Some worrying developments are occurring across the Tasman as Australian Communications Minister Stephen Conroy presses ahead with his plan to censor the internet after Government-commissioned trials found filtering a blacklist of banned sites was accurate and would not slow down the internet.
Conroy announced he is making it mandatory for internet service providers (ISPs) to block a secret blacklist of “refused classification” (RC) websites for all Australian internet users.
Legislation to implement the scheme will be introduced before the federal election next year.
The announcement, made in the week before Christmas, has infuriated the Australian online community and spurred a campaign called No Clean Feed calling for a blackout. Another campaign by Get Up is also running. Trevor alerted us to this last night.
The campaign has echoes of the copyright campaign launched here in early 2009 to draw attention to the impact of Section 92A on ISPs which would have been required to cut off users’ internet connections based on accusation of copyright infringement.
The NZ (National) government, after much urging, eventually pulled its finger out and re-worked Section 92A. Legislation is to be brought before Parliament early next year. It requires vigorous scrutiny as copyright is a touchstone issue in the digital era. The NZ legislation is being watched around the world and will impact on other jurisdictions.
NZ, under the previous Labour Government, also introduced a test filtering programme blocking access to the approximate 7000 websites known to deal with exclusively child sexual abuse imagery.
Previous Labour Comms Minister David Cunliffe stated at the time that NZ had no intention of following Australia’s legislation of mandatory filtering of ISPs. NZ’s response to undesirable material has been an emphasis on education, as demonstrated by Netsafe.
In Australia, Stephen Conroy’s proposed laws go a lot further. While initially promoted as a way to block child pornography, the censorship policy has been extended to include a much broader range of material, including sites depicting bestiality, sexual violence, detailed instruction in crime, violence or drug use and/or material that advocates the doing of a terrorist act.
He has some strong arguments; that the filtering scheme will not affect speeds on the internet, that the only material being blocked is Refused Classification (RC) material that is already illegal; that there are mechanisms in place for correcting mistakes; and that the filter is not a silver bullet answer to protecting Australian children.
All laudable arguments. There are some points I’d like to make though.
Firstly, any material relating to child abuse is illegal and abhorrent. We support a system that enables ISPs to block this material. We support more work around exploring the best ways to do this.
The NZ system currently works on an “opt in” basis. It’s not mandatory. There are strong arguments against mandatory filtering which must explored. It doesn’t cover encrypted traffic, file sharing, email or chat which is how much of this material is circulated. And motivated people will find ways to circumvent a filter using proxy servers or encrypted tunnels.
Then there’s an argument about to what extent censorship is acceptable in a democratic society. If the censorship goes beyond child sexual abuse, where does it stop? Political sites? Who decides on what gets censored? And how transparent and accountable is that system?
A mature society should largely be able to self censor and know why it’s important. Yes there must be rules. And they should be enforceable. But preventing the sickness of proliferation of child sexual abuse imagery through a voluntary opt in agreement amongst ISPs is one thing. Establishing a blacklist of banned sites that is kept secret from the public and widens beyond child pornography is another.
Last week in Australia, former High Court judge Michael Kirby criticised the Federal Government’s internet censorship agenda, saying it could stop the “Berlin Walls of the future” from being knocked down.
In the last week an anti-censorship protest site www.stephenconroy.com.au was taken down by the Australian Domain Name Administrator (auDA) sparking outrage and claims of political censorship.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has allegedly lost thousands of twitter followers in the last few weeks over this issue.
Does this matter?
The online community is vast and spans geography, ethnicity, socio-economic differences, occupations and political affiliations.
But there are strong views on both sides and there are genuine concerns about the amount of unacceptable content available online, especially to our children. Nobody finds that palatable. The question is, what do you do about it?
There must be a line where common sense and the common good prevails. Governments are there to govern after all, by setting and implementing standards.
It seems to me that it’s best to deal with the facts. If you’re going to have a filter, will it work? Will it capture the material that you have identified needs capturing, will the people trafficking in this material be able to circumvent it? And what impact will it have on the ISPs? Will mandatory filtering work better than voluntary filtering?
