Q&A: Senator Nick Xenophon on Net filtering and piracy

Re: Good sign

Ben, I just gotta love this point from you:

"Where the content is legal, like all of the content proposed to be banned by the mandatory filter, there is no need to censor it - it is legal after all."

You wil forgive me for questioning the veracity of that statement? The percentages are a big question from past lists, however the CB will make rulings in the future I understand.

Otherwise, you have all the makings of an excellent biz dev guy, I will let our sales director know... >;)

(getting too many responses to keep up on the other debates, apologies but time is an issue...)

Illegal content

The whole premise of blocking illegal material is based on a misconception. The ACMA, Classification Board or anyone else cannot judge something to be legal or illegal. Only a court can do this. If the material in question has not gone before a judge and ruled to be illegal, then it can only be suspected to be illegal.

So the concept of the filter only targeting illegal content is false... unless of course the ACMA plan to send every picture, text, sound or movie found on the net and suspected of being illegal before a court (and hope the same content is still there after the ruling)

@Ben...

"Roddy I make no lie or misleading statement that the only content the government will censor is legal content. RC is legal to view, as is X18+, R18+ and MA15+ material."

The statement remains misleading Ben, the gov will define what is legal and not legal. If there are laws prohibiting it's access to Australian society then it is illegal for that material to be accessed by that society. I would not suggest you are lying, but in error...

Nothing from the site you linked indicates that the proposed handling of the blacklist will entail blocking only legal materials. That is pure conjecture and will not stand up in a court for 20 seconds Ben. The gov will adjust the wording of the regulations to support the laws, and will update these to be applicable to the media and the communications/broadcasting proactices in question.

"I guess the questions raised in http://www.arnnet.com.au/article/325310/q_family_first_senator_steve_fie... are too difficult to answer, otherwise you would have addressed them by now, instead of skipping over them and addressing arguments raised thereafter."

Nope, not too hard at all and thank you for the thoughts. I have addressed those I believe. It is unfortunate that I then had several of your associates also assail me with questions which I also wanted to address. My time is oft limited...

@ Roddy

No Roddy, it is not misleading. The only material which is illegal to view is child abuse material. This is set out in the Crimes Act. Anything else is legal to view.

Did you actually read the page I linked?

There are many instances where it specifically said that prohibited content is legal to view, including:

* 37% (506 URLs) 'R18+' or 'X18+', i.e. content that is not illegal for Australian adults to access, view or possess; and
* at least 14% (190 URLs) 'RC', i.e. content that is not illegal for most Australian adults to access, view or possess. Also, the RC category includes all computer games unsuitable for minors because one of the nine Australian Censorship Ministers refuses to permit an R18+ classification for computer games.

If it isn't in the crime act, it isn't illegal content. That's why Conroy was forced to adopt 'unwanted' content when talking about the blacklist, because his rhetoric of the blacklist as a list of 'illegal' material was flat out wrong.

"Nope, not too hard at all and thank you for the thoughts. I have addressed those I believe. It is unfortunate that I then had several of your associates also assail me with questions which I also wanted to address. My time is oft limited..."

I'm sure your time is limited. We're all busy people. But by continuing to ignore the questions, you are portraying the idea that you can't answer them, and that by answering them, you will weaken your position. Which is understandable. Pro-censorship people rarely ever answer those questions for fear of making themselves look stupid.

"EG: A parking control officer.... He can fine you without even going to a court, as this has been regulated and supported by laws."

That is an accusation of wrongdoing, not evidence. You can challenge that fine in court. With the censorship legislation, that is not an option. You're guilty at the say-so of one person at ACMA. There is no appeals process. Once you're on the blacklist, that's that. Unless the list leaks and your department looks like incompetent idiots.

@ Roddy

"As I stated and will state again, it is a question of whether or not it is legal to deliver or make access to the materials available. The Internet does not view, ISPs do not "view"."

Since the content proposed to be censored is overseas hosted, the Australian government cannot declare overseas servers and people hosting them of breaking the law. That is an entirely different issue from accessing the content. Again, content is only illegal to view if it is in the criminal code. Child abuse material is illegal to view according to the criminal code. Viewing anti-abortion images or euthanasia videos is not in the criminal code, and is therefore legal to view. It's pretty simple.

