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The Federal Opposition says it is not surprised the Government's mandatory internet f


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(stolen from here)

 

The trial, which was meant to begin today, has been postponed until mid-January 2009 and the internet service providers (ISPs) who will participate will be announced at the same time.

 

ISPs iiNet and Optus both said yesterday they had not heard anything about their applications to participate in the trial, and doubted the Government would meet its own deadline.

 

iiNet's chief operating officer Mark White said yesterday he is sceptical about plans to filter the internet, and said the company was only participating to show the system would not work.

 

Opposition communications spokesman Nick Minchin says the delay in the proposed National Broadband Network shows the Government's poor track record with communications projects.

 

"I'm not surprised frankly, given this Government's bungling over communications issues generally," he told Radio National's Summer Breakfast program.

 

"We've seen the National Broadband Network just fade off into the distance and bedevilled by delays and procrastination, and we're seeing the same thing here.

 

"It's really the result of political manipulation prior to the election. The now-Government, then in opposition, made these broad sweeping promises about a National Broadband Network and ... eliminating child pornography from the internet.

 

"Now they've got to make good on their promise and they're finding it difficult."

 

He said he has no issue with the trial going ahead, but says the burden of proof now rests on Communications Minister Stephen Conroy to establish the trial is legitimate and that the results will be reliable.

 

Report released

 

 

Senator Conroy was unavailable to speak to the ABC today, but released a report commissioned by the Howard government into internet filtering.

 

The Internet Industry Association-produced report concluded that mandatory filtering would slow internet speeds, be easy to get around and would not block all undesirable material.

 

But Senator Conroy said the report included no empirical testing, instead relying on literature review, interviews and surveys.

 

Senator Minchin says he disagrees with Senator Conroy's attempt to devalue the report, saying it is an "insult to those involved".

 

[They] are leading experts in this field, particularly the lead author of the report," he said.

 

"[His] frustration with the Government in hiding this report led to the Fairfax newspapers having a detailed briefing on the content then forcing Senator Conroy last night to release the report 10 months after he received it.

 

"The report does identify some very, very serious issues with any attempt to impose this mandatory ISP-level filtering system, but it leads me to believe it's almost impossible to do this with any degree of effectiveness."

 

Opt-in system

 

Senator Minchin said his government commissioned the report to assess the viability of a voluntary system of filtering.

 

"The motive is good; obviously we want to prevent access to [child pornography]," he said.

 

"But we were more interested in whether you could have a system whereby ISPs offer this to their customers on a voluntary basis, an opt-in system.

 

"I don't think it ever occurred to us to mandate this, to force ISPs to impose this without their customers having any choice in the matter whatsoever."

 

Speed concerns

 

 

Senator Minchin said evidence that such a filtering system would drastically slow down internet speeds is a major problem with the idea.

 

"The laboratory trial that the Government conducted this year showed potential effect on speed of up to 87 per cent slowdown in the speed of the internet," he said.

 

"And this is from the Government that wants to install a National Broadband Network so we can all have high speed broadband," he added, laughing.

 

"I think that's a major flaw in the scheme but there are many, many others."

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read this yesterday. i never thought id find myself agreeing with the libs! although this is essentially the greens viewpoint as well...

 

The liberals are dripping of hypocrisy in this issue, they're just as much to blame as labor in this issue. Both parties only really care about having Family First vote with them in the senate, that's the real reason for all of this.

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  • 2 weeks later...

The Libs will be talking about anything BUT the workplace for a while to come .

 

Expect them to try and push anything they can get there hands on to the hilt , maybe they might help in the end but they still wont score many browny points for doing so .

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