73% disagree with ISP filtering

Whirlpool's Australian Broadband Survey for 2007 included a question about the clean-feed policy. The survey was completed and verified 17,881 times, and the results prove what we've been saying all along - very few Australians want a filtered connection.

In response to the question "Do you support the government’s policy for mandatory ISP-level content filtering (opt-out)?", three quarters of those surveyed disagreed with the decision to filter internet content, with more than half strongly disagreeing.

The full breakdown of results is as follows:

Strongly agree 2.9%
Agree 10.4%
Disagree 22.9%
Strongly Disagree 51.5%
Don’t know 12.3%

For more information, see the survey page at Whirlpool.

7.30 Report and Internet Hysteria

When we heard the 7.30 Report was preparing a report on the clean feed policy, we were hopeful that a serious piece would highlight some of the major concerns with the policy. When the story opened with "A monster is loose in suburbia", it was obvious this was not to be.

Although the ABC interviewed Internet Industry Association president Peter Coroneos and journalist/academic Catharine Lumby, they gave more time to anti-porn crusader, Michael Flood, who did a good job whipping up fear about the dangers of the net. Sadly, when it came to examining whether the clean feed is a good solution to this problem, they dropped the ball. One of the "experts" was Anthony Pillion, representing a company called "Webshield" that wants to offer their own commercial software for the policy's implementation. That's more than a conflict of interest - it's a sales pitch.


Mike at Somebody Think of the Children has some good coverage of the story.

Two Thirds of Internet-connected households child free

Although the clean-feed policy is targeted solely at "vulnerable" children, official statistics show that a large majority of internet-connected households in Australia have no children under 15.

According to ABS research (Household use of information technology2006-07), the number of households with internet access was:

Households without children under 15: 3.356 million
Households with children under 15: 1.782 million
Total: 5.138 million

When the objective of an ISP based filtering system is “to give peace of mind to mums and dads” (as indicated in a Labor media release), it seems it would be an irresponsible waste of tax payer funding to implement a mandatory system applicable to 100% of households with Internet access (5.1 million) when only 34% have children under 15 years (1.8 million), due to the likelihood that most households without children would not particularly want a filtered service.

Further, the 34% of households with children under 15 years would include:
the third of parents of children aged 8 to 13 years who have a filter installed; and
the two-thirds of parents of children aged 8 to 13 years who do not have a filter installed, 67% of which choose not to install filtering software because either they trust their child or feel that installing software is redundant because of their use of other safeguards. It is highly questionable whether those parents would want mandatory ISP filtering.

For more detailed information, take a look at our detailed policy response.