Comments on 'What does the Digital Economy encompass? What does it mean for Australians?'

anna

10 Dec 2008 3:31pm

benefits: citizens can be homebased, therefore live where they want and not waste time, cost and pollution commuting. Sense of isolation can be remediated by online social tools.
ensure benefits to all: reasonable speed internet across Australia. Not 'internet availability' - which usually means
(a) too expensive &/
(b) "it is available in your area, but because you're on the other side of the mountain you're in a dark spot so can't get it"

anna

10 Dec 2008 3:35pm

conversely, mobile devices mean people can work when on the move. That means they are 'always on', when they choose to have their mobile devices switched on.

Steven Daniels

10 Dec 2008 3:50pm

The benefits of the digital economy are already well known... the best way to ensure that the benefits are enjoyed by all Australians is to employ a minister who knows what he is doing and values input from interested parties. In other words, get rid of Senator Conroy ASAP!

BBB

10 Dec 2008 2:10pm

Equal attention should be paid to the importance of allowing the digital economy to grow and the importance of growing postive personal interaction and relationships in a real, non-virtual way.

Sam Douglas

10 Dec 2008 2:11pm

At the risk of sounding over-enthusiastic, I'd say that the digital economy has the potential to enable the closest thing we have seen to a perfectly functioning market. We are already seeing the benefits to consumers via the ability to quickly find the best price on almost any given item, service or product. Over time Australian business will take advantage of the ability to reach more customers than ever before. The best way to safeguard this is for the Federal Government to provide high-speed infrastructure and an environment that is as agreeable as possible to private investment across all areas of the digital economy. I would add that the ISP level filtering plan works actively against both of these aims and ultimately puts digital future of Australia at risk.

Stephan

10 Dec 2008 2:17pm

Encompassing the activity that currently occurs on the Internet with the use of the term "Digital Economy" obsfucates both the internet activity and the general public's understanding of the word "economy". So what do "I " think? I think you guys have already gotten off to a bad start from a misunderstood position. Users of the Internet come from all walks of life and all nations. They are not just Australians and therefore the premise of this project is faulty to start with. In fact I would put it to you that users of the Internet comprise a culture and society independant of nationalities and that this means that what you're proposing is pretty much doomed to a pitiful mouthing of nationalistic diatribes that will have absolutely no impact on the individuals and probably hamper Australians' effective use of the Internet as we know it.

Tanya

10 Dec 2008 2:20pm

One option made possible by the new digital age is decentralisation - i.e., working from home or from a nearby branch office*. The potential impacts on fuel consumption, transport infrastructure and pollution should more than cover the investment in building construction and network infrastructure. There are also strategic implications, with the inevitable proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in our region making the concentration of our population in a few coastal cities less than ideal. *A 'branch office' could be a publicly funded suburban or regional centre, linked by high speed broadband, with various rooms and facilities leased to interested businesses. Perhaps a tax break could be involved, to encourage use.

Black Adder

10 Dec 2008 12:03pm

I am perplexed as to how you can attempt to underline the importance of a digital economy, particularly reliant on the internet, when you are currently attempting to filter all of the information passed through it to Australia? If your goal is to nurture the digital economy, then the activities 'personal dialogue' and 'information gathering' you refer to, should be allowed some form of fredom of speech; as it is impossible to gather information effectively, if a 3rd party is filtering your data. How does the content filtering which you are due to test relate to your goal of protecting the digital economy?

Informed Citizen

10 Dec 2008 12:04pm

I find it interesting that a Government who supposedly sees that there is a need for a digital economy, does a fantastic job of making Australia look like a 3rd world, repressed, filtered and Govenment muffled online economy. How can we have Internet that is seen as "future" looking when the rest of the world is laughing at us because we are talking about Internet Filters?

Brisbaner

10 Dec 2008 12:02pm

I see the internet economy as being beneficial to anyone connected to the Internet, not just Australians. Currently, in order to extract some kind of profit from the Internet, you need to have something people want, and then charge something for it (be it a direct access cost, or space on your page for advertisements). For example, Google has something a lot of people want: a way to find things quickly and usually accurately. It generates revenue via advertising. If Australia wants a slice of this pie (I'm guessing it does), then we need to put in place infrastructure that makes Australia the "place to go" when you want to set up a massive server farm, or to host websites, or the like. I also see a major flaw in Australia's legislation with regards to this; since our country's online content laws are, in theory, some of the strictest in the world under an elected government. Unfortunately, I see our internet support structures as lagging well behind those in the United States, and when combined with our relatively strict online content laws, this makes our country unfavorable to server farms and corporations hosting large file storage or network services. Alternatively, we need to possess a digital good or service (such as computer games, digitally distributed movies and e-books, and the like) which people want, which can then be distributed from other countries' server farms. This is all the more reason to introduce the same tax breaks the movie industry gets to the digital game industry, encouraging computer game developers to set up studios in Australia. PS: I feel obliged to attempt: "First!".

Sams

10 Dec 2008 12:01pm

Blog Lesson 1: blog posts are written by individuals, not "The Digital Economy blog team".

SianDart

10 Dec 2008 12:05pm

Particularly for rural dwellers, digital communication provides social connectivity on so many levels - both with existing friends, all over Australia and the world, and with new connections, sharing interests, hobbies, professions or other aspects of life. It is an essential form of modern communication, and the default channel by which young urban people communicate, whether they connect on phones or computers. Rural youth already feel isolated in some ways - nothing to do, nowhere to go - and a lack of communication with their urban colleagues just adds to this. As to the hows - well, Australia is vast, and it will be expensive - but it's essential.

yacopops

10 Dec 2008 12:05pm

If I understand your definition, the digital economy encompasses activities including commercial transactions, personal dialogue, information gathering, entertainment and online delivery of products and services Q: What do you understand the 'digital economy' to be? A: All transactions of commercial information in the form of electronic data transmitted by any source. Also any data transmission that adds to my knowledge. Q: What do you think the benefits to Australia of the digital economy are? A: This is not an all encompassing list 1. Free and unhindered access to all sources of digitised information. 2. The ability to play games over the Internet and get data at top speed. 3. Being able to pay for and purchase goods online is far better than driving around the Chadstone shopping centre car park (Melbourne) for 40 mins before giving up and heading home while squandering what�s left of the fossil fuels. 4. Being able to find out what�s happening on the other side of the globe as soon as it happens. 5. Being able to find the answer to almost any question online. 6. Enrichment of life through web based entertainment. 7. Improves programming, networking and general computer skills. 8. Expands knowledge while simultaneously making it obvious that not everything accessible online is factual, correct or well though out. 9. The ability to read about regimes that restrict the internet and free speech and be thankful that such things could never happen in Australia. 10. Conduct financial transactions in a timely manner with anyone anywhere 11. Everyone (ideally) gets to be connected all of the time. Knowledge is power! Q: How do you think we can ensure that those benefits are enjoyed by all Australians? A: These relate to the points above 1 addresses 1, 2 -2 etc. 1. a. Keep the Internet uncensored (except by parents and people�s own sensibilities). b. Immediately put a stop to companies charging exorbitant rates once a download limit is reached. This is akin to making someone pay $100/L for the rest of the month of their tank runs dry and is not justified in anyway! 2. Get the high speed broadband network up and running. Make sure they system is designed to be future proof (haha) and used quality components and has low projected maintenance costs. Allow digital TV to have an Internet component to what you see on the display. Eg a sporting event could show live pictures as well as user defined data. 3. Only relevant if one likes to purchase online. 4. Being able to find out what�s happening on the other side of the globe as soon as it happens will only work if the Internet is not censored. I acknowledge that the provider of information may be dodgy or biased. 5. Being able to find the answer to almost any question online. As per point 4. 6. Enrichment of life through web based entertainment. As per points 1, 2, 3 and 4. 7. Only relevant to those who like to tinker and know how everything works. Eg port 80, who needs that, I�ll set up a VPN! 8. Expands knowledge while simultaneously making it obvious that not everything accessible online is factual, correct or well though out. . As per points 1, 2, 3 and 4. 9. The ability to read about regimes that restrict the internet and free speech and be thankful that such things could never happen in Australia. Refer point 1 a. 10. Everyone (ideally) gets to be make a transfer of money from an account in Bank A to an account in Bank B instantaneous for sums of less than 10 000. The 3 day wait is not realistic given no physical money changes hands of borders these days. 11. Regarding K .Rudd�s failed computers for every student plan, have a chat to One Laptop Per Child Association, Inc. (OLPC) and see if they can suggest something. Refer point 1b. Investigate a computer recycling program where refurbished low end computers are given to the masses.

Dave b.

10 Dec 2008 3:18pm

The digital economy is the use of electronic or other technologies in business or other fields, which make up an economy. It is important because the technology enables the previously impossible when used correctly. Digital technology more specifically concerns the use of digital media (encoding into a computer understandable format). An example which should be examined is the use of smart sensors around a home or business. For example Motion, infra-red, sound and light. These can then be used to turn on and off devices (lights or power down computers). Technologies must be examined and used from multiple viewpoints. There must also exist an interaction between creators, 'power users' and normal users (sometimes called end users). The sharing of ideas and information so as to reach further levels of understanding and efficiencies in use.

Fizz_gig

10 Dec 2008 3:19pm

Hi there, Firstly I think this blog is a useful idea that has potential, though it will suffer from many of the advantages and disadvantages that all on-line media suffer from. I have worked in quite senior positions in ISPs for 3 years and spent over 10 years in IT running my own IT security consultancy firm. One important thing to remember is that the internet is essentially anarchic - by that I mean "without leaders" rather than "without rules". To use a biological metaphor, people on the internet follow herd behaviours in that they tend to "clump" around certain popular sites and causes for a certain period of time before that site or cause becomes too large, splits apart, and then the people "clump" around another site or cause. Again, like in a herd, if someone stands in front of that "clump" and becomes an obstruction, that "clump" will just flow around that obstruction. This flow is lead by the mavericks that always exist in any group of people, and they pass the information about on how to flow around that obstruction until it becomes common knowledge. Attempting to stop that flow is pointless, doomed to failure and essentially futile because it is impossible to control the flow of information. You may be able to block one source of information about the blockage, but it will be discovered by another maverick who will then pass the instructions anew. The key advantages of the internet is the rapid flow of information from one, to another - regardless of whether that information is directly related to 'bricks and mortar' businesses, videos, file sharing, or computer games. That being said, like all technology, the internet is just a multiplier. Calling it "the digital economy" actually limits the concept, semantically putting it in a different category to every other aspect of the implied 'real' economy. This is most definitely not the case. It is just a different means of doing the same thing - buying and selling services and resources. It is as essential to all businesses and individuals now as the mobile phone became 10 years ago and the land-line telephone was before that, and the telegram and letter before that still. The flow of information has always been critical to businesses - there are entire industries developed on information analysis and presentation. Now though with greater computing power and much, much greater access to data the ways that information can be collected, collated and arranged is exponentially greater. The main strategic difference between the internet and other methods of data exchange is that with the technology in use now, everything that is not a physical thing can be reduced to data. Data is just a bunch of zeros and ones that can be reproduced eternally and copied infinitely for almost no additional cost. That is its strength and its weakness. It is a strength in that it means that the distribution costs for data fall to miniscule levels. It also means that all industries that have traditionally relied on a distribution model to provide their income or cash flow are almost immediately losing the majority of their revenue. This is the single biggest problem that is affecting the motion picture and recording industries as their business model relies on making money through distribution of physical things. They have moved from selling music or a movie or a TV show as a performance to selling it as a product that is attached to a physical media. As such, they are having a great deal of problems at the moment as now the product that they are producing is disconnected from the media that they are selling. This is not going to change and all the complaints of those in both industries is only going to delay the inevitable. The business model that was phenomenally successful in previous economic environments is now fundamentally flawed. If it is not changed, it will cause great pain. Please note, this will not stop those industries from producing what they do best - making high quality entertainment products that are enjoyed by many, it just means that they have to change their business model in order to gain a return on investment. To gain the greatest benefit to the Australian population, there has to be better access to the internet. This means as well as faster/cheaper access, it also means less blocks and bottle necks. Coming from an ISP background, I know how problematic this is. The biggest limitations are Australia's relatively low population and extremely low population density. Data signals over any medium, be it copper wire, optical, or whatever, are limited by the laws of physics. Having few people spread out over large areas drastically increases the cost to lay out the physical media by which data can flow to the users. Being separated from the rest of the world by large oceans increases the costs for purchasing transmission lines that have to be recouped through data costs, making data quite expensive when compared to the rest of the world.

Dave b.

10 Dec 2008 3:23pm

In order to implement any kind of technology society, the industry, experts and other stakeholders MUST be consulted in an OPEN forum. The use of 'gag' orders is just prohibitive and has no place in a democracy concerning public issues where the public has a right to hear the forum.

Katoomba

10 Dec 2008 4:29pm

It's really annoying that you go against blog convention and have the comments in reverse order!

And it would be so much easier to read if it accepted paragraphing.

Infiltrator

10 Dec 2008 12:34pm

Access. We need to get cheap (sub $10 per month) unlimited (not capped, time limited or anything else) internet available to the whole country. The country is left behind all the time. We need to change people�s view of what the internet is. It is NOT a kiddie�s playground. It IS the greatest library humanity has ever attempted. It�s the repository for all humanity's greatest highs and lowest lows. We have to make sure that these benefits are open to ALL Australians, without stomping on the rights of those that wish to research illegal things. Then search for knowledge is not illegal, and should not be. The misuse of that knowledge is. The government should NEVER censor the internet, but should POLICE it. Remember, if you don�t like the content, you can always turn it off. We have to make sure we don't have any organisation like the Office of Film and Literature Classification dictating what is applicable to view. Always remember, this organisations original mandate was to CLASSIFY all film and Literature. Now they also Ban (by the use of Classification RC, Refused Classification). Any organisation that is designed to do good for the public (by informing them of content) can be easily turned to evil (to restrict information based on their, moral viewpoint) as in the case of the OFLC. We have to remember that researching something criminal and DOING something criminal are two totally different things. Researching criminal activity is not illegal, should not be illegal and should be freely researchable whereas the use that knowledge should be illegal and treated as such.

Not a Communist

10 Dec 2008 4:42pm

Mate, we do not live in China where internet is filtered, parents need to be responsible enough to manage and monitor their own childrens usage. If people don't want to look at certain things, by intent or accident then they need to purchase (or I think there's even a free government sponsered standalone filter) internet filter. The money the government is spending on this can be better spent elsewhere imho and a one man crusade (if you haven't noticed already) to censor the internet is in the minority and goes against everything a) our country stands for, b) more power than the government should have. There's my two cents, good luck.

Public Servant

10 Dec 2008 5:08pm

One of the most important enablers of access to the "digital economy" is a broadband internet connection. Yet, even many government departments are faced with inadequate connectivity. The ACCC, for example, shares a paltry 4mbit connection between 600 staff members.

The "Digital Economy blog team" themselves have validated YouTube as an important part of the Internet. Employees at many government departments aren't able to view your YouTube channel because the site has been blocked.

How does DBCDE hope to bring the "digital economy" to Rural Australians when the government can't even bring it to its own employees?

Stu

10 Dec 2008 3:42pm

There is no doubt that the internet has revolutionised every aspect of modern life. I could talk about the improvements the internet has brought us (such as free access to the sum of all human knowledge, and instant communication with anyone in the world), but in a blog post, I'd only begin to scratch the surface. A better question to ask is this: "Why is a Western government in 2008 taking us back to 1996, when a profound fear and ignorance of the internet was the status quo?" We know the filter won't work, but advice to that effect has only been ignored by Senator Stephen Conroy. Instead, every packet in Australia will be analysed by the government for approval, and in the process our digital economy, internet connectivity and online freedoms will be severely crippled. The blacklisting of Wikipedia by UK authorities in the last few days is a perfect example of this. It was reversed, however, when it was shown to be enormously counterproductive - the banned article became the most popular article by far, going from a few hundred views per hour to hundreds of thousands of views per hour. If the government is taking its responsibilities to the digital economy seriously, they will abandon this disastrous and internationally humiliating plan.

Kane

10 Dec 2008 3:47pm

With respect to the NBN, while it is admirable that you wish to provide fast internet to all Australians (as an ex-Darwin resident I can understand how frustrating it is being left behind by the more populated parts of the country) and there has been plenty of talk about making it high-bandwidth, there has been little mention of data transfer allowances. There is not a whole lot of use to having fantastic high speed internet, if using it to capacity for a day will break your usage quota.

Jonathan Scanlan

10 Dec 2008 3:55pm

The most important factor in the digital economy is bandwidth. Networks are just like oil - they offer expansion opportunities when service are cheep, but we don't reap the full benefit without making our engines (i.e. service providers and computers) more effecient.

Now, what the internet filter is going to do is drastically slow speeds, bloat telco and gov. bottom lines, and drive away those companies seeking cheeper bandwidth. Raising our network's bandwidth capactiy prior to the filter will not cancel the effect out either - it will mean more power is needed to filter vaster quantities of content.

Furthermore, if anyone here has read The Porn Report (published by melbourne uni press), you'll recall that the actual impact of pornography on adults and young people is between non-existant and positive. And pornography has historically driven the uptake of technologies, so allowing it to exist serves us economically also.

Finally, what we really need, if we are to fully benefit from the digital economy, is to deregulate intellectual property. This protectionism is not in our interests, and prevents us from setting up enterprises that make better use of ideas than the original holders.

If we deregulate it beyond all other OECD countries, investment in otherwise locked up ideas/designs would flood into Australia, and turn us into a technological production hub.

rodrig

10 Dec 2008 3:56pm

Here we go � back to the dark ages of the 50�s when government decided what we could and could not see, read and hear. Whose values are they anyway? Mainly right wing religious fanatics who believe in creationism and think that being gay is a �life style choice�. The main point is, what does internet filtering do for the digital economy � precisely nothing or is it the government�s need to appease those who think the internet is more evil than Lolita and D.H. Lawrence?

The internet is not just a place to make money. If we have high regard for the many non commercial aspects of the internet then the digital revolution is paramount. By its very nature the internet will create commercial opportunities and will grow in ways we are unable to imagine now.

What we must do is lay down the infrastructure so that we are able to fully utilise the potential the internet has to offer. And if along the way someone wants to download porn then so be it.

narfin

10 Dec 2008 4:00pm

Mr Conroy,

I do not understand how you can propose a blanket filter to all Australia without even the courtesy of publishing the black listed websites free for all Australia to read.

You say your are trying to stamp out Child porn - noble but your filter will not cover peer-2-peer. Which I am sure most is passed as people know websites are monitored. If you are worried about this scurge - invest more funds into the police force or even create an elite cyber tracking unit (or expand the already working cyber unit as I read all the time on the news more are being caught).

This is nothing more than censorship, however which way you try and spin it. You are taking the responsibility out of Australian's hands and not giving us at least the slightest say - I am sure this post will not be posted... As it is subversive to your goal but I am writing it anyway.

What gaurantee is there that any political media will not be black listed if it does not conform to your (the government) views. What public oversight is there in this regard and why is the blacklisted material ran by an overseas company?

Listen to the people - there is nothing but negative responses all across the web of your proposed web filter.

It will slow our already laughable broadband network to even slower speeds. It is not rocket science it is an easy fact for anyone to comprehend; espieally IT literate whom are the majority.

jimmy

10 Dec 2008 4:08pm

All Australians will benifit from the growing digital economy if we are able to access it without impediments such as filtering and crippled infrastructure. But like the ABS statistics you quote - that is stating the blindingly obvious.

Sams

10 Dec 2008 4:15pm

Blog Lesson 2: use established blog software; this blog looks like some poor home-made hack (although no doubt millions of dollars of Administratium went into developing it).

Sams

10 Dec 2008 4:18pm

Blog Lesson 3: In a good blog, the authors interact with the commenters by adding their own comments, answering questions, adding new information - generally doing responsive and productive things that encourage commenters to believe that their posts are not just falling into a black hole. This doesn't look like much more than the comment sections on a newspaper website.

Ash

10 Dec 2008 4:20pm

A good start to ensuring that all Australians enjoy the benefits of the digital economy would be to do something about the way Telstra is able to hold the nation to ransom. It has behaved in a very arrogant & selfish manner and I think some kind of structural separation is critical to the long term health of our digital economy.

1984

10 Dec 2008 4:21pm

The question: "What do you think the benefits to Australia of the digital economy are? How do you think we can ensure that those benefits are enjoyed by all Australians?" is a loaded and designed to create answers of the type of "well a national broadband network with fast acess etc", answers which mirror ALP policy.

Sigh. Get to the real issue in play and that is the stupid policy of filtering the internet. I want to know if the price of bribing Family First is worth it. We know your pandering to those bible bashers in order to avoid negotiation with the Greens in the senate.

I just don't understand why you'd do a deal with an ideological incompetent group of religious fanatics simply to avoid having to agree to a green economy with the Greens.

Thomas Karpiniec

10 Dec 2008 4:28pm

The digital economy includes all activity on the Internet, but it's a moving target. For example, current activities for consumers are online banking, shopping on eBay or Amazon, chatting with family/friends through instant messenger services or social networking sites, email and purchasing music. There are also the business consumers who want email hosting, websites, coordinated calendar services and secure VPNs between different physical locations.

These are going to change. One only has to observe the huge growth of Youtube to see that the Internet is fast becoming a platform for delivery of all types of multimedia content. It is now a simple matter to purchase electronic copies of movies and TV shows and download them directly. Consumers as well as businesses are getting more interested in video conferencing.

None of these new things are going to work very well in Australia because large amounts of bandwidth are required. The cheapest Telstra plans give you less than a single gigabyte of data to use each month. One or two movies and that's gone, never mind anything else you want to do. Only when you're using a different ISP and paying upwards of about $80/mo do you get a combination of reasonable speed and a reasonable download limit.

A few years ago I was speaking to a friend in the United States about his Internet connection. He was paying the equivalent of $AU20/mo for about 4Mb/s downloads (that's megabit) and 1Mb/s uploads and hadn't even heard of a "download quota". It is nothing more than a marketing tool to make the consumer feel like bandwidth is a special commodity so that telecom companies can skimp on infrastructure. Australian users need fast downloads and uploads without limits to take full advantage of these newer technologies.

There is a flip side too: the hosting companies. I rent a personal virtualised server and not so long ago changed from one in the US to one in Australia. The one in the US cost me $US20/mo, gave me 10GB hard drive space and 100GB bandwidth every month. The Australian one costs me $AU35/mo, gives me 10GB of hard drive space and 10GB bandwidth. I made the change because I wanted lower latency, wasn't using the bandwidth and wanted to support the company's attempts to survive in the Australian server market. If I was a company which wanted to host clients' websites though, I would absolutely have to get the one in the US for economical reasons. As much as the US economy needs a boost right now, I would like to see the dollars stay in Australia.

As a Government you don't have a long list of things to do, to be honest. The Internet will do its own thing: businesses will be built and the effects will improve Australia's economy. What you have to do is get the expensive infrastructure monopoly out of the way, get us the bandwidth, get us the value for money, not mess it all up with a filter and we can get our work done. Not an easy task, I'll admit, but that's all we need.

Churchill

10 Dec 2008 5:00pm

We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in Proxy, we shall fight on the VPN's and Seedboxes, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the http tunnels, we shall defend our Pipelines, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the Usenet, we shall fight on the TOR, we shall fight in the IRC and in the FTP, we shall fight in the P2P; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Nation or a large part of it were filtered and censored, then our VPN's beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the International Community, would carry on the struggle, until, in CERN's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.

mdr

10 Dec 2008 4:18pm

My blueprint would be 1) Cheap, fast, widespread wireless internet. 2) No filters. 3) Open Standards. 4) Adequate IT Education for children. 5) Open Source Software. OLPC would fit 3,4 & 5 NBN and dropping the filters project is in the minister's hands and should fix 1 & 2.

User

10 Dec 2008 4:20pm

Internet censorship - do we live in a third world country? What are the consequences of the inter filter re speed etc, will slow down are current broadband services? If so, that is a massive backward step. Do you really think a filter would stop undesirables getting access to things that you want to stop? They could just point to an overseas proxy server that is encrypted, and you wouldn't be able to control them. There are plenty of applications available that people can use to help protect children etc, but perhaps children should be warned and even watched while on the internet. Internet services are slow enough in this country already, without the filter!

Peter

10 Dec 2008 4:38pm

You say that the "The Australian Government considers that the digital economy is important for our future productivity, competitiveness and social and economic well-being". Then why in the world are you trying to hinder that? 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. Why do you want to strangle the digital economy for just 1000 or so sites? Is it really worth it? Wouldn't time and money be better spent in getting rid of the problem rather than burying it under the sand - which is what the filter is effectively doing? It won't rid paedophiles or criminals or illegal content. It will simply move them to another channel. Another issue is about trusting the Australian government. It's not as straightforward as blocking child porn. It's about policing what we surf. Nobody wants it. Why should a government body decide what Australian's are allowed to view or download? We know that the filter blocks legit sites, and the last thing we want is governments dictating what we can and cannot view and do. As far as I'm concerned, my hard earned dollars are better spent else where. No point in implementing a filter which does nothing other than limit what we can view. Australia should not become another China, and I certainly know that like the Chinese, if this filter does go up, we will get around it. Simple as that. If you really want to improve the digital economy - scrap the filter. You�ll probably then get some real good advice from the thousand of Australian's once you get rid of that off your back.

MareeK

10 Dec 2008 7:42pm

I fully support the comments by Black Adder & Informed Citizen. It's almost laughable to be haing a blog discussion on the digital economy when the government is planning such restrictive filtering.

