Most of us have been pretty sceptical about Minister Conroy's constant references to child pornography and "illegal" material. In many cases, it has been seen by us and others as a deliberate attempt to confuse the issue and paint the anti-filtering forces as soft on kiddie porn. For the sake of argument, though, what if we gave Senator Conroy the benefit of the doubt, and assume he's sincerely motivated by a desire to clamp down on this stuff. How does the scheme hold up?
The arguments that filtering will not stop or even slow the trafficking in child pornography have been made elsewhere many times. (Basically, most of it isn't traded on the web; the web sites that do pop up wouldn't be added to a blacklist until too late; and when that happened, the filter could simply be bypassed.) Ignoring these fatal technical objections, what are we left with?
The cornerstone of the filtering pilot is the ACMA blacklist. This blacklist is compiled by the bureaucrats at the Government media authority, not by police or experts in the field. The blacklist is small - 1300 URLs - and not particularly dynamic. Sites are only added when somebody complains about them. It's therefore pretty hard to see how anyone could represent such a small and constantly outdated list as an effective weapon against child pornography.
What really belies the Minister's rhetoric, though, is the fact that the blacklist is not just child porn - it may not even be primarily child porn. Anything rated RC, X or in some cases R18+ goes on the list. As our analysis shows, given that child porn is the most likely to be removed by web hosts, the list is probably by now mostly legal, adult pornography.
Something to think about the next time we hear the Minister ask rhetorically why filter opponents hate children.
Read our analysis of the blacklist here.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
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4 comments:
"Sites are only added when somebody complains about them."
Oooh, maybe people can set themselves or others the task of searching out stuff they themselves don't like so they can complain about it and hopefully get it on the blacklist.
What a fantastic way to save The Children!
Also, I don't hate children. I used to be one if I remember correctly.
I hate people who use The Children as a reason to force stupid things on other people. What an insidious way to silence any opposition.
Won't somebody please think of the responsible adults?
You can be assured, that most likely ALL safe natural remedies sites, compared to toxic artificial high profit drugs, which of course, generate huge $$$ profits, are gonna be suppressed, to prevent people from getting access to FACTS!!
There will be many others like it...
People aren't supposed to know about secret societies that are in operation out there, the secret government, which is working behind the scenes, these are the REAL reasons these entities are determined, to keep the sheeple in ignorance, on what is truly going on out there!!...
Those who have the money $$$ have the power!
Something to be aware of!
Indeed this is deliberate Censorship presented under the guise/ smokescreen of 'protecting our children', which of course is the parents basic responsibility anyway!
Be forewarned on this!!...
Anyone remember the movie "Footloose"?
Started off banning music, ended up burning books!
How's this for a petition:
We the undersigned plan to regularly complain about and thus add internet sites to your blacklist, using a different email addresses each time. It will be up to you to determine whether or not they are legitimate or child porn.
then thousands of names here
It could totally stuff them up
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