The Australian article on Conroy's censorship plans

According to Bernadette McMenamin, the chief executive of anti-child-abuse group Child Wise, more than 100,000 commercial websites offer child pornography and more than 20,000 images of child pornography are posted on the internet every week.

Various international groups have estimated the number of child pornography websites alone to be in the millions, while one local internet service provider told The Australian it could be as high as 30 million sites globally.

According to Homer Simpson, 95% of all statistics are made up on the spot.  I suspect these ones were too.  Moreover, these are the very best kind of statistics -- the kind that absolutely positively can't be disproved by anybody with a mind to do so.

Want to see the information on which these statistics are based?  They won't show you it.  EFA had to fight a Freedom of Information Request all the way to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal because the ABA wouldn't release any information about any sites on the 'official blacklist'.  The argument goes that if they have to show these details to anybody, then people will stop complaining about illegal material, and organisations such as 'Inhope' (International Association of Internet Hotlines) will shun them.

Even if you had a list of this alleged 100,000 commercial websites offering child pornography, how are you supposed to verify it?  You would be breaking the law if you looked at even one of them to see if it did, in fact, contain child pornography.

I am sure that there is child pornography on the Internet.  Nobody denies it.  I think that the prevalence of child pornography is being blown out of all proportion by groups such as Child Wise, who have their own agendas to further.  I also think that the child pornography which does exist on the Internet is sufficiently well hidden (AFAIK, it is illegal to distribute or possess it in practically every country in the world) that it is highly unlikely to come to the attention of the average Internet user, unless they were actually seeking out child pornography.  And if they are seeking out child pornography, I don't think Conroy's little scheme is going to stop them.

I think we also need to be clear about the terms we're using here.  'Child pornography' is pornography depicting actual children.  A naked picture of an actual 18 year old who might appear 17 years old is not child pornography.  If a story involving sex with under-age characters constitutes child pornography, better put Romeo and Juliet on the official blacklist.  While we're banning Shakespeare, put The Merchant of Venice on the official blacklist, it incites racial hatred against Jews.

Senator Conroy's office is, however, not deterred.

Of course not, if government were deterred from doing anything which was impossible and a waste of money, they'd never get anything done.

"Admittedly, it will be difficult, but that's the intention," Senator Conroy's spokeswoman said yesterday. "Obviously there are many sites out there and they change their names. It's going to require a fairly vigilant monitoring system and it's not going to be 100 per cent foolproof."

Conroy is so far sticking pretty closely to the 'child pornography' party line.  There are at least three 'pornography' issues here however:

1. Access to child pornography.  It's already illegal.  An expensive ineffective filter isn't going to do anything;
2. Access by children to adult pornography.  This is an issue for their parents or guardians.  They wouldn't let them watch a late-night horror movie unsupervised, or buy pornographic magazines at the corner newsagent, why do they treat the Internet as a babysitter?
   
3. Access by adults to adult pornography.  Underneath all the government posturing, this is what I suspect the plan is really about.  Pornography is bad, sinful, immoral, there ought to be a law, and so forth.
   

Long-time online free speech advocate Irene Graham said ISP filters could be circumvented simply by using proxies such as Google Translate or Google caching. "ISP filtering systems are going to be looking for the URLs of blocked sites, but if you can get the link up through a Google page, it will not be recognised," Ms Graham said.

"PC-based filters such as Net Nanny and CyberPatrol solve this problem by blocking anonymising proxies that people can legitimately use to visit a website without revealing their real internet protocol address.

"Because home filters are designed to protect the child using the system, there is a trade-off in favour of blocking those services for safety reasons.

"One shouldn't try to apply this across the entire population, but if you don't people will be able to get around ISP filters."

They shouldn't, but they probably will.  I doubt that the government would or will acknowledge any legitimate usage of such services.  After all, they're only used by people with something to hide, aren't they?

The internet regulator, the Australian Communications and Media Authority, has struggled to stem the flow of prohibited web content, as most of the material is hosted offshore. Moreover, it can only act on complaints.