Niveuse Lephas

10 Dec 2008 7:44pm

Benefits depend on the availability of Internet services, coupled with an individual's lifestyle, education, age, affluence, technical literacy and key driver(s) (such as business, peer network etc). Benefits include: Self-education, time/cost savings for certain activities, eco benefits, rich forms of on-demand entertainment, evolution of new forms of "leveled" human networks (beyond corporations, religions or government), propagation of creativity/imagination and freedom of expression. The highest value future benefits are the last two points above - but don't bother to try to quantify these. On the flip side, there are many negative aspects related to the Internet, such as: contribution to the "fatty country", crime, anti-eco aspects of consumerism and technology, psychological effects of isolationism, mis/disinformation, dumbing down, plagiarism etc. The point you should note is that the Internet is messy and unlike anything else. It is not Westfields, Channel 9, the stock exchange, a health clinic or the local library. It is much, much more - beyond what a Government can hope to understand or influence in a meaningful way.

fifers

10 Dec 2008 7:46pm

The Digital Economy blog team makes clear that social and cultural benefits are a key part of the digital economy, but these are not being sufficiently "economised" by the private sector due to the reusability of freely provided user contributed content (like this blog). Similarly, the monopolists of "intellectual property" are demanding that their "rights" be more strongly protected. In these circumstances the Government should protect the commons rights of the people against encroachment by a limited, powerful minority. The horror of this is that the privatisation of commons has repeatedly occurred with parliamentary connivance in the Westminster systems: be it land rights ("the enclosures", "terra nullius"); work rights (master-servant relation, workchoices); or social services (the workhouse system, and the systematic dismantling of the Welfare state). The Copyright Act 1968 should be repealed. The fantasy of the small "craftsman" fine artist, writer, music recorder, or academic is just that: a fantasy. Their rights are not protected by the Copyright Act because monopolist media and marketing machines control access to the market. In this climate, Copyright is a nonsense, as the vast and universal non-compliance with the Copyright Act 1968 by younger Australians demonstrates. Mass criminality like this indicates not that the population is immoral, but that the law itself is wrong. I challenge DBCDE to develop an economic model of the digital economy which does not rely on monopolistic copyrights, the enclosure of the new intellectual commons online, or fantasies of "small industry" producers. How should culture be produced and disseminated in Australia? How should the makers of culture be remunerated? Who should profit from this, and if so, to what extent. This is especially significant given that human culture is fundamentally not protected property, 40 000 years of Australian culture for example is in the public domain if we listened to the custodians of that culture to discover it. All new cultural works are fundamentally derivative, relying on that wealth shared in common: our culture. Why then should some people who take from our commons own the fruits of all our endeavour?

Peter

10 Dec 2008 7:48pm

Lyn

10 Dec 2008 5:21pm

Is it safe to assume that this government realises that this digital economy is overlaid onto an already established social set up? The filtering proposal suggests not.

The most successful online businesses use trust as the social mechanism underlying economic transactions. Amazon, eBay etc. Trust is how this thing works.

If you want to prepare people for a digital economy you could start by refraining from making out the internet is full of thieves and kiddy fiddlers. You can't prepare people for a digital economy until you get your heads around the idea that you just have to trust people. We all learn this thing by jumping in. You should be encouraging, not discouraging, that jump.

pfalcon

10 Dec 2008 5:24pm

Until EVERYONE in the country is able to access cheap, high speed, high bandwidth broadband, talk of the "digital ecomony" is just empty talk. The NBN plan goes partway, but still ostracises the large number of people (including indigenous groups) who can't get it because of distance, cost, or simply because Telstra hasn't properly equipped an exchange to handle the necessary volumes (or DLSAMs) required (the latter occurs all too often in city areas).

Statements like this blog entry are too quick to bandy the term "all Australians" without coming close to actually meaning it...

Cheap broadband, VOIP and other new technologies have a huge positive effect on small businesses - and if was actually possible to get this in the bush say, then you might have a lot more (tech) businesses starting up there, instead of migrating to the cities...

Jess L

10 Dec 2008 5:42pm

But you're going to cripple the backbone of the internet economy (the speed) by implementing the mandatory filter. Not to mention that the cost of internet plans are going to skyrocket as the ISPs will have to cover all costs associated with the filter.

I really am perplexed by this post. How can you tout the importance of online business and society while at the same time plan to undermine it?

Battlewench

10 Dec 2008 5:48pm

Net filter is fail.

More damage than good with be done by censoring the internet. This is a suppressive measure.

Governments are not there to spoon feed us democracy. People should have the right to choose their viewing.

Children are central to this debate. In that a) they are being exploited for child porn, and b) they may have access to potentially harmful material over the net. We obviously have to protect them, however having the government decide for us what we can and can't view takes away public accountability and self-responsibility, which the government should be fostering. This is not a protective measure that will benefit society as a whole.

It is an excessively paternalistic measure with extremely fuzzy boundary lines. Once we go beyond the obviously damaging material (ie child porn), what is or isn't "inappropriate content" can be a highly subjective matter that should be up to the individual to decide.

Net filter = Epic fail.

shirro

10 Dec 2008 5:18pm

The Internet's true worth lies in freedom and diversity.

Free market. Freedom to innovate. Freedom to learn. Freedom of speech. Diversity of opinion. Diversity of control and ownership.

Any government which wishes a vibrant digital economy needs to embrace freedom and diversity.

Infrastructure wise we need freedom to compete. The Telstra monopoly is good for their shareholoders and many Australians profit from it. Unfortunately it is bad for the national interest.

The NBN will simply establish a new monopoly. Even if skillfully crafted to allow open access to competition, the monopoly will establish a dominant technology. This will be a technology we will have to live with for a long time and may be quickly surpassed. It would be wiser to have a blend of technologies that is arrived at by the market.

The Internet is not a television service or video game. It is an essential service that underpins the digital economy. Carriage MUST be neutral and unfiltered in regards to content. Law enforcement needs to be carried out at the endpoints, not in transit.

The digital economy is a highly globalised economy. Jobs and money will be easily lost if governments damage or are perceived to be anti-Internet.

Geography and the laws of physics put us at a huge technical disadvantage. The government can have a strong leadership role and have a massive impact on Australia's digital competitiveness by acting to boost the nations connections to the rest of the world. This would get rid of capped Internet and put us on a more equal footing with the global competition.

Good luck. This is an area where a progressive government can significantly improve matters.

Now is not the time to pander to social conservatives or embark on massive public works. What we need is firm leadership with a commitment to those ideals that best represent the Internet.

I believe any government can rise to this challenge. Be brave.

Battlewench

10 Dec 2008 5:31pm

Colin Contessa

10 Dec 2008 5:34pm

Digital Economy - no such thing in my book. We have the economy, and you have people that form communities that influence the economy with a range of mechanisms and tools, and one such tool happens to be electronic communications pipes and systems that data and knowledge get transferred by at increasing speeds.

If Australia is to become the nation built on knowledge that allows maximum participation from all Australians then it needs a digital network that in order of importance is:

- reliable, ie 99.99% up time
- accessible, ie to all Australians
- low cost, ie $20 per month, no caps
- fast, ie greater than 20MB/s
- publically owned

This network then needs to be available to enterprises who pay the same price to access it who then build value adding services such as online business applications, entertainment offerings, education etc. It is pointless having a national network that is also owned by a service provider who does not equitably wholesale price access to that network.

The free market economy and the greed of corporations makes such a model unworkable. The priority will always be to the shareholders and the share price. With public ownership of the network this problem disappears.

Of course, the government must not get in its mind that a national broadband network once implemented is "mission accomplished". The network will require continual upgrading and maintenance, and no doubt yet to be invented technologies will supplant current ideas of what a national network should be capable of achieving.

Further, small business in particular needs a government funded education program to impart knowledge, ie, actionable information, as to how the electronic connectivity to the rest of the world can improve productivity, access to markets and profitability.

Chris89

10 Dec 2008 5:49pm

Net filter is fail

BFitzroy

10 Dec 2008 6:09pm

This filter is a good idea. And they were too soft on that "Simpsons porn" guy, should've been chemically castrated. Seriously.

Fitzroyalty

10 Dec 2008 6:10pm

"How do you think we can ensure that those benefits are enjoyed by all Australians?" By not filtering the net for a start. This farce brings new depths to political irony.

aarggh

10 Dec 2008 6:20pm

I think if the Government is serious about wanting input on the future growth and direction of infrastructure, consider getting ministers who actually know what they are talking about involved. Stephen Conroy has single-handedly made Australia's internet stance an international laughing stock, and Rudd in his support of his laughable idea of filtering certainly hasn't helped!

Shane

10 Dec 2008 6:24pm

Sir, You are ignorant of the modern age. What you propose is not viable and can be worked around very quickly. As minister for communications etc, you should at least understand the ramifications of what this will do this proposal means, it is very obvious especially when questioned over it, that you lack knowledge.

Peer 2 Peer will simple get around any of the black listings that you make. I would rather you spent more time and effort in catching the perverts rather than punishing the majority of people. This is what is happening, your choice (cause it is not ours, you've taken that away), punishes us with slower broadband speeds. We already have a third world access to the internet, please don't make it worse.

Tjunction

10 Dec 2008 5:19pm

You're doing the same thing that caused the liberal government to lose the last election - thinking up stupid ideas and not listening to the people! The idea is not thought-out and what a child looks up on the internet should be a parents responsibility, not the governments. Why not spend the money you would have wasted on this idea (as it's easy to bypass), not slow the net down for the rest of us (it's already slow!) and give some lessons for parents on how to raise kids? It seems lots of them need it these days...

Reni1010

10 Dec 2008 5:46pm

I think a much better use of this money is to roll out a major free Wireless internet network in every major CBD in Australia! That is what this country needs, more internet access NOT less!

Rod

10 Dec 2008 5:47pm

Drop the planned filtering of the internet. I do not want the government dictacting what I can and can't see on the internet. Censorship belongs to communists countries not an democracy like Australia. If I want to limit what my kids can see, it is my responsibility to control it, not the government. Keep your hands off the internet.

JonathanConway

10 Dec 2008 5:48pm

I'm a web developer, software engineer and business owner based in Sydney. I think it's disgusting that the government should be involved in slowing down or in any way obstructing access to the most important communications network of the 21st century. Rather, you guys should be helping to improve and broaden Internet access for all Australians. Unfortunately, many of us are uninformed about the consequences of this censorship, but believe me, the knowledge is spreading.

Tom

10 Dec 2008 5:57pm

Considering the world economic situation, we should be doing everything possible to increase our GDP. Decreasing our productivity by a poor (in world standards) broadband infrastructure monopolised by one company, a mandatory net filter that slows down our ability to communicate with the rest of the world will only hurt our economy in this time of need. I could go on about the other reasons as to why a net filter is a terrible idea and why we need a strong broadband infrastructure but these two points at this particular time are key.

Andy

10 Dec 2008 5:58pm

Now I understand that there is a genuine need for something to filter unsuitable content. BUT THIS IS NOT THE WAY TO DO IT! Has the government not considered other means. Educating the public, particularly parents, might be the key. Brochures could be distributed that promote the government's existing free software filtering options and let parents know it is important to monitor their children and place the computer in a visible spot etc etc rather than throwing money at something that hinders Australia's already pathetic communications technology. How are we supposed to progress technologically when exciting technologies are sending us backwards! Imagine future internet-based developments, everyone else in the world will be able to use it but Australia... because of our lagging filtered internet. A prime example at the moment is digital movie rentals (e.g. netflix, itunes etc). Without a descent ADSL2 connection, it isn't viable for most people. But its taking America by storm!

DavidP

10 Dec 2008 6:01pm

I object to someone else deciding what I can and can't see on the Internet and especially more so when I won't even be aware of what it is that I can't see. Having said that, if we have to have some kind of nation-wide filtering, we'd get a better ROI by ignoring the content and filtering for malware. Putting the brakes on organised crime by stopping unsuspecting ordinary everyday citizen's computers being infected by drive-by downloads would be a much wiser and appreciated form of filtering than the idiotic proposal before us now.

Stephen

10 Dec 2008 6:02pm

I can't believe the Government is capable of understanding either the technical, social, business or educational aspects of a digital future while they persist with the totaly unacceptable internet filtering proposals.

Wayne

10 Dec 2008 7:24pm

Internet censorship - I have never voted anything but Labor in my life. If this ludicrous scheme is implemented I won't be doing it again. Plain and simple.

Another Peter

10 Dec 2008 7:25pm

Sent a letter to Senator Conroy's office via his webpage regarding the "Great firewall of Australia" a while back. To date no acknowledgment of receipt (not even automated), let alone response. The arrogance of these elected officials knows no bounds. I fear for this country....

Infiltrator

10 Dec 2008 6:06pm

Ciccio

10 Dec 2008 6:07pm

I would think that most if not all illegal material shared on the internet gets propagated through Peer to peer, therefore the filter wouldn't have too much impact on the people trafficking illegal content. If an illegal website is found just shut it down, also, how are encrypted connections such as VPNs going to be handled? Surely the government is not going to decrypt all encryptions? If it's our children we're trying to safeguard then give the option to the individual to have the filter enabled from the ISP rather than having it forced nationwide..

Refused Classification

10 Dec 2008 6:11pm

I find it interesting how the Australian Government considers that the digital economy is important for our future yet you are more than willing to contradict yourself by implementing Internet filtering. The Internet is unlike any other communications medium. It is not the TV or the radio, it is not a newspaper, a book or a magazine. Progressive thinking and network neutrality should be key in any policy, not backwards 1950's sweep it under the covers style logic. Your ISP filtering scheme will not work and contradicts all of your statements on how important the digital economy is.

Broadband Anywhere

10 Dec 2008 7:36pm

Hello Minister, With regard to delivering broadband to regional Australia (in this case South Aust)-is there any reason that a compliant application would take nearly four months (lodgement date 180808) to be processed? Would be good to gain your opinion on this very important matter.

Dave

10 Dec 2008 6:18pm

I personally dont think the "digital economy" is a seperate entity; rather it is just a medium & part of the larger Australian economy. Nevertheless, we will rely on the internet & digital mediums more and more as the years go by. We must invest in proper, and UPGRADEABLE communications infrastrucutre NOW. There's no point spending billions on something we're only going to have to completely replace in 5-10 years time. Add to that, also let's recognise that this stupid notion of filtering the internet is an outrage, an international embarrasment, giving FAR too much power to a government, and most likely to be extremely ineffective and very costly. I for one am extremely opposed to this proposed policy, it is draconian style legislation that is only in place in countries with a known history of human rights abuse.

Zombie

10 Dec 2008 6:19pm

"You say that the "The Australian Government considers that the digital economy is important for our future productivity, competitiveness and social and economic well-being". Then why in the world are you trying to hinder that? 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." Adding to this is the damage that happening to Australia's cyber-reputation. The benefits of the filter: 1) it will stop internet inexperienced people from accessing illegal material. The Con 1) overall speed lower, 2) false positives leading to legal sites being banned, 3) increased cost for the user to access the internet, 4) unknown websites could also be used to restrict sites harmful to the government's version of events 5) loss of jobs due to businesses moving overseas, and the most important 6) the large number of voters who will no longer vote for a government that places this into action.

FiltersRgood

10 Dec 2008 6:21pm

Stand your ground on the filtering issue and do not believe the rubbish touted by so-called experts that wouldn't know an Internet filter if it turned around and bit them! The facts are here: Millions of Internet users in the UK, Canada, Scandinavia, Switzerland and New Zealand have their internet filtered for illegal child sexual abuse Web sites and their Internet does not slow down and they don't notice it. What is wrong with Australian ISPs - can't they look beyond their own shores and see what the world is doing? Go for filtering of illegal sites for everyone, and if they don't like the other type of filtering for unwanted content, then they can always opt out - so what's the problem?

Poss

10 Dec 2008 7:39pm

What consenting adults do in their own home is their own business, and no government has a right to control that. Sure, kids might wander upon an unwholesome site, but they might wander into someones house and see the same things. Just because the door is unlocked does not mean the government has a right to put locks on peoples doors, or sites. It is not the governments job to raise peoples children for them. The internet is like a city, and if parents let their children wander around unsupervised, bad things can happen. That does not mean adults should be disallwoed from wandering the streets at night, just because a kid might be around. As far as stopping child porn goes. Let me ask you this: Even if you suceeded in getting rid of all the child porn on the internet, where do you think the pedos would go to get their fix? Well I'll tell you, they'd go down the local school. You are making the problem worse if anything. The problem is not what some sick bastard thinks in his own head in his own home, the problem is when the sick bastard acts on those thoughts. You cant make it illegal to think bad things, I mean, its illegal to murder people, and yet you can still watch movies with murder in them, would banning movies that depicted violence lower the violence level? WE have the highest rate of bashing in the western world, and yet you arent banning hollywood block busters. That says to me that this is not about stopping crime at all, and that it is all about control. You were not elected with a mandate to become the thought police. Some people have sick thoughts, get over it and stop punishing innocent people in an attempt to stop bad people. Because your filter sure as hell wont effect anyone but the innocent. I do not care what twisted thoughts someone else has, I care about their actions, and your plan is doing more to turn thoughts into actions than any other strategy i have yet heard of. It is the most counter productive scheme you could possibly have come up with. And this black list... utter tripe. You sir have absolutly no right to choose what i see. IF i choose to research terrorism for an assignment, or an article, or even a blog post, i should be able to see whatever information i choose. You have no right to block content, of any sort. Ths whole scheme has left me under the impression that you do not understand the internet or care about internet users at all. And more than that, this single issue has caused me to loose complete faith in a government i elected. Bad form sir. Bad form.

MDofPerth

10 Dec 2008 6:30pm

You asked: "What do you think the benefits to Australia of the digital economy are? How do you think we can ensure that those benefits are enjoyed by all Australians?" Governments have a poor record of trying to guess market directions and "pick winners". However, there is an active and engaged market of internet service providers spending their own money (rather than the taxpayer's) to bet on such things and doing a rather good job of it. Let them at it and they will provide services that the community wants, or they will die trying. Example: Please avoid funding Telstra to strengthen their self-serving monopoly on network infrastructure. Allowing Telstra to bid late with a non-compliant bid for the National Broadband project was a very bad sign - it looks like favouritism or even corruption (although it might just be incompetence). In fact, a govt funded national broadband project is a bad idea even if it does not get handed to the monopoly player; such an initiative is not market driven so its deliverables are unlikely to meet demand. Failure is very likely because the parameters are to deliver 2008 levels of bandwidth in about 2010. Such levels are impressive today, but they will not serve community needs three years hence when the world has moved on. In the words of Bob Dylan: "Come senators, congressmen; Please heed the call; Don't stand in the doorway; Don't block up the hall". In other words, please do not interfere with the digital economy - it's working just fine, and will continue to so long as it remains free from big brotherly manipulation.

James

10 Dec 2008 7:51pm

The Australian Government considers that the digital economy is important for our future productivity, competitiveness and social and economic well-being. Increasingly, commercial, health, educational, cultural, entertainment and social activities will occur online both within Australia and globally. Competitive? Australian Internet costs are amongst the highest in developed worlds. USA and Europe see significantly better broadband networks and speeds at much cheaper rates. Not to mention the filter. Moving to a dictatorship style internet filter which will further burden business and individuals with increased costs slower speeds, security issues (how secure will secure webpages be after they are not stopped and monitored by your ISP?) and much more. Drop the filter its a joke, The government should have its own wholesale arm which installs the required infrastructure to see that it is fairly and equitably performed throughout Australia and then unbiasedly wholesaled out to all ISP's (Unlikely Telstra which had a retail arm) at prices which can see more affordable internet. Not everything should be done privately. Basic infrastructure, facilities and services should always remain public as these shouldnt be profitable instead tax payer funded to ensure everyone regardless of status or income can have access to these basic needs and lets face it the Internet is a basic requirement in todays day and age.

Eth

10 Dec 2008 7:52pm

NET FILTER IS FAIL

business

10 Dec 2008 9:24pm

I can see that the IT section of this forum is well covered and so is the theories on growing economy with the assistance of faster and more wide spread internet but from a mother of two attempting to get her ecomerce business up and running and longing for that wisteria lane house and lifestyle in the country i"d like to think i have a bit of a different perspective on all this that just happens to coincide with most of the people's opinion here. With the entire world having faster internet i'm stuck here with having to put up with adsl2 speeds to cope with popup [not the google toolbar blocking variety] adverts on my websites and jpg sizes that i didn't even know where possible a few years ago. So if my business doesnt take up because of you i want your job. thanks

The Cat

10 Dec 2008 9:26pm

Senator Conroy, your Internet Filter plan is an international embarrassment and a disgrace no less. Digital Economy?? Any worker needs good tools, and you don't send a woodsman to the forest with blunt axes. This filter will clearly disadvantage Australia internationally and make us appear as backward and regressive. Please sharpen the Australian Internet Senator, it is blunt enough as it is. Give a Digital Economy a chance in this country. Encompasses the future... Means for Australians... that we are not hindered by our infrastructure and that we seek the cutting edge and have openness and choice in our dealings on the net.

NThirty

10 Dec 2008 9:33pm

See this post here? Bought to you guys thanks to VPN technology, something that is readily available to every Australian, something that no internet filter can actually prevent. It can be downloading from one of tens of thousands of websites whom supply them. No doubt currently, every online pirate, computer hacker, terrorist and pedophile has some kind of VPN technology at hand. The very people that this filter is designed to stop, would only slow them down they'll still be able to access all the nasties of the world wide web and there is not a single thing a government mandated ISP filter can do to prevent it. Block it? You essentially block every form of online banking and secure transaction, which allow every cyber-criminal to have a field day. Virtual-Private-Networks, Stenography, HTTPS encryption protocol and Encrypted Peer to Peer networks are just some of the tools of the trade to your average cyber-criminal. This isn't to mention that many legitimate websites inadvertently store the very material that would (attempted) to be blocked. How about getting off your $200,000 taxpayer a year arse and actually start working with Interpol and the FBI in actually catching these sick-individuals? $180 million would sure go a lot further in investing in online anti-criminal technology rather than pushing a filter which would by all accounts be useless and push Australia back 50 years. Unless the government is activly trying to sabotage their 'Digital economy' the best course of action would be to drop this filter legislation, realize that the average criminal has some form of intelligence about them and proactively catch these people rather than ruin Australia's supposed prosperous 'digital economy.' All I had to do to hide myself here? Press a single button on my web browser, I think even a semi-unintelligent cyber-criminal can manage that.

robert

10 Dec 2008 9:34pm

I note the adverse comments to censorship of the internet. If this blog has any value Steven Conroy would abandon any plans to censor it. He is acting like any politician in asking for feedback then ignoring it. Why is it that of all the animals fish and birds on the planet humans are the only ones that have to hide sexual activity. More importantly it means that governments will be able to censor anything from eutanasia to cigarette smoking or pissing in the garden

Ian

10 Dec 2008 9:37pm

Is Australia a Free country, Not anymore, our freedom is being whittled away each day with policies such as this. We all couldn't believe the Chinese filtered the internet there, now they are starting to open it up and what does Australia do - Filter it just like the Chinese did. Lets keep Australians brainwashed with what the government wants us to see and hear. This is one way of sending propaganda to the Australian people, dictating to third world countries how free and rich Australia is but look how bound we really are becoming. Keep the internet open, spend the money on the High speed broadband. All this does is encourage more deviant ways to get around the system, it only prevents people from surfing freely. Most stuff you try and filter will become available through some other encrypted means that cannot be filtered rendering the whole project a significant waste of money. If you say they wont find another way, look at what they said about DVD encryption, music DRM and so on, it is all cracked, this system will be compromised within weeks of being launched. Also - I believe this will give an out to would be people that want to do what you are filtering, if you don't filter it then they have a legal argument that if you didn't filter it then it is OK to view or do. Filtering will give the criminals a good legal argument to keep doing what they are doing and harder for the police to prosecute. Please spend my tax money on more worthwhile things.

Jenkins

10 Dec 2008 9:39pm

The solution to the problem of internet selection is easy. You provide software which runs on pcs which captures every web address to be accessed, checks with a "nominated site" to see if it is on an approved/disapproved list and either passes the address or blocks it. The "nominated site" can be one run by the Govt or any other interested party such as a church group or a commercial org. Parents decide and set the "nominated site" to be trusted. This takes it out of the hands of the Govt and allows parents the control they want.

Vipeyr

10 Dec 2008 9:42pm

My father always warned me about the Labor Government. He fought the communists in the old Czechoslovakia and could see the same control tactics in Australian Labor. As kids we never took it serious or wrote it off as 'it could never happen now.' I am amazed that this censorship is even being considered in 2008. This has nothing to do with protecting kids and everything to do with protecting government interest.

Jeremy

10 Dec 2008 9:47pm

The internet filtering is terrible. I have voted all my life and I'm sure I will again at the next election, but I still think your policy shows that you have no idea how the technology you're making policy over actually works and you need to consult with experts before coming up with policy.

Infiltrator

10 Dec 2008 9:49pm

Just one more additional point, How can the Government be trying to foster the digital economy and implement internet filtering?? Internet filtering will simply mean more people use foreign ISP's (Bouncing satelite signals from South Korea isn't that expensive and tunneling through the US is cheap as well) All you are doing is destroying potential business in this country and moving it off shore, reducing the number of qualified IT professionals in this country to support the smaller user base and pissing off a lot of your electorate. Senator Conry, Kevin Rudd, you two are not stupid people. You were both elected to make things better in Australia, not worse. To hold the positions that you do and I'm sure that you didn't want your legacy to be the removal of the rights of Australians. It's not too late to do the right thing and protect the rights of your electorate from this insanity. You can still make it illegal for any ISP to filter any part of the internet in this country.

Jason

10 Dec 2008 9:52pm

Give up on the filtering idea. It is ill-conceived and bound to fail. Devote more resources to education on responsible internet use and to the police to target anyone using the internet for illegal purposes and prosecute them. Stop treating the rest of us like we can't be trusted.

Lies all lies

10 Dec 2008 9:56pm

�The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation� - Adolf Hitler - Mein Kampf.

