Stephen Conroy does not have an Internet license

In the last few days Conroy has proposed that in order to protect ‘working families’ from all the porn their kids are going to access on their government bought laptops, we need mandatory ISP level censorship of “questionable content”. There would be an option to ‘opt out’, but being the cynical individual I am, it concerns me that the default option is censorship.

The problems are thus:

1. ISP’s will, by necessity, maintain a list of people who ‘opt out’ of the clean feed. A database of porn surfing perverts, if you will. The prospect of having this information sold on to third parties, or used to blackmail Family First candidates in Western Sydney seats, is alarming.
2. This will slow the internet down. Conroy holds up Britain as a shining example of how filtering can occur with minimal slowdown, but he neglects to mention that they only filter child porn, not porn in general (though apparently he covers this with another, equally nonsensical statement, see the next point).

3. “If people equate freedom of speech with watching child pornography, then the Rudd-Labor Government is going to disagree.”

   Apparently general pornography and kiddy porn are the exact same thing, which must be a relief for Milton Orkopolous, who can now decide to ‘opt out’ of laws which stop him watching toddlers being ploughed with gardening implements.

4. Optus already offers an ISP level filtered service. It’s been spectacularly unsuccessful, because that’s not what parents want.

When the Government creates imaginary problems, or believes that technology can ever be a substitute for good parenting, or reasons that fascism solved Germany’s inflation problems, so it can fix
fucking anything, you know you’re in shit.

This post would not exist under mandatory ISP filtering.