January 2008 Archives
The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the NSW Judicial Commission has rejected a complaint made by the head bureaucrat at the AG's department against a NSW judicial officer who found in a judgment that ASIO officers had unlawfully kidnapped and falsely imprisoned a suspect in a 'terrorism' case.
The news article, which gives details on the content of the complaint, says the complaint alleges that Adams J had made 'unjustified findings' which 'reflect adversely and very unfairly on the officers', and that '[t]he lack of concern the judge has shown for due process and natural justice in his comments about the officers' actions stand in complete contrast to the great care he took to determine that the officers had not complied with the applicable requirements.'
The grounds of the complaint are, and always were, bogus. Adams J's findings were entirely justified, there was plenty of evidence to support them. If those findings reflect adversely on the officers involved, then perhaps ASIO should stop kidnapping people. It should also be borne in mind that the identities of the ASIO officers were suppressed in the judgment -- all that the world at large knows is that ASIO officers B14 and B15 broke the law. Only people within ASIO or other government agencies who know the identities of B14 and B15 would know that they are the individuals who kidnapped Ul-Haque, and they're not likely to care.
As for the natural justice claim, even the news media can see the holes in that argument:
The news article, which gives details on the content of the complaint, says the complaint alleges that Adams J had made 'unjustified findings' which 'reflect adversely and very unfairly on the officers', and that '[t]he lack of concern the judge has shown for due process and natural justice in his comments about the officers' actions stand in complete contrast to the great care he took to determine that the officers had not complied with the applicable requirements.'
The grounds of the complaint are, and always were, bogus. Adams J's findings were entirely justified, there was plenty of evidence to support them. If those findings reflect adversely on the officers involved, then perhaps ASIO should stop kidnapping people. It should also be borne in mind that the identities of the ASIO officers were suppressed in the judgment -- all that the world at large knows is that ASIO officers B14 and B15 broke the law. Only people within ASIO or other government agencies who know the identities of B14 and B15 would know that they are the individuals who kidnapped Ul-Haque, and they're not likely to care.
As for the natural justice claim, even the news media can see the holes in that argument:
Late last year, the ASIO director-general, Paul O'Sullivan, complained the agents had not had a chance to rebut the charges. But the two ASIO officers - known as B15 and B16 - had in fact given evidence to Justice Adams, who found their testimony unconvincing and, at times, untruthful.They forgot to mention 'evasive', 'dishonest', and the other choice terms used by Adams J to describe the ASIO officer's evidence.
For those who are interested, I've made a PDF version of the paper on Creative Commons licences and warranty issues which I referred to in previous postings. It's an assessment paper and consequently wasn't written to the same standard as it would have been if it was for publication. The paper also had to comply with a word limit, so its treatment of some areas is necessarily superficial. I'd be interested in reader's comments.
In my last posting, I talked about the problem of people purporting to license material under a Creative Commons licence, where they had no right to do so. One such scenario is:
So what do you do? You sue A. Except that the terms of the CC licence try very hard to prevent you from doing that. See for example cl 5-6 of the CC Attribution 3.0 unported licence:
This is serious stuff. The version 1.0 licences expressly warranted that 'to the best of Licensor's knowledge after reasonable inquiry ... Licensor has secured all rights in the Work necessary to grant the license rights hereunder and to permit the lawful exercise of the rights granted hereunder ...' The post-1.0 licences basically say 'I give you the right to reuse this stuff, but I refuse to say whether I'm the copyright holder, and if I'm not, you can't sue me.'
The disclaimer and limitation of liability clauses aren't air-tight, or at least not in all cases. If there was fraud involved, they wouldn't be effective. There may be applicable warranties which are implied by statute which the licensor can't contract out of. A court might hold that these clauses aren't sufficient to contract out of liability in negligence.