All questions also relevant to the copyright debate. I wonder where our government sits on these issues right now.
This is especially concerning for NZ, as most of our Internet bandwidth passes through the cable to Australia. Could their restrictions on Internet usage end up censoring us too?
You may wish to ask the Aussies whether Internet traffic passing through Australia on its way to NZ can be censored by Australia. NZ’s laws may be of no import if they censor before it even gets to us.
Disclaimer: I’ve done some (unpaid) work on the filtering options with DIA.
1) My opinion is that filters don’t technically work. I’ve communicated this to DIA and they agree with my assessment, as far as it goes. They still feel that they have to do something as the request has been made of them.
2) The NZ filtering proposal is fairly solidly ring-fenced to images of child abuse, and it is unlawful to obtain, possess or disseminate such images. One of the reasons DIA has asked me to be involved is that they know where I stand on “feature-creep”, and that I’m prepared to call them on any shenanigans. They don’t *want* to take it beyond images of child abuse, as a) that would be improper use of the tool and b) those areas are far murkier (and therefore costlier) to manage.
3) The filter will be voluntary, barring a law change, and I anticipate that it will become a marketing point for ISPs that they are or are not participating in the filter.
4) I’ve examined the ACMA list (it’s only illegal for Australians to look at it
and it is pretty poor, with a number of false positives, and a number of political inclusions. Australia has a “Refused Classification” category that is incredibly wide, covering *everything* that doesn’t fit into a bunch of small categories. Conroy is extrapolating from that and saying ‘if it’s not explicitly permitted, it’s forbidden!” NZ legislation takes the opposite viewpoint of specifying what is forbidden and with a very narrow brush. While some categories are forbidden by statute (child abuse, bestiality, and such), most items are examined individually by the Censor’s office.
5) In my humble opinion, Conroy is an ass. I’m sure he thinks he’s actually saving Australia from its darker side, but anyone who wants to cry “nanny state” need look no further than across the ditch.
6) The anti Conroy site was, again in my opinion, taken down in accordance with auDA’s policies. If the site got any special treatment, it was because of Conroy’s prominence, not because of political strong-arming. By contrast with .nz, .au has very restrictive policies regarding all of its 2LDs and so usually has a backlog of issues around eligibility. I think the originators of the site registered it deliberately, in full knowledge that they were not eligible, as a publicity stunt, thinking they’d have a few weeks of use before it was taken down. They were surprised by the speed that auDA moved at on this occasion and cried “political interference” because they really had no justification for the registration. Unfortunately, Conroy’s handling of internet issues has been so ham-fisted that it seemed very credible that he might have interfered.
7) Australia is prone to over-regulate everything. I am not sure why – it appears to be deep in the national psyche.
8) While it is important to ensure that the NZ filter is free from political encouragement to go beyond the mandate of child abuse, I am currently comfortable that the general policy framework around Internet filtering respects that ideal, and that the officials involved have a good understanding of that. I would not be associated with it otherwise and, indeed, would be fighting it tooth and nail. And they know that to.
9) I don’t believe any parallels to the copyright situation are as relevant as you appear to. Just because something involves the Internet doesn’t mean it’s relevant to something else that involves the Internet.
10) Please don’t try to score political points off National for hesitating over s92A. I don’t recall any particular howls of anguish from the Labour Government caucus over its initial passing, especially over the manner of that passing, and at least National did eventually act. What’s done is done – let’s look forward to examining the concept and structure of copyright to produce a system that is fair and balanced for all involved.
9) If you and Trevor, or any of your colleagues from any part of the House, would like to talk further about these matters, I am more than willing to meet with you and discuss. I’d much rather that future NZ policy was based on knowledge than “good intentions”. And I, for one, *AM* thinking of our collective children.
Regards
Mark Harris
Simple answer, No.
Education and a culture that doesn’t allow such things is the only way that child porn and this sort of undesirable behaviour can be controlled.
The Australian blacklist includes all sorts of stuff – including things that are beneficial to society:
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2009/03/19/1237054961100.html
But about half of the sites on the list are not related to child porn and include a slew of online poker sites, YouTube links, regular gay and straight porn sites, Wikipedia entries, euthanasia sites, websites of fringe religions such as satanic sites, fetish sites, Christian sites, the website of a tour operator and even a Queensland dentist.