"We will leave it to the parliament and the senate to regulate what is illegal or not, and to the courts to decide when any actions by any entity is breaking that law. The rest is speculation at this stage."

Parliament have decided what is illegal to view, as mentioned above. The courts have not taken action against someone viewing material besides child abuse material, because it isn't illegal to do so. If they had, wouldn't you think the police would be arresting people viewing contents on the blacklist? I haven't heard the police come out and say they will be hunting people doing so, have you?

"Soz mate, but again just because you do not accept the answer given does not mean it is not answered... "

It hasn't been answered.

Again, these are the questions:

What has been the harm in having uncensored Internet access for the past few decades?

Where is the significant public outcry for mandatory Internet filtering?

Where is the evidence that it won't over-block significantly, won't slow down connection speeds significantly, and won't be prone to security vulnerabilities, among many more performance issues?

Where is the evidence that it will not cost a lot of money? When answering that question, compare apples to apples. For instance, comparing it to the UK is not, because they only filter 'child sexual abuse material' material (which I think is rubbish, but I digress), while the scope for our policy is much larger.

What makes you so sure that incompetence won't arise, and bureaucrats don't make idiotic decisions? iTunes gift giving of movies which can be purchased at K-Mart is now banned. That's just one example.

Where is the evidence that the blacklist won't leak? What measures would you put in place to ensure that it doesn't?

"The statements of a parking officer is indeed evidence Ben, you may want to check up on actual legal and court practices on that one. Yes you can challenge the fine in court, but you can also challenge court decisions in further courts."

The system of fines like that is open to accountability. Which is entirely unlike the proposed online censorship policy. It's still an inaccurate comparison. For it to be somewhat accurate, a website owner who is about to be blacklisted would be contacted, have their day in court, and then if they lose, then the site gets blacklisted. That is not the case for this policy. One person at ACMA thinks your overseas hosted site is prohibited, then on the blacklist it goes.

"You are though incorrect with the proposed filtering legislation, as the classification board has now been involved as the oversight instrument, and the CB has a r4eview and appeals process."

That's not really oversight. It's just another government department double checking. Kinda like ACMA making a decision and then passing the complaint to Rudd to ask if he thinks the site is 'revolting'.

"BTW, on the question of the leaked list, do you have any authenticated proof that the list leaked was the actual ACMA blacklist, or that only an assertion and speculation again from the people involved?"

For starters, Conroy eventually said that the blacklist was very close to the official one. Secondly, anyone can verify the contents by running the leaked blacklist through Integard to see if the list contents are blocked.

@ Roddy

"The proposed filtering is targeted at blocking access to this content, as accessing this content in Australia will contravene federal regulations and laws."

That's not true. The ISPs would be breaking the law by not filtering the content on the blacklist, but, and I have said this many times, accessing the blocked content via circumvention is NOT a crime. Conroy's department CANNOT criminalise circumvention. His department only has jurisdiction over communications carriers, such as phone companies and ISPs. Even Conroy himself has said that circumvention will not be criminalised, so wherever you are getting that information, they are wrong.

"Are you seriously suggesting that the police should or do hunt down every contravention of a law Ben? Truly?"

Of course not, but the fact that NOBODY has been targeted for viewing, distributing or accessing the blacklist is a huge indication.

"More children being raped, abused and tortured than previously, so that more pics and vids can be produced."

Sounds concrete...can you actually tie that to the Internet with evidence?

"The proposed filtering is targeted at blocking access to this content, as accessing this content in Australia will contravene federal regulations and laws."

I think you will find I am right Ben. Practicing circumvention will not be criminalised, as some folks will use circumvention for legal purposes, however it will still be a contravention of federal regulations and laws to access content on URLs on the blacklist...

No "Get out of jail free" cards on that one Ben.

@ Roddy

I should clarify. Yes the Internet can be used for harmful purposes, and some people are negatively affected, but the overwhelming majority of people see the Internet as beneficial. Your argument is kind of like saying that we should limit car speeds to 10km/hour because a few people died on the roads. As tragic as it is, that is not a justification.

