Off Topic With Ashley

Radio National’s Life Matters‘ “Mandatory internet filter” coverage, as presented by Richard Aedy. Available as MP3 or Ogg Vorbis via nic.suzor.com.

Do you use the Internet? Because if you do, the Federal government has plans that will affect you. Not that those plans for a mandatory Internet filter are getting very far at the moment.

A trial of the technology was due to begin more than a month ago, but it hasn’t gone ahead. There’s no new start date announced, but there is increasing opposition to the plan including from the greens and the advocacy group GetUp which is running a campaign against its introduction.

The filter is supposed to block child pornography sites and other blacklisted sites considered inappropriate, but it is contentious for several reasons and you’ll hear about them shortly.

My guests have very different view about this. Jim Wallace from the Australian Christian Lobby, he’s for it; and Mark Newton who’s an IT networking engineer and very much against it. Thank you both for joining me today.

Mark I want to begin with you. Could I get you to briefly, briefly recap what is actually being proposed. What would you change should the plan for a mandatory Internet filter go ahead?

Mark Newton:

Right, currently the government has a regulatory system for Internet content which involves classifying it into the usual “R” “MA 15+” and “X” classifications that exist for films; and content which the government deems to be of a classification that’s high enough to be prohibited is notified to the vendors of filtering software that people can run on their PCs.

The change that the government is proposing is to take that blacklist of sites that’s currently notified to filtering software vendors and instead force ISP to implement it in the core of their networks.

There’s also a bit you can opt in and opt out of, isn’t there?

Mark Newton:

Yeah there is, and that’s decidedly less controversial. There are already ISPs in the marketplace right now that offer that, so anybody in Australia can sign up for a filtered ISP and opt in to a filtering service if they so desire. The controversial part comes from the intrusion on adults right to determine what they can view and read for themselves which the mandatory aspect of this policy represents.

Now I mentioned that there were plans, and I’d imagine there still are plans to trial this in a live sense. What will actually happen.

Mark Newton:

In a way. The trial um, I think is a little bit stillborn, partly because the government or the people that have been critiquing it actually understand what the government is trying to trial. There have already been a number of trials since the 1990s for these systems: CSIRO has looked at them, OVUM has looked at them RMIT has looked at them, ENEX Test Lab most recently has looked at them, and the government released a report in July from them.

Uniformly all of these reports indicate that the systems block way more than they are supposed to block, they introduce performance problems on the Internet, they push up the cost of delivering Internet services, and from the civil liberties aspect they introduce — as I said before — an intrusion that the government doesn’t currently have, which is the ability to control what people can and can’t see on the Internet.

So I know you have more objections to this, but to summarise so far, your problem is that a) this is wrong, and b) it makes the Internet slow, wonky, inaccurate, and more expensive.

Mark Newton:

That’s a fairly good summation.

I want to bring in Jim now. Jim Wallace, welcome to Life Matters.

Jim Wallace:

Yeah, thanks very much.

Why do you think this kind of mandatory filtering is needed in Australia?

Jim Wallace:

Well look I think uh, we know that a news poll survey has shown that 93 percent of parents of 12 to 17 year olds want automatic filtering, but I think it’s very important to take up the points that Mark has made there. I’m glad to see that Mark doesn’t disagree with an opt in system which means that people, and this is the government’s intention, that people will be able to opt in to see legal material, that is pornographic material, if they decide to see this.

But that’s only part of it, there’s also the part you have no choice at all about.

Jim Wallace:

No that’s right. Yeah, exactly. But that mandatory blocking only applies to illegal material. Now I would hope Mark and the ISPs, and the Pornography Industry…

Mark Newton:

Have you seen the definition of illegal material?

Hang on Mark,

Jim Wallace:

It is very clear in the government’s intent that would only apply to illegal material, primarily we’re dealing here with child pornography. Now I’m absolutely amazed that the ISPs if they have any form of corporate responsibility would be opposed to that.

Okay. Firstly Jim, uuum, that news poll that you’ve quoted, I think that’s 2003, a) I think it would be a rare person who hasn’t changed their mind about something in the last six years, and b) since then, the government’s Net Alert program which has now been axed — that was started by the previous administration — it’s been axed because of a lack of demand for it.

So these people who say they don’t want the stuff are not bothering to actually install their own filters.