It, quite simply, isn’t worth going there at all. Put the resources into something that will actually make a difference such as education.
I have an issue in particular with “mandatory for internet service providers (ISPs) to block a secret blacklist of “refused classification” (RC) websites”. This is not Myanmar, North Korea, Iran etc. In a society like we have down under I do not believe secret lists have a place. If it is blacklisted then it should be public knowledge.
The problem i see is that attitudes, laws and trends develop often instigated by earlier events later develop into or allow unrelated aspect to develop. Take the Peter Ellis Creche debacle …and the now notable shortage of male teachers in the education system now and difficulty of recruiting. Did you see the TV article and the significance of teen sexting and we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg of this trend developing …will that lead to certain cell phones being blacklisted in 6 years time. Or take the Sue Radford bill and anti smacking and where that has lead us.
My big concern is that Government takes an inch (or we give Government an inch) a bill passes on a 3 vote majority and before we know it the inch is a mile and the “people have mandated the Government” mentality sets in. In the commercial world, one major ISP domain registar in the USA will reprocess a domain and web if it receives a spam complaint against that site..it is one of their significant income streams and yet most do not realise this until it is to late, or maybe the site is blacklisted under dispute…let the head aches begin
Whilst we have incredible freedoms in NZ compared to a number of other countries at present, we do need to strive to maintain a open society and not throw the baby out with the bath water.
Re the copyright reference Mark makes, his comment on the surface are true, Governments and time seems to create nasty magnetic attraction with bills… just take a look at the Resource Management Act and what that has done to the cost of our house construction prices. “Feature Creep” is a wonderful mechanism that others later on just may well leverage off and before we realise it has taken a direction of its own.
Anyway thats my personal thoughts for the night.
Kevin Andreassend
http://www.aucklandict.wordpress.com
The question is, what do you do about it?
You police based on people’s actions, not restrict everyone’s freedom in an attempt to pre-empt people’s actions. And in the case of mandatory filtering, we’re talking not only about restricting everyone’s freedom, but doing it through a system widely known to work really badly and deliver a rich harvest of unintended consequences.
I’m curious, how much of this is official Labour policy, and how much of it is your personal opinion? National said one thing about copyright and did something else when they got in. Labour did one thing while in power, and now you’re saying something completely different.
At this point, I don’t _trust_ either major political party around any technology issues (filtering, net neutrality, copyright, etc). If you want my vote, you have to convince me that you have the right ideas, _and_ that you will follow through on them.
I’m going to trust the _actions_ and not the _talk_. Currently, you’re both dodgy, but National is currently a little less dodgy – they stopped the implementation of S92A.
I agree with everyone here, especially Kevin when he says that things need to be transparent. Euthanasia isn’t something to be censored, IMO. Yes Australia is too restrictive, look at the way they has restricted access to alternative remedies.
Jason has just been moderated through, so my comment about agreeing with everybody didn’t include him. 92a was / is a dog’s breakfast. Sure they stopped it (after much protest), but they haven’t replaced it with anything decent.
The argument is that the DIA system is voluntary, but because of how its been implemented (ISP side) I’ve got to wonder how voluntary this system really is. The information on whether an ISP filters or not is hardly readily published, and you (or others) need to inquire to the ISP about whether they filter or not, and just hope that you receive a response. If we do want this system to be truly voluntary we need to look towards the efforts of ISPs like Snap, which offer both a censored feed and an uncensored feed, allowing the customer to actually choose whether they wish to censor their internet.
I always wonder about new laws – are we approaching the right problem?
Take the anti-smacking law. The problem wasn’t so much that we didn’t already have laws in place to handle the problem. The police have said that the cases that have been followed up on under the anti-smacking law would’ve been followed up on under the old laws.
So what is the problem? Smacking has become taboo. A friend of mine is a teacher and was told by one of the parents of his students to smake them if he felt it necessary. He’d never do such a thing but it’s an indication of what happens behind closed doors.
It’s a problem of policing and education.