Your argument is that because a minority are harmed, the majority should suffer. When there are many other, less intrusive alternatives, they should be explored.

"child porn ring exposed"

Child porn is not new because of the Internet, it has merely shifted distribution. Blaming the Internet is like blaming Telstra for not stopping a crime.

"internet porn addiction"

Again, taking a small minority of people, and justifying an ineffective solution for all people.

By the way, last time I checked, smoking killed people, which is markedly different from the Internet.

"There was no "significant public outcry" when mandatory pool fences or mandatory seat belt laws were enacted."

Seat belts save lives, that is proven scientific fact. Pool fences save lives. ISP filters are trivial to bypass and don't prevent people wanting to access banned content. Comparing deaths to people accessing naughty content online is far from a valid comparison.

"And just as with those laws, this proposed filtering and regulations do not affect all Australians, only those that use the internet, and unless they try to access a URL on the blacklist, they will most probably not even notice that it is running at all..."

Which is a clear majority of people in Australia. Broadband penetration is very high and getting higher. Over-blocking, speed reductions and insecurity in 'secure' connections doesn't just affect people seeking out banned content. Is that a similar argument to "if you have nothing to hide, then you won't mind me invading your privacy"?

"The fact that they had incrased manifold thru smoking was simply denied and "not accepted as evidence" by the tabacco smokers, lawyers and executives..."

With the Internet, the government has commissioned many reports into the harm and benefits of the Internet, with every single one saying that parents and children are perfectly fine with uncensored Internet access. Have a look on ACMA's website. Empirical proof if you will. But like the ACL, you portray the belief that it's only people with money to lose who are opposed to it. Reality is not on your side.

"Practicing circumvention will not be criminalised, as some folks will use circumvention for legal purposes,"

Agreed.

"however it will still be a contravention of federal regulations and laws to access content on URLs on the blacklist..."

No, it is only a contravention of federal regulations if the regulations are targeted at those bypassing the censorship. Since the regulations are targeted at ISPs, people aren't contravening any laws by bypassing the filters.

@Roddy, statistics say no

"More children being raped, abused and tortured than previously, so that more pics and vids can be produced."

Now I may have taken what you said incorrectly, So just in case I prepared two arguments.

Roddy, this statement doesn't make much sense. It is well known that most of these vids/pics are not made in Australia. In fact, there was a study into a while ago that showed most of this filth came from areas in Eastern Europe I beleive, sorry can't quote since can't find the doco again.

In any case, most is not produced in Australia.

Second argument could be if you are considering that it is increasing the sexual assault crime rates in Australia. Many psychologists and sociologists lay claim to the link between the internet and sex crimes. You will find most of these to be psuedoscientific and not following correct methodology.

Lets take for example, statistics between 1998-2005. Look at ABS catalogue # 8146 and you will see that in 1998, less than 20% of people had internet access, and in 2005 that figure increased to ~65%.

Hence by that logic, the rate of sexual assault should increase at the same rate, betweens 3-4x the amount.

Take a look at ABS stastic catalogue 4509, and you will see that since 1993, the prevalence rate have sexual assault has been decreasing. It was 0.6% of population in 1993, 0.4% in 1998 and 0.3% in 2005.

In AIC statistics, the level of reported sexual assaults shows that amount of reported incidences has increased 51% between 1995 and 2007.

Combining these two together can show one of either two things, 1) The rate has increased and people are just lying on the census; or 2)cases are being reported more often.

Considering the advertising campaign such as "Violence against Women: Australia says No" and such in past number or years, I beleive the latter to be a more accurate assumption.

Since the rates are moving in the opposite direction, it cannot be said that internet access is causing an increase OR a decrease in sexual assaults. The statistics show no correlation.

If you want a more international level, I would consult Dr Milton Diamond at the University of Hawaii, as he has done very in-depth, statistical studies on the subject.

@ Roddy

"Ben, you asked for an example of one harmful use of the internet, and I have given you one."