Neil

10 Dec 2008 9:58pm

Why spend a fortune on speeding up the internet, when you then slow it down again with filters? Do you guys really know what you're doing? This is just like the great Firewall of China, except it's being imposed on us by an Australian government. And where do you (or some future despot) stop? Will you start filtering stuff that's critical of the government? The "People's Republic of Oz" is closer than I thought. It's imperfect anyway - The smart ones among us will be able to get around it via VPN, SSL or Proxies. So you'll end up stuffing us all around, for something that won't work anyway. Sounds like a white elephant out of "The Hollow Men" or "Yes Minister".

blabla

10 Dec 2008 10:03pm

Just what digital economy do you think there will be after you apply internet filtering? NONE. Speeds will be so slow as to make business via the net impossible to do efficiently. Parents should moderate their children's internet use. Filters are useless, the only people advocating their use are people who know nothing about the technologies that drive the internet. The very same people I suspect that allow their kids unmoderated internet usage. There are plenty of products out there parents can use on their home PC, which won't impact on my business, or my freedom to choose what I view.

Neil

10 Dec 2008 10:04pm

Infiltrator

10 Dec 2008 10:07pm

Hi FiltersRgood I actually agree with most of what you say. The only problem is that Australia won't have an Opt out option. If I could have only child pornography blocked and opt out of all other filtering, I would be all for it. If I can't look at my rocketry pages because the chemicles could be used to make explosives and I can't opt out, then I have a problem. If I can't research medical sites because the information could be used to commit suicide and I can't opt out, then I have a problem. If I can't look at gambils sites off shore but I can use gambling services here and I can't opt out, then I have a problem.

Nat.

10 Dec 2008 10:12pm

NET FILTER IS FAIL!

TechNoFear

10 Dec 2008 10:20pm

@FiltersRgood Since you mention the filter in the UK... I am sure many people noticed not being able to access Wikipedia due to the UK filter blocking the whole site. This was due to one image (a '60s album cover) which is freely available for purchase in the UK from other internet sites.

Tom Riddle

10 Dec 2008 10:24pm

So, Australia is to become one of the elite countries of the world who censor the rights of it's people to access information on the internet. We are to join those elite countries such as China and Burma where the people are only allowed access to information their governments deem fit for the people to see. This is very much akin to a certain European government who decided that it's people should not have access to certain information contained in certain types of books and so, removed them from libraries and shops and homes and burned them in big public displays of book burnings. Internet censorship is along those exact same lines. We supposedly live in one of the "free" countries of the world. Or do we? The people of australia will not stand for this kind of restriction of their rights to access information freely. They will not stand for ISP filtering of any sort which smacks of any restriction. We are not China or Burma. We are supposed to be the "lucky" country. The "lucky" country does not hold with politicians who take it upon themselves to beat their voters with a stick and tell them what they can and cannot do on the internet. You have already done your dash with the voters of this country Mr. Conroy, you will not get a second chance. This plan is dispicable and you are obviously off with the fairies if you think this is going to win you any votes.

Dean

10 Dec 2008 11:50pm

I think the Federal Labor Government is doing a great job but this filtering issue is so important that I simply will not be able to support Labor at the next election if the filter goes ahead. The simple reason is this, I can not and will not accept a situation where material is filtered in secret by some official body who will decide what kind of information is deemed "appropriate" for the public to view.
There is too much potential for this to become exploited by Religious, Political or Idealogical zealots. THIS IS A FREE COUNTRY, HANDS OFF OUR FREEDOM OF ACCESS TO INFORMATION.

TechNoFear

11 Dec 2008 7:56am

TechNoFear

10 Dec 2008 11:16pm

@FiltersRgood

Since you mention the filter in the UK...

I am sure many people noticed not being able to access Wikipedia due to the UK filter blocking the whole site. This was due to one image (a '60s album cover) which is freely available for purchase in the UK from other internet sites.

Joel

10 Dec 2008 11:16pm

All the experts agree - everyone, individuals AND businesses, will be disadvantaged by the implementation of a filter. Speeds will be slower, costs will be higher, sites will be incorrectly blocked (take, for example, the recent blocking of the ENTIRE Wikipedia in the UK!) and not all illegal/inappropriate sites will be filtered.

But not a single criminal will be stopped, as these filters can always be circumvented. Even in terms of blocking pornography, the most tech savvy group are teenagers and they will ALWAYS find a way around it. Not to mention actual evil perps on the net.

"Protecting our children" is admirable, but let's give our parents some responsibility too - computers in the lounge rooms rather than bedrooms for all to see, education for children and parents, and a little bit of trust between children, parents and the government.

Take this opportunity to admit you were wrong, and spin it positively - promote Australia as a technical and cultural country!

Son of Liberty

10 Dec 2008 11:12pm

"The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation." From the greatest child murderer in history... Adolph Hitler (Mein Kampf)

As a retired science teacher, computer expert and long time online gamer, I can tell you, any stupid attempt to block illegal sites is doomed to fail. I can easily set up an anonymous route through overseas servers and completely by-pass any filtering that my ISP or government can impose....just as many Chinese people can. And so can most internet savvy kids here....oh, the irony.

I'm against kiddy porn as much as anyone, but this idea is idiotic and shows that the perpetrators know nothing about how easy it is to circumvent by the very people they are trying to stop.

Now way will I sit quietly why Big Brother Conroy tries out this China-like great firewall rubbish.

Before you know it the list of banned sites will include anything connected to peer to peer sharing (the music and movie industry will be right onto that). Then it will be adult porn, or anything else the bloody Christians or Government twits get their cat-bummed lips in a twist about.

Leave our internets alone you silly wowsers!

Any slowing of an already Aussie-joke-band net will impinge on my uber skills as a gamer and I pay a lot of money for that privilege, so be warned...the Aussie public will vote you out so fast you won't have time to blog a moan about it.

Brownbear

10 Dec 2008 11:10pm

I would suggest that the digital economy is all profit making endeavour that utilises digital equipment to achieve that objective. This basicly means that anything that uses any form of binary code to operate is part of the digital economy. The vast majority of our equipment in the modern world has some form of digital control system. The obvious things are the computer and internet, telephones and Digital TV's, but it also includes cars with their computer engine controls etc.

If we look at the digital street directory we find that the actual unit is reliant on an internal computer which receives GPS information from satelites by digital signal and maps are updated using a computer and the internet. The number of enterprises making a profit from this one item are numerous. The main difference between the digital and the paper directory is ease of use and the ability to have continuosly up to date information.

Australian's have a history of quickly embracing good new technology. There is no doubt that Australians are eager to adopt and use digital technology because they see it as making life easier. We are able to access information easier and faster. We are able to participate in a variety of activities such as chatting with friends, watching videos, playing games and doing our banking and paying bills from home. The developments that are occuring in digital technology make it exciting and desirable for all Australians at some level.

One of the biggest problem with digital technology is equal access for all. At the root of this access problem is the antiquated telephone cable system that covers this country. While there has been work done in the major population centres with optical cable there is still a lot to be done and over large distances. This has been recognised in the NBN initiative by the Goverenment. The cost of using the landline system is, IMHO, rediculous. I believe that this can be blamed on the largest telecomunication provider in the country also owning the hardware. I firmly believe that the owner of the hardware should not be allowed to retail telephony services. Because of the size and population spread in Australia I believe that the infrastructure should be owned and maintained by a Government instrumentality so the equity of access and pricing issues can be addressed fairly. Australia also needs increased cabling to link with overseas telecom networks to increase bandwith.

I think that these measures are essential if all Australia are going to be able to enjoy and benefit from the ongoing digital revolution.

Finally let me say that in my opinion the Government has no place trying to replace parents. It always cost a fortune and invariably doesn't achieve the objective. Forget the compulsory internet filter and tell the parents to do their flaming job and stop blaming others for their incompetence.

Calvin

10 Dec 2008 11:08pm

If users of the 'net are concerned about it's content, and what their children may look at/find, there are plenty of actions they can take locally to protect themselves. Some obvious examples:

1. Sit with their children when they are on the 'net
2. Make children use the 'net in a public area like the lounge room so they are under surveillance
3. Consider installing a filtering programme on the computer that minors will use.

If parents are SO concerned about what their children are viewing, might I respectfully suggest that they actually take an interest in their children, instead of expecting the entire country accept degraded and substandard Internet access just so they can be relieved of their parenting responsibilities.

The Internet has some very unpalatable content on it, IF YOU GO LOOKING. The solution is simple however, If you don't like particular content DON'T LOOK !

Attempting to alter the Internet to 'restrict' access to material is likely to cause 10 times more problems than it will solve, and frankly I beleive it will lull a lot of parents into an EXTREMELY FALSE sense of security.

Darque

10 Dec 2008 11:07pm

To everyone posting "Filtering won't work", "it will degrade our already slow internet"... you are not telling the government anything they do not already know. They are not listening to industry experts and results from tests they already have conducted, what makes you think they are going to listen to any of you? They have their backs against the wall on this. They can't back down lest look weak on the sickening issue of child pr0n. A question that should be asked is "What is the measurable?" By what do they gauge their sucess in curbing distribution of such material? Followed by a two-pronged question of "Did you simply drive it further underground?" and "If you have a measurable, that means you've been tracking distribution. Why not persue it? Why close the garden gate and pretend the leaves won't still blow in?" The other aspect of this I find particularly sicken is the further exploitation of children by the government. To think that the Blacklist only has sites related to images of child abuse is naive. They have created a conduit to censor any material deemed unpalettable to a select few, and have been screeching "think of the children" to silence resistence. I have worked in IT for 20 years. I know your plans will fail and severely hinder this nations future in the digital age. I am also a father, and it's my job to keep my children safe. There are already laws that cover those who don't. Reinforce them and punish those responsible, not the nation.

And to FiltersRGood - why look abroad, when they are already looking at us and questioning it. Clearly you haven't been reading widely enough.

Twilightknight

10 Dec 2008 11:05pm

My comment may seem a little off topic but it directly relates to the *impact* that the idiotic internet filtering proposal will have on the "digital economy" or whats left of it after the packet filtering at ISP level has slowed the web to a snails pace.

This internet filtering proposal looks like yet another classic case of people listening to advice from people who don't really understand the fundamental issues. This is just another example of a cotton wool government regulating away our freedoms to *protect* us. If you intend to protect children then perhaps parents should surf the net WITH their kids? and you can't reasonably expect dedicated child predators would be slowed down by something as simplistic as this filtering method? There is more than one way to connect to the internet. Also given the rate of change in the internet how you can you reasonably expect a government department to keep up with the list of sites that are off limits?

A quick and easy way to send our economy to the stone-age.

Lisa

10 Dec 2008 11:04pm

I work for a company that makes online computer games, and I really despair at the plans for internet filtering. Nothing will ever stop people from accessing illegal content online if they want to. The only people who will be impacted by this policy are law-abiding citizens, whose speeds are going to be slower, and whose access to information will be impeded by false positives.

Simon

10 Dec 2008 11:00pm

>The facts are here: Millions of Internet users in the UK, Canada, Scandinavia, Switzerland and New Zealand have their internet filtered for illegal child sexual abuse Web sites and their Internet does not slow down and they don't notice it.

These filters are applied optionally by ISPs themselves. They are completely different from the proposed Australian filter. You say they don't notice it but recently the Internet Watch Foundation blacklist, which these filters apply, blocked a Wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Killer - an album which can be bought from amazon.com) which caused the entire UK to be unable to edit Wikipedia. The image on the site was not blocked, just the page itself. As unacceptable as you may find the album cover that the text of the page was blocked shows how dangerous these filters are.

>What is wrong with Australian ISPs - can't they look beyond their own shores and see what the world is doing? Go for filtering of illegal sites for everyone, and if they don't like the other type of filtering for unwanted content, then they can always opt out - so what's the problem?

The problem is with defining what is illegal content. That is a job for the courts, not an unaccountable black box between our internet and the rest of the world.

The filter wont stop child pornography and it wont stop child pornography from being made. Not even China's firewall can do that.

Although I realize it currently does, our government should not have the power to censor ideas.

Aron

10 Dec 2008 10:50pm

What do you think the benefits to Australia of the digital economy are?

Businesses
- Continued evolution of inter-business transacting electronically
- Broadening services offered and delivery medium benefiting business partners and individuals alike
- Being able to run a global business with global partners in supply chain, logistics etc
- A continuation of how business can be conducted today
- Reaching more customers than with just bricks and mortar alone
- A continued evolution of where we are today in terms of electronic commerce
- Creation of new models of transacting and new models of how organisations can operate / collaborate together regardless of location including our resource rich environments

Industry
- Creating depth in Intellectual Capital and Intellectual Property in Australia to develop concepts and businesses
- making a viable digital commercial economy by determining what services and media development could be conducted locally or imported through the accumulation of IC and IP in Australia

Individuals
- reduced costs and friction to transact with businesses electronically eg BPay, councils etc
- Access to new print media, video content, audio content (music etc) and whatever else is fashioned in future.
- Whatever concepts can be developed and delivered from now on

How do you think we can ensure that those benefits are enjoyed by all Australians?

- Open access to a network infrastructure(s) for consumers, businesses and governments.
- Reasonable regulation of network access providers
- Reasonable regulation of network backbone providers
- Reasonable regulation of how network media (spectrum, rights of access etc.) are provided and divided up and used
- Enable the digital commercial economy to develop in Australia and become a bigger slice of the services based economy by bringing more IC and IP to be developed and stay in Australia
- Staying away from regulating for a particular technology or a particular organisational /legal structure
- Opening up multiple access pathways for access providers to the home/office/campus etc.
- Creating incentives for well thought out business plans for regional providers to compete in the rural and out of metro areas on an even basis.
- Stop listening to economists and pundits who think they know what is best in this regard and build your own view of how you see the communications technology industry evolving and build legislation, organisation and political effort to achieve that goal. There should never be a single Australia wide network and the concept of overbuild on the same street should be a commercial one for providers to deliberate if they have access to houses/apartment blocks/campuses or commercial buildings.

Ant

10 Dec 2008 10:43pm

The "great firewall of Australia" must be stopped, its ill advised, virtually impossible to achieve its stated purpose and will slow the internet in Australia down to a crawl. How utterley ridiculous that a supposedly forward looking country like Australia would seek to emulate China and Iran by blocking and filtering the Internet

Brad

10 Dec 2008 9:37pm

Senator Conroy, you have been given the responsibility to improve this industry not drag it down further than it already is!

First, build a panel of experts, not bureaucrats who actually want to improve the industry not line their pockets!

Secondly, listen to the MAJORITY, you only have christian fundamentalist support for this filter as all they see is people arguing over blocking child porn which isn't even remotely close to the real issue here.

Industry experts globally have condemned your plan as costly, unintuitive and as a futile exercise. There is very good reason for this. Most of the content you need to block (child and animal porn) isn't available over a HTTP protocol, it is passed by direct file transfer, which can be encrypted and totally undetectable to any filter you may ever conceive.

You will drive people to using remote proxy servers, VPNs and RDP sessions to PCs and Servers in other countries, exposing people to greater insecurity as their bank details etc will be easily traced through these connections which are easily able to be configured by a 12 year old.

As someone who has used the internet for well over a decade for at least 2-3 hours per day, I have NEVER stumbled across child pornography ever.

The odd adult website or poker website comes up when you are already looking in shady corners of the internet, but if you are already dealing with those sorts of websites you are expecting to find such things.

Spend the money on something worthwhile like trying to catch the scum who trade in child pornography, not to treat innocent Australian's as a group of potential child abusers that need to be separated from this garbage.

This whole exercise is an insult to the way our tax dollars are spent, will increase our ISP costs, will slow down our internet speeds exponentially during peak times when the filtering servers cannot cope with the load and by far the worst: give the current government, acma and a private organisation the ability to SILENTLY filter content it disagrees with.

If you must proceed with the filter, legislate EXACTLY what is allowed to be filtered, ie: child porn, terrorist websites etc. In addition to making the full list of banned IP and URL addresses publicly available at any time for any Australian to review and question, as is our right!

You are in government because we put you there, not because it is your right to be there. Work choices killed the reign of Howard, I am certain that the Great Firewall of Australia's Censorship Government will be its downfall.

Im a voter too

10 Dec 2008 9:39pm

The Governments plan to censor the internet is misguided policy and is based on misunderstanding of the Internet and what it is (and is not) capable of.

1. The proposed filtering system (and every such system) has significant false positive rate. This means that legitimate sites WILL be blocked by the Government. Maybe your site. With no recourse. And if the filter decides to block my business site: bad luck. If it decides to block an innocent site I need: bad luck. The proposed filter WILL block millions and millions of innocent sites.

2. The proposed filter has a significant false negative rate. This means that it wont block all the sites that the Government deems to be nasty.

3. The filter is open to misuse by blocking sites that arent 'nasty' but that the Government happens not to like. Protest sites, civil disobedience sites, people with wierd but innocent hobbies, opposition movements, sites that religious bigots don't like, they can all be blocked now. No recourse.

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.

5. Its not the Governments business to be my child's censor, nor even to be my censor. Its my business. Stephen Conroy, keep out of my business.

6. The people who want the nasty information the Government is trying to prevent will find a way to get it. Filters are easy to work around. So in the end, the Goverment's filtering policy is an expensive, painful waste of time. Thanks Stephen, Ill remember that come next election.

Andrew P

10 Dec 2008 9:41pm

As several posters have mentioned before me the Internet is not a playground for children and the government needs to get that message out. What we don't need is baseless fear mongering by a government backed into a corner by political maneuvering during it's tenure in opposition. If families want a clean Internet then ISPs should do what they can to provide that, even to the point of offering filtering on a voluntary basis, but they should also take more responsibility for what their children are doing. Start an Ad campaign to tell people to move the computer to the kitchen or lounge room. Teach parents to restrict computer access, use passwords, etc.

Australians need to take a little more responsibility for their own actions and outcomes, and the government needs to back off and stop legislating morality.

Ian-Brisbane

10 Dec 2008 9:43pm

I am gob smacked that a government in and of a decent democracy like ours would even contemplate censorship. You have no right to censor what your citizens read and hear. It is especially staggering that the description of the black list apparently includes "inappropriate" as a description of things which will be censored. Who is going to decide what is inappropriate. North Korea is sounding more and more liberal by the minute.

Adelaide in the New Peoples Republic of China

10 Dec 2008 10:01pm

What will the government decide as inappropriate content? When did Australia turn into the People's Republic of China?

Andrew D

10 Dec 2008 10:01pm

So the ISPs are forced to filter URLs, so this means that I get a slower service and pay for it (directly or indirectly via tax?). As for the censorship element that makes me a little uncomfortable as an initially benign system could potentially be used for political ends. But any half competent person over the age of about 7 can bypass content filtering relatively easily unless it is very draconian. As an IT security professional with over 15 years experience I would think that it would be better to direct funding at detection and enforcement rather than prohibition.

Steve in Perth

10 Dec 2008 10:23pm

I'm sure that Senator Conroy and The Honorable Lindsay Tanner are decent people trying their hardest in difficult times to do their very best.

It's obvious though to anyone who, like me, has spent a lifetime (since 1968!) working with computers and who has been using the internet since before it was called the Internet, that (no disrespect) they don't know what they are talking about.

Ministers can't become instant experts with years of experience, so they have to rely on the advice that they are given by their staff. Clearly the advice that is being given is deeply deeply flawed on a technical and practical level.

Find a way to get better advice independent of those who have advised in the past.

What's being suggested for "Internet Filtering" is unsound, unwise, impractical in a real world, and needs to be reviewed. HTH.

Agotz

10 Dec 2008 10:38pm

As an IT Technician I can honestly say that the net filtering proposal will fail. I urge the Government to consider the implications of subjecting current and future broadband speeds to any kind of ISP level filtering system.

The reality is that 90% of all teenage boys and girls know how to circumvent this filter and those that don't will soon find out how. Every techie and his friends know how to do the same. The various methods that can be used to defeat a filter are undetectable and easily employed. Why is the Government wasting millions of dollars of tax payers money on an already doomed idealism at a time when we can do better things with this money?

I trust Minister Conroy will see the light of reality and forget this stupid net filtering idea. Leave children's net safety to the parents where it belongs and stop being a nanny style government. It is not what we want.

Freedom of speech, either good or bad, is the cornerstone of a our democracy. Destroy that and you destroy the very foundation this great country was built upon.

Andy

10 Dec 2008 10:39pm

Like WorkChoices, for me, this internet filtering policy is an election loser. Implement it, and I for one (and I suspect a huge amount of other people who don't like being nannied) would vote against the current government in the next election, assuming the opposition are smart enough to have the removal of the filter completely as an election promise. I am starting to be ashamed of the fact I voted labor last time......

Alan

11 Dec 2008 6:06am

The proposal to censor internet content is the sort of thing which is to be expected of Labour Governments. Was this inspired by China's system? First pornography, then what?

smokey

11 Dec 2008 6:08am

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. There's also the fact that you want to censor up to 10,000 sites now, giving little detail as to what they all are.

Markus

11 Dec 2008 6:10am

How ironical. I can submit a comment on your blog from China.

Dave Bath

11 Dec 2008 6:11am

Sooo many comments. It would be nice to get the LOT of them in a single page for easier perusing (or saving to disk). Can we have a "single page view (with comments)" that might also be "printer friendly"? Thanks in advance.

Buddyij

11 Dec 2008 6:14am

Hi there.. This is a strange approach and yet the government decides to not to listen to the people..reminds me of the howard government and if this goes ahead i can see the next election to go the otherway and the alp will not be in power. net filtering odd concept, lofty goal and totally unreachable and attainable. the government is wanting to build a whole new broadband network yet wants to slow it down by over 85%. so why build it then. let the economy suffer and tank, allow jobs to dissappear and peoples information to hacked and taken. a better option is to make it optional for those who want it. the best option would be to encourage a netforce and then assistant funding it and actually placing the people in jail who do the wrong for this cp they claim. but the new system they want will only lead to a dictatorship with unhealth consequences, for example the science group who believes that christians who beleive creation loby the government to ban all pro-creation sites as they are harming the freedom of mans thought andare "hate sites" and walla done and not to mention that the temptation to accidently decide to blacklist national or liberals sites will be too great.. yet their theory is only theroy and not fact. the government wants to help the economy and yet at the same time wishes to stab it in the heart and destroy it. also the other countries that have done this does not work. china is always used as an example yet they are the largest counterfitters of media material in the world... so best to catch the criminals instead of hoping they go away... catch the cp criminals and people hacking and you will definately see an improvement and also train parents with knowledge of the net and how to track.

webberist

11 Dec 2008 6:15am

Exactly what is being blocked? Under the Broadcasting Services Act 1992, the following categories of online content are prohibited: * Any online content that is classified RC* or X 18+* by the Classification Board (formerly the Office of Film and Literature Classification). This includes real depictions of actual sexual activity, child pornography, depictions of bestiality, material containing excessive violence or sexual violence, detailed instruction in crime, violence or drug use, and/or material that advocates the doing of a terrorist act. * Content which is classified R 18+* and not subject to a restricted access system that prevents access by children. This includes depictions of simulated sexual activity, material containing strong, realistic violence and other material dealing with intense adult themes. Comments 1. Regarding the RC (Refused Classification), other than obviously affecting pornography, are websites for games that have been RC going to be blocked? How can I be sure game distribution platforms such as Steam are not going to be blocked because they sell RC material? 2. I assume by restricted access system, a credit card age validation system is required? If so, that means all pornographical websites that have a preview page should be blocked. I'd estimate this to be 100% of the sites. Up until now these laws have been irrevelant because there has been no way of enforcing them. How can the government even consider a Great Firewall of China style system with laws as vague as these in place. From a techinical perspective, the method the ACMA used for measuring performance impact only tests one aspect of performance. It does not measure latency, packet loss, or speed (data throughput). It only measures the number of web requests that can be passed to a server with and without a firewall. This is analagous to the number of simultanous phone calls that can be made. While important, isn't it also important to measure how long a phone call takes to connect? And if there's echo once it is connected?

dave

11 Dec 2008 6:17am

GG mister in charge. Step 1 get a clue. Can you filter it - no. Can you mess it up for others in the process - yes. In order to be effective your solution has too be smarter than the combined will of the masses being filtered. How smart is your solution - not at all. Step 2 do it right. The only way it will work is with (not against) the will of the users. Ergo opt out (or opt in) for reasonable adult use. Noone disagrees with kiddie porn being filtered, but if I can't get a fresh supply of Cleavland Steamers then millions of other people will be working with me to get around your half baked solution. Step 3 take lessons from the Chinese. They have been doing it for years yet the dissenting voices get out. The tools have been well honed, URL blacklisting is not going to to work. The Berlin wall was a phisical wall. The Rudd wall is like a fly screen. Step 4 stop it from being subverted. I realise your intentions are pure, but if a Hansonite government won office, what would they do with the keys to free speech?

Bleeter

11 Dec 2008 8:07am

>How do you think we can ensure that those benefits are enjoyed by all Australians? Get rid of Conroy and get someone who has a clue

Bleeter

11 Dec 2008 8:12am

>What do you think the benefits to Australia of the digital economy are? Same as to most other countries, exception being theoretical increase in ease of communication between distant regions of the country. >How do you think we can ensure that those benefits are enjoyed by all Australians? Listening and acting upon the advice and recommendations of what would now be called the 'digital community' when they spoke over 10 years ago.

Privacy International concerns

11 Dec 2008 8:14am

The international filter is a farce and will be easily circumvented by the very people you mean to restrict.. proxy upon proxy with botnets and homemade encrypted streams to stop snooping.. easily done I could teach an 11 year old child.. The filters by the way could be misconstrued as a violation of certain internationals staying in the country say for example foriegn-nationals, embassy officicals. I hope that the companies involved are not the same ones involved with the BT phorm trials as that may put the project in a bit of a pickle. wondering bow you propose to secure satelite phones, HAM radio and now affordable microwave repeaters not to mention the tapping metronet and last but not least how can you prove the tangiable state of a WiFi/WiMax node to access materials.. impossible to trace and impossible to hold a conviction. all in all a white elephant not impressed at all.. With so many worthwhile ventures to invest the money, why?