While putting filters in place for child pornography is something I do agree with, I worry about the technical aspects of it. I would imagine that the majourity of the material is exchanged behind closed doors. We have great encryption techniques – you can store files in images these days which you can’t extract unless you have the passkey. There are networks out there designed specifically to counter such measures as filteres. Email doesn’t even have to reach NZ shores (think web mail – gmail, hotmail and the like) so even trying to censor email wouldn’t work.
And then there’s the fact that once a filter is in place, it shouldn’t be hard at all to go the way of the Australians. This is rather close to the argument against Google. Google appears to be all good intentions and is doing great things with it’s summer of code and the multitude of services it’s providing. But in essentially owning a large chunk of the media, what happens if something goes wrong? A change of management, an opportunity for greed, even pandering to various governments. We’ve seen some of this with their proprietary components of the Android phone and the upset it’s caused when people have copied them in other firmware packs.
So, can future governments be trusted not to creep that list to other agendas? And should we not be educating people?
When I was young there was a document out there called “The Jolly Rogers Cookbook” out there which documented how to make thermite and napalm and a whole lost of other explosives and things like getting a high off nutmeg. The people I knew who had the document only went as far as making napalm and even then it was incredibly controlled – i.e. it wasn’t flung anywhere, and burnt on concrete. They had the education to only try the experiment which they felt was safe to do. This lead to all sorts of interesting education about the Vietnam war and the use of napalm in it.
To me, this sort of knowledge is not undesirable. Knowing that the best approach to napalm is to get away from it rather than trying to snuff it out or monitor it and deal with the after effects etc.
In this age of terrorism and paranoia though, this sort of knowledge is frowned upon. How long until the frowners take this away from us? Recipes for gun powder? Found in most encyclopedias – because there’s value in knowing what’s in it.
So if filtering doesn’t really do anything to stop child pornography, and it opens the doors to “feature creep”, then what is the agenda here?
Wow you can get high off nutmeg?
Mark – I have an email from the DIA saying they’re NOT ring-fenced to images, but are perfectly prepared to block text as well. The information they’ve given Thomas Beagle is contradictory on this point as well, and the fact that they threw away all the information from the trials when they’re legally obligated to keep it isn’t exactly reassuring either.
I’ve got to wonder how voluntary this system really is.
Indeed. Telstra and Telecom are both planning to implement filtering on all their web connections. So how many consumers will actually be able to choose an unfiltered connection? The system was ‘voluntary’ in the UK, and within a year of implementation every ISP was doing it.
Bleep, that’s bad.
I think these ISPs should come forward and tell the public exactly what they’re doing!
Just a quick comment from an Australian trying to find ways to bring down the Rabbit-Proof Firewall.
I DON’T agree with “filtering” out child sexual abuse material. I DON’T agree that it should be “blocked” to some armpit little country (yours or mine).
I don’t want it blocked.
I want it GONE.
I want it deleted from the frakking Internet altogether.
http://www.unpolitik.de/2009/05/28/delete?dont?block?it?works/
Every page blacklisted is a failure.
Every censorship proponent is a coward.
I agree that these things never stay within their original confines.
What happens when government decides that certain forms of political speech need to be censored? What if, for instance, they said that speech in favor of removing filters is actually support for what was being filtered, and therefore should be banned?
I am strongly tempted to say that this is all a result of not having a bill of rights, entrenched, that protects freedom of speech. Congress passed the CDA back in the 1990s with overwhelming majorities in the House and Senate. To no avail. The Supreme Court blasted that sucker out of the water with respect to “indecent” speech as a violation of the First Amendment:
“As a matter of constitutional tradition, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, we presume that governmental regulation of the content of speech is more likely to interfere with the free exchange of ideas than to encourage it. The interest in encouraging freedom of expression in a democratic society outweighs any theoretical but unproven benefit of censorship.”
http://www.ciec.org/
(quoting Justice Stevens)
That kind of decision can only happen when the bill of rights and the constitution generally are “higher” than normal legislation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Decency_Act
Note that the Telecommunications Act was passed by a 91-5 vote in the Senate. The House vote was 414-16.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d104:SN00652:@@@R
That such an overwhelming legislative majority’s law would be rejected outright with a constitutional bar is inconceivable in a country where the legislature is supreme.
