet, then we will have gotten rid all the child porn and those Chuck Norris jokes.

Jason
" if it's broken, why fix it?"

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