Finally, progress (of sorts) on the Rudd government’s Internet “filtering” trials, which were meant to have started before Christmas. Well, finished before Christmas, but let’s not belabour the point. Last week Senator Stephen Conroy announced the first batch of six ISPs trialling the filters: Primus Telecommunications (iPrimus), Tech 2U, Webshield, OMNIconnect, Highway 1 and Netforce.
Who, you ask?
Apart from maybe iPrimus, most people won’t know these ISPs. But most people don’t realise that at last count (December 2007) there were 421 ISPs in Australia. Fewer than 30 have more than 10,000 customers. Telstra/BigPond is the biggest with a ball-park 3 million customers, but they’re not taking part. Next is Optus with 1 million, then iiNet with perhaps 300,000, then 418 others scooping up the remaining millions. A very Long Tail indeed.
Some tiny ISPs are “virtual” — someone with an office selling a re-badged service from a bigger player. But others are classic small businesses, owned and run by an old-school network engineer or two, someone to staff the support line and a bookkeeper with maybe one or two thousand customers.
With Conroy saying that “consultations continue with a number of other ISPs that have applied to take part” — apparently some of them want more money — perhaps we shouldn’t read too much into this choice. Speculation that iiNet was excluded because they’ve spoken out against mandatory filtering is unjustified. Probably.
“We’re reasonably confident that they want us to be a part of it… We just need to sort out each other’s expectations,” iiNet’s chief technology officer Greg Bader told NEWS.com.au.
It’s reasonable to choose some of the many smaller players. But it does seem odd to have none of the big three involved, at least so far.
There’s other questions to ask, too…
Why is there further mission creep?
Labor’s pre-election policy said: “A Rudd Labor Government will require ISPs to offer a ‘clean feed’ internet service to all homes, schools and public internet points accessible by children, such as public libraries.” Apart from pointing out again that “offer” isn’t the same as “require everyone to use”, the policy doesn’t mention business premises. Yet three of the ISPs (Highway 1, OMNIconnect and Netforce) are business-only ISPs.
As network engineer Mark Newton says, “If the Government is scope-creeping its plan to include business, I think it has some explaining to do.”
Crikey asked Senator Conroy’s office to confirm that the policy has changed, but all we got was a copy-and-paste explanation of the trials’ purpose.
What is Webshield trialling, exactly?
Webshield already offers “safe filtered internet access”. That’s their “unique selling proposition”, as marketers would say. They and 12 other ISPs already offer content-filtered Internet access as part of the Internet Industry Association’s “Family Friendly ISP” program.
Of course, Senator Conroy will claim all this is only about filtering the ACMA blacklist, and that’s what they’re testing. If he ever actually answers any questions, that is. But as Irene Graham has thoroughly documented, Senator Conroy only pulled back to the ACMA-blacklist-only line when his “you’re a p-dophile” retorts were ignored.
This first batch of ISPs will start testing “once filtering equipment has been obtained and installed” and run for at least six weeks. iPrimus, who seem keen to get moving, say they expect to start filtering in April or early May.
When will we hear about the next batch of ISPs? Will Optus and iiNet be taking part? Senator Conroy’s office, as usual, won’t say.
Supposedly in a democracy, parliamentarians are accountable to the electorate. Anyone familiar with the rise of the Third Reich would understand that democratic processes were subverted by stealth. The Rudd government needs to be feared because it will become totalitarian if idiots like Conroy are allowed to operate without checks and balances.
In opposition Labor promised to improve FOI but in practice they are doing the opposite. Kevin Rudd is becoming master of wedge politics following in the shoes of John Howard. Similarly pre-election promises are being broken although not at the same rate of the master John Howard. Give him time!
You people at Crikey are off your tits. (apologies to female staffers)
Just like a Mandelbrot formula Rudd’s overall policy is identical to his ISP Filter policy.
All hail the new Emperor, Rudd the Infinite.
Much much more important: what are the success criteria for the trial? I want to know how “success” is defined, otherwise we’ll end up with much the same result as the last trial, touted as a success despite the selected filtering products being found either woefully inaccurate or incredibly slow.
This is about the State attempting to gain further control by telling us their actions are only designed to protect us or our children (that usually is a winner in the mind manipulation business). Remember one thing. This filter can block Crikey just as readily as anything else. Independent comment and free thought may not be welcolmed in another time when the people are begging their government to save them from some scary monster thing perish the thought..Already the British Airport Authority is apparently blocking a certain anti-Big brother webiste at Heathrow; or was last time I checked. As I said once before, the baddies will bypass the system anyway leaving the rest of us thnking we’d probably be better off in China..
This is absolutely horrendous. Thanks Stilg…. for trying to help us to understand the “Big Brother” thing that Rudd’s mob are trying to inflict on us, but far far more relevant is the question “what does all this mean?” and “what will be the outcome?”
Does anyone know??