gibbo

Text of letter sent to Minister Conroy on November 13. Now an open letter to the Minister. Dear Minister, It is, quite simply, impossible to censor the Internet without a China-type clamp-down. China employs an army of people(1) manually sifting through the 'net seeking out subversive content. I don't for a moment think you intend anything like that here. Anything short of that kind of effort, and any savvy user will be able to bypass any measures you put in place. Before you know it your banned list will have been posted on newsgroups along with instructions on how to use an off-shore proxy server to access them. There is also the concern about the "thin end of the wedge". The moment you have a list of banned sites it opens a Pandora's box of real or imagined opportunities for a future government to redefine "undesirable" to their own advantage. How about banning a site that talks down the economy, spreading negative sentiment, or a site that promotes Islam in a manner that some may consider threatening? All you will achieve with this move is an incredible amount of criticism and ridicule, and a reduction in the performance of the Internet for Australian businesses and households. The effort is doomed to fail. Please, please quit while you are ahead. David Stonier-Gibson Melbourne -------------- (1) "The size of the Internet police is estimated at more than 30,000." Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China. The number of people required for a given level of "filtering" will not be affected by the number of Internet users