Yes and I conceded that question needed to be clarified to be whether the harms of the Internet outweigh the benefits, which I say they don't.

"Where do yet get this fanciful statement : "the majority will suffer.."...?"

Slower connection speeds, over-blocking, higher ISP fees, information can be cut off at the discretion of governments. Etcetera.

"Do you truly, really truly believe that the rates and levels of porn addiction and child abuse porn prevalence has not increased dramatically due to the massive availability through the internet?"

Porn addiction increased, quite possibly. But in terms of a percentage of people viewing porn? Minimal. Anything at all can be addictive. Does that mean that everything is inherently bad? No.

Child abuse porn is not on the web, or for long enough to make targeting the web a priority. Meaning that this policy will have zero impact on it.

"But more importantly for your efforts against internet filtering in Australia, do you seriously believe that the broader Australian public will accept that a 24x7 free availability of live porn, that a 24x7 availability and easy access to unlimited, fully graphical porn of all persuasions, including rape, sodomy, violent porn, group porn, public porn and whatever else is popular today, does not increase consumption and then levels of addictions."

Strawman fallacy time. How many people who access the Internet seriously are addicted to those kinds of porn? How many, as a precentage of people, are even interested in those kinds of porn? Just because they are there does not mean people want to view it. I could view animal porn if I wanted to. The fact that I don't want to should be a clear indication that people don't have a high priority for accessing this porn. Notice how you focus on all the bad sides of the Internet which practically nobody accesses?

In case you haven't caught on, we are not saying that we agree with everything on the Internet, but starting to censor content is the start of a slippery slope to oppression.

"No one has yet to prove the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of the proposed measures Ben, they have only presented speculation, assumptions and possibilities based on extremely strong motivations to see it fail."

20 years of research into ISP filters says otherwise. The Enex report, the Ovum Report, the RMIT report, the Tasmanian trial. All failures. Yet when our government doesn't like those answers, their answer is to crank out another trial. It can only work if you tighten the screws far enough and break core features. You could stop people bypassing the Internet if you disable VPN capabilities, ban all legitimate proxies and other means, but is that really a good way to solve the holes in the policy? The government knows it will fail, because they manipulated the trial to be unrepresentative and lacking proper methodology so that it can't possibly fail.

"Yet policing bodies around the globe, in many countries, support the work and increasingly co-operate with entities such as the IWF, as they observe growing levels of effectiveness."

You really don't take in anything I have to say do you? Remember that quote from the AFP commissioner, who said "They don't work at all?" Remember when I said that co-operating with the police doesn't mean that the police believe it is effective. ISPs will co-operate with the law and implement ISP filtering. They know it's useless, but they do it anyway.

"Lastly for the moment, it is very sad to see people dismiss the suffering and injustice of what happens to raped and tortured children in paedo and child abuse pix and vid production, on the grounds that it is only "naughty content".."

Strawman number 2. The policy is targeted at 'naughty' content. Child abuse material is underground and will not be touched by the filter. Paedophiles, by posting their content on the web, may as well hand themselves into police.

"Trivialisation of child rape, torture, gang rape and whatever else is done repeatedly to them?"

Already illegal, already under investigation by police. Nobody is trivialising child abuse material, yet you misrepresent arguments that filtering prohibited content will block child abuse material, which is most certainly false.

@Roddy
>You are though

@Roddy

>You are though incorrect with the proposed
>filtering legislation

If you have seen any proposed legislation, please quote from it here. Otherwise it is only speculation as to what any future hypothetical legislation will look like.

However every indication that Conjob has given to date suggests that it is his intention to attempt to block material that is currently legal to access, own, possess, view - and to do so mandatorily for all Australian adults.

No attempt has been made either by Conjob or Krudd to justify this to the Australian public.

No such proposal was revealed to the Australian public prior to the 2007 election.

>do you have any authenticated proof that the list leaked >was the actual ACMA blacklist

It is easy enough to follow the instructions that have been widely posted on the net to reverse engineer a blacklist out of one of the ACMA-supported filter products.

You can of course probe each URL on the list and confirm that it is blocked. (That doesn't prove that the list is complete. There could be URLs that are not on the list that are also blocked.)