Vamsmack

11 Dec 2008 2:01pm

*SMACK* Bad Boy! That was for even contemplating an internet filter and then trying to push forward the idea of a digital economy. What you fail to realise is that when you censor the internet, degrade the internet signal(upto 85%) and tar all people who oppose the internet filter with the same brush by sneakily alluding to them as supporters of child porn you really are doing yourself and the people who put you into your position a great dis service. For us to enjoy the benefits of a digital economy we need to have access to what we want not what our government wants us to look at. I think what really needs to happen her Sen Conroy is we need to get someone into the hot seat who actually knows what even base level filtering is going to do to our 'digital economy' aside from making our internet so slow that it becomes impossible to do business online. If i lost 85% of my signal strength I would be down to almost dial up speeds... What you don't realise is if we cant get high speed access to the internet there is no need to actually do business online as it will all grind to a halt. If we wanted an ignorant ill informed blundering mistake to make this would be it. It isn't about protecting children its about the government telling us what we can and cant have access to and last time i checked the only places that do that are china, iraq, afghanistan, sudan to name just a few. Is that really the company you want to keep? I could have done your job for half the cost and make better informed decisions.

Stomfi

11 Dec 2008 2:02pm

Cost Effective Systems. The digital economy relies on a mechanism that consists of machinery, networks and procedures, to allow media forms to be stored, viewed, manipulated and saved, searched, and broadcast electronically. A combination of transparency, security, and speed, are the controlling factors for media handled by the mechanism. The hiher rated the combination, the more effective any system running on it will be to those that use it. To make this complex mechanism easy to comprehend in its entirerity, this simple model of the beast shows anyone how it works. 1. Public Information Layer. - Big Archives and long period analyses. 4a. Networked to each other. 4b. Networked to Work Node Layer 2. Work Node Layer. - A grid of end user computing devices with Internet and Human Interface ports. 4c. Networked to the Work Node Layer. 4d. Networked to human interfaces. 3. Human Interface Layer. - Mechanisms for Viewing, Listening, and Tactile output, Scanners for Visual, Audio, and Tactile input. 4e. Networked to each other 4f. Networked to Work Node. Now that we can see the pieces, it is simpler to calculate how the devices should be interconnected and where the various user selection criteria could be most effectively controlled. Looking all three controlling factors for each calculation, one can work out where and why a bottleneck occurs, and where to shift a software component to relieve the stress. Naturally a work node can be built from something simple and inexpensive like a PS3 or Xbox, games machine with an inbuilt dialup and broadband wireless router. The ISPs must control the nodes to be able to control blacklists on a proxy filter at the user interface connection device. These suggestions will shift the filtering function to where it will be more effective for these reasons: 1.Because ISPs have control over what gets into the customer machinery. 2. All customers will get an ISP supplied and grid connected work node for super high speed computing. 3. The ISPs will have a new inexpensive, but extra functions product with which to make Government guaranteed income. 4. The Government will have a popular blacklist supply role in effective content filtering, and in making ISPs deliver the new must have gadget. 5. The Internet will not be slowed at the server. 6. The work node grid will add cost free benefits to ISPs with the likes of grid storage services, and for the whole community, as traffic analyses lead to distributed local server farms reducing the stress on city power supplies. 7.The work node OS and software are installed by the ISP. 8. The user connects any existing computing equipment. It could be Apple, Microsoft, Linux, UNIX, or wireless keyboard and mouse, and cabled HD Screen to the Work Node. This direct connect to the node will lead to a stimulating market of add on interfaces. 9. If the IBM Cell chip is used, effective Work Nodes can be set up to filter content at mobile towers with a very low power footprint. This is about stopping to think clearly about getting money spent and using it to create the foundation of a superior system that can be developed and maintained cheaply and easily. Most importantly it leads to cheap and easy functionality and performance growth.

Will Fight U All The Way

11 Dec 2008 3:55pm

I cannot beleive that the current Federal Government would even consider the filtering of the internet. For you to even think that you could do so effectively further reinforces my long held belief that you have NO CLUE WHAT-SO-EVER when it concerns the digital age. All you need to be concerned with is 'real' Hi-speed internet access at an affordable price for ALL Australians - not this disgustingly overpriced 'commodity' with which most of us are stuck. Sure, you can Hi-speed - if you have a spare $100 or so every month (I'm sure you do Senator Conroy - I DO NOT!). However, back to the more concerning issue. Either you simply don't care or grossly underestimate OUR ability to sink your plans and your position. Or are you backed to the hilt by Christian lobby groups? We all know you are but you of all people should have the intelligence to keep politics and utterly irrational blind faith separate (I would hope). Short point is this - DON'T DO IT. You will face a literal mountain of opposition should you go forward with this. The real experts (not those working for you who only tell you what you want to hear) have spelled it out plain and clear - IT WON'T WORK. Footnote - just suppose that this archaic plan were to be put in to practice and sites deemed to contain inappropriate and offensive matter were blocked - you'd never be able to load a single government site. Think about it. Practically everything the government says and does is offensive in some way or another.

CrystalsQuest

11 Dec 2008 2:30pm

I object to reducing the scope of the digital world to an 'economy'. Sure, we all know in the bricks and mortar world the banks are the real rulers, but online is so far mostly free of that, and I for one want to see it STAY THAT WAY!!! What on earth do social sites have to do with economics? Admittedly, having run multiple sites myself there is a cost involved, but that is not, nor should be, the prime driver of what is created online. Sorry, but this world was born to give us freedom of information, freedom of expression, freedom from distance and freedom of choice. It allows us to connect with like minded souls regardless of where they are in the world, what our social standing or address is, to be ourselves in a world where our ideas stand alone, to be taken for their own value, free from prejudices about the person delivering them. Don't reduce it to money, numbers, and economics. It's way too big to fit in that hole. Don't try to put limits on cyberspace - the only world left for people who like living without horizons and who need frontiers to explore. It's not yours to control. Never was. Never will be. Any more than we, the people, are under your control. Abandon illusions, all ye who enter here... Welcome to the world of equality. Online, what you say matters more than who you are. People will only listen to you if you have something worthwhile to share. If this is an exercise, forget it, you'll never get the point. If you want to hear people speak their mind, though, and take on board what they have to say - you've just entered nirvana. Namaste.

Adam

11 Dec 2008 4:02pm

It's interesting to note that the Senator has yet to address the angry mob of protestors rallying in capital cities railing against this censorship campaign. It would be interesting to see the governments view on these misguided individuals, like the Digital Liberty Coalition people

texinick

11 Dec 2008 2:43pm

I find it rather ironic that you wish to talk about the Digital Economy, while your plans to create a mandatory internet filter could well destroy our Internet. Similarly, I find it ironic that Kevin Rudd is in Bali chairing a meeting about democracy while you have plans to create a mandatory internet filter without giving he people YOU serve a vote. Since when is FORCING all internet users to use the filter a democratic option? The internet is a global information pool, owned by no-one. Microsoft poured millions and millions of dollars into development to try and tie the internet to their operating system, and failed. Our previous government wasted millions of tax-payers dollars to try and censor it, and failed. What makes you think you can do any better. In the end, the people you're trying to protect are the ones you hurt while those you are trying to curb just continue to use the tools and services that you are NOT filtering. All the money that is, and has, been wasted could have developed a superb filtering package that parents could install if they are concerned about their children seeing the wrong material. The internet is far bigger than the Labour Party. I can guarantee that forcing a filter on the people you are serving without giving then a vote, will cost YOU votes in the next election. I beg you, for our internet economy, for our digital economy, for those of us who have so much vested interest in the internet and online businesses, please reconsider this ridiculous move. By all means punish the ones that are distributing the material, but please don't punish everyone.

Wally Anderson

11 Dec 2008 4:04pm

Censorship by the government will not do one thing for the digital economy. Parents already have access to effective filtering they can install on their PC's for free. This whole thing is a complete sham. Your argument is that people like me (people who want freedom from government oppression) are pedophiles. I am absolutely certain anyone in your party will never again receive my vote. You are either completely clueless or you are singing family first's agenda.

Geoff

11 Dec 2008 2:45pm

I am a professional software developer and have been using the internet for my education, teaching and business, every day I've worked since it was connected to Australia in 1989. Not once during this 20 years have I been inadvertently exposed to child porn. My main concerns are that it: 1) Parents should be in control of what material children see, NOT the government and certainly not a handful of right-wing religious extremists who appear to have undue influence upon our politicians. This legislation does nothing to protect children from the real dangers such as lurkers in chat groups and bullying. Only parental supervision can do that. It is far more dangerous for our children's well being to live under a far right regime of censorship than it is for them to be potentially exposed to "inappropriate" material. 2) In a country that is already an internet backwater, Senator Conroy should be focusing upon providing 100MB/s to every business and household, not crippling out future economic infrastructure back to 3rd world standards by turning ISPs into filtering police. 3) During the run up to the election it was stated that end users would be able to opt-out of the censorship, instead it simply appears that two levels of censorship are being implemented using "the children" as a means to foist totalitarian policy upon us all. Why were we lied to? 4) Power corrupts, and having a hidden black-list of banned content that cannot be reviewed or challenged by the public will certainly lead to another arrogant, power-drunk, department much like Howard's Department of Immigration. Where will it end?

Homerlovesbeer

11 Dec 2008 2:48pm

I am very concerned about the introduction of this filture. I do not believe it will do any good at all and will waste millions of dollars of our taxpayer money. The filture can easily be bupassed by the simple use of a proxy so anybody with half a brain can get around it. Not only that but the Australian ISP's already lag behind the rest of the developed world when it comes to the speed of our service and the cost to the consumer. To needlessly slow further my already average internet connection is both unproductive and frustrating, not to mention utterly pointless. I have every right to access material I deem appropriate which has already been wrongly filtured in trials already. How many 1000's of sites have been wrongly blocked so far? The sooner politicians stop trying to nanny Australians with draconian laws the better. Money should be spent on catching those proven to have accessed material such as child pornography and putting those people in jail instead of blocking masses of legally available material by mistake and slowing the internet to a crawl. Last time I checked I didn't live in China..........

Charlie

11 Dec 2008 4:11pm

The starting point for ensuring that benefits of the digital economy are enjoyed by all Australians is committing to open access for all Australians. The current plans by the government to attempt to filter the Internet are a threat to this and should be abandoned. The most significant issue with the proposed scheme is one of principle: in a democratic nation, the government should not be responsible for mandatory filtering of �unwanted� sites from the public. The other main problem is that filtering schemes are technically and socially flawed, so are ineffective and therefore a waste of tax payer's money. The principle of free access to information is of immense importance in a free country such as Australia. It is already understood that activities such as viewing child pornography are illegal and that incidences are investigated by the police - and ethical people do not wish to access such content, but ethical people can also rightfully object to the government's plan to filter �other unwanted content� [1]. The comments earlier this year by the Prime Minister about Bill Henson's work, for example, illustrate that members of the public have differing views of what is appropriate and the government should not decide this for everybody. Another example includes terrorism: this is a prime political target for filtering, but will the government stop access to Hamas material, for example? Some identify Hamas as a terrorist group and others do not. There are already calls from Senator Fielding to include legal pornography and from Senator Xenophon to ban gambling sites. The prospect of an ever-widening scope for filtering rightfully makes the public wary of creating the infrastructure that will allow this in the future. Filtering is also fundamentally flawed in terms of its stated objective, which is protecting children. It is vital that parents supervise their children online, because filters will not be perfect (they will still let bad sites through) and because the most serious risks online are not from published content but from other users. These other users will communicate with children through chat and instant messaging software, which are not filtered, or through the interactive features of websites that are increasingly common. The Internet is as varied as the real world, and parents must supervise their children just as they do in the real world. In addition to the technical flaw of not filtering everything is the fact that some percentage of legitimate content will be blocked by dynamic filtering techniques. Will the government compensate businesses whose e-commerce websites are accidentally blocked? Clearly, filtering poses a risk to even innocent people. And if we consider those who want to access illegal content, we should note that even young teenagers posses the sophistication to bypass filters using proxies and other software. The government has offered filtering software for concerned parents via the website for some time, but there has been limited public interest, as noted even by Conroy himself [2]. The people of Australia have lived with the Internet in its current form for many years now and understand already how to remain safe online. [1] Senate transcript, 11-Nov-2008. [2] Colley, A. Costs threaten NetAlert. The Australian IT, 26-Feb-2008.

Mark Elliott

11 Dec 2008 2:54pm

This blog is in itself representative of Australia's digital economy - it is thus far productive with strong growth, but is it sustainable, what is the quality and diversity of its output, and can it compete with other emerging economies? There is a great opportunity here (in Australia and on this blog) a good many informed and intelligent individuals not just willing to participate, but doing so with gusto. No doubt you are learning a great deal about this type of process and the interests of your constituents. However if this blog is to move beyond traditional consultation (eg, a letter to your minister) and explore the much heralded 'web2.0' potential, there needs to be a two way dialogue (as Sams rightly suggests). If this does not happen, I fear the unaddressed issues will dominate and eventually take over (if they aren't already). This is no doubt a challenging and likely daunting task, but one that must happen if the digital economy is to flourish sustainably - at the national level and that of this blog. Otherwise, I fear you can expect a brain drain.

w

11 Dec 2008 3:04pm

FiltersRgood: Your statement is factually wrong. No such "clean feed" exists in any of those countries. What does exist is a voluntary opt-in system which is not in any way mandatory, or even administered in any way by the Government.

Teledyne

11 Dec 2008 4:16pm

We run a successful Australian online business which will shift offshore entirely if this asinine proposal is implemented.

theangryibis

11 Dec 2008 4:17pm

Senator - the general population DO NOT want their internet filtered. the general population does not want to live in china. Even the chinese with their great desire and lots of money can't get a filter right. Some people want their internet filtered - let them do it. I don't - why should *you* impose *your* views on appropriate content on me? Why will you slow down my internet? Why does no other civilised country do this? Because it doesn't work, it is an impediment to free speech, and it is patently ridiculous! Do you even know that this will not work? Anyone who wants kiddie porn or whatever else will get it anyway. So you'll be annoying the majority to deter the easily deterred. Well done on that.

TheWomp

11 Dec 2008 3:40pm

Internet filtering is already available for those who want it through ISPs such as webshield.net.au Your unwarranted scheme would destroy such companies and adversly effect all Australian Internet business and the Internet performance for all Australians.

Also, the fact that you and other politicians have managed to keep our Rights from being enshrined in a Constitutional Ammendment does not mean that Australians do not believe that we have Rights, including the Right to Freedom of Speech. It is entirely unAustralian for you to presume to interfere with our Rights, and certainly not the basis under which you and your Party were elected.

Pete

11 Dec 2008 3:45pm

Using the Filtering idea Senator Conroy may hope to pick up a few votes in his "electorate" (Victoria). Conservative groups who are ill at ease with the freedom of the internet and who seek to impose their concepts of righteous morality may give him the thumbs up.

However, we the majority of Australians recognise filtering for what it is: quaint, ineffective, expensive and Luddite. It will handicap the speed of Australia's internet just when we need speed for economic efficiency.

Rudd may think he can get away with this but we the voters won't forget how beholden Rudd is to a religious minority - how Rudd failed to represent the majority. It makes no difference if the Coalition decide to be beholden to the same vocal minority.

Conroy and Rudd - this will lose you more votes in the end. Stand up for Labor values - not for a minority of social conservatives.

Pete

Richard Atkinson

11 Dec 2008 3:46pm

Congratulations on launching this blog! You have made a bold and positive step in opening tech policy decision making to the Australian taxpaying, voting (and clearly not politically apathetic) public.

Furthermore, kudos for recognising that publishing comments that criticise your current policy ideas actually helps your credibility in the long run.

I hope that you listen to the many good ideas put forward and refocus your energy toward helping Australia take advantage of this current quantum leap in mankind's development we humbly refer to as information technology, rather than trying to fight it.

Sincerely, Richard Atkinson

james

11 Dec 2008 3:58pm

As a new Australian working in technology, I'm tired of being ridiculed (by friends internationally) about this government's consideration of even considering a trial of an internet censorship/filtering platform. It's shown the world that Australia doesn't understand what the internet is - please - it makes us all look stupid. And it's going to hinder future investment when we appear so ridiculous to the rest of the world. It's already made an election decision for me. Look at ever post on slashdot.org which relates to technology in Australia - the first comments are ALWAYS ridiculing us due to this whole filtering scheme.

Nigel

11 Dec 2008 4:01pm

The benefits include a more flexible workforce that does not require additional transport infrastructure because they will commute less often, by being able to work remotely. Increased productivity, with greater access to more comprehensive data, faster.

You ensure this is more likely by having a faster, cheaper consumer broadband network; that allows IP video streaming/IP Voice without degradation of data rates; with reasonable data allowances that don't run out the first day you use your fast service.

Tax incentives to stay technically up to date; such as the recently scrapped laptop deductions. More technical law enforcement, with additional resources; cyber crime appears often not investigated until it crosses into physical realm (by which stage the horse has bolted).

Be involved in international police task forces to reduce organised crime groups, including money laundering, fraud/scams/identity theft. Actively seek criminals (honey pots) and track them back to their source. Invest in better decryption machines/software to allow police to (with warrants) to virtually break into criminal strongholds.

Reduce anonymity, most of the unsocial behaviour stems from this. This is challenging though, given identity theft and the criminals currently seeming more technically capable than the police.

Trying to filter the internet at any level other than directly at the local machine is not going to work and directs resources away from where they could be doing better work, a more technical Federal Police force.

Jaimes

11 Dec 2008 4:09pm

As an Australian and an internet user, I have serious concerns about your new mandatory "clean feed" filter initiative.

Given the importance your Government has attached to modernising Australia's broadband network, pursuing a policy that can only slow down and increase the costs of home internet access seems misguided at best. Australian households are diverse, and most do not have young children, so mandating a one-size-fits-all approach will not serve the public well. I don't think it is the Government's role to decide what's appropriate for me or my children, and neither do most Australians.

Given the amount of Internet content available, the Government will never be able to classify it all and I feel that the time and money could be spent in better ways both to protect children and improve Australia's digital infrastructure. Australian parents need better education about the risks their children face online. Trying to rid the Internet of adult content is futile, and can only distract from that mission.

A few points to consider

1. How will this filter serve any purpose for blocking child pornography or other illegal content when surely if any illegal content is found the proper authority's would be notified to have those websites taken down.

2. How will this filter even attempt to prevent online predators from contacting children? Will you be blocking social networking sites like Myspace and Facebook aswell as chat rooms where these predators are known to go to engage children?

3. Implementing this filter will give parents a false sense of security that their children are now safe on the Internet because of the filter. Opening up the gateway to lawsuits when it doesn't properly filter some webpages.

4. It should be up to parents to decide what's best for their children just as they would when they decide what movies and television they watch. It's not the governments role to play "Nanny State".

5. In a supposedly free and democratic society how can you justify blocking or censoring adult content from adults? Also how can you do something as completely undemocratic as block sites you deem as "unwanted material" without giving the public any indication as to what this unwanted material is instead keeping it hidden in a secret blacklist with no publicly available record where you can continue to add anything else to the list you deem unwanted without the public ever knowing what is being blocked? I wonder if negative comments about polices such as this would be classified by you as unwanted material.

6. The filter would incorrectly block 10,000 legitimate sites in every million. 7. When we have a filter like this where countries like Iran have more Internet freedom how can we any longer take the moral high ground and be an example to other nations as what a free and democratic society should be.

8. This filter will slow Internet access down by up to 80% according to a Government report. Our country already has just about the worst Internet speeds in the world, why put another hurdle like this in front of us, which is going to seriously hamper us from ever being able to catch up with the Internet speeds of the modern world.

9. The filter can easily be bypassed making it effectively pointless. 10. Tax money would be much more efficiently and sensibly spent on going after these child abusers.

11. All the experts agree that this filter is stupid, flawed, won't work and will only slow Internet speeds down.

12. The Australian public have shown very little interest in this filter public with far more of the public feedback being against it. So how can you willingly force this upon the Australian people and expect us to pay for it?

13. Given the amount of disapproval this filter has why pursue it when this will almost guarantee your party will be a one term government when the people decide to vote you out at the next election.

It seems to me the only reason you could have for pushing this policy is either you are seriously misguided, which I doubt because you have been given plenty of feedback by the public, the experts and the ISPs for why this filter is so impractical and insensible. So that means that the only conclusion that can be drawn is that you want this filter in place because of some ulterior agenda it serves.

Lastly given all these points that you have not even began to address I find it deeply offensive and juvenile that you'd suggest that everyone against this filter supports child porn.

Jaimes

11 Dec 2008 4:12pm

As an Australian and an internet user, I have serious concerns about your new mandatory "clean feed" filter initiative.

Given the importance your Government has attached to modernising Australia's broadband network, pursuing a policy that can only slow down and increase the costs of home internet access seems misguided at best. Australian households are diverse, and most do not have young children, so mandating a one-size-fits-all approach will not serve the public well. I don't think it is the Government's role to decide what's appropriate for me or my children, and neither do most Australians.

Given the amount of Internet content available, the Government will never be able to classify it all and I feel that the time and money could be spent in better ways both to protect children and improve Australia's digital infrastructure. Australian parents need better education about the risks their children face online. Trying to rid the Internet of adult content is futile, and can only distract from that mission.

A few points to consider

1. How will this filter serve any purpose for blocking child pornography or other illegal content when surely if any illegal content is found the proper authority's would be notified to have those websites taken down.

2. How will this filter even attempt to prevent online predators from contacting children? Will you be blocking social networking sites like Myspace and Facebook aswell as chat rooms where these predators are known to go to engage children?

3. Implementing this filter will give parents a false sense of security that their children are now safe on the Internet because of the filter. Opening up the gateway to lawsuits when it doesn't properly filter some webpages.

4. It should be up to parents to decide what's best for their children just as they would when they decide what movies and television they watch. It's not the governments role to play "Nanny State".

5. In a supposedly free and democratic society how can you justify blocking or censoring adult content from adults? Also how can you do something as completely undemocratic as block sites you deem as "unwanted material" without giving the public any indication as to what this unwanted material is instead keeping it hidden in a secret blacklist with no publicly available record where you can continue to add anything else to the list you deem unwanted without the public ever knowing what is being blocked? I wonder if negative comments about polices such as this would be classified by you as unwanted material.

6. The filter would incorrectly block 10,000 legitimate sites in every million.

7. When we have a filter like this where countries like Iran have more Internet freedom how can we any longer take the moral high ground and be an example to other nations as what a free and democratic society should be.

8. This filter will slow Internet access down by up to 80% according to a Government report. Our country already has just about the worst Internet speeds in the world, why put another hurdle like this in front of us, which is going to seriously hamper us from ever being able to catch up with the Internet speeds of the modern world.

9. The filter can easily be bypassed making it effectively pointless.

10. Tax money would be much more efficiently and sensibly spent on going after these child abusers.

11. All the experts agree that this filter is stupid, flawed, won't work and will only slow Internet speeds down.

12. The Australian public have shown very little interest in this filter public with far more of the public feedback being against it. So how can you willingly force this upon the Australian people and expect us to pay for it?

13. Given the amount of disapproval this filter has why pursue it when this will almost guarantee your party will be a one term government when the people decide to vote you out at the next election.

It seems to me the only reason you could have for pushing this policy is either you are seriously misguided, which I doubt because you have been given plenty of feedback by the public, the experts and the ISPs for why this filter is so impractical and insensible. So that means that the only conclusion that can be drawn is that you want this filter in place because of some ulterior agenda it serves.

Lastly given all these points that you have not even began to address I find it deeply offensive and juvenile that you'd suggest that everyone against this filter supports child porn.

michela

11 Dec 2008 4:14pm

Thanks for asking.

>What do you think the benefits to Australia > of the digital economy are?

Unparalleled access to information and culture which can close the distance gap between citizens and peers around the world.

>How do you think we can ensure that >those benefits are enjoyed by all Australians?

Recognise that the medium's strength is its openess. Stop wasting tax payer money on technological attempts to police social behavior and copyright law via the internet. Get up to speed on Creative Commons and open source licensing and shift government policy so that, by default, more resources remain accessible and useful to Australians.

Be transparent

Mr Average

11 Dec 2008 4:16pm

exactly what percentage of internet traffic is considered serious enough to shield us from ?

I fail to see the value in slowing down what is one of the slowest connection speeds among connected nations, in a vain attempt to impose a censorship that the industry and majority of users neither need or want.

Notwithstanding the moral intentions of the proposed filtering, "clean feed" will only make the task of apprehending offenders more difficult as they are driven to more "secure" methods of encryption and subversion. Moreover it will "punish" everyone with a predicted significant slowdown in internet connection speeds, something that is diametrically opposed to the governments stated mandate to increase connection speeds across the nation And once the censoring starts, where will it end ?

Stop wasting time and money, get on with the real issues like homelessness, poverty, health, substance abuse, public transport, infrastructure, unemployment, and prosecuting the corporate fat cats that are responsible for the financial fiasco. Or shut up and crawl back under your rock.

Rohan

11 Dec 2008 4:17pm

I do not live in a regional area (I live 10 minutes from the Gold Coast) and yet I cannot get a fast reliable internet connection. Currently the only thing available to my area are copper telephone wires which seriously limit the choice of plan, the speed and download limit available to my household. This severely curtails our ability to participate in the digital economy.

I hate to reiterate exactly what everyone above seems to be talking about, but the Great Firewall is only going to make matters worse. If my internet runs any slower or less reliably then certain activities on the web (such as uploading content to YouTube, or even downloading pictures) will become completely impossible. Not only is this Censorwall a terrible idea from a policy point of view, but there couldn't be a worse time to start meddling with our access to the internet.

We still haven't lost the opportunity as a nation to become real contributors to the digital economy, but the Censorwall policy puts it in absolute jeopardy.