Jim Wallace:

The Net Alert program was essentially scuttled by what was a well advertised and very doubtful breaking of the Net Alert system, very early on. And so parents confidence in it went straight away, and it just raises the need — it just confirms the need — for the government to be able to put in place something on which parents can rely.

I don’t find at all persuasive that people change their mind therefore you can’t actually say that a 2003 news poll is authoritative today, of course it is. We know that for instance uh, 84% of, of children, of boys, and some 60% of girls actually have had experience where they’ve got unwanted and unsolicited pornography on the Internet. Now parents have a right to be protected from this, and we’re protected from it in every other medium, so why shouldn’t we be protected on the Internet?

It’s just ridiculous, and I think a very important part of context of this is you’ve got the pornography industry which says “we’ll be broke in 5 years if this goes ahead” so motivation for opposing this is pretty clear and the ISPs of course are paid by the throughput by a large extent by the downloads that are made.

Jim, aren’t you conflating two things here? Child pornography which is illegal and everyone would argue against, and pornography which is a legal industry.

Jim Wallace:

Well, yes, but I’m saying that if you apply restrictions to this in the printed material as we do — we require newsagents to put it in a envelope, we require that children are not allowed to go into a movie and that’s accompanied accompanied by adult that particular ratings — then we need to apply exactly the same safeguards for children on the Internet. That’s all the government is doing.

Now when you say I’m conflating these, I’m just absolutely amazed that uh, Mark should have said that he thinks it’s disputable that people should be able to access illegal material. If the government has said that child pornography is illegal, and that’s all we’re talking about in the mandatory area, the mandatory blocking, then of course people shouldn’t be able to access it.

Okay, well I just want to remind people if you’ve just joined us, here on Life Matters — and you can find out more on our website abc.net.ah/rn/lifematters — my guests today are Jim Wallace who’s with the Australian Christian Lobby; and also Mark Newton who’s an IT network engineer, and a fairly vociferous opponent of ISP what the government is proposing to bring in in terms of mandatory Internet filtering.

Mark, I’ll come back to something in a moment, but I want to hear your response to what Jim just said. Isn’t it fair to regulate the Internet in the same way, or in some way? I mean isn’t there’s some kind of point that there’s some value in considering how we classify what’s available through the Internet.

Mark Newton:

Well certainly, and I’ll make the comment that Australia has already had this debate back in 1999, and we ended up with the Broadcasting Services Act which already regulates Internet Content and provides it with a classification scheme, but that’s not actually what we’re talking about here.

Jim Wallace is, is using a little bit of rhetorical sleight of hand here, I’m assuming he has actually looked at this issue enough to understand what he’s talking about, and he would know what when he says that the government wishes to restrict “illegal material” that isn’t actually true. The government has come out over and over and over again saying what they actually wish to restrict on a mandatory basis for adults is “prohibited material,” and the term prohibited material is defined under legislation; and here are the categories that it encompasses:

• Firstly it encompasses material which has been refused classification by the classification board.
• Secondly it includes material which is rated X 18+, which is availably by mail order from Canberra and the Northern Territory, and can be freely viewed by any adult in Australia.
• It also includes material which is rated R 18+ which is screened in public cinemas.
• It also includes any material which is sold on a commercial basis which is MA 15+. This is material which can be viewed by anybody on free-to-air television.

That is the definition of prohibited content which the government keeps waving about and I don’t think it’s a particularly honest debating tactic for Jim Wallace to conflate the terms illegal with prohibited, because they have very different meanings.

Jim Wallace:

Well I have to take that up. That is absolute nonsense and there’s been no indication by the government, and if the government’s used on occasional one occasion an inappropriate term or a Minster has, then that’s quite unfortunate, but it’s a clear intent of the government that’s been made clear that it is not looking at [sic] mandatorily blocking anything that is legally available.

It will be the… People will have the opportunity they can make the decision to opt in for anything that is legal. Now clearly, refused classification is illegal. Child pornography is illegal, and this is all that’s been talked about in mandatory blocking.

I want to move this on, gentlemen. I’ve been reading what both of you have had to say extensively, in fact it consumed the last day and a half I think.

What one of Mark’s points Jim, is that this filter won’t work in several important ways. It’s dead easy to set up a virtual private network, lots of completely legitimate organisations have them, they’ve very easy to use and run; the ABC uses one, and I use it every day. This stuff if you do set up one, this kind of stuff, this dangerous, illegal appalling stuff like child pornography goes further underground.