When the media questioned Conjob as to why a dentist's web site was on the list, he didn't say "A dentist's web site is not on the list", he blathered on about how the dentist's web site had been hacked by the Russian mob.

It defies credibility that the list is not genuine.

If you want proof then you are going to have to define what you mean by "the ACMA blacklist" and what standard of proof you will accept.

ACMA probably wasn't silly enough to issue the blacklist digitally signed - because then they would really get nailed.

@Roddy

Roddy, why are you trotting out the old comparisons between pool fences, tobacco and the internet? Seriously how many people have died as a direct cause of internet use? I would suspect the same as those who have died from usage of all other media combined such as television, radio, telephones and games; nil. Zero. No deaths. I really tire of these arguments. Trying to attribute social problems and illegal activates which are not exclusive the internet such as child porn or addictions such “porn additions” (which seem to only exist in the minds of right wing Christians – see sites such as XXXChurch) is totally disingenuous and completely fails to tackle these problems. You can claim filtering is not a silver bullet, but it’s not even a spit ball to these problems. It’s completely ineffectual.

One has to wonder what those who what ISP filtering think it will do for them. Stop child porn? No, most of that stuff is sent via encrypted means, as evidenced by practically 100% arrests by AFP. The filter won’t help in this regard at all. Illegal downloads of copyrighted material? No, again people will just use encrypted means. They will learn how to do this just as easily as how they discovered how to download this stuff in the first place. I’ve got people in my office who have trouble with some functions of basic programmes like Word, Vista and Excel, yet they’re downloading the latest episode of Dexter at home.

Even if the whole propose of this filter was to rid the “scourge of porn” (momentarily disregarding the fact that there is no credible evidence that it causes any physical or mental harm to normal well adjusted adults and there has been no real negative effects seen in Australian society despite porn being available in one form or another since the mid 1970’s), people would just as easily circumvent the filter as they would do with my downloading example above.

The further I look into this, the more mind boggling it becomes. Roddy, what exactly do think the filter will do? Will child porn magically stop? Will cyber bulling and crime disappear? Will people stop illegally downloading movies and music and searching for porn? I really fail to see how this will benefit anyone. First ISP customers will lose out as eventually they will be saddled with the costs of the filter. That equipment and software ain’t free and the government ain’t going to subsidise it forever. Christian lobby groups won’t get what they want as people can still get porn. As I said before paedophiles and child pornographers will continue as they did before. Music and film studios won’t win because people will still download, but through encryption making them rather difficult to catch. The policy will be quite unpopular with the public and I think politicians will rue the day they thought up this policy.

No one wins. Except the companies pushing the censorware. They stand to make a tidy sum.

road rules/web cannot and should not be used in comparison

It's the government that builds and maintains the roads so it has every right to impose whatever restrictions they want on the users of such roads.

I think that when you properly look back at the seat-belt issue I am sure you will find that there was plenty of outrage. Just look at the US where states today have all sorts of trouble introducing and enforcing simlar laws - even to things as obvious as compulsarily wearing helmets while riding motorbikes.

The internet and the networks that it uese are pretty much neither built nor maintained by the government. Most of the infrastructure, servers etc are not even physically in this country so why does the government feel that they have any right to inpose its will and particular set of moral values over what people can or cannot do with the service?

Porposed filters and other measures like this do nothing to'save the children'. What they do is to make politicians look like they are being 'tough on crime' etc etc while in reality all they achieve is to push the crims further underground making them even harder to catch. Way to go!

Might be good for getting votes, not so good for the rest of us.

@Roddy
>The majority of UK

@Roddy

>The majority of UK users have voted with their feet, and choose to stay with the filtered ISPs.

I saw a stat recently that filtered UK ISPs (12% of all UK ISPs) cover 98.6% of UK internet connections.

This could easily lead to speculation that the majority of people have no choice except to deal with a filtering ISP i.e. that the 88% of UK ISPs who hold a grand total of 1.4% of the market between them are tiny ISPs with limited capital and who operate in geographically limited areas.