Anon

11 Dec 2008 4:29pm

Net Filter is a waste of time and money, just proving how sad our world has become

Martin

11 Dec 2008 4:31pm

Dear Minister, Perhaps a redirect of our collected hard earned tax dollars towards a substantial level of funding for IT support to schools is a better solution to a crippled and filtered network? If you aim to enhance Australia's 'digital economy' perhaps build the key skills in school children to operate and manage in the digital world? By providing a solid financial contribution to education (not the mediocre effort currently promised / given to schools) you will ensure children are taught well, develop a solid knowledge base, and learn to use the net responsibly - and you will have negated the need for a filter.... Oh, a final point - if you ever do properly support education in schools, how about you go for systems that are NOT micro$oft? It is a failing monolopy that is starting to crumble. The NSW Govt's idea of a netbook for all is a smart step forward, perhaps you should talk to the states....

Kimmo

11 Dec 2008 4:32pm

This slipshod crock of a policy; this inane net nanny malarkey, is a vast blot on this government's prospects. The sheer degree of bloody-mindedness evident in pursuing this ridiculous insult and injury to Australians and our internet actually boggles the mind. And boggling, I stand here wondering how a reduction in speed of up to 85% is worth paying for a degree of security a ten year old can circumvent... Madness. Everyone says so. The writing's on the wall. Heed it or pay.

tc

11 Dec 2008 4:35pm

This is an insult to all, removal of freedom of speech and removal of freedom of information. As adults we are well equipped to make choices, we don't need a nanny government to dictate to us and purport to protect us. We have the means to protect our children if and where we deem fit. The costs of this project are also ridiculous, and the implementation virtually impossible without potential severe impact on business who genuinely uses the internet for business purposes. I've seen sites with what I'd consider porn, get away with license as being artistic, on the flip side, why would you want to limit a concerned parent from investigation of the symptoms of bullemia or anorexia if they felt it possibly applied to their family? Surely our medical system is bulging at the seams and well and trully insufficient when it comes to support of a concerned parent. This concept is expensive, ill conceived and in a time when communication is being purported to be paramount, you are looking to restrict such communication? Our broadband internet is still very expensive and still a luxury to pay for, so it would be naive to think that further regulatory restrictions would not result in higher costs. Whilst I am against pornography, illegal doings and paedolphilia, I do not believe this is in the best interest of the public nor business, and will negatively impact all, depriving them of very viable resources and limiting the interchange of information via cost and speed. I think political correctness has gone beserk.

Australia�s misguided Internet filtering plan

11 Dec 2008 4:42pm

There can be no digital economy of any value should plans to implement mandatory Internet filtering in Australia be put in place.

This proposed system is flawed on three major levels:

* Technical: It slows down the feed, it breaks some applications and it is possible to bypass it

* Legal: If the ISPs are filtering content without laws to support them, they are open to wrongful disconnection and/or wrongful blocking cases

* Ethical: By what standard is content being filtered? Differing religious beliefs and political leanings frequently result in varying moral codes - that which is offensive to me may be perfectly acceptable for you

apc.au believes that this proposed system is an invalid solution to the problem areas of the Internet. Australia should be enhancing existing methods of tracking down illegal content and online criminals rather than trying to find ways to block them. Australia should also be implementing improved education programmes to teach people how to safely make the best use of the freedoms and information the Internet provides rather than attempting to further protect us from ourselves.

Ian David Smith

11 Dec 2008 5:00pm

jozzas

11 Dec 2008 4:35pm

Congratulations, Senator Tanner. You have introduced the most undemocratic policy ever seen in Australia. Are you proud of yourself? This policy is ruining your political career, dragging Labor's name through the mud, and doing nothing to assist the woeful broadband speeds in this country. Drop the policy. Anything else is tantamount to career suicide.

Adam Liddy

11 Dec 2008 4:37pm

Mr Tanner, I would first like to thank you for the opportunity to provide feedback, with the additional comment that consultation is only as valuable as the consideration it is given. That being said I must lodge yet another voice of protest against the internet filter. I have stated to my MP (Kevin Rudd) that the Labor Party does not have a mandate for compulsory internet filtering, he has been manifestly unable to provide me with any statement made prior to the election where he informed the public that all adults would have their internet filtered. This is an attack on freedom of speech and can easily be used to stifle debate. Before you respond that it wont be used this way, we only have to look at the way the Labor party has already attempted to stifle debate on this topic by classifying everyone wanting to stand up for freedom of speech as helping child pornography, an abhorrent and patently unethical attempt to stop debate on a vital issue to all Australians. With the Labor policy of introducing a NBN and have touted the economic benefits of having faster broadband. Can you then explain the logic behind introducing a filter that will effectively eliminate any speed benefits the new network will give? I urge you to use the money to chase after the criminals setting up these sites. If the Government already knows who they are why are you not pursuing them through law enforcement? To not do so is negligence on the part of the Government. As previously stated, the Labor Party does not have a mandate for this policy. I urge you to make filtering optional. If you do not then I will be voting for the coalition as all people who care bout freedom of expression must surely be contemplating.

Mike in Townsville

11 Dec 2008 4:39pm

All i can say is no way web filtering is a direct attack on me and my family. I face it at work and that's OK, but in my own home no way. As a normal labor supporter this policy will change my families votes. Senator Conroy find another pet project and get out of my home. I am quit capable of looking after my own children i did not ask or require your assistance.

Marcus

11 Dec 2008 4:40pm

Instead of wasting money on slowering EVERYONE's internet to TRY to stop illegal porn activities, why not spend all that money on fixing our hospitals! Or there is many other thnings that would be more useful then web filtering. Anyone with half a brain will be able to egt around the filter, so why waste the money. Considering a young school kid beat the filter they tried in schools, do they expect others not to be able to do it??? Please, use common sense!

texinick

11 Dec 2008 4:43pm

If you REALLY want to fix up our Digital Economy, may I suggest that you put the money and effort into shutting down the Bit Torrent sites that are illegally sharing movies and music, and helping the ISP's stamp out the illegal downloading of this material? Piracy is causing the loss of billions of dollars to the relative industries. What are you doing about that? And why don't you review the draconian laws that puts Child Pornography into the same category as non-violent sex between consenting adults? I abhor child pornography, but I have no issues what so ever with sex between consenting adults. For censorship purposes, maybe we need a new category that separates the two? Or better still, as the adult industry has been asking for, you put non-violent sex between consenting adults in the R category instead of the X category. Sex is not evil, EVERYONE does it. It's about time this censorship farce got fixed up. Just because some don't like it, don't ruin it for everyone. I don't particularly like to see gore, and people eating brains in movies, but I can self censor myself and not watch it, I'm not calling for it to be censored. Considering that paid adult sites are one area of the internet that always seems to do better than anyone else, you can basically say that your plans to censor the internet will destroy a large part of the Digital Economy.

texinick

11 Dec 2008 4:45pm

LogicprObe

11 Dec 2008 4:45pm

Once again the government is prepared to sacrifice the rights of the many because of the percieved sins of the few. We want faster internet speeds, not slower!

?????

12 Dec 2008 9:10am

Ha this filter isnt going to work.. Give me a day after it goes up and i will be through it. it seems pointless to even bother when it takes so little time to break it .. Spend the money elsewhere like upgrading our communications hardware

Alfarin

11 Dec 2008 4:48pm

If you really think the digital econmy is important then you won't implement compulsory web filtering. It is a ridiculous idea that will not help protect children and will slow internet speeds for all. As our internet speed are already substandard on a world stage, how are we meant to compete in the digital economy. What pages will be blocked on the governments secret blacklist? If this goes through Labour will pay for it at the next election. Unless of course they use there new filter to block all online dissent.

wpd

11 Dec 2008 4:50pm

Can't believe that the ALP will go down this Internet filtering path because it simply won't work. How can anyone hope to increase speeds while forcing them through a filter? At the end of the day, it's not going to happen. Surely Conroy can see that he will be off-loaded when this falls into a heap?

Mick

11 Dec 2008 4:51pm

I do not see the value in mandating Internet filtering in this country. Sure this should be an opt-in service only? A pre-election promise by the Labour Party was to increase the speed of our Broadband network not to slow it down with something that is not required. The funds wasted on this proposal should have been put straight into funding Police to track down Child Porn trafficer's in this country. I can now only image the back room deals that will be done to pass legislation in the future with this filter used to add sites deemed unacceptable by minor parties. Shame on you Labour for this stupid policy, you will not be getting my vote if this censorship is introduced!!

Ross

11 Dec 2008 4:52pm

We are already behind the digital age against other first world countries and now you want to slow down our ISP connections. If this goes ahead we will see a greater digital gap between classes with in the Australian society along with the digital divided between nations. Being an online socierty and ebusiness as growth point with our international partners overseas have you considered the finicial implications and cost to the economony? not only the cost of the filter but the effect it has to business. Will the government pay for faster ISP connecitons for large multi-national companies? Working in the IT industry information is the key I understand the how important the speed and connectivity is to our customers. Is this suppsose to be green grovnement? As this will increase the governments carbon footprint. arent we suppose to be looking at reducing it? More servers more power more expensese more overheads more procedures more support required more man hours. Can you tell me does the cost of this out weigh the means??

Mick

11 Dec 2008 5:04pm

Craig

11 Dec 2008 5:09pm

I think that the concept of ISP filtering is ridiculous. There are computer based filtering programmes out there that do just as good a job of filtering than this will do and will not slow down the internet for everyone, hell even the previous government had one created (maybe this is the real reason they are doing it, they have to beat what there previous government is doing). For those people that are for this kind of internet filtering, i bet they are the ones that don't keep an eye on there kids when they are on the net and want someone else to do the job, they allow kids to have a computer in there room without really knowing what they are up to. This filter will not stop the potentially harmful things on the internet this filter is aiming at. What about things like P2P, etc, there are ways around what there main aim of this filter is for. And the stupid thing is that the people that they are trying to protect, the children are probably the main users of P2P systems. If the main aim of this filter is to stop child pornography, they are well from the mark. Any idiot with a phone line and computer and a bit of knowledge could setup a dial in service that is not connected to the net. All this is being done to filter out less than 1% of the net (which is the current estimate of what general pornography makes up). How much of that 1% is child pornography which is the main aim of this filter? And what about the other 99%, how much of that are they going to try and filter out? Control the masses by controlling the information that the have access to? How is this filter going to handle chat rooms? What is the Senator going to do about them? Are they going to be on the filter list? That might work for web based chats. What about other systems that use the internet like, IM, IRC, Newsgroups, BBS's, P2P, how much research have they really done? Do they really know what they are trying to achieve, or is this all some political stunt? Education is the key, not mass censorship, the money for this needs to be spent in a different area. Better investigation techniques and service, bring them up-to-date with technology. But especially, educate the masses, offer training courses for parents. Making people aware of the Internet and what is out there is better than mass censorship. I have taught computers to adults, and the first thing i teach about the internet is safety. Things like keeping the computer in a public room, get involved in what your children are doing on the net, get them to show you things about the internet, etc. Not watching them like a hawk, but glance as you pass, ask questions about there net friends, like how are they going etc. Just because it is "internet life" doesnt mean you shouldnt ask questions about it like you do about other aspects of the childs life, and that is probably where most parents make the biggest mistake, thinking "Oh, its only the internet". I have seen past students and they have commented on what they learnt, and how much more they are involved with there children now on the internet. They say that they have even sat down and spoken to there children about the dangers of the net, just like they did with "Stranger Danger." The students have also used the internet to become more familar with whats out there. They use education for other areas, so why not the internet?. If we apply his philosphy to other areas, we should ban cigarettes from being sold totally as they are harmful to children and adults, lets throw alcohol in there as well, cars too, they are harmful, maybe TV as well, don't they say stuff on TV can influence our behaviour, bicycles, children get hurt on bicycles, they should be banned, religion should be banned, people are always fighting over religion, if we ban it no-one will get hurt. What else can hurt us that we should filter out of society? Politics maybe? Books, they can give us ideas that could be harmful? We don't won't children jumping of roofs trying to be superman do we. Hell, lets just ban the computer and lock us all up in a room, oh hang on, wait, that could be dangerous as well. Politicians need to use common sense. But then since when did common sense and politicians go together?

Geordie Guy

11 Dec 2008 5:17pm

Is the OECD initiative you refer to the same OECD which was referred to in a 2007 report that placed Australia's broadband quality (in terms of speed and cost) as the second worst, better only than Mexicos? Does the department have any comment on whether mandatory ISP level filtering - a concept that every technology expert has told the department is insane - would see us move from the 29th poorest broadband in the world to somewhere else on the league table of the 30 member states?

Sidd

11 Dec 2008 5:19pm

I don't see what all the fuss is about. Go ahead with the plan, if anyting it is going to employ a few in the IT sector which is good considering the current economic climate. If it fails, the minister will be held accountable and more than likely will loose crediblity, with fellow ministers and the genral public. We have all seen web censorship schemes around the world, we all understand the complexities and most would appreciate when I say that find a cure for cancer would be easier. Regards Sidd

Sidd

11 Dec 2008 5:22pm

BoD

11 Dec 2008 5:19pm

net filter is fail

vusak

11 Dec 2008 5:23pm

The proposed mandatory filtering scheme is actually dangerous for children, because the first person who works out how to crack/break the system will make the method public on any number of internet forums/blogs.This will occur within minutes of the mandatory filtering scheme being deployed. Subsequently even non-tech savvy kids will have access to instructions on how to bypass the filter, if they dont know to actually find the information themselves, someone at their school will probably mention it and they will then learn about how to bypass it. So then a child has unfiltered access to the deepest darkest corners of the internet and their parent(s) will be lead to believe the mandatory filter is protecting their child. The best way to protect our children is to provide software and education to parents who want it. A parent who understands the internet will have a much better ability to govern their child's access, while software can be provided to prevent 'accidental' access.

Markus

11 Dec 2008 5:37pm

How ironical. I can submit a comment on your blog from China.

Josh

11 Dec 2008 5:38pm

Please get rid of Senator Conroy and his extremely poor vision of internet in Australia.

Adrian of Sydney

11 Dec 2008 5:08pm

Senator Conroy, you make Richard Alston look like a super hero. Your internet filters and NBN make you one big joke. This time I agree with Greg Wynn (Telstra), filtering the internet will be like trying to boiling the ocean, and to liken those who opose you to child porn supporters, makes me sick. Let us hope you're a one timer with your mate Kev.

John

11 Dec 2008 5:09pm

The ISP filtering proposal is ridiculous and an affront to democracy. I have always given my voting preference to Labor rather than the coalition. If it is implemented I will never again vote for a Rudd Labor government.

walterjadamson

11 Dec 2008 5:11pm

I've mostly voted Labor but also against Labor when they completely lose the plot like Keating in the end and successive Victorian Labor Goverments including the present one. How successive governments can so successfully turn Australia into a lame duck in the IT and Internet world is beyond me, and this one appears to be getting off on the same misguided foot as Howards reign of destruction.

The digital economy is about helping people to create wealth and value faster. It doesn't have to be universal, that;s an economic pipe dream but might rightly fit in the Department of Social Security if we have enough taxes for everything else. But is does have to be fast and competitive and serve current and future centres of wealth generation. That wealth generation can pay for any other subsidies needed if its decided to go the social service route for universal services.

The shambles of data-casting, digital radio, the Internet filter, the outsourcing fiasco, makes you wonder which so-called experts Governments consult as all of these fiascos could have been avoided (the digital radio one is still in the making) and the relevant point is that all have destroyed wealth and value and yet could have been part of building a digital enabled economy.

Finland has many components right, and as a small and geographically dispersed country offers some good insights. Denmark has come from the basket case of Europe only 20 years ago to one of the most thriving entrepreneurial and "digital driven" economies.

But, even though I am an "IT person", I despise this whole topic of "digital economy" as it artificially divides "digital" and creates an industry of advisors which is self-serving just as "innovation" has created an "innovation industry" of advisors who leave nothing of value.

Getting back to basics in the "digital economy" is about getting back to competition, incentives to create competition, incentives to create wealth and sensible strategic policy decisions that are based on a realistic view of Australia's pauper status in this regard and not some rose-coloured bureau-speak meant to please all political agendas.

Marcus

11 Dec 2008 5:13pm

Given the importance the government has attached to updating Australia's national broadband network to meet standards such as those in the United States and the United Kingdom (I remind you they do not have a totalitarian style internet filtering system in place). Pursuing this filtering system is at best misguided. Considering the national network could be slowed by up to 70 percent, coupled with the global economic financial situation that is gripping Australia this would be like turning off the electricity because people grow marijuana with it. Australian households are diverse and the majority do not have young children or people who are determined to go against society by breaking the law and looking at illegal images or documents on the World Wide Web. I do not believe it is the Government�s role to decide what is or is not appropriate for me, or my future children, and neither does most of Australia.

Given the poor and in-effective filtering system in state schools that often hampers the studying efforts of students, rather than focus their attention on school work; I believe this national filtering system will be just as hopeless at filtering out material dubbed illegal and further intrude on the liberties and freedoms of this democracy. By keeping the list of banned sites (any that are dubbed illegal) away from the public it is impossible for you to guarantee that freedom of speech will not take a hit. I believe that the money which might be squandered invading our liberties could be far more useful improving the neglected schools or improving infrastructure with Transrapid rail lines that could potentially provide a huge boost to transportation and the national economy.

Therefore I believe we should not follow in the footsteps of China and Korea, who filter their citizen�s internet. I believe it to be in the best interests of the Australian public to focus on employing the money in special task force's whose soul purpose would be to trace those who view and create child pornography.

Mitch

11 Dec 2008 5:14pm

Senator Conroy - It's about time you start doing a little more research before you release statements - most of the 'facts' you've presented the public with over your Internet Filter are either incorrect, skewed, out of context or flat out lies. It's also time you realize that you can't fool the online Australian public, as you have done with the politicians. Nor can you suppress us by painting us as 'pedophiles' for opposing you and your bill.

Here's a freebie for you:

Internet moderation for children should be in the hands of the parents, using programs such as Cybernanny, moderating the time children spend online, and having the computer in an area where you can keep an eye on them.

Internet moderation for adults is and should be in the hands of the Police and their cyber-crime divisions.

If we could trust that you weren't pushing this bill through to curry favor with Family First, or for another ulterior motive, maybe we would be more accepting and cooperative in finding a solution that would work for Australian.

But we don't trust you.

Tom

11 Dec 2008 5:20pm

The internet filtering plan is a disaster. It will never have 100% accuracy. Some illegal material will always be missed. There will be false positives where legitimate material is wrongly censored. Also the filtering will be easily bypassed eg via P2P.

If the filtering goes ahead I will never vote Labor again. I think Labor will lose 1 million votes at the next election if they waste time trying to filter the net.

Kerry

11 Dec 2008 5:29pm

This filter really is nothing more then a grab to try and win political points.

1. The filter will only be applied to websites on the HTTP/HTTPS Protocols therefore any body that uses NEWSGROUPS, IRC, FTP, EMAIL, P2P NETWORKS etc etc. Which means the vast majority of unwanted material will still pass through unnoticed or filtered.

2. Recently it has been shown the vast majority of people being arrested with child pornography on their computers including the 23 men arrested today were involved in a sophisticated P2P file sharing network, it would be virtually impossible to filter these types of rings. Unfortuantly villigance is key as opposed to prevention.

3. What exactly will the filter be blocking? If it is working of METATAGS, KEY WORDS and known websites would it not be all to easy to just create a harmless looking domain and innocently name the files ie: photograph.jpg to circumvent a multi million dollar 'investment'.

I think Sen Conroy and co are just trying to win over the General Public through scare tactics and quick fixes when really the problem is a lot bigger then just a glorified filtering piece of software.

P.S - I circumvented my workplace's filtering software just to access the internet to make this post. ;)

Greg Tannahill

11 Dec 2008 5:30pm

The digital economy represents an opportunity unparallelled in history for individuals and small businesses to become quickly established on a global scale.

The key challenges for government are therefore:

- Increase Information and IT Literacy Australians of all ages, from schoolchildren to established business owners, require training on how to access detailed information on the internet, assess the reliability of that information, create and manage content on the internet, and promote that content in a responsible way so that customers can find it. This is the new basic literacy, and it should be placed on a par with existing literacy and numeracy programs. Knowing how to use the internet is more important than knowing how to use our postal system. This should be the focus of a massive, co-ordinated government program, and if done correctly it can put Australia in a world-leading position for many decades to come, comparable to Japan's achievements in electronics in the middle of this century.

- Upgrade Internet Infrastructure Australia needs to be able to serve a very high volume of data to the world in a reliable and accessible manner, and this requires input from government to improve broadband cabling both within Australia and in our connections with our neighbours.

- Lowered Red Tape For Small Businesses With more individuals and small businesses doing business online, many of whom have no prior business experience, it is essential for the government to reduce the bureaucratic requirements on these businesses, particularly with regard to taxation declarations. Our taxation laws for small businesses need to be simpler and easily explainable.

- Government Support For Third Party Public Content Hubs The government needs to provide support, possibly through funding or infrastructure, for Australian non-profit organisations who are creating or maintaining significant public information content hubs. Large examples include the AustLII legal database; smaller ones include social service groups who provide online service information to disadvantaged groups. These organisations provide valuable information to all Australians, increase Australian participation in public life, and attract international traffic to Australian content.

- Promote Australia As An IT Nation We need to promote Australia as a forward-thinker on IT, and this means promoting our educational institutions internationally, opening our digital borders rather than closing them, bringing our software classification laws up to a modern standard by implementing an R18+ classification for videogames, and making sure government departments are able to engage with digital culture on its home turf (this blog is a great start).

Thank you for this opportunity to engage with the government on this important policy issue.

Tim Matthews

11 Dec 2008 5:35pm

I would like to register my absolute protest to mandatory ISP level filtering that would waste taxpayer money on an ineffectual filter that is potentially a politically oppressive tool, would decrease internet connection speeds, and have little impact on criminal activities that should be stopped by practical measures.

Calvin

11 Dec 2008 5:39pm

Son of Liberty said:

"The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation." - Adolph Hitler (Mein Kampf)

I think Son of Liberty that you hit the nail RIGHT on the HEAD - I'm always suspicous of people who embark on these type of 'morals campaigns'. They ALWAYS seem to have some form of ulterior motive, which of course, you never discover until it is TOO LATE.

A particular campaigner here in Queensland has been VERY VOCAL over the "net filter" plans. This person is OFTEN vocal, and I am left wondering what the true agenda is. Certainly the cries of righteous indignation get them plenty of media exposure - which has been used in a FAILED (fortunately) attempt to enter politics.

The person concerned may be GENUINELY disturbed over this issue, and they have the right to voice those views in public. Unfortunately, so many have come before them that have abused that right, that it is now impossible to assess the true intent, and the public are, on the whole, VERY cynical.

My advice to the government over the 'net filtering issue is BEWARE - you may find yourself being manipulated in ways that you never thought possible !

Mulga

11 Dec 2008 5:41pm

Everything I wish to say has, I think, already been said here. However it is important that the more people who make their feeling known the better. So to summarise.

1. Internet filtering is impractical, easily bypassed by anybody with minimum computer skills

2. It is likely to slow the already slow connections we enjoy even more.

3. False positives will adversely impact on educational institutions and the like that will be prevented by their own rules from bypassing the filters

4. It is a gross breach of individual liberty

For those who may not know it there is an online petition against 'net filtering being run by GetUP.org. It already has many thousands of signatories and can be found here

Finally, please Mr Rudd, find us a Minister who actually has a clue about technology.

Jacqui

11 Dec 2008 5:54pm

Oh hi there! Listen, I have an idea for maximising benefits and takeup of the digital economy. Hope you'll hear me out.

It would involve faster internet speeds and access to a variety of business, support group and informational websites which wouldn't be randomly blocked to prevent commerce or information sharing deemed inappropriate by a single religious doctrine.

Sounds awesome, doesn't it? Not only would it be good for the economy, it would be in our nation's best interests to remove ourselves from Amnesty International's watchlist over internet censorship, AND they wouldn't be laughing at us in the UK for taking already substandard speeds and reducing them by 87%, or accusing the good minister of lying in Canada, where his claims about adopting their model of access management were declared false.

In fact, were this harebrained scheme dropped, Australia's internet service providers could probably even get back to their core business of providing the efficient, cost effective service demanded by their customers instead of expending energy telling the government what it should already know about filtering being a dangerous delusion. When our biggest ISP doesn't dignify your suggestions and others go on record as wanting to prove you wrong and rub your nose in it, you might want to check your credibility and reconsider the wisdom of proceeding.

Aside from being expensive, technically impossible, vastly reducing speed and lulling parents into a false sense of complacency, the high handed manner in which Conroy has refused to provide any details and slandered opponents of the scheme in the face of public outcry has been quite breathtaking. I don't think even Howard managed this kind of arrogance, and that's saying something.

My husband and I are the schmucks who shut up and pay our considerable tax bill every year. We subsidise pensioners, the unemployed, 'working families', the running of this country and even this blog without asking much in return. Is it really that over the top, then, for us to expect that we'd be treated like the adults we are?

We want access to all the interesting things on the internet at speeds better than dialup, swearing and profanity on tv at times when responsible parents would have their kids in bed, and to appreciate all the fun activities that consenting adults can get up to without anybody interfering in our R&R. We will faithfully promise to keep our noses out of the good Senator's personal life if he'll agree to extend the same courtesy to us, and we're certainly not alone in these sentiments.

Conroy himself was quoted condemning the Howard government's PC-based filter as a failure because of its' low takeup rate, himself failing to comprehend that perhaps this was because nobody WANTED the damned thing. Look at the free filtering software iinet's offered for years without a single person downloading it. Now ask yourself - if even those in the target market of parents with young children haven't bothered doing it voluntarily, why would you then decide to foist it upon the entire population and pay hundreds of millions to maintain something that nobody wants?

Michael Rogers

11 Dec 2008 5:55pm

"Filtering" the Internet

The right wing mind defines itself by its lack of imagination. It is this inability to see beyond the box that leads to support of repressive measures without seeing all the possible consequences.