Here, a free speech argument relies on the good will of MPs. Even if you have that kind of support in one government, it can wither and fade away with one unfortunate election.
In effect, what this means is that residents of NZ have to have a much higher level of vigilance than those in a system where the courts will protect individual rights above mere enacted laws.
On the other side, if conservative presidents pack the courts with anti-liberty justices, liberty can be suffocated until that court composition changes.
BUT, it is harder to change the composition of the courts and harder to amend the Constitution than it is to pass a misguided law.
All good questions. And useful debate contributions in the comments. But where is labour going to nail its policy to the mast? Will you have the moral torpitude to hold off against the easy spin soundbote in the face of onslaught from the pathetic domestic media and do what is right? And not what sounds right.
I hope so.
Filtering is like drm. Spend the time and money on education, optional services and clarity of position for ISPs.
What ever we are doing at present to weed out child porn must be working quite well,in all the years of my porn surfing i have never come across anything like that.So lets leave things just as they are,if it ain’t broken…
Oh and the Nutmeg thing was a real con,didn’t do a thing for me!lol.
Oh
Such ISP/government filtering systems should be, and need to be, illegal. They infringe far to far into peoples personal lives and they don’t actually achieve anything.
If people want to protect their children from this sort of stuff on the internet then they can go out an buy the appropriate software – at least then it would have a chance of achieving it’s aims (although even some of those programs block sites that are beneficial to society).
It’s good to read Clare’s comments about filtering and to see that at least some politicians actually *think* about this issue!
If anyone wants further information, here’s a link to the FAQ I wrote about filtering in NZ (expecting some updates soon): http://techliberty.org.nz/issues/internet-filtering/filtering-faq/
There’s also a whole bunch of other censorship related articles on my blog at: http://thomasbeagle.net/category/censorship/
Dear Clare Curran,
As a former Kiwi (emigrated to Australia 10 years ago), let me advise you that the noise over here on the technical social sites such as whirlpool.net.au have plenty of information in regards to the Australian Communications Minister Senator Stephen Conroy wild claims that the URL filter will work without any speed degradation or affects whatsoever.
The filter URL tests employed by Senator Conroy are a complete sham. The only tests that did not have any specific speed degradation are the DNS blackholing by Telstra. DNS & URL filtering are two completely different types of filtering.
Senator Conroy has been on the censorship campaign by applying coercive pressure to outspoken Internode ISP engineer Mark Newton, issuing censorship notices to whirlpool & removing .au domains from sites speaking out against the filter (stephenconroy.com.au).
Re: Mark Harris
As already publicly noted by Liberal MPs (in both News & Fairfax publications), Senator Conroy has made a deal – for votes – with the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) to bring in the filter.
Your opinion of the stephenconroy.com.au domain is incorrect, as the site “engages in a trade that is related to the name” (i.e. t-shirts).
“He has some strong arguments; that the filtering scheme will not affect speeds on the internet, that the only material being blocked is Refused Classification (RC) material that is already illegal”
The government has been deliberately muddying the waters, implying that RC content is illegal. Apart from child abuse content, everything else is legal to view in the RC category. Given how child abuse content isn’t actually traded on the open web in any significant volume, the policy will be completely useless in this aim. Relying on complaints from the public is laughable, given what they claim to be targeting. The complaints system takes upwards of a month, and for illegal content, it will be long, long gone by then.
They have so little faith that the justification is now “to reduce the risk of accidental access to RC content”, which is pathetically weak.
This has nothing to do with porn, and has nothing to do with children – the proposed solution is too weak for any of that. It’s simply the thin end of the wedge, and the government is desperate to control the Internet and are satisfied with any level of control, knowing that they can extend it later.
Emma: Sorry, I know it’s not only images and includes text. My error there.
As I recall, the justification is that the textual matter that this would involve would also be matter that would be ruled offensive in the same way that the images would, and through the same process.