The paper which I referred to in my previous posting explores these issues in more detail. The deletion of warranties after the 1.0 licences has a lot of history (involving much dummy-spitting and beating of chests), and I don't defend everything that the 1.0 licences warranted -- they went too far in some areas. But I think that the post-1.0 licences have gone too far in the other direction -- by disclaiming warranties as to the validity of the licence, and attempting to contract out of all liability, IMHO they disclaim too much to be useful, or at least, they disclaim too much to fulfil their stated goals.
- A finds a copyright picture of a cat on the Internet;
- A inserts a humorous caption, and publishes the resulting captioned picture on flickr under a Creative Commons licence which permits commercial re-use;
- B finds the picture on flickr, and starts selling t-shirts with the picture on them, not realising that they are infringing copyright;
- C, the person who owns the copyright in the original picture, finds out that B is infringing their copyright and sues B. (Yes, they could also sue A, but lets assume B has deeper pockets and is a more attractive target)
So what do you do? You sue A. Except that the terms of the CC licence try very hard to prevent you from doing that. See for example cl 5-6 of the CC Attribution 3.0 unported licence:
5. Representations, Warranties and Disclaimer
UNLESS OTHERWISE MUTUALLY AGREED TO BY THE PARTIES IN WRITING, LICENSOR OFFERS THE WORK AS-IS AND MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND CONCERNING THE WORK, EXPRESS, IMPLIED, STATUTORY OR OTHERWISE, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, WARRANTIES OF TITLE, MERCHANTIBILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, NONINFRINGEMENT, OR THE ABSENCE OF LATENT OR OTHER DEFECTS, ACCURACY, OR THE PRESENCE OF ABSENCE OF ERRORS, WHETHER OR NOT DISCOVERABLE. SOME JURISDICTIONS DO NOT ALLOW THE EXCLUSION OF IMPLIED WARRANTIES, SO SUCH EXCLUSION MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU.
6. Limitation on Liability. EXCEPT TO THE EXTENT REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW, IN NO EVENT WILL LICENSOR BE LIABLE TO YOU ON ANY LEGAL THEORY FOR ANY SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR EXEMPLARY DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THIS LICENSE OR THE USE OF THE WORK, EVEN IF LICENSOR HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
This is serious stuff. The version 1.0 licences expressly warranted that 'to the best of Licensor's knowledge after reasonable inquiry ... Licensor has secured all rights in the Work necessary to grant the license rights hereunder and to permit the lawful exercise of the rights granted hereunder ...' The post-1.0 licences basically say 'I give you the right to reuse this stuff, but I refuse to say whether I'm the copyright holder, and if I'm not, you can't sue me.'
The disclaimer and limitation of liability clauses aren't air-tight, or at least not in all cases. If there was fraud involved, they wouldn't be effective. There may be applicable warranties which are implied by statute which the licensor can't contract out of. A court might hold that these clauses aren't sufficient to contract out of liability in negligence.
The paper which I referred to in my previous posting explores these issues in more detail. The deletion of warranties after the 1.0 licences has a lot of history (involving much dummy-spitting and beating of chests), and I don't defend everything that the 1.0 licences warranted -- they went too far in some areas. But I think that the post-1.0 licences have gone too far in the other direction -- by disclaiming warranties as to the validity of the licence, and attempting to contract out of all liability, IMHO they disclaim too much to be useful, or at least, they disclaim too much to fulfil their stated goals.
Given my apparent reputation as being 'anti-copyright' (which I'm not), you'd think I would be a major supporter of things such as the Creative Commons project -- but I'm not. Creative Commons has got far too many bugs and other assorted problems for my liking. Many months ago I wrote a paper describing some of the faults that I perceive with the licenses and the movement, one day I'll probably clean it up and publish it on the net. I might even publish it under a Creative Commons licence.
I can do this, because it's an original literary work, and I'm the author, so I own the copyright which subsists in it, and I can license it as I please. But some people don't know or don't care about little details like that.
