Heracles is right. The Filtering problem is more about stifling freedoms of speech and censoring the Net than it is about blocking child porn, and it is bound to be extended into other areas so freedom of speech will become a thing of the past for us in Australia. Apart from slowing down our already sluggish Internet speeds, if it is introduced it is likely to be extended down the track to include all manner of sites; possibly even political dissenters... if they get away with this and they'll add more and more sites to the list to the point where we may one day envy the freedoms that the Chinese have!
Really the child porn issue is just being used as an emotional ruse to effect censorship controls because the purveyors of such material for the most part would most likely use VPNs and other evasive methods to avoid detection, as such their heinous activities will be totally unaffected by the filter. How about the government catch these crooks and lock them up instead of punishing all of us with this net-nanny filter. By and large the Filter will be way more detrimental to the average honest Internet user and the child pornographers will just sit back and laugh at the stupidity of Australian government. for more info see: http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,25773857-953,00.html http://www.arnnet.com.au/article/312845/statistics_experts_label_isp_filtering_trials_unscientific?fp=16&fpid=1 http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/careful-big-brother-is-editing-you/story-e6frg7go-1225792964441 http://www.openforum.com.au/content/firewall-lies http://libertus.net/liberty/ http://www.efa.org.au/censorship/mandatory-isp-blocking/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8AZ21hCkIg and as always there's a "Downfall" video on the subject! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH35CVig3fQ cheers, Meryl -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