History is full of totalitarian regimes and the introduction of special 'protection' measures.

Your ethnicity/religion on a card you must carry - no problem.

The King/President can authorize torture without recourse to the law or courts - it will only be used in extreme cases!

The implementation of a technology to censor/block something on the internet can be used to block anything. As a right wing politician providing administrative services to the ruling class, the minister's lack of imagination is likely a contributing factor to this appalling policy.

Failing that, one must assume profound ignorance, stupidity or plain visciousness to account for its continuation. Oh, and I've noticed a lot of talk on the internet about how to 'vote below the line'.

Shame

12 Dec 2008 12:41pm

Senator Conroy hear this. Your pathetic proposal will not go through as it is. I dont expect you to quit on you crusade though considering you are part of the Labour party.

Calvin

11 Dec 2008 5:58pm

Regarding the current process for a the "Natioanl Broadband Network" or NBN, here are my thoughts on what has gone wrong and how best to FIX IT:

Unfortunately, I believe this MESS was inevitable. It all stems from the wrong model being chosen when Telstra was privatised. Selling ALL of the Telstra assetts, including the copper network and local exchange buildings, and then as part of the deal stating they are a "declared service", was a formula for total chaos ! In my opinion, the politicians responsible for this UTTERLY RIDICULOUS solution should have been sacked IMMEDIATELY !

What SHOULD HAVE been done was Telstra should have been sold AS A CARRIER ONLY, ie: they own their network and switching system with a boundary of the equipment cited in the local exchange buildings. (like every other carrier/ISP)

Floor space and building services (ie: power, environment, security etc..) in the local exchange buildings and access to the copper network should have REMAINED in government hands. (after all WE paid for this network build over the years using OUR taxes, right back the PMG days !)

This would have put Telstra on an equal footing with every other carrier in this country - albeit, considerably larger than any of it�s rivals.

A government entity (perhaps an independent authority) would then lease floor space for equipment, and access to the local copper network, to ALL players on a "level playing field". Any carrier could cite their equipment in an exchange building and access the copper network, for payment of the appropriate fees. THIS WOULD HAVE TOTALLY SOLVED the current ADSL network wholesaling and management issues that have plagued us for the last decade !

I would argue that it would still be possible to acheive this (subject to an accurate actuary valuation of assets) by the government re-acquiring the necessary infrastructure (copper network and exchange buildings) perhaps in some sort of deal involving the approx 13% holding in Telstra they still have.

As some industry experts have pointed out, the original idea for a FTTN solution came from Telstra, and their motivation was ensuring a network monopoly, NOT providing the best outcome for the Australian public. Personally I believe money would be far better spent expanding the existing ADSL copper network (NO FIBRE NODES) to pick up the remainder of the population currently "out of range". Several manufacturers already make suitable ADSL range extension technology to acheive this.

SHOULD it be decided that a FTTN network IS in the nations interest (and I conclusion is dubious at best !) the government authority would pay for a FTTN build and it should be a PUBLIC ASSETT. Several funding scenarios would be possible to achieve this end, including the current suggestion of government/private partnerships or perhaps a better idea investment from the Future Fund (and that�s what it would be - INVESTMENT, the public would expect a fair return on the money put into this venture !) or by a straight �charge the carriers who want access� model.

Adding a Fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) build (or any other network infrastructure) would require considerable expense reconfiguring the copper network to break out at a node - this also creates equity issues for ISPs with DSLAMS currently cited in local exchange buildings being isolated and rendered inoperable - that would need to be addressed. Basically I believe they would have grounds to seek compensation by fact of a FTTN system rendering their network investment worthless.

Short of action to re-acquire the copper network and place it in public hands (and Telstra I'm sure would sqeal like a stuck pig at the suggestion) it�s ALL TOO LATE and talk about the NBN or ANY OTHER FORM OF NEW INFRASTRUCTURE is pointless.

Instead we have a political mess it may well take a decade to totally solve.

A wholly Telstra built and dominated FTTN network would be a TOTAL disaster ! Any other player that "gets the nod" from the government after completion of the current "tender assessment process" I'm sure will find itself in court being sued by Telstra inside of 5 milliseconds !

Having already seen Telstra's stated aims on the return on their investment they expect (absolutely ludicrous) one can quite easily 'reverse engineer' what retail pricing one might expect - the $85/month minimum charge for FTTN access that has been suggested is quite believable ! NOBODY will want it for that price - and to make matters worse we won't be able to continue using existing (cheaper and satisfactory) ADSL arrangements because of the changes to the copper network !

I see this as a "lose / lose" scenario :-(

If and when we can first manage to tame Telstra and get our politicians to see reason - I'm not hopeful on either front - we then have the problem of basically having to "start again" and hopefully "get it right the FIRST TIME" !

TuffGuy

11 Dec 2008 6:03pm

What amazes me the most about this sort of thing is the bloody minded attitudes of politicians towards wasting taxpayers dollars. It is like they think there is just this neverending supply to play with and if it starts to run dry just tax us a bit more.

On that note everybody (experts and non-experts included) knows this internet filter just won't work. It is as plain as the nose on Mr Conroy's face yet he continues to push ahead with this whole process, doing trials and wasting more millions along the way. WHY??? Times are tough and we don't need to be wasting money on such pointless exercises. Even more so politicians should not be pandering to the whims of minority groups saying things like "if we can keep children from seeing even a little bit of this stuff then it is ok no matter the cost" is just plain stupid.

If a child can access ANY porn that is too much and no filter yet invented is going to do that. The ONLY solution is to turn off the internet. It was only yesterday the UKs version of a filter banned Wikipedia because someone put a picture of a naked girl on the site. How easy will it be for those so inclined to maliciously have websites banned. It could be a rival business, someone you don't like, etc.

Howard produced a home web filter for families for free and even the response to that was massively underwhelming. This reaction could mean parents just don't care, the issue is just not that big, parents supervise their children, or any of hundreds more.

From a business perspective the whole filter thing is just a waste of time when considering the cost against the results. So get a life, build a bridge and get over it, your filter will NEVER work, can the whole process now and spend our tax dollars on something constructive.

IanBirks

11 Dec 2008 6:13pm

I applaud the government for creating this form of open feedback for important issues.

I note that the title of this blog is "What does the digital economy encompass? What does it mean for Australians?"

The majority of blog comments however seem to be focused on Internet filtering, not the direct subject matter of the blog.

Would it be possible to migrate these comments to a separate blog on this topic for clarity of interpretation of the issue?

Lyn

11 Dec 2008 6:15pm

Is it possible to do something about the number of comments appearing on a page? Could the number be increased to maybe 20 or 50? Or all of them?

mskeggs

11 Dec 2008 6:19pm

If the government is at all serious about a digital economy it should drop the pointless push to install mandatory censorship proxies. Bad enough we are the laughing stock of the world for such a backward policy - demonstrating our government has little understanding of how the Internet works - but the filters will hamper network performance and result in numerous 'false positive' incorrectly blocked sites.

Family First supporters can install their own censor software, let's leave the rest of the net alone.

James Fleming

11 Dec 2008 6:41pm

I'm yet another would-be entrepreneur, using the web as my medium of business.

Because I haven't been able to get any assurances from Minister Conroy's office about what content would be acceptable within Australia (and this was well before any filtering was mentioned), I'm hosting all my services offshore.

What do I need to operate onshore? Assurance that it's safe for me, as a businessman, to operate a commercial enterprise on a server within Australia. I'm not in the porn industry, and have no intention of doing so. However, I'm not willing to take the risk of being arbitrarily censored or shut down.

The only "clean feed" that's going to benefit Australia is one that's free of tampering, however good the intentions, and however bombastic the supporting rhetoric. If the government is serious about tackling crimes enabled by the internet, then the sanest approach is to *use* the medium and the information it provides to track down the criminals and use the existing powers to deal with them.

Censorship benefits nobody. The most positive move that Mr Conroy's office could make at this point is to publicly apologise, abandon all plans to censor Australian internet access - and follow up by repealing the existing censor-the-internet legislation introduced by Helen Coonan.

What's been particularly damaging to Mr Conroy's plan has been the blatant dishonesty and bait-and-switch tactics. Is it about the children? No, wait, it's about illegal content. Now it's about "objectionable" content, with no reference to who is to regard it as objectionable. Then there's the suspicious timing of the lawsuit brought against the ISP who's made a point of their opposition to the scheme. It has many of us wondering what persuasion the RIAA and MPAA have applied to Mr Conroy.

It also leaves me puzzled as to how this might benefit the real victims of child porn: the children used to *produce* it. How does it help them, to hide what's being done to them?

Pressing ahead with a regime of censorship will merely drive (more) business offshore. What would be much more constructive is to understand that it's a medium of communication used by a very wide variety of interests, and to facilitiate that communication.

I'm totally in favour of making filtering software available to those who wish to avail themselves of it - as has already been done. If the uptake has been disappointingly low, then a reasonable conclusion is that the desire for censorship in this country is correspondingly low.

I'd actually be interested in filtering that could accurately block child porn without any false positives, but for two minor issues: first, I haven't encountered any in the 16 years I've been using the internet, and second, I know that it's such an intractible problem as to be effectively impossible.

Mr Conroy, please remember that the government is supposed to *serve* the people, not *rule* them.

Personally, I don't want to be stifled by those who fear freedom. I don't want a nanny state; I want the freedom to be hurt, because stopping people from doing stupid things will also stop them from doing unexpectedly clever things. Mme Curie's example comes to mind - we'd never have gotten the medical benefits that we have from our understanding of radiation, if she'd been prevented from hurting herself in the course of learning about it.

Ray

11 Dec 2008 6:41pm

The internet filter is useless and a waste of money. Don't want to become a second Singapore or China...

Martin English

11 Dec 2008 6:42pm

I am a practicing Christian, and I OPPOSE the internet filter for two main reasons.

1) The Digital Economy is a direct product of the openness of the networked world, where you are judged by what you produce, not by who you are or where you are. This leads to faster, higher quality, BETTER processes and services, because the openness allows people to move to the product or service that is best for them. Any attempt to close this down will result in Australians missing out on the full potential of the Digital Economy.

2) I have seen how National Internet Filters and Firewalls have been used to track the political and religious groups (both Christian and non-Christian) that are out of favour with their governments. In many parts of the world, this tracking extends to the arrest, imprisonment and sometimes execution of these individuals. While we currently have tolerant parties on both sides of the house at the moment, Senator Conroy needs to consider who would have control of this filter in the future.

Perhaps Senator Conroy needs to consider how this filter could be used against his own party.

It is not the Governments job to filter the material my children are exposed to, whether it be violence on television or porn on the internet. It is MY responsibility as a parent to do so, and I take this responsibility seriously.

The internet filter

Paddy

11 Dec 2008 6:43pm

The big problem is Telstra, a private company should not own the national telecommunications network.

Until it is put back in it's cage it's going to be difficult to deal with the cripplingly slow data speeds that inhibit our data centres, access to international markets, and local take-up.

Most people use the internet in relatively few areas of their day-to-day lives and will continue to while ever data connections speeds remain as they are.

Our domestic market is small enough as it is we need to get Australians using the internet more and this means speed.

Chris

11 Dec 2008 9:16pm

Filtering the internet is aiming to protect children being the victim's of abuse. Will this stop those who are abusing children? No, this will simply hide it from the view of all Australian's. Will this help the problem? No, Australian's need to be aware that this is wrong, and should be stopped. Simply because this material is not available any more to Australia via a web page, will not stop its distribution over the internet. P2P is where majority of illegal content is distributed - it can't be filtered. Not only does this proposed internet filtering not solve the key problem, it creates new ones. If a vote was taken for the internet filtering versus using those funds to police the internet - policing would win. If a vote was taken to filter the internet or use those funds for something more useful... To make some sort of association between those who object to the internet filtering, and those who are responsible for child abuse is completely inappropriate. I demand an apology - will I get one? No. Questions for Senator Conroy: * What do you know about the Internet and the technologies behind it? * How hard do you think it will be for someone to set up an offshore proxy with a dynamic IP address? * How much has already been invested in the internet filtering black hole, and how much is planned? An answer to any one of these questions will slam this campaign.

Beefy

12 Dec 2008 5:32am

I have few words to say on this issue and on your blog. Blog = Fail! Policy = Fail! I respect you for trying to do the right thing however I disapprove of the way you are going about it. I will not go as far as saying you are as bad for Broadband & the Digital Economy as Coonan and her team were, however if you continue the way you are going then you will be worse.

EddieBarnes

12 Dec 2008 5:33am

As a first time voter I voted for Kevin Rudd and think he has done a great job so far, however if the proposed internet filtering plan outlined by Senator Conroy goes ahead, then I, and many around me will not be voting for Rudd again in 2011.

David

12 Dec 2008 5:34am

An Internet Filter would be contravening the spirit in which the Internet was first developed. The Internet was developed for the speedily transmission and interactions of information in an universal and democratic fashion. The amount of illicit material and illegal activities cannot warrant actually putting this sluggish and rather foolish measure in place. The reality is that a well manned and professional Internet arm of the police would much more effective than this cumbersome measure.

John Tibbons

12 Dec 2008 5:34am

Not even the Howard government came up with such an inane policy as the proposed mandatory net filtering.

Kosh

12 Dec 2008 5:37am

I think that our Digital Economy should be based on pushing the boundaries on expanding the amount of information online and not trying to censor it. Just by proposing this filter we're making ourselves a laughing stock in the IT community, the number of jokes about how backward we are is as ridiculous as the censorship itself. First and foremost, the problem of children being more advanced on computers than their parents is rapidly coming to a head anyway as the current working generation who are becoming parents are far more tech savvy than their predecessors. Of course, that's assuming that the plan behind filtering was protecting children, as we can see from the reports it's not going to protect anyone. The internet has become the resource it is today based on free expression, people can make a blog claiming that aliens are behind everything just as much as they can print flyers and hand them out, the information is just easier to get at now. Information itself isn't a bad thing, how can we call ourselves intelligent people if we don't hear all sides of a story. Even the completely arrogant one-sided and blatantly wrong comments about this filter aren't a bad thing, disregarding that is just as bad as being ignored ourselves for doing the research.

Rob

12 Dec 2008 5:38am

It's impossible to filter the Internet. It's only possible to make it more difficult to for people to get access to what they want. Imposing mandatory internet filtering is a waste of government time, money and effort. If one of the objectives of the filtering is to stop Child Porn, etc; then this has clearly not been thought through. I believe that filtering will encourage paedophiles those services that allow them to continue their sick endeavours. We will drive them to use encrypted proxy serverers located overseas to give them anonymous internet access. This will make it more difficult for law enforcement agencies catch these people. Clearly there are some good intentions with this proposal and we should applaud that. Unfortunately this is not the way to achieve the desired outcome.

Peter

12 Dec 2008 5:39am

Dear Senator Conroy and fellow travellers Know that your arguments for internet filtering are completely unconvincing. The issue here is an internet free of political and religious censorship. As you well know filtering does nothing to protect children from exploitation by child pornographers and your proposal is a blatant and disgraceful attempt to exploit the plight of these same children to impose your own religious and political views on the entire Australian community. Further, your cynical willingness to use these exploited children as a smokescreen to advance your own ideological agenda is the moral equivalent of the very crimes you quote in your attempt to justify curtailing free speech. Shame on you too for trying to so label those that oppose you; you are the true exploiter !! I remain implacably apposed to your proposed legislation. It�s a vote decider, and it will see you and your government out of office if you persist. I will be at the demonstration next week with as many friends family and colleagues as I can muster, I will be speaking against your legislation at ever opportunity, I have and will continue to support the campaign against you financially. Your ultimate political demise through the online campaign being mounted against you will emphasise the importance of a free internet in a free society, as a way of ridding ourselves of aspiring despots.

David Cake

12 Dec 2008 5:43am

I'll just note for the record my strong opposition to internet censorship, but I know it is not the topic here. The digital economy itself, by which I mean that part of the economy that is primarily about the supply of services that are supplied purely over digital communications such as the internet, is an important but slightly misses the point. The real point is the extent to which the economy, overall, is becoming digital. For example, we don't think of banks as part of the digital economy, we just think of them as part of the economy, and they have buildings and branches and a lot of interaction with the physical world -- but for many people, online access is becoming the primary way that they interact with their bank, and essential for day to day management of their finances. Increasingly, many specialist products are available outside a very small number of (generally CBD only) specialist shops only via purchase from internet vendors. This trend makes issues of access and equity essential -- it is not just that those without online access will miss out on access to new services, they will also increasingly miss out on access to services in all areas of the economy as they move online. So don't think about the digital economy -- think about the digitisation of the economy. That is the big issue -- and is enough to justify access to the internet. On the general subject of internet access, BTW, the need for fast broadband is overstated. What we need far more is back end bandwidth. Many internet connections are sold with high speed, but monthly bandwidth allocations that could be used up in a few hours of regular use! Many emerging internet services -- internet radio, podcasting and videocasting, etc -- work perfectly well with current high end DSL connections available in many Australian cities, but are attached to plans that make these services too expensive for regular access. The NBN process seemed to focus on delivering faster, more expensive, internet, when the real access issues is price, particularly bandwidth price -- and the NBN promise of more expensive, much faster, connections without serious back end investment just sounds like it will enable people to afford smaller allocations that they can use up faster. In order to encourage the actual digital economy, online services such as social networking sites etc, what we need to do is to encourage our small innovative entrepeneurs. Our larger companies like Telstra are embarrasing, for example the Telstra owned Sensis search industry (whitepages.com.au etc) is tragicly poorly implemented in terms of usefulness of returned search results etc -- if they would just sell it to Google, everybody would be better off. We need more of a local venture capital market, and more programs to help entrepeneurs meet and liase with overseas industry leaders would help a lot too. Paradoxically, while our large tech companies are often flailingly bad such as Sensis, most of our large corporations in other sectors are doing very well globally. I heard a story this year of someone in Silicon Valley boasting that their bank had introduced a new service to mail out regular cheques automatically -- a service that seems incredibly quaint to Australians who have been enjoying electronic direct debits for years. Many of our large corporations, and particularly many of our government departments, lead the world in online access to their services. I don't think we need a lot of government effort to support what we seem to be doing very well. What we need is support for, not fast deluxe services, but access to guaranteed minimum levels of service accessible to all. One last point -- I've been living in Alice Springs this year, a remote regional hub, but quite a large one, not a tiny village by any means -- and the lack of understanding of regional service by many major corporations is very visible. Optus people kept telling me to 'visit my local Optus shop', without understanding that my local dealer was 1500kms away! Extending quality digital services to regional area is hard, and I fully understand the many complex decisions the government faces in trying to make it happen -- but its going to be far easier to extend digital services to regional areas than it has ever been to extend physical branch offices, so for large parts of Australia, access to the digital economy is their best hope for full access to the economy in total.

Joshua

12 Dec 2008 7:44am

This will be my first and last post. Because if you think Conroy is going to listen to a word you say you are kidding yourself.

Maya

12 Dec 2008 2:33am

Can you please have an 'abstract' facility and make people put a 20 word synopsis of their post - save us all trawling through the prolix-ness? And giving up as I'm just doing? :)

Dan Buzzard

12 Dec 2008 2:45am

There are many perfectly good filtering solutions already available on the market, tax payer money would be better spent on providing free filtering software to families.

The plan to copy China's censorship regime is all about silencing dissent, rather than protecting children.

~Dan

RichardK

12 Dec 2008 2:47am

Has anyone else commented on the contradictory nature of these policies?

On the one hand they are proposing spending billions to 'improve the broadband services provision' to Australians.

On the other hand they want to put 'filters' (read mandatory censorship) in place which would more than negate any supposed improvements!

If this censorship filter proposal goes through the current Government should be renamed the LUDD government nat the Rudd government.

This proposal, allied with other knee-jerk overreactions like the Henson photograph beat-up make me wonder what the people overreacting have to hide.....

Bill McGill

12 Dec 2008 2:48am

There are those in our society that are evil, such as those that create child pornography. The solution is simple - track them down and remove them from our society. Filtering the internet does nothing - it does not prevent the children being harmed or help remove the evil from our society, and this is well known by pretty much anyone who understands the internet.

Therefore the only reason you would attempt such a system is supress the views of those that wish to point out the flaws of the government. So do the right thing spend the money on investigating and tracking down criminals. Bill

wish

12 Dec 2008 2:49am

I am a senior citizen but having studied Internet Technology let me assure you that any proposed filters can, and will be easily bypassed, by anyone with a minimum knowledge of the internet.

� Having friends who reside in the capital city of Western Australia and who can not get any adsl service at all, surely money spent on futile filtering would be better directed to remove all so called black-spots and enable all Australians to enjoy a reasonable internet connection at a reasonable price.

I emailed several politicians to express my views and Senator Conroy was the only one who failed to respond

Jonathon Adams

12 Dec 2008 2:52am

The Internet Censorship is the first step towards dictatorship. What is the next step ? Censoring Google ?

In the real democracy we should use the Internet for on-line voting for all important Goverment decision. Every single voter should have username & password, similar to one used for Internet Banking.

Vox populi.

Peter H

12 Dec 2008 2:53am

Your manatory internet filter proposal is a joke. Remember when Howard offered free client side filters and nobody wanted them? Remember the news story a 15 year old disabled it in 10 minutes? That 15 year old was not a rare genius. There are litterally tens of thousands of 15 year old who process the knowledge to easily avoid these filters. I learnt how to use Proxy servers and VPNs when I was 12 years old. Bypassing your filter should take approx 2 minutes. Just wait for the Today Tonight stories to roll in. Then again.... On the brightside its all ok. The opposition/the greens shall block your proposal in the senate. The last thing we want is for the internet to be sensored like television in Australia.

Tim

12 Dec 2008 2:55am

I think that as per usual with Australian politics we will never get anywhere decent purely because people are trying to compromise rather than force the best option for everyone in the fastest way possible.

I live on acerage on a rural property in the sydney metro area and I like 1000s of people in city and outter city area's can't get decent land line broadband because of the unbelievable incompetence of telstra, who I hate with a complete passion I hate them for their poor planning poor and over priced service their lack of care and arrogance to Australia.

Personally I don't care what happens so long as it happens, despite my hate of Telstra if makeing them a monopoly gets people the service we need to pull us out of the laughing stock so be it!

So all you stop whining about Competition (since when has competition scared telstra just look at their prices) and the other problems and just get on with building the damn infrastructure

sir_gwayne

12 Dec 2008 3:05am

What embarresses me is the absolute shame we are suffering in the eyes of the world in this attempt to censor the Internet.

SJL

12 Dec 2008 3:07am

Blog ?? What Blog ?? I thought that they were interactive.

Where's your response Minister to the issues raised ?

Daily feedback please Minister !

This site is a waste of time and taxpayers' money.

Lets get everything out in daylight like the Democracy we are said to live in, stop hideing behind your own rules to save face.

Please truley interact with the people and stop the anxiety you are causing.

Dave

12 Dec 2008 3:09am

Congrats on giving it a go, albeit a very risk free way for you to do so.

Why post a blog about totally public facts which is not new, then say its written by "a team" which remains totally faceless/nameless from the public, and moderated by lawyers? I thought government was about actual real people, not to acting like another faceless company.

On top of that, its pretty clear all the comments on here see right thru this 'non blog', blog anyhow.

If there is any credibility why not post a real person as the real writer of this blog? Clue: the public reads all this with avid skepticism.

I want to see a face, not a mere watered down blog from 'a team' who can hidden 'blameless' away from the public.

Best wishes if it succeeds at least you are trying anyway.

Max

12 Dec 2008 3:12am

Dear Sen Conroy,

The fact that you have dodged the questions submitted in parliament is enough to put doubt in my eyes towards Labour's inability to be competent with decision making process for Australia. Your lack of judgment to listening and responding to the facts, statistics and the general informed public have totally left me gobsmacked in your inability to address arguments put forward to you.

I understand that you are just adhering to election promises but at what cost?

To me it's certainly a cost of not voting for labor in the next elections. I am sure to inform all my colleagues and community of labor on this whole filtering debacle.

Regards,

Max

Purple Monkey

12 Dec 2008 3:13am

I don't have kids and don't look at child porn. Believe me, I have not interest in children, except those I can give back after hours of running around the backyard and messing up their parents house. I like being treated as an adult, not a child. It appears that we are all going to be treated like children. Everyone is being punished for the crimes of a few. Punish the few, and leave the rest of us alone.

If this passes, it will be used for political means, if not by this Government, then by one in the future. All it will take is for a Government to call a terorist threat and then they can move in. Howard did that whenever he was in trouble. I think the Government should consider the far reaching consequences of this Censorwall.

And most importantly, please don't do it because I really like Rudd and would like him to stay. I think if he does things like this everything we have waited for will be put in jeopardy.

I really should talk about the question you asked. When I hear the "digital economy" I think that you are only interested in how money is made over the internet, and how you may benifit. I view the digital economy could apply to anything that uses digital technology. The scope is huge and will only get larger in the future. Unless you truely know the full ramifications of what you impose you could limit future growth in the digital economy.

I also do not feel as though the Government has been forthcoming about how the Censorwall will be used and the true limitations. This is a good issue to debate, though the same agruements get used and they never stand up because I fear polticians don't have a full understanding of the internet. Please don't become like China, I have lived there and the Internet is boring due to lack of content and the slow speeds.

But most of all, please don't do it. I really like Kev.

Chris of Surry Hills

12 Dec 2008 3:15am

Censoring, blocking or policing illegal pornography is one thing, but doing the same to holiday snaps, personal blogs, legal porn and legitimate political, philosophical and academic consideration of complex social issues is just not on.

At least 2 parliaments in this country have voted on euthenasia in the last few years - under Conroy's policy the pro-euthenasia case will be banned from the web. In the last 25 years, gay men in this country had to struggle for the right to have sex - under this policy, the pro-decriminalisation would have been banned from the internet. Illegal and offensive.

Protect the kiddiewinks from playboy.com by all means, but leave adults, in our own homes, doing nothing illegal, alone.