Take as an example the Flickr user anomalous4. It might be unfair to single them out for criticism on this issue, since I'm sure there are thousands of other people out there doing the same thing, but they seem to be a fairly clear-cut example of the problem, and they came to my attention after one of their pictures was posted on Cute Overload today.
Yes, it's a cute pic. Click on it, and you end up on the page for that pic on flickr. The description of the picture? "don't know source of pic." They have other lolcats on their flickr profile, here's another one. The description of that one? "Original from ????? don't know".
I'm inferring from the descriptions that anomalous4 has given those images that they have found the original cat pictures from somewhere, edited the pictures to insert a humerous caption, and put them on their flickr profile. The problem is, anomalous4 has purported to license both of those images under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 licence, which they almost certainly had no right to do. You can't give people permission to use copyright material that you've just randomly appropriated from somewhere on the Internet because it was cute.
This is an admittedly trivial example. It's not likely that the original copyright owner would find out that this was happening, they may not care, and they probably wouldn't sue. The risk to people who reproduce anomalous4's CC-licensed lolcats is pretty tiny. But then again, cute overload might put it in their 2009 calendar, and get sued by an angry litigious photographer who thinks they've stolen their photo.
My point is this, and it was a major theme of the paper that I wrote criticizing the CC licences: When you release material under a CC licence, you are inviting other people to reuse it and purporting to give them permission to do so. If you don't have the right to license that material, the people who reuse it could get sued. You owe it to them to only CC-license material which you have the right to license. Usually, that will mean that it's your own original work (sticking a caption on somebody else's cat photo doesn't count) or that the non-original components were also CC-licensed.
I can do this, because it's an original literary work, and I'm the author, so I own the copyright which subsists in it, and I can license it as I please. But some people don't know or don't care about little details like that.
Take as an example the Flickr user anomalous4. It might be unfair to single them out for criticism on this issue, since I'm sure there are thousands of other people out there doing the same thing, but they seem to be a fairly clear-cut example of the problem, and they came to my attention after one of their pictures was posted on Cute Overload today.
Yes, it's a cute pic. Click on it, and you end up on the page for that pic on flickr. The description of the picture? "don't know source of pic." They have other lolcats on their flickr profile, here's another one. The description of that one? "Original from ????? don't know".
I'm inferring from the descriptions that anomalous4 has given those images that they have found the original cat pictures from somewhere, edited the pictures to insert a humerous caption, and put them on their flickr profile. The problem is, anomalous4 has purported to license both of those images under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 licence, which they almost certainly had no right to do. You can't give people permission to use copyright material that you've just randomly appropriated from somewhere on the Internet because it was cute.
This is an admittedly trivial example. It's not likely that the original copyright owner would find out that this was happening, they may not care, and they probably wouldn't sue. The risk to people who reproduce anomalous4's CC-licensed lolcats is pretty tiny. But then again, cute overload might put it in their 2009 calendar, and get sued by an angry litigious photographer who thinks they've stolen their photo.
My point is this, and it was a major theme of the paper that I wrote criticizing the CC licences: When you release material under a CC licence, you are inviting other people to reuse it and purporting to give them permission to do so. If you don't have the right to license that material, the people who reuse it could get sued. You owe it to them to only CC-license material which you have the right to license. Usually, that will mean that it's your own original work (sticking a caption on somebody else's cat photo doesn't count) or that the non-original components were also CC-licensed.
Today's issue of the 'Communications Day' newsletter (a very expensive trade newsletter, which has kindly given me a free trial subscription, because god knows I couldn't afford to buy it) contains a story which reads in part:
What Conroy describes as 'hysteria' has largely been the product of comments attributed to him and his spokespeople. A fair reading of those comments (e.g. 'filtering'; protecting children; blocking 'inappropriate' or 'offensive' content; the very use of the term 'clean feed'; etc) supports the inference that what Labor are proposing is a very wide-ranging filtering system based on content analysis of Internet material, rather than a more minimal solution such as a blacklist of confirmed child pornography. Indeed, the ability to 'opt-out' seems to be a key part of Labor's scheme -- and why on earth would they allow people to opt out of a blacklisting system that only targeted child pornography or other illegal content?
