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Won't internet filtering reduce internet speeds?
I condemn the filter plan mainly on basis of the snail's pace our connections will be reduced to and the money that it will cost the government but also on the ineffectivness of any filter and my disgust that any democratic government would attempt to censor the media in such a way.
Posted by Sam, Wollongong / 10 Dec 2008 7:22pm / Permalink
Why spend a fortune on speeding up the internet, when you then slow it down again with filters?
Posted by Neil / 10 Dec 2008 6:29pm / Permalink
For a gov that rightly pointed out pre-election the abysmal state of Oz broadband and it's lack of speed, I can't for the life of me see why you'd now turn around and implement something that does exactly the reverse of increasing it's speed. I can only infer that you were lying pre-election when you spoke of bringing in some great broadband infrastructure that would see our net here able to at least be competitive with overseas. To slow it down by anything (let alone 80%) is monumentally stupid and I'd never have thought such an idea could've come from a group of people who gave the impression of intelligence during the election campaign.
Posted by smokey / 10 Dec 2008 8:54pm / Permalink
You have given us the National Broadband Network, which *should* bring us up to some standards and help us recover from the damage that Telstra's monopoly (prior to ADSL2/naked) has done. However, for some reason which defies all logic, the DBCDE wants to implement a filter which has proven to slow down Internet access by up to 80% and block legit content."
Posted by Zombie / 10 Dec 2008 5:39pm / Permalink
4. The proposed filters will significantly affect internet speeds in Australia. My internet based business is in Australia. The Goverments filter will affect the impression my sirte makes on my customers, both here and overseas.
Posted by Im a voter too / 10 Dec 2008 7:54pm / Permalink
What are the consequences of the inter filter re speed etc, will slow down are current broadband services?
Posted by User / 10 Dec 2008 1:50pm / Permalink
An internet filter will insult the intelligence of Australians, be completely ineffective, and worst of all, will slow down our already slow internet - apparently by as much as 86%!
Posted by Lindsay Wu / 09 Dec 2008 8:05pm / Permalink
The Government is aware of concerns that ISP-level internet filtering will degrade performance or 'slow the internet'. In this regard, a number of people have pointed to the network performance findings of the previous Government's laboratory trial of six filter products. This trial found 'network degradation' of less than two per cent for one product, less than 30 per cent for three products and in excess of 75 per cent for two products.
It is important to remember, however, that this laboratory trial did not test ISP-level filtering against a blacklist only—the solution proposed for the Government's mandatory tier of ISP filtering. In fact, blacklist filtering (introduced in a voluntary capacity), is active in a number of countries such as the UK, Sweden, Norway and Canada with no discernible impact on network speeds or performance.
The Government takes claims that ISP-level filtering will degrade internet performance seriously. After all, in Opposition we campaigned heavily on the need to remedy Australia's inadequate broadband speeds and in Government we are now working hard to facilitate the roll out of a multi-billion dollar infrastructure investment in the form of the National Broadband Network. That's why we're undertaking a live trial of filtering technologies in order to collect evidence of the technical dimensions of internet filtering.
Stephen Conroy
Return to the Promoting a Civil and Confident Online Society blog topic or see other responses:
This is an attack on freedom of speech- Why aren’t PC-level filters sufficient?
- How will the blacklist be maintained?
- Why won’t the Government publish what is included in the ACMA blacklist?
- How does ACMA determine what sites will be included on the blacklist?
- Hasn’t the Government already undertaken a trial of the technical issues surrounding internet filtering? Didn’t this trial find that filtering was not effective?
- Internet filtering won’t stop peer-to-peer and BitTorrent traffic—so why bother?
- So what else is the Government doing to help protect children online?