I’ll be honest – I have been totally opposed to any form of Internet filtering. When Stephen Conroy announced new plans to filter the Internet in Australia I immediately thought that perhaps he was following in the foot steps of our best known luddite – Richard Alston. Alston came up with some of the most hilarious ideas and suggestions during his term as minister for communications, including his statement that the only thing the Internet was used for was porn.

Anyway – getting back to Conroy…. we all know that it just isn’t possible to ‘filter’ the internet. There are always proxies and other ways of getting around access restrictions. You have to ask yourself though – what is the filtering really about? If it is about preventing adults from deciding what is good for them and what is not then I can see the anti-censorship argument. On the other hand, if it is about removing the potential ‘customers’ of people who provide illegal material then is that such a bad thing?

There’s no question that it’s incredibly controversial but if you are opposed to this filtering policy then first ask yourself… why?

Are you a pedophile who is going to lose access to the abhorrent sites that peddle child pornography?

Do you believe all the trumped up suggestions that it’s ‘going to slow the whole internet down’? Don’t forget that our NBN will increase speed by around 100 times, so any slight delay caused by a content filter will make no difference. The delays or ‘slowness’ they talk about are in terms of milliseconds so don’t be fooled that it’s something you will actually notice.

Are you a ‘free speech’ supporter who believes that any censorship is a bad thing. If that’s the case, does that mean that you support the supply and distribution of child pornography and other obscene content? You can’t have it both ways!

At the end of the day, I think the success or failure of filtering will rest on how smart the government is when they implement it. if they have an adequately staffed department that is able to react swiftly to reports of false positives and other mistakenly filtered material then I’m sure the majority of the public will accept that it is a necessary evil. I guess we will just have to wait and see…