A fair reading of everything that Conroy and his spokespeople have said to date supports the conclusion that Labor have a much broader censorship scheme in mind -- one that could employ content analysis filtering which would block access to offensive/inappropriate material unless opted-out of. If this is in fact not what Labor have in mind, then their comments are equivocal at best, and at worst have unnecessarily caused the hysteria that they're now trying to quell.
Which brings me to my next point: if what me, EFA, and the media have been saying is 'hysteria', then why doesn't Conroy set the record straight now? If they know what they're proposing, intending, or considering implementing, why wait six weeks to tell us? The delay in announcing further details about their intentions will create the perception, rightly or wrongly, that they don't yet know what their intentions are. And if this is true, perhaps they shouldn't be making sweeping statements to the media which suggest a worst-case scenario?
In the absence of firm, announced details about Labor's intentions, the only thing that their critics can respond to is their comments to the media. The best way to quell the alleged hysteria is to release the details, and release them now. Then Labor's various critics can address the details of their plans, rather than what can be inferred from their published sound-bites.
Oh, and while we're on the topic of hysteria, ad hominem attacks such as "if people equate freedom of speech with watching child pornography, then the Rudd Labor Government is going to disagree" aren't conducive to productive, reasoned debate, and arguably qualify as hysteria themselves.
Conroy promises to douse internet filter concernsThis raises a number of interesting points.
Communications minister Stephen Conroy will move to quell hysteria over internet content filtering plans and outline a full policy development strategy in late February.
...
Conroy's office confirmed yesterday that the minister will delay making more detail available until the IIA general meeting on February 21. He is expected to elaborate on ACMA's filtering trial to begin shortly in Tasmania, as well as a consultation and implementation timeline.
What Conroy describes as 'hysteria' has largely been the product of comments attributed to him and his spokespeople. A fair reading of those comments (e.g. 'filtering'; protecting children; blocking 'inappropriate' or 'offensive' content; the very use of the term 'clean feed'; etc) supports the inference that what Labor are proposing is a very wide-ranging filtering system based on content analysis of Internet material, rather than a more minimal solution such as a blacklist of confirmed child pornography. Indeed, the ability to 'opt-out' seems to be a key part of Labor's scheme -- and why on earth would they allow people to opt out of a blacklisting system that only targeted child pornography or other illegal content?
A fair reading of everything that Conroy and his spokespeople have said to date supports the conclusion that Labor have a much broader censorship scheme in mind -- one that could employ content analysis filtering which would block access to offensive/inappropriate material unless opted-out of. If this is in fact not what Labor have in mind, then their comments are equivocal at best, and at worst have unnecessarily caused the hysteria that they're now trying to quell.
Which brings me to my next point: if what me, EFA, and the media have been saying is 'hysteria', then why doesn't Conroy set the record straight now? If they know what they're proposing, intending, or considering implementing, why wait six weeks to tell us? The delay in announcing further details about their intentions will create the perception, rightly or wrongly, that they don't yet know what their intentions are. And if this is true, perhaps they shouldn't be making sweeping statements to the media which suggest a worst-case scenario?
In the absence of firm, announced details about Labor's intentions, the only thing that their critics can respond to is their comments to the media. The best way to quell the alleged hysteria is to release the details, and release them now. Then Labor's various critics can address the details of their plans, rather than what can be inferred from their published sound-bites.
Oh, and while we're on the topic of hysteria, ad hominem attacks such as "if people equate freedom of speech with watching child pornography, then the Rudd Labor Government is going to disagree" aren't conducive to productive, reasoned debate, and arguably qualify as hysteria themselves.