Another possible factor could be: fear of being accused of being a pedo

Another factor (which certainly applies here in Oz): the hassle of losing your email address

Of course it is completely irrelevant to talk about customers leaving their ISP in droves if *all* ISPs in a country are filtering ISPs (voluntarily).

Last I heard, Scandinavian countries were using DNS poisoning to implement filtering (as do some UK ISPs). That would probably have no detectable performance impact on non-poisoned domains but DNS poisoning is laughably easy to circumvent.

@Roddy
>The comparison is

@Roddy

>The comparison is very relevant for several valid reasons:

But at the same time you shouldn't be blind to the differences.

The UK public may be generally supportive of a government move to block CP (even if misguided). They may even be prepared to tolerate some cost increase / speed loss in support of that goal. They may even be prepared to overlook a few high profile gigantic stuffups (like the Wikipedia incident).

They may choose not to attempt to sabotage the system.

Because the only material that is blocked is (allegedly, theoretically) illegal material, they may choose not to mess around with the system (i.e. testing circumvention).

For the same reason people are less likely to complain about problems (lest they be accused of attempting to access CP).

The ISPs, having chosen voluntarily to go into the scheme, have an incentive to make the scheme work as best as they can.

Now contrast that with a system that seeks to force ISPs to block legal material.

- loses its moral high ground

- people less tolerant of any negative consequences

- people feel free to complain

- anybody can legally mess around with circumvention options

- ISP has incentive to do it on the cheap since all problems can be blamed on the government

But I have to say that the Number 1 reason why I oppose internet censorship is that I simply don't trust any government to limit the blocking to what they say (now) they will block.

Governments of all colours, and in all countries, have shown time and time again that they are dishonest.

Having a secret blacklist will always encourage this lack of trust but at the same time the ease of circumvention means that the government has at least one reason to keep the list secret.

Introducing internet censorship in a dishonest way just amplifies my concerns about the honesty of the government.

Australians don't have the protection that we need and deserve regarding our right to freedom of expression. If we had that protection, in the Constitution, then using internet censorship to fight CP might be tolerable (even if misguided).

The Number 2 reason is the outrageous loss of privacy that internet censorship entails i.e. that every web site that I visit could be scrutinized.

>Yep, speculation abounds
But

>Yep, speculation abounds

But at the same time a suggestion that people in the UK are happy with internet censorship and are not encountering adverse consequences is itself speculation.

Has anyone asked the poms what they think?

Are UK internet users flocking from the filtered to the unfiltered ISPs, or not? Not so far...

That is your answer.

"But at the same time a suggestion that people in the UK are happy with internet censorship and are not encountering adverse consequences is itself speculation."

People vote with their feet.

"Has anyone asked the poms what they think?"

Just look at the stats.

@ Roddy

"This is about restricting access to content deemed to be in contravention of Australian laws or regulations, irrespective of where it come from."

It's hard to take you seriously when you make statements like that. Conroy's plan isn't and never has been to restrict access to content deemed to be in contravention of Australian laws or regulations. Content which would be deemed illegal should it go before a judge is only a small subset of the RC umbrella.

Inaccurate comparisons

Roddy, one thing you can't grasp is that the policy our government is proposing is far wider in scope than the UK is currently experiencing.

Like I said, and you continue to ignore, theirs 'works' because the scope is so small and the sites blacklisted are ones which practically nobody accesses. With our system, any site can be a victim, even YouTube. Does the system in the UK blacklist wikipedia pages, YouTube pages, and other high traffic sites? No, because the results are dreadful, as they now know.

The fact of the matter is that these systems are so unpredictable that one entry can cause severe consequences. How about you compare our policy to a country not restricting itself to child abuse material. Ones like China, Iran, and even Webshield block the entire site, meaning that this is not an issue. But filtering one page on one of these sites and not another just doesn't work.

Could you come up with an explanation why YouTube links were specifically excluded from the trial?

"This is about restricting

"This is about restricting access to content deemed to be in contravention of Australian laws or regulations, irrespective of where it come from."

