yARN: Can Conroy conquer filtering by flying solo?

"Lundy has made it perfectly clear she’ll vote against the filter if that’s what her party wants."

that's oddly phrased... she also made it perfectly clear that she will vote FOR the filter if it's what her party wants. Voting against the party is forbidden in the ALP and makes a farce of democracy.

Yes, this has been bugging me a lot too. The key thing (imo) is that Conroy is winning because he *looks like* he's winning.

People opposed to the filter argue the facts -- and the facts seem so obvious to them, how could anyone not get it? -- but Conroy isn't having that debate. He's doing what all politicians do -- get a message (the one you mention) across to the general public, and I think he's (sadly) winning. The general public, as you mention, don't like child porn, terrorist material, and other objectionable material, so why would they object? Abstract arguments about online civil rights are irrelevant to them. Will child porn be blocked or wont it?

Conroy and his staffers do what all politicians do -- they spend countless hours crafting their message and rehearsing media interviews to get it out, which gives rise to neat soundbites like "100% accurate, no overclocking, no underblocking". Of course it's a nonsense argument, but that's not the point, it's Colbert-style truthiness that wins the public perception battle.

That's also why objections to the filter based on things that will be filtered -- fetish material, euthanasia, safe drug use material, etc -- are bound to fail. What politician is clamoring for the fetishists vote? What political party is afraid of losing the informed drug users?

Instead, the filter opposition needs to start focusing on the meta-debate and people who matter in this debate -- families. Will children still be able to access hardcore pornography? Will children still be able to find information on drug taking and other harmful behavior? What will the government do to prevent people sharing information on how to bypass the filter? If the Government's solution is to block all this content, how will they process thousands and thousands of complaints about offensive material?

People may think 'But that's what we've been saying!', but it's not us that need to make the arguments, we need to inform journalists so they start asking questions that Conroy can't answer with a carefully prepared soundbite, and can convey to families the questions they should really be concerned about.

Every interview Conroy has with a journalist who knows the facts are on their side, but tries to engage in a straightforward debate will just give Conroy a platform to deliver more truthiness-filled soundbites. They need to be putting the hard questions, but not the ones we've been raising. The journalists need to start asking questions on behalf of families who will be misled by the gesture politics of the filter, and we need to start focusing on them too.

Phil people want to by pass it to show how useless the filter will be.
Since the RC will be on a secret black list we don't really know what content will and wont be blocked.

The government should not act like our eyes and ears we. Shame that our tax money is getting wasted on such silly idea as a useless internet filter or better yet call it censorship.

Phil - RC is more than just “child sexual abuse material”, “bestiality”, “sexual violence during rape” and “terrorist acts” -

http://libertus.net/censor/isp-blocking/au-govplan-refusedclassif.html#RClist is a good read to learn more about what can be included in this category.

He only ever mentions a few categories which are listed under “Refused Classification”. Why don’t he address the others?

http://www.acma.gov.au/WEB/STANDARD/pc=PC_311012

You will discover “Violence Depiction” and “Sexual Fantasy” fall under the category of Refused Classification, along with other LEGAL categories caught up in the Refused Classification net.

I wonder if parts of greek mythology will b blocked too? For those who don't know search up minotaurs.
Well if this filter/censorship bill gets passed we could always filter out government sites complaining that they are putting offensive material up.
I always thought that child porn was already illegal and that the police and other agencies for child protection were already looking into sites that contain it to find and arrest those looking for it. If Conroy wants to protect the children why doesn't he just invest all that money into those agencies and also parental education into this to prevent their kids from "accidentally" stumbling upon this content.
I always thought it was the parents responsibility to monitor what their children do not the governments job to legislate this. I would like Conroy to for once classify in detail what "Refused Classification" is.
I would rather not have the government tell me what I am or am not allowed to view online through a list that could potentially block sites that are not related to child porn or other things. If there are people looking for that stuff then invest in measures to CATCH culprits not just since there are a certain %age of people that are using the internet to find this content we are going to block EVERYONE.

All Conroy says is either to scare or trick people into accepting internet censorship. For example he only mentions the really bad RC content, and he says useless things like 100% accurate/effective. So the filter is 100% accurate? WRONG!!!!. To me, 100% accurate means that it would be "correct in all details; exact" in blocking ALL RC content. Impossible!

The original 2003 research paper by the Australia Institute that led to Labor's policy, surveyed groups of children to ask if while using the internet they'd ever been exposed to offensive images (ie. porn) and a majority responded 'yes'.

Thus the public concern and political debate that 'something had to be done'. It also led to Howards free PC-based filter which Conroy has since scrapped.

But in reality those so-called 'offensive images' would likely have been spam, ad pop-ups or M rated soft-porn, NONE of which will be affected by Conroy's ISP filter (though the PC filters could almost do so after user fine-tuning).

It was this fundamental misinterpretation by Politicians of the actual problem that led to this whole futile agenda.

No child will be shielded from offensive images and no adult will be prevented from accessing RC material, but that will only be apparent to the wider public after its all in place and too late to undo.

Conroy loves to infer thats its all better than doing nothing ('no silver bullet...'), but achieving nothing at the expense of millions isn't better, its much worse than nothing. Thats the point that a journalist needs to take him up on.

A clearly defined argument is whats needed.

The filter is actually not the problem. It's the fact that they can block WHATEVER (it does not have to be illegal) they like, and it's all done in secret. The next government may decide they find Muslims offensive and block all their sites, or Christians, or a political party they don't like. They will have total control.

That is a fairly compelling argument.