It's pretty sad when an Australian political debate starts looking like an episode of South Park, but that's what is happening at the moment. Conroy's (fairly transparent) attempts to make Labor's Internet censorship plans bulletproof by playing the 'child pornography' card are having some effect, at least amongst 'save the children' campaigners.
The article Filters needed to battle child porn, appearing in yesterday's Australian IT, and written by Bernadette McMenamin, the CEO of 'Child Wise', begins: [emphasis added throughout]
Supporting freedom of speech as I do, I support McMenamin's right to express her opinion on this important issue, as it is my right to respond by labelling her position even more extreme and fanatical than those of the non-decent human beings (such as myself) that she is attacking.
McMenamin's position seems to be that the government should do anything which might have the effect of reducing the trade in child pornography, regardless of whether it will be effective, whether it is technically possible, the monetary cost, the practical consequences, and the cost to the civil liberties of every person living in Australia. A weighing of the benefits against the costs isn't required; we're talking about children here! If you don't support it, then you hate children.
Which brings me back to South Park. In episode 30 of South Park, called 'Gnomes', a television advertisement is aired in favour of Proposition 10 on a forthcoming public balot. Proposition 10 would kick a giant chain of coffee stores (Harbucks) out of town, and the South Park kids are enlisted for pro-proposition 10 propaganda. I couldn't find a video of the advert, but the audio is available here (have a listen!).
The TV ad concludes with 'Prop 10 is about children. Vote yes on prop 10, or else you hate children. You don't hate children.... do you?'
This is what McMenamin's argument boils down to. If you oppose Labor's censorship plans, you're in favor of child pornography, therefore you're a despicable human being and hate children. I think perhaps she needs to realise that Labor's proposal is not about child pornography, and accept that playing the 'child pornography' card does not exempt any proposal from an evaluation on its merits and weighing of the benefits against the costs.
Distribution of child pornography is an abhorrent crime, to be sure, but even accused child pornographers enjoy the same civil liberties as every other person in this country. If you subscribe to McMenamin's theory that no price is too high to reduce the prevalence of child pornography, perhaps we should do away with some other civil liberties while we're at it. After all, people accused of child pornography offences don't really deserve the right to a presumption of innocence. Making the government prove their case beyond all reasonable doubt isn't really necessary, and requiring the police to have search warrants before they kick in somebody's door looking for child pornography is just unnecessary paperwork. This is about saving the children! Sacrifices need to be made! I don't understand how any decent human being could support a child pornographer being innocent until proven guilty!
As I conclude this little exercise of my free speech rights, rights which McMenamin, Conroy, and their ilk seem only too happy to sacrifice on the altar of 'saving the children', I'll point out that McMenamin's own website -- www.childwise.net -- would probably be blocked by the automated content filters that she is so keen to force upon the rest of us. It contains references to delightful terms such as 'child prostitution', 'child pornography', 'child porn', 'sex with children', 'pedophile', 'child sex tourism', 'sex trafficking', 'child sex trade', and so forth. Content filters aren't good at determining context; such as telling the difference between a website which is promoting 'child sex tourism' and a website which opposes it.
But I'm sure that having her own website blocked to most Australians is a small price to pay. After all, this is about saving the children, people!
The article Filters needed to battle child porn, appearing in yesterday's Australian IT, and written by Bernadette McMenamin, the CEO of 'Child Wise', begins: [emphasis added throughout]
IT is beyond belief that some representatives of the Australian internet service provider industry are reluctant to install filters that would prevent access to child pornography.There you have it. If you oppose Labor's plan, you are not a decent human being, or you might be an 'extreme civil rights group' (I'm guessing she means EFA), or you care more about profits than the protection of children. If not for the fact that I'm a fairly thick-skinned individual, who happens to care about civil liberties such as freedom of speech, I'd probably sue McMenamin for defamation.
Surely any decent person would do all they can to protect children. However there exists a small but vocal group in Australia which is opposed to the federal Government's proposal to introduce mandatory ISP filtering to block child pornography and other illegal content.