Or get used to Opposition again Senator Conroy. Or is that ex-Senator Conroy?

Rog

12 Dec 2008 3:17am

I hope that one day, as an Australian citizen and resident, that I will be able to bring my online services back in to the country instead of paying for them overseas, where they are affordable, accessible, uninhibited and neutral within existing law, and not subject to outdated methods and clandestine politics.

Zac

12 Dec 2008 3:18am

How can the digital economy move forward if you start by implementing such draconian measures as censorship?

Simon Hackett

12 Dec 2008 3:30am

With respect to the Digital Economy and how best to stimulate it - clearly the #1 issue is the impact of the NBN on access to digital information in Australia.

I have recently made a speech about this very thing, and rather than reprise it, I'd invite the Department to take 20 minutes out over a coffee to watch it for themselves:
http://mirror.internode.on.net/pub/videos/atnac08/

Regards,

Simon Hackett

Matt

12 Dec 2008 3:32am

The digital economy is an important element of today's marketplace. The most obvious step is to untangle the telecommunications infrastructure - Telstra has a tight grip, and advancement to new technologies like FTTN are hampered by this.

The internet must not be filtered at an ISP level in the same way line providers do not filter the telephone arena. It is presently only viable that users protect themselves personally online from questionable content, and the digital economy would be slowed if any other approach were taken.

In summary, keep the digital economy improving by ensuring Australia's tech advancement is not at the whims of Telstra; and protect any unnecessary slowdown or blocking of content by ending the plans for ISP-level filtering.

Reality_Please

12 Dec 2008 3:34am

The unfortunate thing here is that we have a Senator who has no idea about even the basics of technology trying to impress his, or his masters view/s on the majority of normal Australians.

Just about everyone except Conroy and the voters he needs to back him up knows this rubbish just will not work.

Filter away and anyone with half an IQ will bypass it in seconds....

Today the AFP with the co-operation of other Police Forces have made several arrests against the scum peddling kiddie porn, seems to be working just fine.

Introduce this filtering system and you can say "bye bye" to covert Police detection of offenders as they will go right "underground" using methods and protocols far beyond these filters capabilities.

Also, apart from the fact that this whole idea of trying to "censor" the internet for the (and I'm going to say this!) "WORKING FAMILIES" is the most stupid idea to yet be put forward by the RUDD LABOR GOVERNMENT.

Listen up......

I am a swinging voter. Most of my family and inlaws etc blah blah blah ....vote the same way.

Conroy is turning us into LNP voters...

It is time Kevin Rudd, Kevin 07 or as he is now known, Kevin 747, slapped Conroy about the ears and made him come to his senses and try to make him slightly technologically capable so that perhaps he could find someone with a half a clue that may be able to advise him as to the reality of this situation.

As an Addendum...

If Conroy & Co really feel that their mates who can't handle their own internet connections, due to being technologically inept, really need some sort of filtering because they cannot exercise parental control, then why not set up a Government ISP that will filter all your unfounded nasties? That way all those who are incapable of managing their own internet connections can be spoonfed as to what they see or do not see. Although in all reality, these types should not be allowed to connect to the internet in the first place!

So, moving right along...... Before anyone is allowed to connect to the internet it would be a good idea to test them like for a driver's licence. That way we do not have idiots who are spreading viruses and other malware without having a clue they are even doing it!

Better still use a *nix variant ;-)

You want a profitable digital age?

Forget filtering and keep morons who do not have a clue how the internet works from accessing the same.

End of rant.

Cheers, Reality_Please

Princhester

12 Dec 2008 3:36am

The primary issue at present in relation to the internet is whether the current administration will censor it and make Australia the laughing stock of the free world. Your department needs to stomp on the whole idea before it can be taken seriously in relation to any other issues concerning this portfolio.

brad

12 Dec 2008 3:40am

Current overseas bandwidth from Australia is appalling. While I reliably achieve 7-8 Mbps within Australia from my Transact connection, this falls to less than 2 Mbps as soon as I want to access sites in the US or Europe. This sluggish performance makes it unbearable to watch streaming video, for example.

It would appear that someone is strangling our connection to the outside world. This problem does not seem to arise with aarnet performance (I once watched an HD videoconference between AIMS and San Diego which maintained a speed of roughly 100 Mpbs) so I'm inclined to blame Telstra. Actually, I blame the privatisation of the infrastructure owned by Telstra.

Finally, the proposal for compulsory filtering of internet content is a purely political ploy without any basis in quantitative fact. It's being driven by the populist misconception about youth victimisation that was thoroughly debunked in US Congressional hearings. I recommend the reader to access the podcast of the US Congress hearing "Just the facts about online youth victimization" for an objective presentation of the facts by experts in the field. The last people to suffer from such ill-advised policies as compulsory filtering are the people doing the bad things. They already know how to defeat such tactics as are being proposed. It's all the law-abiding users who suffer.

ben

12 Dec 2008 3:41am

Senator Conroy, Why is it the Government see's fit to be my moral compass? Do you think I am incapable of judging right from wrong? Do you think I am not able to properly monitor what my children view? I offer you a challenge. Try and find "kiddie porn" which is publicly available via a search engine. I suspect you will fail since the sick people who do such things use much less public means of sharing information. It is not hard to do and impossible to stop. If your intention is to stop undesirable images being displayed when you type the word "sex" into a search engine then you will also fail. I have in the past typed the most innocent of phrases and have been confronted with a barrage of large breasted women. If the intention is to stop using key words like euthanasia then ask you why?

With every new form of communications technology there are risk involved. People will abuse it but that should not place an adverse effect on the 99.9999% of people that use it in a proper way. Bad people will always find ways to do bad things and the rest of us are smart enough to know how to avoid what we do not want.

On a more broader aspect of the "digital economy", I make full use of it. I work from home because of it, I communicate via VOIP because of it, I keep in contact with relatives overseas because of it, I use it as a library, I can participate in discussions because of it and the list goes on. Without the "Digital Economy" my life would be worse off for it. Let the police do their work and you should sit down and produce a vision of what could be!

Martin

12 Dec 2008 3:42am

The problem is Conroy has been handed a portfolio, he has little clue about. According to his biography, his real job experience outside politics include: a) industrial officer and superannuation officer for the Transport Workers Union 1992 to 1996.

b) He worked for the Metal Trades Industry Association from 1984 to 1986 The rest he has been assistant to this and that and adviser to this and that. With a resume like this, does anyone think he would be recruited by any IT or technology company in Australia? If the answer is no, then why is he occupying the top job in the Nation's IT and technology? That's simply beyond me.

texinick

12 Dec 2008 3:49am

IanBirk commented:

"The majority of blog comments however seem to be focused on Internet filtering, not the direct subject matter of the blog."

In response, I would like to say that the filter WILL directly affect the Digital Economy, and I therefore feel that it is VERY relevant to the original topic.

I, for one, don't want to see all these messages swept away into another place where they can be forgotten. The moderators of these blogs need to see how their actions are going to affect every single internet user in the questions they are asking us. From those being affected in business by false positives, to those being affected by the speed of the internet. Not to mention the potential impact on a business whose content may be considered remotely objectionable on confronting by the moderators of the filter.

This blog should have started BEFORE Mr Conroy started trying to force the filter on us, maybe even using it to get opinions from the real experts on how best to handle the situation. Alternatively, for this forum to work, they need to stand down on this ludicrous plan to filter the network, and then we can have some SERIOUS discussions on the Digital Economy.

As long as the plans for a filter exist, it's going to affect just about every question that the department ask on this blog.

APFDF

12 Dec 2008 3:56am

I fully endorse comments by: TuffGuy / 11 Dec 2008 2:29pm

I would hope that the government considers the underwhelming response there was to the web filter Howard produced. It wouldn't surprise me if this blog has already attracted more community interest than the Howard web filter ever did. I would love to see the numbers from that project made public.

The demand for this is simply not there in the Australian community.

I have every confidence that this will be dropped and the feed remain clean.

Shane

12 Dec 2008 12:33pm

I can understand the need to protect children from the sexual predators on the internet, from inappropriate content and from the horrific abuse of being dragged into child pornography.

I am employed in one of the Department of Education colleges who have a duty of care to provide this filtering to all of its students (and staff get this too to some lesser degree).

Even with a lot of human resources and expert contractors dedicated to this function, I could not advise that this is a complete success.

I hear complaints frequently about harmless sites being blocked, along with the problem existing that it does not censor all inappropriate sites.

Our judicial system was based on better than 100 people guilty of a crime to go free than a single person getting convicted for a crime they never committed.

If you use this logical basis on which our judicial system has long been based on, then mandatory filtering is wrong.

I agree with the small number of sites blocked, but I think that ISP's should report to the relevant police authorities, when a user accesses one of these specific sites of concern for further investigation.

I to some extent fully support censorship in general, provided that the goal is to protect society and that the censorship is accurate or extremely effective.

If there was a magical system that could perform the censorship of inappropriate content for children (and perhaps adults as well - sites about crime, bomb making come to mind here) and it did not block valid sites then I would be all for it. We already censor TV, magazines and videos already (with ratings and some material being rejected when it is too obscene). The internet should not be excluded from this.

The internet use to be a academia universe. With the comercialisation came all the spam, scams, phishing, popups, spyware and other nasty stuff. Purists that all content on the internet must be available have got to get their head out of the sand.

Obviously I cannot agree with countries like Vietnam and China who censor anti-government sites. This takes protection too far when it is purely political protection. Focusing on crime and valid site lists that are checked and reviewed by a human with open and reviewed criteria is common sense.

Jeff

12 Dec 2008 12:45pm

It is ridiculous to talk about a "Digital Economy" when, in the same breath, the government is proposing to cripple the internet performance via its proposed mandatory ISP filtering.

Anyone with an ounce of knowledge knows that this kind of filtering is best undertaken at the individual PC (via a range of available tools) where it does not impact overall performance of the internet.

The proposed internet filtering also sets a dangerous precedent with governments (present and future) being able to prohibit access to any sites of their choosing, for whatever reason. If we wanted that kind of censorship, we would all move to China.

I find it hard to comment on any other aspects of the Digital Economy until the government reconsiders this ridiculous, nanny state mentality.

Telstra Basher

12 Dec 2008 1:12pm

It is indeed interesting to be able to publicly comment on Government policy or (in)action. The so called digital economy blurb on the 'information' pages of this blog site say that having the populous needs broadband internet. That's great, citing income-access stats and all manner of other statistical bumpf doesn't give any comfort to me at all in the broadband stakes.

Until the Government makes Tesltra answerable to the public as the major shareholder about providing BB I just laugh at the whole idea of a digital economy.

Take my situation. Built brand new house in a new housing estate, can't even get broadnband on my Telstra line because Telstra installed crummy lines and hasn't got a planning deprtment astute enough to make sure enough ports or DSlams are available.

Any idiot can get info on where development is going to take place, why can't Telstra plan for the future? I have tried four times to get BB on my phone line - NO luck.

So I'm typing this from my laptop on the train to work using my OPTUS wireless BB connection. Ministers of any flavour over the past that many years are to blame for this, sad thing is no blog like this will have any effect on changing any topic raised by the public, it is just a device to be seen to be "consulting" with the public.

I vote

12 Dec 2008 1:20pm

So you think this is a blog? It's a web page with comments, not a blog. I guess this sums up the credentials you have on IT. Absolutely clueless. P.S. I didn't vote for a nanny state, stop the stupid misuse of technology for censorship.

Paul of Mt Martha

12 Dec 2008 1:21pm

The policy that spawned internet filtering is misguided. What gives anyone the right to decide what I can or cannot read or see? It has nothing to do with child pornography (which the government sees a a vote getter with the traditional Liberal supporting conservatives) and everything to do with basic rights of individuals to choose for themselves. Democracy = choice. Tyranny = no choice. Tryannic governments eventually fall.

THX1138

12 Dec 2008 1:29pm

For obvious freeasons that most educated people should already know, Internet Content Filtering (like many other child rearing duties) should be performed at a PARENT level and not by BIG BROTHER.

Pre-emptive actions toward protecting our children is the first step in setting a precedent toward total control, and you should all know what that means. Why not make available 'FREE' software that parents, organisation, instituations etc... can obtain through FREEDOM OF CHOICE?

sartu

12 Dec 2008 1:33pm

Hey Senator ... after you've cleaned up the internet ... could you go down the beach and stop the rising sea levels!

Jeremy

12 Dec 2008 1:35pm

The digital economy will not move forward if you filter the internet. Our broadband will slow by 80% as shown in tests, and large swathes of the internet, including access to editing wikipedia will be blocked (as shown in the UK, using the very same filtering list you plan on using).

People overwhelmingly rejected Howard's move to filter the internet and will do the same to your efforts (which are far and away more draconian than Howard's).

I and many others will vote against you at the next election, to ensure that only parties against filtering retain their seats.

Senator Conroy must be sacked as he has shown time and time again his ignorance of the internet.

You've currently got over 200 comments here, you will soon have over 10, 000. All will be anti-filtering.

Also, if you are even contemplating allowing Telstra to build the new broadband network, you have rocks in your head. They charge the same price as other country's (much faster) broadband access, for their incredibly slow copper access.

You already know about the petitions on this issue, what more do you need to hear to understand that facism will not be accepted in Australia.

The Greens and the Liberals must vote against this in the senate. It's strange - it's the first time I'll have supported the Liberals.

AndrewH

12 Dec 2008 1:37pm

Senator Conroy, I believe the mandatory Internet filtering proposal must not be implemented. I think enough experts have shown that every filtering technology trialled to date is ineffective, prone to collateral blocking, underblocking, and will do nothing to stop sick people from creating and sharing material that exploits children.

I also believe the doubts of privacy advocates, child welfare groups, the country's largest ISP (and others) and the general public as indicated by the protests and tremendously negative media coverage should be indicative to any but a mute man that this policy is a bad idea. John Howard ignored us on Iraq and plenty of other issues, dont make the same mistake Senator Conroy! You are ruining it for Labour and giving the country more reasons to vote the Libs back in next election with this unnecessary mandatory filtering scheme that makes the libs look liberal and labour ultra conservative! You could solve the problem right now by making it opt-in, or uniquely for blocking child porn ONLY and NOTHING ELSE. To quote Benjamin Franklin - those who would give up essential liberties to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither!

Anthony

12 Dec 2008 2:01pm

Senator Conroy, I would look more favourably on your initiatives, such as this blog, if you dropped your plans to censor the internet. As a supposedly free, Western country, these Iran-style plans are utterly embarrassing, and potentially dangerous. Holding back the digital economy is hardly a smart move when the country is experiencing an economic downturn. This is the 21st century, need I remind you Senator Conroy.

DrPhil

12 Dec 2008 2:08pm

I wish to be counted as another, long time user of the internet, steadfastly and implacably opposed to the filtering of the internet part of the Labor Party internet governance. Senator, please convey this information to the 36 faceless men (?persons now) who invent and promulgate these policies.

Ant

12 Dec 2008 2:09pm

Let's face it, Conroy is using child pornography as a Trojan Horse. By appealing to "protecting the children" he is hoping Australians will opt for slower internet, higher costs, and extensive government-controlled censorship. Why? Because throughout the ages, governments have feared people getting hold of information. They see the internet as a threat and therefore want to control it. This is why his plans have no opt-in or opt-out component. They are designed to be compulsory for ALL Australians, whether you have kids or not. Beyond any other issue, THIS is the vote-changer for me. I volunteered my time at the last election to help Labor win government. I now feel extremely betrayed. If Conroy goes ahead with his plans, I will put every effort into trying to get rid of this government at the next election.

nigel

12 Dec 2008 2:10pm

Filtering It is a very simple thing to bypass the proposed filtering methods. It would take less than 5 minutes. It will cost the ISP's a huge amount of money to implement. Why not take the 150 million dollars and give it to the federal police to chase down those people committing e-crime. NBN Cancel the NBN, take the $5 billion and turn it into tax breaks for any communications carriers who invest in rural / remote exchange areas. Imagine ISP's with that much more money to invest in infrastructure. Assigning that much money to only one infrastructure build will inhibit competition not encourage it

Shane Sody

12 Dec 2008 2:11pm

The Minister is (or should be) getting advice that net filtering (a) won't work and (b) will have negative impacts on internet speeds. He is however, committed to some form of filtering as a political necessity. Therefore, the political reality is that the Minister needs to come up with an alternative policy to achieve similar goals. May I suggest that the Government offers a subsidy for consumers who wish to purchase one of the commercially-available filtering programs e.g. Cybersitter. This would be more directly-targeted and workable for those who want it - and allow the Government to save face politically.

Jim

12 Dec 2008 2:15pm

Nice objective: stop people seeing what they shouldn't on the web. Trouble is the instrument is blunt and will kill the web for Australian users. The web economy is critical to Australia's economy. It won't work if censored. So the alternative is to show respect to the people of Australia and let them make their own decisions about what they will watch on the web. If it's illegal book 'em. [ALP member (and I have met you Steve), medical professional, dependent on a functioning internet]

derekj

12 Dec 2008 2:17pm

well this filter is a poor decision and so is the fiber to the node.. we have that allready.. fibre going directly to the exchanges. what is the government thinking ? we need fibre to the house not the node. then and only then will be in a position to see the benefits. also this filter is a slippery slop and it will be abused by the current government will abuse it as well, and any person/s who lobby will get there way. it is a first step to a dictatorship and what we can and can not do as long as it follows the government policy on how we think and what we do must all be for the governement. when infact the governement is by the people and for the people.. the people are not for the government to use and do with as they please. the government is there for the people and do the peoples bidding and it is clear that this filter is not the peoples bidding and nether the fibre to the node...

smokey

12 Dec 2008 2:32pm

So where is the big new broadband we were promised in the election? Has anything at all been done? It's a year after the election, and all we're getting is being dictated to like morons that we have to have a SLOWER net. I still have the same $60 a month connection of 1.5mbps. Talk to anyone online in America and they pretty much piss themselves laughing. A standard connection over there is about 5mbps I'm told and half the price.

Ozblogger

12 Dec 2008 2:34pm

My suggestions:- - drop the filter/censor idea (stop wasting public funds on such un-necessary endeavours) - educate/encourage people to use e-com on regualr basis - provide incentives to do so - encourage new & brilliant ideas that'll take Australia past it's current status in the digital economy . - influence young minds, don't drive them away, allow them to prove what they can achieve given the chance Peace Out!

Chris

12 Dec 2008 2:48pm

How can the internet make the world a better place? Communication. by adding your filters you will be limiting your voice, and reach of communication. if your going to put a filter on the internet, somebody is going to remove it and then show everybody else how he did it. you're conerned with piracy and pornography. does this mean that you are also going to stop p2p file transfers and vpn? how are businesses meant to function? could it just be solved with a free version of netnanny and if the parent doesn't install it then its the parents fault. my solution is to use the money that you have been wasting on this frivolous idea and to put it to better use to expand network capabilities to more rural areas. In my honest opinion, i believe that Conroy just doesn't understand the internet and what his effect on it will have on the economy. so here's a solid idea for him on how to make a "better" digital economy... WiFi Hotspots!!. Put your internet filters on them if you wish. They are YOUR internet connections. You could always just make the internet free. i wouldn't care about a filter if i didn't pay to use it. btw i would just disable the filter or bypass it.

bsolah

12 Dec 2008 2:58pm

The overwhelming response for the internet community against the internet filter makes this government, and their blog out to be a complete joke. You have no support at all. For those of you in Melbourne, see you all at the protest tomorrow, noon at the State Library.

Argus

12 Dec 2008 3:07pm

You ask two questions: Q1 What do you think the benefits to Australia of the digital economy are? Q2 How do you think we can ensure that those benefits are enjoyed by all Australians? In response I offer 2 answers. A1) the benefits are real and measurable to all Australian citizens and businesses. The rapid and free access to data for information, decision making and trade will translate into real GDP benefits... but before appluading yourselves note answer 2 below. A2) To ensure these benefits you need to have affordable, transparent and fast internet connections. This relates directly to the NBN and Internet Filtering policies of the current government. The NBN must provide an impartial utility style access that provides fast and affordable connection capacity. Please ensure you learn from past telecommunication fiascos such as Australia's cable roll out. We need a public utility for public benefit. Corporate Australia (or anyone) can benefit from this but they should not run it. the desire for profit will take over public benefit if they do. Secondly to maintain transparency you must abandon this ill conceived mandatory filter policy. The technical issues demonstrate that it will slow our speeds. Technology to escape filtering via VPN is already well established and will defeat any filtering effort. New technologies and practices will emerge to circumvent any mandatory filter. The ethical issues of mandatory filtering and having a "secret list" of banned sites are staggering. The absence of a Bill of Rights in Australia is something that I am pleased the government is reviewing but the mandatory filtering policy is at odds with it.

withnail

12 Dec 2008 3:08pm

I am writing to express my extreme displeasure at Labor & Senator Conray's attempt to introduce a mandatory Internet censorship filter. By nature the Internet works through the free flow of decentralised information. These ineffective filters will inadvertently censor webpages making Australians third-world information recipients. Attempts to hinder the Internet through filtering will not only reduce access speeds significantly as shown in clinical trials and statements by ISPs but will dampen any attempt to broaden our future digital economy. Senator Conroy's inability to understand these basic concept illustrates his unworthiness as Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy. His attempts to bully the ISP industry and label his vocal opponents negatively again reflect poorly upon himself and have been noted by voters. Incredulously the world is watching on whether we will join restrictive Internet states such as China, Iran and North Korea. Senator Conroy's ineptitude recalls the bungling rein of Liberal's former Minister for this portfolio Richard Alston. Labor's desire for Senator Steve Fielding's approval also recalls the position held by former Tasmanian Senator Brian Harradine. Secular Australia and the basic human right of unrestricted information cannot be dictated by a vocal, uninformed minority. PM Kevin Rudd still has my respect but needs to appoint a qualified person for the portfolio of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy and reformulate its Internet policy. The government should pursue a policy of education, policing and the provision of optional home-based software filtering. Labor have no doubt this is primary electoral issue for technologists such as myself and I will be voting at all future elections based on the outcome of this ridiculous Internet filtering legislation.

Martin

12 Dec 2008 3:09pm

To address the topic at hand first the benefit to Australia of a digital economy will be great. Most likely we will not fully realise many of the benefits until we are actually there. As many of the benefits have already been mentioned or are extremely obvious I�ll list a few points that need to be overcome in order to truly enter a digital economy. 1) All households and businesses must be connected to the internet. Whilst government and business need to cater for both those with internet and those without administrative cost will remain prohibitively high. 2) Connection needs to be at > 100mb/s. Whilst the 30mb/s connection maximum at present suffices for most in the near future the shear volume of information that needs to be transmitted will greatly increase, especially with more and more talk of �cloud computing�. 3) Dismissal of this censorship idea. It�s a Draconian plan with no fundamental benefits to support its enactment. It�s an affront to democracy and will hold Australia back. 4) Revision of current Intellectual property and Piracy laws. Whilst the laws may have been appropriate back in the 80s times have changed a great deal.

Heidi Allen

12 Dec 2008 3:10pm

As a publisher of electronic material and online courses for students in Australia I am very concerned at the Government's proposal to filter the internet. It is far better to teach children and students how to use the internet correctly and how to source information correctly than to presume to do it for them. To consider filtering the web would be a big step backwards for Australia and put us at a disadvantage to those countries where there is free access to the internet.

TK

12 Dec 2008 3:42pm

I think texinick hit the nail on the head by saying "As long as the plans for a filter exist, it's going to affect just about every question that the department ask on this blog". As someone who works in the IT security space there are just so many things wrong with the filtering proposal on almost every front that I don't know where to begin. Even more disturbing are the child protection dills who make statements like "It's a black day for Australia" because a major ISP decides not to participate in the trials. If this is what passes for logical argument and reasoned debate then we're all doomed - with or without the digital economy. As an IT professional the digital economy is where I make my living - although I don't spend much of my leisure time there these days. One of the major challenges for the digital economy is providing equitable access across the country. There's a lot of talk about what speeds should be considered an acceptable standard of service and how much data should be included in a basic service. But I've seen no discussion of any criteria around latency - the time it takes packets to traverse the network. As a former user of a two way satellite service (which is the only choice apart from dialup for many rural and remote users) I believe latency should be a key factor. Many of the emerging Internet based services (VoIP is one example) cannot function effectively on a high latency link. Those who can only get that type of link will be excluded from the benefits of those services. We need to aim for a better outcome than that.

Johnny G

12 Dec 2008 3:45pm

Please don't waste OUR money on pointless filtering technology Senator Conroy. I didn't know childcare was part of your portfolio...

Arved

12 Dec 2008 3:56pm

Also add my voice to disapproving of the internet filter. An optional, opt-in filter is reasonable (although several Australian ISPs already provide such a service), but no censorship should ever be mandatory, especially when perfectly valid games like GTA IV are refused classification in Australia.

Greg

12 Dec 2008 3:56pm

Hey Conroy, pull you're head in mate. Who do you and you're government think you are implementing something with the intention of almost no public discussion on the matter??? Trying to sneak this one through weren't you? You went to the election with filtering, on an opt out basis, and now you're in power you want it to be mandatory! What a nerve. Listen to the people, listen to the polls, no one wants this filter. It is disgusting, and will hopefully be one of the deciding factors to you're loss of government in the next election. Deceptive, interfering pollies, with very little understanding of IT at all. And while we're at it, you're doing a wonderful job of stuffing up the NBN as well. If telstra is given the network on their current terms Australia will pay for it for many many years to come. Lets just hope you don't make a folly of it, and get a result that is in the benefit of Australia, and it's citizens, and not the big corporate bully called Telstra.

Mick Leyden

12 Dec 2008 3:44pm

I'm late to the game on this one, work got in the way!

There are many benefits the Australian people, Australian Industry and the Australian education sector can gain from having a strong digital infrastructure.

My biggest concern relates to the availability of access to broadband internet. A connection that will allow a user to engage with rich multimedia content, for example watching speeches, listening to interviews and reading commentary during the recent US elections requires significant by bandwidth and usage allowance.

