Stephen Conroy's Argument Against Internet Censorship

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On 31 December 2007, Stephen Conroy announced the Federal Government's intention to introduce an ISP-based filter to censor "inappropriate material" from the Internet (mainly child abuse and terrorism). In this announcement he also stated that adults could opt out of the filter to receive an uncensored internet. The filter itself is flawed, so is met with strong opposition. Banning illegal content like child abuse and terrorism is inarguably a good thing. I welcome it. But that’s not where the filter stops. According to the leaked black list, controversial and politically incorrect topics have been banned as well. This forms two thirds of the list. Sites about educational information on safer drug use, information that saves lives. Anti-abortion…show more content…
Australia which already has the slowest internet in developed countries will be slowed even more. Tests showed a 22% drop in speed when not filtering. What would happen if my speech was a prerecorded YouTube clip? Gimme ten, I’m loading. And accuracy further reduces speed. With up to 7.8% of tested sites being wrongly blocked you begin to wonder if Conroy is trolling. And of course with such dodgy plans for censorship, there is a strong opposition. Also opposing the filter is internet superpower Google. They comment that "moving to a mandatory ISP filtering regime with a scope that goes well beyond such material (child abuse and terrorism) is heavy handed and can raise genuine questions about restrictions on access to information." iinet an Australian ISP who are also against the filter accuse Conroy of intentionally giving false information when he claims "85% of ISP's welcome the filter." So now he’s a liar too. The general public has taken protest even further. The group anonymous attempted to "annihilate (the Australian governments) presence on the internet" by dosing Australian government websites, mainly the aph website. These attacks were so successful that authorities couldn’t even figure how many sites were taken down. Then Conroy just laughs it off as if he didn’t care that the aph site was down for "2

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