...
In 2005 the United States National Center for Missing and Exploited Children revealed that 40 per cent of arrested child pornography possessors sexually abused children. The most disturbing trend is that the demand for sexual images of babies and toddlers and images of children being sexually tortured is increasing. This is the reality and I cannot comprehend how any decent human could oppose any initiative that aims to curb this evil trade.
...
So what could possibly be the arguments against ISP filtering from elements of the ISP industry and extreme civil rights groups. Well they have stated that it may "slow down the internet", "is expensive to use" and the clean feed system which is being used in the United Kingdom has faults, despite blocking access to hundreds of thousands of child pornography images. Do they care more about profits than the protection of children?
Supporting freedom of speech as I do, I support McMenamin's right to express her opinion on this important issue, as it is my right to respond by labelling her position even more extreme and fanatical than those of the non-decent human beings (such as myself) that she is attacking.
McMenamin's position seems to be that the government should do anything which might have the effect of reducing the trade in child pornography, regardless of whether it will be effective, whether it is technically possible, the monetary cost, the practical consequences, and the cost to the civil liberties of every person living in Australia. A weighing of the benefits against the costs isn't required; we're talking about children here! If you don't support it, then you hate children.
Which brings me back to South Park. In episode 30 of South Park, called 'Gnomes', a television advertisement is aired in favour of Proposition 10 on a forthcoming public balot. Proposition 10 would kick a giant chain of coffee stores (Harbucks) out of town, and the South Park kids are enlisted for pro-proposition 10 propaganda. I couldn't find a video of the advert, but the audio is available here (have a listen!).
The TV ad concludes with 'Prop 10 is about children. Vote yes on prop 10, or else you hate children. You don't hate children.... do you?'
This is what McMenamin's argument boils down to. If you oppose Labor's censorship plans, you're in favor of child pornography, therefore you're a despicable human being and hate children. I think perhaps she needs to realise that Labor's proposal is not about child pornography, and accept that playing the 'child pornography' card does not exempt any proposal from an evaluation on its merits and weighing of the benefits against the costs.
Distribution of child pornography is an abhorrent crime, to be sure, but even accused child pornographers enjoy the same civil liberties as every other person in this country. If you subscribe to McMenamin's theory that no price is too high to reduce the prevalence of child pornography, perhaps we should do away with some other civil liberties while we're at it. After all, people accused of child pornography offences don't really deserve the right to a presumption of innocence. Making the government prove their case beyond all reasonable doubt isn't really necessary, and requiring the police to have search warrants before they kick in somebody's door looking for child pornography is just unnecessary paperwork. This is about saving the children! Sacrifices need to be made! I don't understand how any decent human being could support a child pornographer being innocent until proven guilty!
As I conclude this little exercise of my free speech rights, rights which McMenamin, Conroy, and their ilk seem only too happy to sacrifice on the altar of 'saving the children', I'll point out that McMenamin's own website -- www.childwise.net -- would probably be blocked by the automated content filters that she is so keen to force upon the rest of us. It contains references to delightful terms such as 'child prostitution', 'child pornography', 'child porn', 'sex with children', 'pedophile', 'child sex tourism', 'sex trafficking', 'child sex trade', and so forth. Content filters aren't good at determining context; such as telling the difference between a website which is promoting 'child sex tourism' and a website which opposes it.
But I'm sure that having her own website blocked to most Australians is a small price to pay. After all, this is about saving the children, people!
The Australian has a good article today about Senator Conroy's marvelous plans to censor the intarwebs, to save the children of course. Or is it about stopping child pornography? I wish they'd make up their minds.
