The ISP filter is an opportunity lost

Categorized | Censorship

The ISP filter is an opportunity lost

Posted on 19 February 2009 by admin

This point has been floating around in my head for about 2 weeks now, though I honestly didn’t think I could do the notion justice in less than 3 thousand words.

Helen Razer’s latest article on the incivility of the Internet seemed like an apt place to pilot my opinion.

I think that one of the primary causes for the Internet becoming so dear to many of us is that, on the internet, the barriers to entry to so many pursuits and activities are incredibly low.

To be a writer on the Internet requires less than 2 minutes spent setting up a wordpress blog.

To be a shop owner requires similarly minute portions of time spent setting up a cafepress shop.

The context has not been lost, there is still far less credibility given to online sources than there are to brick, book or blood sources.

What the DBCDE fails to understand, and this is abundantly clear from their latest discussion paper, is that to apply traditional red tape and legal structures to the Internet kills the very reasons for its rapid and widespread uptake.

While the Government has the right to ensure the Internet doesn’t aid in the infringement of laws -in the real world-, they do need to start thinking of better ways to do it.

The DBCDE needs to think forward instead of trying to shoe-horn the Internet into existing legislation and red-tape.

While I don’t always agree with Helen, she does point out that the traditional bastions of credibility weren’t fast enough to adopt the keen new formats of today’s audiences. Wikipedia has nothing on Britannica, yet the format and hook of Wikipedia means it will be used by many more.

Examples such as this are why traditional media outlets are pissing fire at Governments trying to make them stop the nimble little e-buggers from bleeding them with a thousand cuts.

I’m not really surprised by the constant fencing between record labels and the torrent community. It’s quite obvious when you step back from either point of view – there are unusual and unexplored principles of economics being discovered, almost accidentally, by the torrenting community.

Less accidental are the leaps and bounds to creativity being made by the Cretive Commons movement. A whole new level of creative productivity has been unleashed as a legal framework finally caught up to the technology on offer. Creative Commons as a concept has matured to the point where Government agencies are starting to use it.

Creative Commons wouldn’t have happened in any other environment than the internet.

What if we could use the emerging issue of online depravity to create a new and superior solution that is more flexible, efficient and effective than traditional solutions such as censorship and filtering?

If there’s one thing that the Internet has taught everyone but the Government, it’s that you need to solve problems by moving through them, not walling them off. I see the NoCleanFeed debate as an opportunity to sit down and work out the best way the government can handle the internet on a philosophical level. The most recent DBCDE discussion paper indicates that the government is ready to ask the question.

The NBN and filtering scheme, however, indicate that the DBCDE is not yet ready to think of an answer.

Pornography is an integral part of the internet. A lot of the money and traffic that makes the Internet viable commercially is tied up in pornograpghy. Whether you like it or not, it’s something that needs to be in place for the internet to continue growing. The economies of scale just won’t add up if you start hacking away at vital parts of the equation.

So we are faced with two paths. If we follow Conroy and his goons, we shoot the internet in the foot and everybody loses out. If we work through the issue in an innovative and creative way, not only will our children be better protected, but the Government can reap the rewards that come with a vibrant and fertile online economy.

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14 Comments For This Post

Danu Poyner Says:
February 18th, 2009 at 1:41 pm

Fantastic post Kieran, good work

An opportunity to work out the best way the government can handle the internet on a philosophical level. That's a great way of looking at it, and it's about time it happened. I think it's unrealistic to expect the online environment to continue forever in its present form without some forms of regulation. It's just a question of making sure that when those regulations inevitably come, they are well thought through and not simply a case of applying outdated solutions to an environment where they don't make any sense.

Very eloquently put. I also especially like the phrase 'nimble little e-buggers'

Websinthe Says:
February 18th, 2009 at 1:54 pm

Thanks mate,

It's quite exciting to wonder what could be accomplished if the same level of innovation that went into CC went into solving whatever it is Conroy's currently trying to solve.

Tomorrow's post will be brought to you by the letter: Navigation.

Danu Poyner Says:
February 18th, 2009 at 1:59 pm

Quite. It's interesting to note also that some of the most innovative ideas – Creative Commons included – come from prior failures when best laid plans didn't work out and people were forced to look at situations in new ways.

Websinthe Says:
February 18th, 2009 at 2:05 pm

And that's roughly how it will continue.

Notice, however, that it is seldom, if ever, government organisations that close the circuit on invention.

Mark Newton Says:
February 18th, 2009 at 2:07 pm

It's good to see the debate moving in this direction. It'd be better if the Govt was prepared to be involved in it too, but I'm sure they'll catch up eventually and we can fill them in when they get here

I note Danu's comments about regulation, and also note that the internet is probably one of the most heavily regulated aspects of modern life already. You can't even install a cable to link to buildings together without a license from the Government, which allows them to insert themselves into virtually every aspect of the internet in a way that other countries find quaintly puzzling. End users don't see much of that because it tends to be concentrated on ISPs and carriers, but the censorship debate is concentrated on ISPs and carriers too (for that very reason!), so I think it's an important point to make.