In 2006-07, there were only 602 complaints, resulting in five take-down orders over locally hosted content; 494 overseas-hosted items were referred to internet filter makers for inclusion in their products.

602 complaints, five take-down notices, for content which could have remained on the Internet (and probably did) by simply shifting its hosting overseas, and 494 new items for the 'official blacklist'.  And the government spent how many million dollars to accomplish this?

The US is by far the largest source of illegal and offensive material. In 2006-07, it accounted for 53 per cent of the total, according to ACMA, followed by Russia at 11 per cent.

The US has a little thing called the First Amendment which protects their freedom of speech, at least most of the time.  It means that their government can't stop them accessing pornography just because the government decides that pornography is 'offensive'.  It's unfortunate that we Australians have nothing to stop the government imposing their conservative moral agenda on us.

ACMA's Donald Robertson confirmed there were "currently 1000 pages on the blacklist".

"We're also part of an international network that generates 300,000 investigations per year into offensive and illegal internet pages," he said. "The majority of these investigations relate to child pornography."

More unverifiable statistics.

Senator Conroy's spokeswoman said the blacklist would be expanded through liaison with the Australian Federal Police, and international agencies such as Interpol and the FBI. She said technical difficulties would be resolved in filtering trials being conducted by the ACMA in Tasmania. "We have a lot of experts coming to us saying, this can be done," she said.

I'm sure that the Federal Police would be delighted to help expand the official blacklist.  Just before the election, the Coalition introduced a Bill into the Senate that would allow them to ban Internet content by decree.  God knows that the Federal Police have got nothing better to do with their time.

I'm sure that the government have a lot of 'experts' coming to them saying that 'this can be done'.  They're saying that because they're selling the filtering software.  The fact that every ISP in the country is saying the opposite doesn't count for much.

The last I heard, the trial in Tasmania was aborted because nobody tendered to conduct the trial.  Will be interesting to see what develops from this.

"We'll be testing the best overseas models, the best advice and the best new technologies." Three previous trials by ACMA - in 2001, 2003 and 2005 - all found problems, including filters allowing banned material through and wrongly blocking legitimate content. A test of six filters recorded a relative loss of network performance ranging from 18 at best and 78 per cent at worst.

I'm confidant that any fairly conducted, balanced trial conducted in 2008 will show the same results.

Senator Conroy has been prodded into action by Family First senator Steve Fielding, and the Australian Family Association, which scorned the former government's $85 million free filters for families package as wholly inadequate.

Now it becomes clearer who's pulling the government's strings on this issue.  Labor will need Senator Fielding's support to get legislation through the Senate if it's opposed by the Coalition.  Fielding is shaping up as the new Harradine of the upper house.

It called for automated content filtering technology to scan for objectionable content, and a new "grey list" of sites, such as those promoting anorexia.

Now the true colours of this scheme begin to show itself.  Promoting anorexia is out.  Presumably, he will also want to ban anything promoting abortion, contraception, gay rights, gay marriage, being gay, pre-marital sex, and anything else that his right-wing conservative Christian morality objects to.

Filter provider NetAlert says that in the five months since former communications minister Helen Coonan announced the $85 million National Filter Scheme, it has received 110,000 download requests for free filters, and 27,000 orders for filters on CD-ROM.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, about 1.2 million households with broadband access have children younger than 15.

Mass blocking at the ISP level has prompted an outbreak of protest blogs, including NetAlarmed, a satirical website, created by Michael Meloni.

"I started the site last September to show voters what the ALP was planning, and how far internet censorship can go," he said.

"It may start with an opt-out provision, but once they have that control, in future anything can happen."

The Brisbane-based internet production manager said Senator Conroy had dismissed free speech concerns, basically branding "those who disagree with him as child pornographers".

"I find it amusing that the site Mr Rudd used to help win the youth vote, YouTube.com, could well be banned under the scheme because it contains content that requires an adult perspective," Mr Meloni said.

Youtube would be banned under the existing scheme, because they have R-rated content on their website, and their method for verifying that their users are 18 or over doesn't comply with the government's requirements.  Therefore, it goes on the 'official blacklist'.