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Australia’s internet filter could cut speed by 60%
by Scott Gilbreath ~ November 19th, 2008
Australia’s proposed nation-wide compulsory internet filter will cause a major reduction in web access speeds. Senator Stephen Conroy, Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy is the point man for mandatory internet censorship down under.
The key shortcoming is ISP filtering will slow down the web to all Australians by as much as 60 per cent, depending on the sophistication of the filtering program that your ISP has in place.
Australia has one of the slowest broadband delivery systems in the OECD and if Conroy has his way, it’s going to get a lot slower.
There is also solid evidence that the system will be ineffective and unnecessary.
[I]n the Australian Communications and Media Authority’s (ACMA) 2005 report, Kids Online at Home, 50 per cent of parents trusted their children not to head off to the web’s dark corners and 67 per cent of parents reported supervising their children’s internet use to some degree.
The overall view of the report is that there are filters currently in place and that these filters are of the safer, saner type, stemming directly from parental authority.
[…]
The rock spiders who download this [child pornography] material do not Google search their way onto a web site. For the most part, paedophiles operate in sophisticated and complex networks and rely heavily on peer to peer (P2P) technology which ISP filtering cannot prevent.
This is shaping up as another costly and pointless government boondoggle that will have negligible effect on the alleged problem but will impose huge costs on citizens who have done nothing wrong. Kinda like Canada’s gun registry.
h/t: Andrew Bolt
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November 19th, 2008 at 06:08 PM
[...] AUSTRALIA’S internet filter could cut speed by 60% …. [...]
November 20th, 2008 at 03:26 AM
Porn and gambling already slow the internet by 70%, I don’t know what your problem is?
So we block some porn and gain overhead, add some filtering and lose overhead and come out 10% faster.
The real boondoggle here are all the “experts” who conveniently forget that porn makes up over 50% of web traffic and that some filtering will speed up the networks…
Oh, I forgot, most of those opposed to the filtering are those EARNING from the pron…. ISP account sellers…
Oh how silly of me, you cannot fight people’s desire to earn off porn, that rarely works.
Oops, their halos are slipping… lol
November 20th, 2008 at 09:31 AM
You could do right about the net gain in access speed but, since the government will be overseeing the filter, I wouldn’t count on it.
November 22nd, 2008 at 08:34 PM
At the instigation of the Moral Right and the Australian Christian Lobby, the Australian Government is proposing, and is about to trial a compulsory internet ‘Clean Feed’.
From the outset let me say this, I fully applaud any attempt to curb the trade of child pornography; but I appear to be out of step with my Christian brethren because I do not believe that compulsory internet filtering is the answer to the proliferation of this perversion. Such material will still freely enter the country on CD’s and the like and be shared freely on peer-to-peer networks, and even school kids know how to circumvent filtering systems.
I believe that the only way to prevent perversion is a change of the perverts heart, and censorship will do nothing. Drugs are illegal and prevented from entering the country, but they are still readily accessible! It is clear that you cannot legislate morality.
I won’t even go into the technological difficulties, ineffectiveness, and expense of this scheme.
What this system will do, in my opinion, is to open the floodgates of thought suppression, such as exists in the repressed societies of Iran and North Korea. Political censorship may not be on the minds of this present regime, but compulsory internet filtering provides an opening to the policing of thought. We don’t even have a right to know what is being blocked! Already on the proposed list are sites on controversial topics such as euthanasia, suicide and anorexia. How do they seperate the pro sites from support groups.
I believe in is religious and political freedom. How long before some of my favourite sites are rendered inaccessible to me by beauracrats and politicians who may not agree with my political or religious leanings? I do not have to remind the Church that Christian sites are already censored in Iran, North Korea and China.
It is time for the Christian Right to stop their support of this ridiculous notion, and start doing as they were told by Jesus – to feed the poor, clothe the naked, heal the sick. That is the way that we can change our society, not by imposing rules, restrictions and censorship.
Even in my town people are still going hungry and are homeless while we, as Christians, rely on the Government to do what is our God-given responsibility. If Christians were to act in a manner fitting their calling, people would be drawn to the Gospel, and the pornography trade would die a natural death.
As it is, society sees us (Christians) as a group of generally unhearing and aloof wowsers, seeking only to mandate and control.
The money being squandered on this scheme would be better spent on giving law enforcement more tools to protect children from this abuse.