"It's hard to take you seriously when you make statements like that. Conroy's plan isn't and never has been to restrict access to content deemed to be in contravention of Australian laws or regulations. Content which would be deemed illegal should it go before a judge is only a small subset of the RC umbrella."

Content is RC due to it contravening Australian laws or regulations, that is why it is Refused Classification.

The classification board can decide that without the content or case going before a judge...

@ Roddy

"Oh Ben, I grasp as much about the proposed policy as you do, and at this stage Conroy continues to state that the policy is not as yet finalised."

Policy still isn't finalised? It was proposed 2 years ago and it's still under development? Fantastic.

"What I do see is high levels of speculation on what will be included, some of this speculation is off the planet..."

Well with details absent all we can do is speculate. Remember that housing example I mentioned, and how you would be angry if the government just evicted you without any reason at all?

"One anti-filter guy claimed on a forum earlier this week that governments aim was to destroy the internet..."

Wow, one person. Fantastic. One person also said that the earth was flat.

"Please explain the technical architecture Ben, I am interested if your understanding matches the overview I got from the UK telco IP architect I asked..."

So basically, their system works by maintaining a list of IP addresses of web pages on their blacklist. If a user requests a page which has the same IP address as one of the sites on the blacklist, it then looks further and resolves the URL and if that is a match, it kills the connection. If not, it allows the connection. Since practically nobody tries to access content from those IP addresses, there is rarely a problem.

Contrast that with our scenario. Any site, even hugely popular ones, can be and are blacklisted. So if one YouTube URL is on the blacklist, ALL YouTube requests are routed via the censorbox and checked. This evidently strains the censorbox and eventually gives in. This is why even the designers of these censorboxes strongly recommend not blacklisting high traffic sites. If even the people who are trying to sell the technology strongly recommend extreme caution in adding new URLs, then just maybe they're telling the truth.

"Victim Ben? Victim? The website that has a webpage in the future that qualifies for the blacklist is the "victim"...? "

Hypothetical scenario time. You set up a website hosting innocuous content in a way to earn a living. Your website happens to share the same IP address as a porn site. That porn site is blacklisted, meaning that your IP address for the site is added to the censorware box. Your website is then accidentally blocked for access to the entire country. Since there are no official appeals process, you have to go to court to get off the blacklist. That process takes a month and you lose a lot of money and subsequently go bust. Are you a victim? Or are you just a whinger who doesn't care about protecting children? Were the blacklist not leaked, at least 3 businesses would have experienced exactly that.

"Performance is not going to be the issue Ben, it appears that a couple of the URL blacklist filtering systems being used by carriers and telcos today can handle hundreds of thousands of URL requests per second, per system."

Wow, try to pay attention. Remember when I said that our system is markedly different in scope than the UK, thus voiding any comparisions between the two? Larger scope and forcing the system under duress is a completely different context than voluntary filtering whereby practically nobody stumbles upon the content they are trying to ban.

"Is or was? Otherwise that is poppoycock Ben... It was not the entry, as an example with the Wikipedia problem, but the config error that an ISP made that caused the problem..."

Ha, just like the 'caching error' BS from Conroy. Wikipedia was blocked because the ISPs have only a handful of proxy servers for the filtering. Because of only a few users arguably causing destructive behaviour, and because almost everyone in the ISP shares the same proxy server, everyone from filtered ISPs were blocked from editing.

Your trivialisation of issues like that, dismissing them on the grounds of nothing serious, show your profound lack of awareness into the real problems these systems create. That could easily have been a banking website.

@ Roddy

"So here is your challenge, when a campaign is based on speculation, then it is speculative, and thus lacking in substance..."

We know they are pushing for mandatory Internet censorship of completely legal online content. That's all we need to know to oppose it. Is that speculative? Is it lacking substance?

"Err Ben, that person's name was “Ben”...” Co-incidence?"

If you're referring to me, then no, I didn't say that. I've said that their intent is to *control* information on the Internet, but I never said their intent was to destroy the Internet.

"So a tiny percentage of the internet requests actually go to the filter systems, so where is the problem if you have the right system in place? I am told that 16Gbps network segments are no issue for the better systems..."

