Thursday, 30 March 2006
Is Internet filtering ever justified?
Australian Labor party leader Kim Beazley has been pushing for Internet filtering at the ISP level, to provide a “clean feed” for Australian families. The idea would be for ISPs to blacklist particular websites that are known to have pornographic content, so that children will not be exposed to objectionable content.
While something should be done to curb Internet pornography, I’m not sure that filtering at the ISP level is a better idea than installing filters at the PC level (or eliminating the problem at its source, by pursuing the offending website operators). As Communications Minister Helen Coonan has pointed out, ISP filtering may have an effect on Internet performance. The system would also be costly to maintain–which cost would be passed on to consumers.
But more importantly than this, an Internet filtering system (even for porn), is starting to sound like a little too much Government for me. Google and Yahoo! (among others) have been under intense criticism for caving to Chinese pressure, which has resulted in filtering out search results that are offensive to the Chinese government–namely anything that undermines the political orthodoxy. While removing pornography from childrens’ eyes is infinitely more desirable, isn’t filtering at the ISP level objectionable in terms of our own rights? I am not speaking up for pornography, but how is this kind of censorship really any different than the Chinese kind?
I hesitate to mention “freedom of speech” and the like because Australia does not have a Bill of Rights that specifically protects such things–although it is common thinking that the Australian Constitution does protect such rights. But even if you do not accept this argument, I would think that the concept of an open democracy supports the idea that adults should be treated as adults. If we want to eliminate pornography, we should go to the source of the problem.
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One Response to “Australian Labor party pushes for Internet filtering”
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March 30th, 2006 at 6:54 pm
I agree totally. As I commented in someone else’s blog recently:
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There’s a bigger problem that these clueless policymakers fail to see: creating a requirement to offer clean/filtered Internet access increases expectations of some parents that their children will be “safe” from porn. This is bad security. We don’t want parents paying less attention to security/child safety because they’re relying on technology.
Let me start again: there is a much bigger problem than access to porn: child safety. Kids who search for porn don’t mind seeing it, and kids who encounter it unsolicted will generally be offended and go elsewhere. (The lucky kids will be those who have grown up learning about sex as a natural part of life, but have not been sexualised beyond their youth: they will stumble upon porn, be unoffended but also uniterested beyond initial curiosity and maybe even a chat with Mum and Dad.)
We need to be attentive parents, not solely to protect our kids from porn, but to protect them from predators, bullying, spyware, illegal activity and other things that might harm or upset them.
Some time ago, I listened to this podcast on Internet Child Safety by Larry Magid (IT Conversations): http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail488.html
I cringed when I saw the title, but he anticipated that and moved on to explain that he wasn’t advocating censorship or focusing narrowly on porn. Instead he talked about real concerns and strategies to deal with them as parents. Worth a listen for concerned parents and far more insightful than Kim Beazley’s knee-jerk view.