Debate: Should Australia adopt a National Internet Filter?
Side: Australia SHOULDN'T...

" BUT, you gave mention to the fact that conferences have been called with the minister in charge in regard to public questions; this proves that people know, and soon enough the entire country will know."On the contrary, it proves that a few people in the media know about it, that is all. They are constantly cancelled, hence their viewers/listeners never get the information."Now, the government can "try" and be a cunning and quiet as they can, but as a democracy, they need to accept that Australians will get a say soon enough as to what happens with the Internet and the Internet Filter."Have you heard the government offering to hold a referendum on whether or not we get the internet censor? We don't get a direct say. It goes: House of representatives -> Senate -> LAW. People play no part in this role. All we can do is write letters to labour senators, which get a token form letter reply, and ignored as labour senators lose their position if they vote against the party policy. Where's the democracy in that. They're supposed to represent their electorate, not their party agenda. Yes, we voted in the kRudd government. We voted in a KRudd government who at the time had no plans to introduce a mandatory censor. They threw in something about an optional filter at the list minute before the election, that was it. Then changed it to be a mandatory censor as soon as they got in."Then I would have to say that Australia has the power to vote a government in or out of parliament, and that sooner or later a change is going to be made if Australia is unhappy."Yep, just like what we did to Howard over workchoices. You'll also notice that KRudd is taking a real beating in the opinion polls. He may just have the 1st government in a LONG time to fail to secure a second term. Unfortunately, we don't vote on individual policies, we vote for a party in general. No-one voted for kRudd to introduce a censor, people voted for him to get workchoices removed. No-one knows the censor exists, probably won't . So how can they make an informed vote at the next election."I would suggest to the government that a blacklist is the wrong way to turn, and that a 'categorization' method would work more effectively. Blacklisting would still be an option, but at least we can trim the fat and then begin to work on the core, if you get my meaning."The government has taken no public input on the policy. They have also ignored any and all technical input from the industry. They don't care what you suggest. If you had seen the input, reccomendations and reports yourself, you would know that a categorization system for the internet is technically impossible.You cannot classify 1 trillion + webpages. Even china with tens of thousands of censor staff working around the clock can't keep up with the new webpages being made every day, never mind the trillion that are already there.Software cannot dynamically classify webpages fast enough to keep up with access without destroying internet connections and pretty much brining down the internet in Australia.The handpicked blacklist of 1,000 pages is the only approach that will even come close to being technically feasible and even with that it's not properly feasible, as the (poorly conducted and biased) government trial showed.