Stephen Conroy resigns

[Tannin]

David, you haven't ben paying attention. We have Internet censorship NOW. Repeat NOW. We have had it for some time. From memory, about 5 years. I don't remember exactly. Nor do I remember which government brought it in. Pointless question anyway, both major parties approved it. Essentially, the government leaned on the backbone providers who bring the data in from overseas (there are only a half dozen or so) and said "here is a list of banned sites; block them or else", so they were blocked.

This is, of course, the very worst form of censorship: censorship not by law with judicial oversight and the ability to hire a lawyer and challenge a decision, censorship by secretive blocking of selected sites by unelected non-officials who don't report to anyone, and all done without needing legislation.

The original excuse was the same tired old one they always trot out, "child porn" - if there was 10% of the actual child porn around that you'd think there was from all the bullshit politicians mouth, we'd be drowning in the bloody stuff - but the blocking is way broader than that. You can doubtless find a list of blocked sites somewhere on the web (I know I've seen such lists from time to time) but I advise you not to search for it as you will undoubtedly go on a different list somewhere and, sooner or later, attract unwanted attention from nasty men in suits and 1950s haircuts. (Actually, you are probably already on such a list somewhere. There is nothing secret police like better than lists of names.)

Getting around the blocks is a simple matter for the technically literate (as is nearly always the case with this sort of thing). Hell, back when Conroy was spruiking a bigger and more public version of the same thing, there was some 15-year-old in the headlines 'coz he figured out how to get around Conroy's filter in less than one minute.

Back when the current block list first came in, I figured out one way to get around it without looking it up anywhere (i.e., just thought about it and dreamed up a method I thought would work) and tried it out). Worked first time. I accessed one banned site (I don't remember what it was now, just something random off the block list) to prove that it worked, then lost interest. If I could figure it out and implement a workaround in maybe 10 or 15 minutes, someone who has an interest in or experience in something vaguely related (e.g., downloading torrents) should be able to do it in half that time, and a script kiddie in less again.

None of which justifies censorship by stealth, of course.

[Culprit]

Tannin, I know it's no cost to replace him. I am saying to resign so quickly after an election should incur a penalty. That goes for any Politician.

[David]

I think there's always been an acceptance amongst the general public (even most libertarians and tech freedom types) that the government should work to block the flow of child pornography. They were doing that long before Conroy's filter was dreamed up, and as you point out, continue to do so.

The problem isn't that the government does this (even though, as some will rightly point out, if they can block those sites without oversight then they can block whatever else they like too). The problem was that Conroy's invocation of child pornography as a reason for the implementation of a filter was always a pathetic smokescreen – after all, as noted above, the government was already doing just that. The purpose of a filter was to block all 'Refused Classification' content, which goes far beyond child pornography and other illegal content to include a great deal of non-vanilla porn, anti-abortion sites, footage of capital punishment, euthanasia advocacy; basically, anything that can't be accommodated by an R rating or the narrow X rating for non-kinky pornography. And of course, it would be illegal for citizens to even know what had been blocked, so if the government decided to start filtering out extreme political views like white supremacism or Islamic extremism or stuff that might hurt our trade relations with China, we wouldn't know.

Furthermore, he proposed a second filter to block all pornography, requiring every citizen in the country who wished to watch consensual adults having sex to go through the humiliating process of calling up a government agency and requesting to be exempted from the filter – and, undoubtedly, ending up on some leaked list somewhere in five years time as someone who wished to watch pornography.

Conroy's main failing here was that he was treating the internet like a neighbourhood Blockbuster video store. He simply didn't understand – or didn't want to – that the internet is not just an entertainment platform but the chief means of communication and source of knowledge of our age. To submit it to our provincial (and frankly pretty outdated) classification system was an absolutely dreadful idea; one of the worst that has been proposed in Australian politics this century that wasn't in Abbott's 2014 budget. And, at least to an extent, it has been defeated.

The filter and the opt-out clean feed were both outrageous proposals, and neither – at least at this point in time – have been adopted. You can still read pro-euthanasia material or see some guy getting a golden shower if you want. It's true that the government continues to censor material and eternally looks for ways to expand their blacklist (the latest I read about was foreign retailers who don't accept their GST proposal!), but calamity was, to an extent, averted. But I have no doubt that proposals like this will be back on the table soon, perhaps even in this term of parliament. The price of liberty, as they say, is eternal vigilance.