Broadband internet prices are still prohibitive for a large proportion of the population. If someone signs up for a $10 a month ADSL plan that comes with 200MB downloads, according to the statisticians they have broadband access, yet with such a small data allowance they are not able to truely engage with the rich content available online. I believe the NBN must address the issue and provide affordable fast broadband access with a usable data allowance to all Australians.

Simon Shaw

12 Dec 2008 4:13pm

Regarding the digital economy.

The Government may want to look at the way media is distributed in Australia.

Currently the movie industry is suing iiNet over copyright infringement by it's users.

The big thing in my mind is that the movie and TV industry, (with the exception of the ABC) are NOT moving with the digital age.

Movies and TV should be available online at a reasonable cost.

Why can we only see a new movie at a movie theater? Yes if its a great movie I'll probably go to a theatre to watch for a better experience. However they should be available online!

Why do we have to wait months for a movie to make it to the DVD rental shop? Why do we have to buy the whole movie, pay for the packaging and shipping when many of us would be happy to download it and view that way?

(Better for the environment too).

Please apply some pressure to that industry to "get-with-the-times". Old distribution models, that are half a century old just DO NOT WORK ANYMORE.

This is why movie and TV piracy is so widespread, the industry is not giving consumers what they want.

john

12 Dec 2008 5:04pm

we do not vote for politicians to look after our morals and treat us like school kids,and the monumental cost of implimenting this is disgraceful. conroy you should resign immediatly for the sake of democracy

Barry Robinson

12 Dec 2008 6:39pm

Well, if we're going to use the term "Economy", I would have to say our Digital version of an Economy is quite dismal at the moment (at least in my eyes):

We have a private company with a monopoly on our national infrastructure, who have the interests of their investors at heart, not the country.
Due to the monopoly, other companies find it hard to compete, as a lot of time there is no effective "economic" method to enter a lot of the market...
We allow this monopoly to dictate growth and govern our initiative. I will provide Next-G as an example - why is it I can not get Next-G on Optus or Vodafone? Why aren't we using 3G, like the rest of the world?
We are bluffed into thinking that we need Telstra to build an NBN... Sure, it would help if they came to the party, but judging from their recent NBN Submission, I am doubtful it will ever be in any helpful or of national interest.
We're bluffed into thinking Telstra are the good guys and Terria are the evils... Yes, Sol Trujillo is as Aussie as Simon Hackett, I am sure.
We try and apply "safe" and conventional methods to solve our Communication
We have a government who wants to sensor our Information... This is about as helpful as putting a dam on a river in a drought stricken area, then setting up a blog asking the farmers how they felt about it.

I am by no means an Economist, but my understanding is that in order have a flourishing economy, you need free trade and competition... we have neither, at least in the Communication Infrastructure part of town.

I live in a part of the country that can not get ADSL2 unless you go through Telstra. There is no technical reason, or visible financial reason for Telstra not allowing other companies to rent/lease these ports?

I am not even going to get started with our complete dependence of Microsoft products in the Public sector. Or the issue of software patents and how it affects our software industry.

We seriously make life hard for ourselves when it comes to technology in this country.

Cheers,
Barry

smokey

12 Dec 2008 8:25pm

In view of the huge response on this blog regarding the net filter, and the fact that blogs are supposed to be interactive, Conroy should at least have the curtesy to post a reply. Well? Let's see you defend your stupid idea in front of all these learned people here eh?

Lexi Belle

13 Dec 2008 10:19am

I am for net censorship, or rather moderation or filtering. I think censorship is the wrong word. I don't believe that any medium for communication should be anarchistic. Just as we need laws to protect us in existing forms of media, eg. radio, TV, print, we need them for the internet. I can see where Labor is coming from in relation to moderating the internet and the future digital economy. If we are going to depend on the internet that greatly, then yes, there should be some degree of policing, to protect our personal and business interests. Now before everyone jumps up and says that the technology wont work; I would have to disagree. There are various vendors that have carrier grade hardware capable of filtering content up to 10Gbps per unit. In fact such an architecture is widely deployed in any telco's core network architecture as part of their value-add services gateway - its mandatory these days. The transmission capacity is also immense, we are talking Tbits and up. Given that NBN will only be 24Mbps and ADSL2+ technology, there will only be marginal effect on the latency as a result of the net filter. What will be the factor would be the response time for overseas servers we are trying to access. For local traffic, this would hardly be an issue. From a cost/benefit point of view, I think the filter is essential. The point that many of those who are against censorship conveniently ignore is that although the filter cannot block out every bit of illegal or undesirable activity, it will block a very significant amount of it, making it safe to use in the digital economy. It will also not affect internet speed by any signficiant degree. Another point is equating this with some kind of totaliatrian plot by the government to control and inhibit freedom of speech. This is such a load of rubbish. We do have freedom of speech, but it is a right that is enacted within the laws of our society, and the internet should mirror these laws. There should not be a separate law for the internet. To say that censoring the internet is putting a gag of free speech is simply incorrect and are the belief of those who think the internet should be lawless. If that were the case, there would be many victims of this digital frontier, if they so choose to participate in it, and I dont see why the internet should be the domain of tech savvy geeks alone.

Dave

13 Dec 2008 10:42am

How can our digital economy be under threat from so many internet 'nasty's that we need to spend hundreds of millions to hide, yet the same Govt has come in and cut funding to frontline federal staff combating the same problem? Hiding it away doesnt save one kid, yet thats where all the money is going.

CraigT

13 Dec 2008 10:47am

There is no division between the 'digital' economy and whatever the DBDE is calling the other bits of the economy. Anyone using a mobile telephone, watching paytv (and soon any tv), buying or selling (or pirating) books, movies or music, growing and selling food using satellite weather reports, complex distribution, accounting and marketing systems is part of the 'digital' economy. From knowledge workers to garbage collectors, the digital economy is seamlessly integrated with the entire economy. Stop placing artificial silos in place that restrict thinking on the flows and consequences of change. They make government less equipped to address the changes occurring in society. All economic activity comes down to labour, time and resource inputs being applied to create products and services people choose to consume, exchanging their dollars for the ideas and efforts of others. This is the same process whether buying the latest fashions at the shops or a digital outfit for their avatar in an online world. Whether going to the park to play football with mates, or going online to play in a Massive Multiplayer Online Game with their guildies, people are choosing between different ways to spend time. Digital is a different channel not a distinct and separate universe. I typed this comment while laying in bed using my wifi itouch, simultaneously listening to music and twittering with friends to organize arrendence at a No Filter rally -

NullDevice

13 Dec 2008 10:53am

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?

Balance

13 Dec 2008 7:07pm

The future of the digital economy in Australia, at present, is reliant on the good will of major search engines - all USA owned.

Google uses their search superiority to direct web traffic to USA websites, particularly commercial websites; and Australia could be doing the same.

Superior search engines influence outcomes/destinations, and there are no laws barring biased search results. To evidence the USA commercial advantage, you only need perform a few Google searches.

Australia could develop/should develop it's own search engine equal to, or better than Google.

A superior Australian search engine could also facilitate 'filtering' of illegal (eg phishing, child pornography) content.

As no other search engines have developed this functionality, this type of search engine could attract international interest (eg parents the world over all have similar concerns).

The Cat

13 Dec 2008 7:33pm

To Lexe Belle, I should point out that the Internet is not "lawless" as I guess you must see it as your magic bullet filter is not yet in place. I am not sure that law enforcement people world wide dealing with Internet crime would be thrilled with that comment (who I am sure could use some extra staff and finance). If you are caught committing crime on the net, you leave yourself open to being punished by the law as it stands now!! You seem to have absorbed little of what the other contributors have been saying and do a great job of MINIMISING the impact that this filter will actually have. It surprises me that you seem to know more about equipment used by ISP's than the ISP's themselves, when oddly enough, many ISP's and experts have been saying that the filter idea is expensive and unworkable and either will significantly impact Internet speed with a filter of higher accuracy or less speed impact which will mean worse job of filtering, both ARE inaccurate anyway in blocking and letting stuff through, simply one is just more inaccurate than the other, a real positive huh?? You say that there should be some degree of policing, Policing is the investigation and arrest of crime, not imposing morals and values and opinions on the population as a whole, and it seems that the Government are not just interested in illegal content, as stated by Conroy, are they Lexi Belle!? Filter your own Internet, that is your right.... It is my right to say no to this and I am!!

jokay

13 Dec 2008 7:52pm

Australia has a strong and creative community of online workers who will be crippled by your threatened internet filtering scheme - I mean really... even telstra doesnt want in! Lolz!

Please listen to the Oz online community - who understand these technologies and the ways that we can make the webz safer for our children. Dont censor us and cripple our ability to work, network, communicate and connect online.

My community of practice in a a virtual world called Second Life say NO! TO Clean Feeds. http://jokaydia.com/2008/12/13/jokaydia-says-no-clean-feed/

Dani

14 Dec 2008 7:09pm

"NET FILTER IS FAIL"

Are we seirously going to be treated like children for the rest of our lives? This is ridiculous! Its bad enough that in schools we can't even complete our work because when we type anything into google it is deemed "inappropriate" and cannot be viewed. Is this going to start happening at home, to? This kind of censorship should not exist, its up to the indivdual not the goverment! Our parents should control what we do and do not see when we're very young, but once we're teenagers we are responsible enough to control our own internet access, nevermind adults in their 40's and 50's! It is just ridiculous that their internet access would be censored for "inappropriate" and "offensive" material. Who is going to decide on what is considered inappropriate or not? It differs for each individual!

How in the world can you even consider censoring the internet?? I mean do you actually think you can keep up with it? You obviously don't have a clue when it comes to the digital age, as YOUNG PEOPLE we could make better decisions than you. This makes me so furious.

Free speech, free access to information, not censored by the goverment!!!! Don't turn us into China.

I cannot wait for the next election, in which the Rudd goverment will be out.

Bazza

14 Dec 2008 8:13pm

Give the whole censorship idea a miss guys. We don't need it, we're adults. If people want their kids to be kept safe, they should try a bit of supervision. I don't see why everyone need suffer to make up for bad parenting.

Ironic how our media and government complained about the Chinese censorship

Family Doctor

15 Dec 2008 11:14am

The mandatory ISP-level filter is as essential as mandatory treatment of sewage before it is released back into our water supply. Those adults who enjoy a dip in raw sewage can still do it, but children should not be unwittingly exposed to that filth. The government must not give in to urgings from the porn industry - whether purveyors or consumers.

BryanL

15 Dec 2008 11:18am

guys,

you titled this blog "What does the digital economy encompass? What does it mean for Australians?"

Well without the functional separation of Telstra, and / or if Telstra get their hands on control of the NBN, there will be no "digital economy" to speak of in this country, because we will all be charged out of existence.

Telstra's track record speaks for itself. Telstra are still ripping off the ignorant by signing them up to ridiculous low cap plans with totally unreasonable excess charges. This is totally beyond what anyone could consider a fair approach. It is insidious and not in keeping with the culture of this country. Their salespeople are still encouraged to lie to consumers re pricing and make promises of non-existent plans to encourage churning back to Telstra.

No-one at Telstra (nor Telstra itself) ever gets in trouble with the relevant Fair Trading, nor the ACCC, nor the telco ombudsman, over these practices and yet any other business doing the same things would be run out of town.

Further, Telstra continue to hamper and outright block access to ISP's trying to roll out competitive services to business and domestic customers across the country.

When telecoms in this country was opened to competition, we saw Optus and others bring the costs to the community down. Unfortunately the profits were still too great and competition beyond signing up numbers has evaporated - that is, competition by way of cheaper pricing.

Telstra are by no means a quality ISP. It was never a core business and their dominance landed in their lap by virtue of being the incumbent monopoly telco (pseudo monopoly perhaps, but none the less, monopoly - or maybe we could just say 500kg gorilla). They only ever do just enough (and often not enough) while still charging excessive rates.

I know there are economies of scale to consider in Australia. But I am sure Telstra could halve both their monthly access fees and their data rates for ADSL, and more so for their mobile data, and still make a healthy profit. I say this because most ISPs admit that they could turn a profit charging half of what they do, if not for Telstra's predatory pricing.

If correct reduction to Telstra pricing truely occurred, I for one would then gladly pay another $5 per month to cover infrastructure to "the bush". Do the sums. I am sure it would more than work out.

I will close with a little anecdote. Back in the 1980's when optical fibre became a reality, Telstra ran their first optical fibre cable between Sydney and Melbourne, at a cost, if memory serves, of $45M. That was a lot of money back then, even for Telstra. The anecdote is that it paid for itself in six months.

I wonder what percentage of their 3G network has already been paid for, given the profits they make from the inflated mobile rates we pay?

Unfortunately Telstra has become an un-Australian company, coincidentally run by un-Australians.

We could, and should, be doing far be better in this country than we are for what is becoming (for some has become) an essential service.

You have received a mandate from the people. Please don't waste it.

Bryan

BryanL

15 Dec 2008 6:38pm

guys, you titled this blog "What does the digital economy encompass? What does it mean for Australians?"

Well without the functional separation of Telstra, and / or if Telstra get their hands on control of the NBN, there will be no "digital economy" to speak of in this country, because we will all be charged out of existence.

Telstra's track record speaks for itself. Telstra are still ripping off the ignorant by signing them up to ridiculous low cap plans with totally unreasonable excess charges. This is totally beyond what anyone could consider a fair approach. It is insidious and not in keeping with the culture of this country. Their salespeople are still encouraged to lie to consumers re pricing and make promises of non-existent plans to encourage churning back to Telstra.

No-one at Telstra (nor Telstra itself) ever gets in trouble with the relevant Fair Trading, nor the ACCC, nor the telco ombudsman, over these practices and yet any other business doing the same things would be run out of town.

Further, Telstra continue to hamper and outright block access to ISP's trying to roll out competitive services to business and domestic customers across the country.

When telecoms in this country was opened to competition, we saw Optus and others bring the costs to the community down. Unfortunately the profits were still too great and competition beyond signing up numbers has evaporated - that is, competition by way of cheaper pricing.

Telstra are by no means a quality ISP. It was never a core business and their dominance landed in their lap by virtue of being the incumbent monopoly telco (pseudo monopoly perhaps, but none the less, monopoly - or maybe we could just say 500kg gorilla). They only ever do just enough (and often not enough) while still charging excessive rates.

I know there are economies of scale to consider in Australia. But I am sure Telstra could halve both their monthly access fees and their data rates for ADSL, and more so for their mobile data, and still make a healthy profit. I say this because most ISPs admit that they could turn a profit charging half of what they do, if not for Telstra's predatory pricing.

If correct reduction to Telstra pricing truely occurred, I for one would then gladly pay another $5 per month to cover infrastructure to "the bush". Do the sums. I am sure it would more than work out.

I will close with a little anecdote. Back in the 1980's when optical fibre became a reality, Telstra ran their first optical fibre cable between Sydney and Melbourne, at a cost, if memory serves, of $45M. That was a lot of money back then, even for Telstra. The anecdote is that it paid for itself in six months.

I wonder what percentage of their 3G network has already been paid for, given the profits they make from the inflated mobile rates we pay?

Unfortunately Telstra has become an un-Australian company, coincidentally run by un-Australians.

We could, and should, be doing far be better in this country than we are for what is becoming (for some has become) an essential service.

You have received a mandate from the people. Please don't waste it.

Bryan

gijed

15 Dec 2008 11:36am

It is absurd to think that you or any commity knows whats best for an entire country, everyone has different opinions for things, and yours maybe different, does that mean you are right because you have that power to censor them? It also blows my mind that i could join the army now, be deployed to iraq, and kill an insurgent, yet im not considered adult enough to handle any alcohol, or pornography.

Senator Conroy, i really want to know why you think this is a good idea, in spite of all the reasons why this is impossible and NOT democratic.

What little information we have recieved so far only shows that it will do nothing more than cripple Australias already slow internet (i cant even get ADSL2+).

I have already written letters to my local MP and to the primeminister on this topic but have not recieved any replies, so if you could fill in the blanks and respond it would be much appreciated.

swordfishBob

15 Dec 2008 11:53am

* Spam and viruses are a big problem, not easy to address. However, if the investment of cash, time and effort proposed for the censor filter were invested in improving security and safety at the ISP level, we might achieve something very significant.

* Most discussion on NBN has related customer connection speeds, with an implication of sufficient backhaul to service those speeds. What about the actual structure and efficiency of the network and of reseller access? If each ISP must still have all their customer traffic routed through their own tunnel heads, and pay the infrastructure owner for specific capacity on backhaul, then the "national" aspect of the network will be carry a lot of waste. The base network should be able to route efficiently on behalf of any/all providers, making peer traffic far more efficient than currently possible. Note that peer traffic includes VPNs for multi-site businesses, and for teleworkers. In the case of teleworkers, the home-office ISP may not be the employer's ISP. Flexible peer routing also facilitates distributed content caching, so major providers (esp video / IPTV) can increase their capacity with minimal impact on backhaul, by putting a cache in each region. Local resources applicable to a town would be accessible at full speed within that town. Traffic between two nearby towns or suburbs need not be routed via capitol city central exchanges.

* There is no easy answer to fairness. Having Telstra build the NBN will further entrench a monopoly that we already don't know how to handle fairly and legally in a "competitive" market. Going apart from Telstra means a fragmented base network and poor peering between Telstra's networks and customers and the new NBN. However, Telstra's comment that they would compete with any other provider suggests that is the most effective way to solve the "incumbent monopoly" question.

* If the NBN is to maximise efficiency and cost-effectiveness, it must be a monopoly. In that respect it should be government-owned. At the very least, it should be prevented from operating in competition with its own customers (retail ISPs), but even then, without competition, it may lose incentive for furture improvements.

* Could the aims be met with a new kind of USO, that specifies good data rates with future increases? Set a requirement for all new services from 2010, with (say) a 5 year window to upgrade all existing services.

* USO should stipulate that where a provider uses mobile/wireless technologies to deliver a fixed-location service, the client is not penalised financially for this decision. This means wireless can be used where sensible (e.g. avoiding long fibre runs per customer in remote locations, or temporarily until a new node is installed in the area) while mantaining impetus for good infrastructure development. Access costs for fixed installs should be in proportion to speed/performance, not access method.

Thanks for listening. Here's hoping someone is able to digest all the comments and achieve something useful in response.

Jono

15 Dec 2008 3:52pm

There is no distinction between a digital economy and a regular economy, and there certainly should be no intervention by government in either. The internet is a utopia for freedom and peace. It is a form of communication where no theft or violence can be employed, and it is totally safe and there is no need for government to police or regulate communications. If a crime is committed, that is a separate matter for the police. But regulating speech and technology is a misguided attempt at social engineering, tried by failed communist states.

Jaimes

15 Dec 2008 4:26pm

As an Australian and an internet user, I have serious concerns about your new mandatory "clean feed" filter initiative. Given the importance your Government has attached to modernising Australia's broadband network, pursuing a policy that can only slow down and increase the costs of home internet access seems misguided at best. Australian households are diverse, and most do not have young children, so mandating a one-size-fits-all approach will not serve the public well. I don't think it is the Government's role to decide what's appropriate for me or my children, and neither do most Australians. Given the amount of Internet content available, the Government will never be able to classify it all and I feel that the time and money could be spent in better ways both to protect children and improve Australia's digital infrastructure. Australian parents need better education about the risks their children face online. Trying to rid the Internet of adult content is futile, and can only distract from that mission. A few points to consider 1. How will this filter serve any purpose for blocking child pornography or other illegal content when surely if any illegal content is found the proper authority's would be notified to have those websites taken down. 2. How will this filter even attempt to prevent online predators from contacting children? Will you be blocking social networking sites like Myspace and Facebook aswell as chat rooms where these predators are known to go to engage children? 3. Implementing this filter will give parents a false sense of security that their children are now safe on the Internet because of the filter. Opening up the gateway to lawsuits when it doesn't properly filter some webpages. 4. It should be up to parents to decide what's best for their children just as they would when they decide what movies and television they watch. It's not the governments role to play "Nanny State". 5. In a supposedly free and democratic society how can you justify blocking or censoring adult content from adults? Also how can you do something as completely undemocratic as block sites you deem as "unwanted material" without giving the public any indication as to what this unwanted material is instead keeping it hidden in a secret blacklist with no publicly available record where you can continue to add anything else to the list you deem unwanted without the public ever knowing what is being blocked? I wonder if negative comments about polices such as this would be classified by you as unwanted material. 6. The filter would incorrectly block 10,000 legitimate sites in every million. 7. When we have a filter like this where countries like Iran have more Internet freedom how can we any longer take the moral high ground and be an example to other nations as what a free and democratic society should be. 8. This filter will slow Internet access down by up to 80% according to a Government report. Our country already has just about the worst Internet speeds in the world, why put another hurdle like this in front of us, which is going to seriously hamper us from ever being able to catch up with the Internet speeds of the modern world. 9. The filter can easily be bypassed making it effectively pointless. 10. Tax money would be much more efficiently and sensibly spent on going after these child abusers. 11. All the experts agree that this filter is stupid, flawed, won't work and will only slow Internet speeds down. 12. The Australian public have shown very little interest in this filter public with far more of the public feedback being against it. So how can you willingly force this upon the Australian people and expect us to pay for it? 13. Given the amount of disapproval this filter has why pursue it when this will almost guarantee your party will be a one term government when the people decide to vote you out at the next election. It seems to me the only reason you could have for pushing this policy is either you are seriously misguided, which I doubt because you have been given plenty of feedback by the public, the experts and the ISPs for why this filter is so impractical and insensible. So that means that the only conclusion that can be drawn is that you want this filter in place because of some ulterior agenda it serves. Lastly given all these points that you have not even began to address I find it deeply offensive and juvenile that you'd suggest that everyone against this filter supports child porn.

Laurel Papworth

16 Dec 2008 10:58am

I perceive the digital economy to be the social economy. We are seeing a profound shift from capitalism, where companies mediate the relationship between supplier and consumer to social network economies where C2C services are provided. I can find a plumber, a writer and a doctor all on my social networks. I definitely don't need media to advertise to me, and FOAF (friend of a friend) supplies me with any connections that may be missing. Peer to peer changes everything. Open Mesh and Meraki turns EVERYONE into Citizen ISP. Zopa and Prosper tuns EVERYONE into Citizen Banker. Not a single industry will be left unmarked by social network (digital) economies. What We Media did to Heritage Media is only the beginning...

Hamlet

18 Dec 2008 9:50am

How benefit Australians Offer us wider choice and more competitive conditions. Telstra owns the copper so build a parallel 'Fibre to the Home' network. Ensure new (unjointed fibre) can be rolled out on demand from the Node to Home (front gate) by robotic crawlers pulling the optic fibre through adequately dimensoned service channels/ pipes/ ducts/ trenchs/ or whatever you want to call the access infrastructure. PS - copper will be catastrophically uncompetitive soon enough. For remote areas satellites provide immediate coverage.

Anthony

18 Dec 2008 3:40pm

Please Mr Conroy, remove YOUR morals (or are they Family First's?) from MY internet. I do not expect you to live by my ethical standards and moral judgements, I would appreciate the same consideration.

Guy Fawkes

22 Dec 2008 9:10am

The 'keeping internet free of child porn' justification behind internet censorship is a red herring. It's all about a meglomanics desire to control all forms of communication and anonymously block any site they want. We can choose to be sheeple and hope for a good shepherd, or fight to defend our freedoms. Unfortunately this means that we'll lay down and get shafted until it becomes unbearable, and then parliament gets blown up. Guy Fawkes anyone?

Groucho

22 Dec 2008 9:43am

First, define broadband, with an effective minimum. Anything below 8Mbs WILL NOT DO AT ALL. Aim for between 20Mbs & 50Mbs within 2 years. Nationwide. NO excuses. No Telstra bull.

nanks

22 Dec 2008 1:23pm

'Digital economy' is an awful term that seems to encompass a complete misunderstanding of computation and communications. Like the net filter it bodes poorly for the future. Anyway, without internet speeds and access costs approximating those of the rest of the OECD and others we won't have a 'digital economy'. If we can get that into place then there is little need for the government to do much other than broker large scale programs in traditional areas of government - education, health and so on.

Tim

23 Dec 2008 1:15pm

This is all bluster. No way are Conroy and the ALP bringing this in. They know they'd be turfed out at the next election if they even try. I'm a lefty and my vote would go straight to the Libs if so.

Cranky

24 Dec 2008 5:23pm

I believe that the Australian Government needs to address region coding of digital material. Seperating the world into 5 or 6 DVD regions (as well as a similar system for software) is an impediment to world free trade, not to mention that it goes against the intent (common trading grounds). I am a regular world traveller and have been frustrated by the excuses large corporations, and the governments that receive their taxes, continue to parade as a cover for what can be considered a global duo-opoly. I regularly see ligitament software in Asia for AU$20 that is also sold in AUstralia for AU$90. Shipping costs do not add AU$70 to the final bill nor manufacturing costs as they come out of the same factory. It is simply old fashioned price gouging (like or fuel cartels). Breaking these region coding regulations would increase sales within AUstralia as the prices of goods fall in line with our neighbours and it becomes less benefical to DL the material. Also, a large amount of DLing is conducted for maovies and games not easily accessable in Australia such as Japanes anime or European sci-fi. Reduced costs, perhaps through tarrif reductions,region unlocks and digital distribution (pay for downloads at $5 each?) would enable the Australian economy to supply a demand that is growing (think of the taxes you would get Mr Conroy). The generation of tech -heads is here. They are the middle aged suburban families and their children. We have grown up with this technology (P2P, web, Billboards & Blackhatters) and are not afraid to use it. Make those who hide responsible for looking after them selves not punish the wider community who want to do the right thing but are hamstrung by backward thinking beuracracy. You can make a difference Mr Conroy, please make it count for common sense and pull down the great firewall of Australia and truly build an e-nation to be proud of...make your mark on history