Josh Mehlman

Yesterday I interviewed Peter Black, the Queensland University of Technology law lecturer who was recently appointed to manage Electronic Frontiers Australia’s anti-internet-filtering campaign. He’s under no illusions he has taken on a tough challenge.

“There’s no doubt it’ll be quite hard to get the government to change their mind. There’s been a lot invested by Senator Conroy and the Rudd Government in this policy.”

He says the filter opponents have a range of options. His ideal would be to get rid of the filter entirely, either by convincing the Government to drop it or by getting enough opposition from the Greens and Liberal parties to ensure the legislation won’t pass the Senate. Until after the next election, perhaps.

The emerging middle option is to implement some sort of filter but to make it voluntary. You certainly could read Labor’s pre-election policy document as saying the filter should be something ISPs could offer customers, not force on them.

But there’s voluntary and there’s voluntary. It could be a voluntary opt-in filter, which people have to ask for. Or it could be a sort-of-voluntary opt-out filter, which is applied by default unless the customer asks not to have it.

Of course, there are problems with an opt-out filter, particularly with the constant insinuations from Senator Conroy and the Australian Christian Lobby that anyone who opposes the filter is a fan of child pornography.

As Labor Senator Kate Lundy put it on Crikey, people may be concerned that opting out of the filter could “lead to interest by the authorities, even though individuals may simply want to ensure they are not having legitimate content filtered”.

Nonetheless, Lundy now says she prefers an opt-out filter. Over the past few weeks she has shifted from warily supporting the filter to being uncomfortable with it to lobbying within the Government against it. She now says an opt-out filter “respects people can make an informed choice” while fulfilling Labor’s election commitments (to the Christian lobby).

One still has to wonder how many people would be willing to email their ISP asking, ‘Can has kiddie pr0n pls, kthxbai!’

Just about everyone I know thinks the government’s plan to legislate mandatory internet filtering is a really bad idea.

This could lead me to believe the majority of Australians are as passionate about internet censorship as me and my friends. But then I remember that most of my friends are university educated, left-leaning types who work in journalism or the IT industry.

This same selection bias is at work in the online community, particularly on Twitter. The sort of people who use Twitter, who blog, who read the IT media are precisely the sort of people who would oppose internet censorship.

This has led many people to believe if they make enough noise about it online, the Government will drop the filter. Unfortunately, this greatly overestimates the importance and influence of Twitter and social media generally when it comes to real-world politics.

Even an infinite number of angry posts on Twitter, sarcastic blog posts and articles in the IT press would still have no effect on Government policy. Politicians only care about who can deliver them blocs of votes in important electorates.

Onine fame is fleeting, but mine was the top article on ABC's The Drum for a little while

As I argue on ABC’s The Drum blog, so far the Christian lobby – which is for the filter – is doing this a lot better than the disparate anti-filter coalition.

This is not to say the anti-censorship campaign is doomed. However, it needs to focus less on preaching to the choir and more on real-life, professional political lobbying.

It’s a big ask, particularly because many of the anti-censorship groups have little experience in direct political action. But it must be done if we are to convince the Government of the immense folly and dire (supposedly) unintended consequences of its current plans.

The federal government’s internet censorship announcement is only three days old but already dissent is emerging from some unexpected places. Perhaps also not emerging from some expected ones. I’ve been following the story for ZDNet.

New South Wales upper-house member Penny Sharpe railed against the filter in her blog. Yes, she is from the Labor party, but the NSW and federal arms aren’t exactly best buddies right now.

Three younger Liberal parliamentarians – MPs Alex Hawke and Jamie Briggs and Senator Simon Birmingham – have also come out against the filter, although this is mainly confirming their previous positions. Most interestingly, Hawke says he has advised the Christian lobby against the filter proposal, even though he is himself a Christian.

As I mentioned the other day, Senator Kate Lundy has been painfully fence sitting. Despite her well known and vociferous opposition to internet filtering while she was in opposition, Lundy wouldn’t say much at all when I spoke to her. Subsequently she posted a lengthy piece on her blog, the gist of which was that she opposed filtering but it was Labor policy before the election, we voted for them and she can’t speak against party policy.

Although there is still an open question about whether Labor’s pre-election policy made it clear the filter would be mandatory – the language was pretty fluffy.

While these small brushstrokes begin to paint of picture of widespread opposition to the filter, no one seems to have an overall idea of how the anti-censorship movement might achieve its goals. Stay tuned…

Whose fault is it that the Australian government is getting set to deliver the Western world’s most oppressive internet censorship regime? Ours, as it happens, for failing to have a bill of rights protecting free speech. So Professor George Williams told me in this article for ZDNet.

“Australia does not have a Bill of Rights which protects free speech at a federal level. We don’t have the protections that they have in every other democratic country.That means Australia might be subject to far more stringent regulations on the internet than would be possible in other democratic countries.”

The academic community is singing from the same hymn sheet on this idea, judging by a report released today from media studies profs Catharine Lumby, Lelia Green and John Hartley. “The proposal would set Australia apart from other Western liberal democracies that have opted for a transparent, voluntary filtering regime,” they said.

They analysed the proposed filtering regime and found it could censor a whole lot more than just kiddie porn, including perfectly legal material.

“The ACMA is blacklisting a significant number of sites that are not illegal content but are considered offensive. While this may be considered acceptable where filtering is opt-in by an end user (or parent for family computers), under a mandatory filtering regime this would result in capturing material that is clearly legal but restricted in availability (off the internet) through classification restrictions.”

Unlike the Liberal Party’s shambolic approach to party unity on the emissions trading scheme, Labor polticos are so far toeing the party line on censorship. Senator Kate Lundy wasn’t saying much today, despite her strong record of criticising internet censorship proposals in the past. Looks like Peter Garrett isn’t the only one to have abandoned his principles once in power.