Here's Stephen Collins' framework for taking the anti-censorship message out of the echo chamber and out to our friends and families:
- there’s no serious Internet content problem to solve – you just can’t inadvertently stumble on RC or child porn on the Internet
- even if it was, nobody wants the government to solve it – if they did, free filtering software would be incredibly popular
- even if they did, this solution won’t work – we’ve seen the trial results and the extensive analysis which points out the flaws
- even if it did, it’s too expensive, unreliable, performance-sapping,
scope-creeping – ouch, ouch, ouch and no way- even if it was perfect, it’ll be administered by governments ill-equipped to do so – we’ve seen several policy and program stumbles lately, do we want one over this?
- even if it was administered perfectly, the blacklist will leak – and leak, and leak, and leak, giving infinite publicity to exactly the content the government wants to suppress (you’ve heard of the Streisand Effect, right?)
- there is no possibility that the blacklist won’t leak – it already has and it will again
via www.acidlabs.org
If the best that Conroy can do with $44.5 million is an ineffective censorship regime that penalises all Australians, then we should take the money off him and give it to the Australian Federal Police – who could actually take the fight against child pornography somewhere useful.