But as long as we're talking about regulations catching up with this new place where we live, I'd like to make a suggestion: The Govt's policy documents keep going on about how threats include bullying, identity theft, fraud and grooming; and then they come up with this bizarre non-sequitur that says the obvious solution is online censorship. It isn't, that's a response to content. If the Government wishes to get involved in solutions to those problems their role should be about regulating conduct.

That's a big "if", though, and I'd submit that the current Government has caused so much enmity and bad blood that the best suggestion I could give would be for them to stay right away from it for a while. They've burned a lot of trust over the last six months, and I'm not sure that I'd want the current crowd debating the rules for a game of Monopoly let alone our conduct in relation to the internet.

Danu Poyner Says:
February 18th, 2009 at 2:08 pm

Yeah they're usually much more closely associated with the failure part of the process

Websinthe Says:
February 18th, 2009 at 2:18 pm

I think that is the key, it's conduct not content that is the real issue. Practically everything with which the government takes offense can be described with a verb.

I think that very big 'if' is swimming in a big pool of 'how'.

How do we regulate or even influence online behaviour without sacrificing privacy and security. If we've learned anything from Anna Bligh or the UK Government it's that governments are the single largest security holes to which our private data could ever be exposed.

Websinthe Says:
February 18th, 2009 at 2:24 pm

I honestly had no idea how much government red tape goes into carrier level internet connectivity.

The bad blood and emnity is entirely Conroy's doing. His personal approach to this whole situation is insulting and vote burning.

Michael Meloni Says:
February 18th, 2009 at 2:25 pm

Good post K, though we must not forget the Internet is already heavily regulated in Australia, with much of the regulation already working effectively, some of it too well. In those areas it is not, it's often down to lack of resources to enforce it. Improvements in policing and education can go a long way in tackling the real problem areas here. Essentially improvements that aren't always at the core tech based.

Those who see the Internet in Australia as a lawless monster should try and operate an adult website onshore.

Mark Newton Says:
February 18th, 2009 at 2:30 pm

Government has always been a bargain between the rules and the ruled.

The rulers make certain stipulations that set out the boundaries of what Conroy likes to call a civil society, and the ruled make decisions about how their conduct reacts to those boundaries.

Note that I didn't say that they make decisions about how to remain within them — The copyfights you cited are a prime example of a case where the ruled and the rulers clearly don't agree on where the boundaries should be.

In any case — Part of the bargain that we usually refer to as "the consent of the governed" needs to be concerned with the degree of consent. The internet makes certain forms of conduct very easy, and other forms of conduct almost impossible to control; so part of the bargain that makes up society must be a personal responsibility on the part of each individual to choose the degree to which they choose to participate online.

… because "harmful" conduct often isn't as harmful online as it would be offline — Even the worst of the bullying the Govt complains about can be stopped by clicking "Ignore", at which point only the offline components of it (which our society already routinely deals with to some degree) can survive.

What I'm getting at is that an important aspect of free speech is the concept that nobody has an inalienable right to not be offended. If I can speak, that means I can say things you don't like.

But in online communities it's uniquely simple to decline to listen. You can choose to participate in communities that I'm not part of, in a manner that's completely opaque to me.

And that choice is a decision that the wowsers who keep promoting the necessity for censorship consistently, irresponsibly, neglect to make.

– mark

Websinthe Says:
February 18th, 2009 at 2:30 pm

I had the impression that it is still illegal to host a pornographic web site in Australia.

I also remember the idiot that banned it claiming he had banned online pornography entirely. It goes to show that you don't need a high level of intelligence to be voted in.

Websinthe Says:
February 18th, 2009 at 2:37 pm

I sat there and read your comment, thinking about how I could relate that to a solution to the problem of online bullying.

For some reason the idea of licensed community moderators as a draw card (not a requirement) kept popping up.

I'm glad you pointed out some more philosophy behind the debate, it seems that we're the only side willing to think it through at that level.

Mark Newton Says:
February 18th, 2009 at 9:35 pm

Would they actually need to be licensed? We're talking about community-building here, aren't we? How deeply would we want to bed government control and approval into it?

I'd be happier with seeing people prepared at an early age to slot themselves into a support role like that themselves where needed. Schools and parents teach responses to bullying to very young children now, why shouldn't those teachings be generic enough to not care about whether someone is online or not?

Because the kid being bullied won't care, that's for sure. He/She isn't going to care whether abusiveness from school colleagues is presented on myspace or in the form of a fight behind the bikeshed after school, it's all the same thing to the recipient, and the same set of skills should be able to deal with it.

Sam Clifford Says:
February 18th, 2009 at 10:40 pm

If you haven't read everything that Lessig has written, do so. His writing about the future of ideas and innovation with respect to the internet and technology is well worth it (and is available under CC of course).

The internet is changing business, for sure, and the DBCDE isn't helping the digital economy one iota by putting up new barriers simply because traditional barriers didn't make the transition to the virtual world.