But yes, I did know that text was included. I simply forgot when writing my comment.
former-kiwi: I think that there was nothing to do with t-shirts on the site originally. I believe the t-shirt aspect only came about as they tried retrospectively to justify registering the name. If the name they had registered was “anticonroytshirts.com.au, they would not have had it taken off them, as it would have been an adequate description that they were eligible to use. The use of Conroy’s name was a deliberate attempt to capture inquiries with anti-conroy information. Just because the man’s an abusive prat (IMHO) doesn’t mean you have to sink to his level to get your point across.
Re Mark Harris
Calling me names will not discard the fact that the Australian filter has to do with gaining votes from a religious group, one that in-fact does *not* represent the vast majority of Christians. Furthermore, the Australian domain name authority (currently controlled by a private entity) has breached its own policies whereby a domain holder is to be given 20 business days (not 3 business hours) to respond to their complaints.
@Former kiwi, it’s just as well the exclusive bretheren aren’t using the internet yet.
Thanks for all the comments so far and I hope this disucssion will continue. It’s important and very relevant at this time. There are many issues to consider. I’m doing a (shorter) post to elaborate on what Labour’s current position is on internet filtering which reflects our position as of November 2008, just before the general election. It hasn’t changed.
But there is a need for further discussion within our caucus on these matters. My view is that a voluntary, opt in system for ISPs to a contained filtering programme focussed solely on child sexual abuse is about as far as you’d want to go. I’m keen to learn more about why some of you believe filters don’t work.
And @ Mark Harris, I believe this issue certainly is relevant to the copyright debate. That debate has hinged around whether termination of an internet connection should be part of the punishment for repeat copyright infringement. Strong arguments have been waged that not only does termination not work, but it creates a set of further problems with regards to denying the rights of people to have access to the internet.
Who should determine copyright infringement and the process of determining it have also been hotly discussed.
From a public policy perspective, filtering (whether it should occur and whether it works), mandatory (or voluntary) filtering, the scope of that filtering (child pornography or beyond), and who determines what should be filtered are all critical to the debate. There are parallels between filtering and copyright and lawmakers must be guided by a common set of principles.
Mark: the enormous difference between text and drawings, and photographs, is that the latter cannot be produced without actual children being abused. The former can. The DIA’s emotive arguments about keeping children safe from harm therefore do not apply to them. They’re not blocking all ‘offensive’ material, only child pornography, and their justification is the harm done to actual children. So it’s actually two quite different arguments.
I’m just thinking here. What if I am defending a criminal client in the US and the crime they are being charged with is creating child pornography, illegal in both the USA and NZ. But there is a question about whether the images are truly what is charged.
Would NZ charge me with an illegal act if I view this material as part of my defense of such a person? Also, if this person’s website happens to be filtered in NZ, how would I, in a legal way, view this material? Do I have to petition my ISP for every URL? Or would I have to petition DIA? And then, when the case is over, would I have to clean all my browsers’ caches and get rid of all images, and would this be allowed in my backup external hard drive file for that case?
Similarly, if I am defending someone who is allegedly infringing on copyright or a trademark in the US, do I need special permission to have a copy of that material on my computer for review, even though the average person would not be able to have it?
Andrew
former-kiwi: ??? I was calling Conroy a prat, not you
I don’t doubt your point about the ACL; I think I said that I thought the filter was a bad idea poorly executed.
http://www.auda.org.au/policies/auda-2008-05/ outlines clearly the eligibility criteria for .com.au (specifically Schedule C) – I don’t think selling T-shirts is either:
“a) an exact match, abbreviation or acronym of the registrant’s name or trademark; or
b) otherwise closely and substantially connected to the registrant. ”
http://www.auda.org.au/policies/auda-2008-07/ establishes auDA’s right to revoke a name (specifically Schedule A section 6.1)
The “20 days” you mention refers to the Dispute Resolution Procedure (http://www.auda.org.au/policies/auda-2008-01/) which states:
“2.2 The auDRP does not apply to all types of domain name disputes. It only applies to disputes which meet the requirements set out in Paragraph 4(a) of the auDRP at Schedule A of this document.”
