Lie #3: Conroy’s filter will stop your kids viewing harmful stuff online.
The filter is designed to block material which is defined Refused Classification by the classification review board. This means that the ISP filter won’t help you protect your child from viewing things that you might prefer they don’t see—- only parental control can do that. It’s a bit like hiring a really expensive babysitter who lets your six-year-old watch whatever they want. On the internet you simply can’t outsource parenting.
from an article by by Eliza Cussen on “The Punch”, an online discussion forum.
Filed under: Australia, geekiness, politics Tagged: | Australia, dictatorship, government, internet filter, lies, politics, senator Conroy
According to Conroy in the past couple of days, the “blacklist” contains 355 URLs pointing to child pornography. There are a few hundred more pages bringing the total up to about 1000 URLs. They expect the list will grow up to about 10,000.
But 10,000 is no match for all the stuff that children should be protected from. According to Google, their index hit One Trillion in July 2008, growing by a couple of billion per day. No army of bureaucrats will ever keep up with that.
A one-size-fits-all-Australians ISP filter is simply the wrong solution. If Senator Conroy really wanted to protect children, he would educate parents and supply in-home filtering software which can be tuned to the age of the children.