John Linton ....apart from those relatively few people who suffer from paedophlia? .......it would be hard to find anyone I would have thought.
So the 'debate' about banning child pornography on the internet should never have existed in the first place - as Stupid Stephen and Krudd attempted to do in trying to kill the opposition to their attempts to legislate using a completely different 'black list' which was not restricted to child pornography at all but to a whole range of wowserism and political doctrine issues which was also riddled with errors.
So, their, (Stupid Stephen's and Krudd's) lying and then gross stupidity in labelling people who objected to banning on line gambling sites et alia as child pornographers has completely destroyed 'the debate' but worse than that it has shifted opposition to "banning child pornography" to actually objecting to government/wowserism censorship - a very, very different issue entirely.
So the real issues now are quite simple:
1) Does operating a child pornography black list impose any slow down at all on non-child pornography users of the internet
2) Is it possible for the Labor Party government to now convince, firstly the Senate and then the Australian electorate, that it can be trusted to move from it's ACMA list of God knows what URLs to one that had only child pornography.
Following the trial Exetel has just completed it seems to me that:
1) above is capable of being demonstrated as being totally achievable as the results published here clearly indicate which replicate results achieved in Sweden:
http://forum.exetel.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=31857
For those people who believe the IWF is something different to what it actually is this recent article should clarify some of the more ridiculous assertions:
http://www.prlog.org/10222199-iwf-hits-back-at-censorship-and-secrecy-claims.html
The Exetel trial showed that 'false positives' can be eliminated and that no user noticed slower speeds as indeed the monitors that Exetel ran clearly indicated.
2) has been made much more difficult now for the Labor party because of the sheer dishonesty constantly deployed by Stupid Stephen and Krudd in claiming that any one opposing the use of the ACMA list was a child pornographer and thus consigning themselves to being regarded as liars, charlatans and discussion bullies and therefore incapable of being trusted not to impose political and ideological censorship rather than a flawed attempt at reducing the availability of child pornography in Australia. (flawed because of the ease of which it can be 'got round')
This trial also demonstrated WHY a child pornography filter is necessary; in that in a five day period there were 20,000 'hits' on the 198 urls (that allegedly are part of an IP range that do contain child pornography but not necessarily the actual IP; i.e the figure of 20,000 doesn't represent that there were 20,000 hits on the actual CP IP only on the IP range) and if you consider that Exetel has only around 1% of internet users in Australia then.......you might, as I was, be more than a little surprised at how many paedophiles that implies there are in Australia (not 20,000 at Exetel but perhaps 100+). When I checked it may be possible based on the BT figures cited here from three years ago:
http://www.out-law.com/page-6615
....bearing in mind that these ban lists have been in operation in the UK since the late 1990s and it would be reasonable to assume that as paedophiles realise they can be tracked by accessing child pornography sites they will find ways round the ban list and therefore you would expect the numbers of "old" paedophile net users to be aware of the blocks to not register after the first two or three experiences - in Australia this wouldn't be the case as there have been no ban lists in operation.
Of course the trial Exetel did, or the trials anyone else has done or might subsequently do, will not stop the mildly technically competent internet users availing themselves of the myriad of tools to use some form of remote proxy to access any list of blocked sites and, personally not knowing any paedophiles, I don't know how their internet knowledge ranks in them being able to do that.
So I think the Labor party has got itself in to yet another major mess and in, yet another, situation (like the NBN, Global Warming, The about to be canceled tax cuts replaced by the about to be tax increases and the.......nominate your own total screw up inflicted on the country since those of you who are responsible voted these muppets in to running Australia).
Basically they have to decide on shelving black listing child pornography (because that is what a back down will mean) or they have to scrap their ACMA list and find a substitute that is acceptable to the Senate and the wavering Labor voters before the next election.
They no longer have the cop out of "it won't work technically".
They now have to demonstrate that they have a few principles - well......at least one of the ones they "won the last election with".
...and you know what?....and I know you think I'm biased.....I think you'll find that this bunch of uneducated and pig ignorant clowns don't even have ONE principle between them as will be evidenced by their actions on this issue.
Perhaps after Whine/Krudd's budget next week neither you nor I nor any other Australian will care any more when the wasteland that Australia has been made into by these economic Vandals will become more apparent.
Never mind, Krudd thinks that Australians don't need promised tax cuts and an optimistic future he thinks $A300 billion (which will have to be borrowed so you can pay even more taxes to pay the interest on it) is better spent in the US and the EU buying obsolete military toys which will never be used. No previous Labor 'government' has ever been that stupid - it was almost the only thing a Labor government could be relied on not to do....Krudd continues to set new standards in egotistic incompetence that make Whitlam look like, well, someone other than Whitlam who defined the new high of gross incompetence married to a giant ego in Australian prime ministers and the ability of one man's mindlessness to destroy Australia's economy in the shortest possible time.