Schedule A p4(a) specifically refers to disputes between 3rd parties. This does not over-rule auDA’s rights and responsibilities.
http://www.auda.org.au/membership/membership-overview/ auDA is a membership-based organisation, rather than a private company. If you have issues about the way it is run, join and take it up with them.
Emma: I know. I think the law is actually wrong on this and have said so to Bill Hastings. However, as the wording of the law is around anything that _supports and encourages_ child pornography, I think we need to change the law rather than the filter.
Let’s be clear, here: I am not in favour of *any* government censorship in any matter at all, but I recognise that mine is a solitary voice and, rather than howl at the moon (like some critics of government), I’d rather work with the government to minimise the downsides of certain of their policies.
@Clare
“I believe this issue certainly is relevant to the copyright debate. That debate has hinged around whether termination of an internet connection should be part of the punishment for repeat copyright infringement.”
Actually, much of the debate has been around termination being appropriate for *allegations* of repeat copyright infringment. Those in favour of it (E.g. RIANZ, APRA etc) have argued that the process of going to court to *prove* infringement is too onerous for rightsholders (and representatives), and they wanted a streamlined non-judicial process for dealing with allegations of infringement.
The idea that an Internet connection was a basic human right was first floated by Tizard, while Minister, but ignored by her in the process of passing the legislation. It is important, but was not the core of the Blackout protest or the discussions around it – “Guilt Upon Accusation” was.
“Strong arguments have been waged that not only does termination not work, but it creates a set of further problems with regards to denying the rights of people to have access to the internet.”
Termination does work, for what it says it is going to do – terminate an Internet account. Filtering doesn’t work because it doesn’t do what it says it will do – prevent access to forbidden material.
It is technically trivial to circumvent a filter, but not technically trivial (or even possible) to circumvent termination. It *is* a trivial business matter to resist termination (by getting a new Internet account), but it is not trivial to resist filtering in a business way (eg taking the government to court to overturn the validity of the filter). The matters are not only not parallel, in my view, but at opposite ends of their particular spectrum.
At present, no-one in New Zealand has a “right” to Internet access, under the law. We have a right to not be discriminated against (and termination could be argued as a form of discrimination) but that has a long, slow process attached to it, without very many teeth. Finland has recently made broadband access a legal right (http://bit.ly/4Iqz5W), and the EU have made supportive noises (while still promoting termination as an option!) but NZ has no legislation, primary or secondary, written or unwritten, on this matter.
“Who should determine copyright infringement and the process of determining it have also been hotly discussed.”
And determined, through (eventually) a due process. There is still much that is wrong, but it is less wrong than before.
“From a public policy perspective, filtering (whether it should occur and whether it works), mandatory (or voluntary) filtering, the scope of that filtering (child pornography or beyond), and who determines what should be filtered are all critical to the debate.”
That’s all about filtering, nothing about copyright.
“There are parallels between filtering and copyright and lawmakers must be guided by a common set of principles.”
Would you please tell me what you think these parallels are?
2048 bit encrypted packages going from IP address to IP address. You can’t read the packages and the IP address doesn’t tell you anything about the sender or receiver. What are you going to filter?
As I’ve already said – filtering at either the ISP level or by government is already going too far and should be illegal. It doesn’t work for starters, costs a huge amount that could be better spent and will essentially be punishing innocent people by making the internet slower for the actions of a very small minority.
This isn’t a problem that has a technical solution. It needs the police to do some real investigating to find the perpetrators rather than them waiting for the computer to tell them where and who to arrest.
SLOWER internet!
This country IS a banana republic. 
I agree, bust them !!!
Clare, the comments here show one of the great virtues of RedAlert: people like Beagle, Hart and Harris are giving us not just opinions (and there are plenty of uninformed opinions on the net)
But they are talking as wellinformed people who have the experience of already engaged the policy process. So some of this may be over my head, but RedAlert is again a market of ideas being proposed and tested. Back to lurking.
Is it just me or does “Beagle, Hart and Harris” sound like a dodgy law firm?
LOL
Over the last year or so, i have come to realize that we in NZ are being restricted from some web content. though I wouldn’t know how to search for something as vile as child porn, I am interested in other topics that may be of a sensitive nature.
But not illegal.
So what can we do?