In any case, the article is very good, but the claims made and quotes from people in it are just screaming out for rebuttal, so here is the article (indented and in italics), with my commentary dispersed throughout (not indented):
In any case, the article is very good, but the claims made and quotes from people in it are just screaming out for rebuttal, so here is the article (indented and in italics), with my commentary dispersed throughout (not indented):
BROADBAND Minister Stephen Conroy faces an uphill struggle in his plans to increase internet censorship by boosting the official blacklist from a puny 1000 web pages to many millions of banned websites.I'm not sure Conroy wants to increase the size of the official blacklist per se, I think his current plan is to force content-based filtering upon everybody.
Industry commentators say the task may be beyond the capabilities of filtering mechanisms and procedures, and it would be impossible to block all such material.I agree completely.
The scope of the problem is, however, immense. Policing child pornography alone could be beyond present capabilities.
Continue reading The Australian article on Conroy's censorship plans.
Somebody has setup a hilarious parody of Conroy's Internet censorship plans at www.netalarmed.com. My hat is off to the creators of that site, it's well worth a look.
It's been a busy week.
The media have gone into a feeding frenzy over Labor's election commitment to 'save the children' by forcing ISP-based Internet filtering upon everybody in the country, unless they specifically opt out of it. Nothing in particular seems to have precipitated this feeding frenzy. I have it on good faith from Senator Conroy's office that there have been no new announcements (apart from some new comments to the media equating freedom of speech with watching child pornography), and nothing has changed since they announced this before the election. It looks like one journo decided to write a follow-up article, which started a chain-reaction of scathing scorn and condemnation.
I find it somewhat amusing how media outlets feed of each other in this way. For instance, I can pretty much guarantee that if I'm quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald about anything remotely topical and newsworthy, I'll be getting phone calls from ABC radio stations throughout the country wanting to do interviews. It's somewhat ironic that an EFA media release doesn't have the impact that one story on smh.com.au does.
Anyhow, the media are really laying the boot into Labor's plans. They weren't this critical back in 1999 when the Coalition were proposing more or less the same thing. Perhaps with FOI becoming a waste of time and money, civil liberties increasingly going down the tubes, and the growth of a culture of secrecy at the Commonwealth level, the media outlets are taking the adverse potential of this scheme seriously.
A random assortment of media coverage:
The media have gone into a feeding frenzy over Labor's election commitment to 'save the children' by forcing ISP-based Internet filtering upon everybody in the country, unless they specifically opt out of it. Nothing in particular seems to have precipitated this feeding frenzy. I have it on good faith from Senator Conroy's office that there have been no new announcements (apart from some new comments to the media equating freedom of speech with watching child pornography), and nothing has changed since they announced this before the election. It looks like one journo decided to write a follow-up article, which started a chain-reaction of scathing scorn and condemnation.
I find it somewhat amusing how media outlets feed of each other in this way. For instance, I can pretty much guarantee that if I'm quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald about anything remotely topical and newsworthy, I'll be getting phone calls from ABC radio stations throughout the country wanting to do interviews. It's somewhat ironic that an EFA media release doesn't have the impact that one story on smh.com.au does.
Anyhow, the media are really laying the boot into Labor's plans. They weren't this critical back in 1999 when the Coalition were proposing more or less the same thing. Perhaps with FOI becoming a waste of time and money, civil liberties increasingly going down the tubes, and the growth of a culture of secrecy at the Commonwealth level, the media outlets are taking the adverse potential of this scheme seriously.
A random assortment of media coverage:
ITWire, New Australian Government tries totalitarian Net censorshipEFA's press release is here and an earlier analysis of their policy is here.
The Australian, Net-nanny state worth watching
AFP, Australia's plans to filter Internet under fire
Australian IT, Labor online strategy slammed
Al Jazeera (yes, seriously), Rudd's 'clean web' plan criticised
The Courier Mail, Censorship must be left to parents
ITWire, One small but significant step towards Internet censorship
Scopical, Plan to filter Australian internet a 'dud' says EFA
IT News, EFA attacks Labor's 'clean-feed' Internet proposal
