James very anti cleanfeed

What makes this blog so special that members of the government will actually take notice of it? When it comes to ISP level filtering Senator Conroy has chosen to ignore all advice from ISP's and network engineers. Not to mention the outcry from human rights groups, civil liberties groups and people who want to keep Australia democratic. My only hope is for this blog to be used as evidence of how unpopular filtering is with the Australian public, resulting in it being abandoned at once. That could save the labour party but I think its too late for you Mr Conroy, you lost me when you said “unwanted” material would be part of mandatory filtering.

The claimed reasons for filtering surely must be false, that or the government is completely ignorant of how the internet works. I think it is only due to lack of mass media coverage that more people can't see this. You don’t need to be a network engineer to know that the filters will do nothing to stop child abuse, creation of child porn or people accessing child porn. (VPN, Proxy, P2P etc etc)

Given this I challenge the government to explain the push for mandatory censorship.

Why does the government want to control the internet?

Does it see uncontrolled mass communication as a threat?

A threat to what?

Government Power?

The idea that people can spread information all over the world in a second is a new phenomenon. In the past those in power have only had to worry about commercial media, who’s voice can be bought.

Why would any government pass off the chance to silence its critics? Senator Conroy has certainly shown a desire to stop people from speaking out against the government. He had no qualms in pressuring a citizen’s employer to silence him about the filter. (respect to Mark Newton for that one) I hope Conroy doesn’t think we are going to forget that one.