Saturday 11 September 2010

Senator Quixote deserves to be told off


by Colin Jacobs

The Labor government's plan to censor the Australian internet has entered the realm of farce. Despite scraping back into government by the barest of possible margins, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has returned without delay to trumpeting his doomed scheme to anybody that will listen.
As we have said (for years, now) the filter will not help parents, nor will it help police crack down on illegal material. It's a worst-of-all-worlds approach that is a case study on the fundamental incompatibility of a classification-based system with the internet. Fortunately, most people are able to see this - not just nerds and civil libertarians think the plan is crazy, but industry, academia, the media, all the other major political parties and the vast majority of internet users do as well. With even children's rights groups criticising the scheme, you'd think any government would love an excuse to tow this old scow of a policy out to sea and scuttle it.

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