The filter also doesn’t block peer to peer file sharing, and all of the child pornography rings rolled up so far in the world have been using that approach. So Mark’s argument is that this isn’t going to work against the really dangerous people.

Jim Wallace:

Yeah, but we’re not about to stop the AFP’s work against those really dangerous people on the peer to peer networks, and I might just correct you there that the media release from the minister actually said that they can block, right, these ISP filters even at this stage of the trial which is only the second of three stages, can block those P2P networks, but it can’t identify them.

Right, so it’s quite a different thing, but the point is that we’re not about to stop the AFP doing its work in trying to get hold of these people on the peer to peer networks. What we’re doing is we’re making — as is the government’s intention with this trial and ISP filtering — we are making the Internet a safer environment for children.

So these are two separate issues. It’s not an either or. You don’t go for one or the other. What you’re doing is you’re making the Internet a safer environment for children at the same time you’re keeping up and hopefully increasing your vigilance against people who push child pornography on their peer to peer networks.

Can I ask you then, how you decide, or how it is decided what will be blocked, because as I understand it, it’s basically a list compiled by the ACMA, and from an ordinary Internet user’s point of view, one is not allowed to know what is being blocked.

Jim Wallace:

Well, I’m sure these systems will be worked out, but I’m sure they’ll parallel the systems we’ll have now for what’s made illegal, well, illegal and illegal, in terms of magazines and movies and all other mediums, and I find it really you know, it really is a very fictitious argument and a very dangerous one and mischievous one that proponents of the porn industry and also the ISPs are making at the moment. I mean, to put up as GetUp did, that this will slow the Internet by up to 87 percent to get people to sign a petition, is just mischievous.

But Getup are not proponents of the porn industry or working for the ISPs, they’re a large organisation that are interested in all sorts of issues.

Jim Wallace:

Well yeah, yeah, okay, but they’re raising a petition based on something that says this will slow the Internet by up to 87%, now that’s like saying by looking at the trial that, let’s say it’s a trial of refrigerators, and uh, we’ve found one refrigerator that didn’t cool the meat. And then we’d say right-o, now we won’t look at refrigeration, it’s a failed technology because one refrigerator failed. I mean it’s clearly mischievous, it’s nonsense, I would have signed their petition and uh this is the sort of mischievous information that we have going around.

I mean the stuff that uh, Mark said there earlier trying to make us believe that the government is about to block what are legally available materials is just nonsense. It’s not the intention of the government at all, it was never the intention of the government. The government’s intention is to make sure that children have a safer Internet Experience.

Mark, Can I just come to you to wrap this up. This blacklist of ten thousand odd sites, that’s what I’ve been reading. A) Isn’t that going to leak? Won’t that get out?

Mark Newton:

Oh, absolutely. Yeah and I started making predictions about that back in October, and then uh, I’d like to say much to my surprise that actually it wasn’t; the blacklists in Denmark and Thailand were leaked to the Internet.

So other countries have been trying this approach?

Mark Newton:

They’ve, other western democracies have optional opt-in systems. Some of them are running with private blacklists, some of them with government sponsored blacklists, but Australia is the only country with a democracy that has yet proposed making it mandatory. There are non-democratic countries like China and Thailand and Iran that have mandatory systems, and um they tend to be characterised as regimes that are more interested in controlling the population than freedom of speech.

Gentlemen, that is sadly where we have to leave. I do feel there is more in this, but we have to go. Thank you both for joining us today.

That’s Jim Wallace who’s the managing director of the Christian lobby, and which is a strong supporter of Internet filters; and Mark Newton who’s an IT networking engineer and just as vociferously opposed to this mandatory filter. Our web site has recent commentaries from both men, and while you’re there you might have something to say about it. Abc.net.au/rm/lifenews.

Is it fair enough, or are you worried about censorship or it affecting the Internet? A whole range of topics; you can get on the guestbook or send us an email too.

We already have rules that apply to the distribution to, for instance, pornography in magazines, movies, all the government is doing is applying exactly that same uh, requirement, those same principals to the Internet. Why should the Internet be free of these, you know? Why should the Internet be able to put on whatever it wants to?