Theoretically, the traffic only goes to the filter boxes if the IP matches a IP address of a blacklisted URL. If it does match, then all traffic from that IP address is routed through the censorbox and manually checked and resolved.

"I think you need to broaden your knowledge of the filter systems available today Ben. I see in various forums that they have been presented and discussed. It does not auger well if people ignore working and scalable systems just because they do not want to accept that multi-million user systems exist."

Define working. Does being trivially bypassed count as working? What are the acceptable false positive and false negatives, what is the acceptable speed degradation? What is the acceptable down-time. Don't quote the systems, tell me what your definition of acceptable and working is.

It's similar to the big question the government is yet to answer - what problem are they trying to solve? Are they trying to stop deliberate access to prohibited URLs, or accidental access?

"Looks to me like you are referring to the Netclean systems alone, which are for smaller installs I am told. There are much bigger systems that will handle millions of users and all the high traffic sites. Some dude mentioned a 6 million user implementation a while ago, incl. Google, Yahoo, YouTube etc. I am sure you read about that? I found various references to it..."

You found the references yet you don't want to share them. Do you seriously expect me to believe you at face value when you tell me that countries are filtering a whole variety content in a similar scope to the prohibited blacklist and/or definition of RC with (next to) zero performance degradation, (next to) zero false positive and false negatives, and actively filtering (not blocking the entire domain) high traffic sites -ie. One YouTube page blocked, the rest allowed?

"?? Technically inaccurate Ben, you may need to investigate how the systems work better. The BGP based systems, as you indicated above, then extract the actual URL from any redirected requests, and blacklist based on the URLK, not “accidentally”. You will not be bloacked because your IP address is in a redirected range."

Ever heard of stuff-ups? You really are placing 100% faith that these systems will never screw up? What about vulnerabilities which every piece of software has? People hacking into the censorbox and manually adding URLs? Might not happen to Bigpond, but what about some ISP in the middle of nowhere with a customer base of 100 and one staff member?

Furthermore, saying that we should only choose one system means that every ISP will be exposed to the exact same flaws in the censorboxes. This is highly dangerous and as soon as someone finds a vulnerability in these systems (most likely through targeting and ISP with the worst security practices), they know how to cause immense chaos.

Have a read of this article:

http://www.banthisurl.com/2008/12/exclusive-white-hat-hacker-tears-apart-flaws-in-aussie-net-filtering-scheme/ (there's two more parts to the article there).

More experts saying that this is a horrible idea.

"Are you still speaking of the past as if it was the future Ben?
Smell the fresh air, it is already tomorrow, and we have a review process proposed via the censorship board procedure, which includes appeals processes."

Ah the Classification Board. Of course. That's not transparancy. It's just another government department checking on another government department.

Do you have any idea how long it takes the Classification Board to make a decision? Often months. Tell me how long you would consider too long to wait when your sole form of income is going down the toilet? A day? A week? Three months?

"Mandatory blacklist filtering, all the duress you want, all the high traffic sites you want.
The trick Ben is not to go into denial that they exist..."

I already covered this, but show me the systems which can selectively filter high traffic sites, as many as required (remembering that blacklists rarely ever decrease in scope), under millions of customers.

"Here is a challenge for you Ben: Count up the number of successful control and block/filter instances over how many years that the UK system alone has been running, and then compare that to the number of system or architecture problems they have had?"

Even British Telecom has admitted that their statistics are massively inflated by malware and port scans. Who seriously accidentally comes across child sexual abuse imagery? I mean really.

"This is the internet Ben, glitches and connection issues happen all the time. My online banking had an access glitch a couple of days ago for several hours.
Did the world go under, were people screaming and marching in the streets? No of course not. It is annoying but this is the internet."

Do we do all we can to minimise telecommunications breakdowns? Of course. Do we add another vulnerability when it is not required? No. These filters will become a single point of failure in a network. If and when they go down, then what? Should the ISP stop serviving customers, or (gasp) provide uncensored Internet access?

Was this preventable and did it cause widespread inconvenience? - http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,25642,24022453-5014109,00.html

You make a long of wild claims, yet show next to no citable evidence. How can anyone take you seriously?