NullDevice

Australia is lagging behind the rest of the global digital economy in several key areas. Firstly, we have the slowest internet access in the (free) world unless we bow to the monopoly of Telstra. Even then, where I live I won't get ADSL2 until Telstra decides that enough of its own customers want it, and then they insist that I be their customer before they 'let' me have it. Unlike when ADSL was first released, there is no register where one might express a desire to be connected to ADSL2. It's all up to Telstra with NOTHING in place to make it fair for ALL Australians, regardless of which telco they choose to do business with. Secondly, Australians - especially at government level - remain woefully ignorant of online security issues. The government itself encourages people to transmit sensitive personal data to government sites without ever monitoring, mentioning or even considering how secure the originating PC might be. Any internet filter is going to compromise what slim security we have now. Already I resort to a live-boot, non-micro$lop product to improve my online banking experience. This filter will break even that. You cannot make a hole in a hose without making it leak. The impact on the economy of the gaming and entertainment industries seems to be largely ignored. I wish to play online games with friends residing in the US and the UK but cannot because my lag times are so terrible. I would have to be the best player in the world just to break even. Do people who invest upwards of $100 on a game deserve to have that same game devalued to $zero because their ISP filters or throttles bandwidth? My ISP throttles P2P traffic during peak hours but will not admit that fully legitimate traffic (eg, World of Warcraft data) is being compromised. Their attitude seems to be 'it's only a game' whereas I view it as a $100+ investment in software and an acceptible form of entertainment to a person who is physically incapable of playing any kind of organised sport. I could discuss how Australians pay up to 80% MORE for games (even online downloads) than their US/UK counterparts but that would be a digression... The music and film industries are being severely affected by our draconian methods of marketing. We really DON'T need to buy videos off the shelf in a plastic box. We can burn DVD's ourselves - we have the tchnology (because thankfully we didn't have to wait for Telstra to provide it). For that matter, many people, myself included, are happy to watch a movie once without having a real, live copy to own. Austalian internet speeds (for the majority of non-Telstra customers) are far too slow to make watching movies online viable. I've been online nearly 12 years and in at least the past 10 of those years I haven't EVER had pornographic returns from an innocent search term. Not ever. 'Protect the kids from harm' is a whitewash. PARENTS are the first line of child protection. I expended the effort to educate and protect my own 4 kids online. Please don't expect me to accept having my internet compromised for the sake of lazy or irresponsible parents. You had them, YOU look after them. I've never asked YOU to take care of mine simply because I couldn't be bothered to do it myself. The suggestion that grown adults who value freedom of expression and decry censorship must be closet peadophiles is most insulting. A person with even a modicum of interest in psychology is going to be tempted to label that kind of behaviour as 'projection'. Projection is where person A expects person B to behave exactly the same way that they (person A) would behave in a given situation. In other words, the REAL 'closet peadophiles' think the rest of us are peadophiles too; worse, they are telling it to the whole world. It's true that its possible to make disgusting blanket assumptions about people you haven't ever met - government does it all the time - and of course, it's your prerogative; but please don't make them public. And PLEASE don't present them as truth. The input box on this form is so small it makes proofreading very difficult. Please could it be made a few lines bigger?