TK

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.