Let The Pile On Begin

Excellent. It’s looking more and more likely that Stephen Conroy’s idiotic plan to censor Australia’s Internet feed is going to die. An article in The Age today reports that Telstra and Internode are not going to participate in the so-called ‘live trial’ (huzzah! I have Internode DSL), and iiNet is only going to try it out so they can kick sand in Conroy’s face when it fails. Optus isn’t even going to bother doing the full thing, only a scaled back version.

More fun is that the so-called ‘live trial’ isn’t going to involve any customers. Riiight. So, in Conroy’s double-speak land, a ‘live trial’ doesn’t involve anything that is actually alive.

The filter is dead. It just doesn’t know it yet. Senator Ludlum of the Greens is correct when he says that the plan can’t be killed now, because that would be too much of a loss of face for Conroy. It’ll get killed when the trial shows it’s a crappy idea again (surprise!), and they can say they’re killing it for technical reasons. With a straight face.

The problem there is that if they don’t kill it because they’ve been told it’s a fucking stupid idea that 97% of Australian’s hate, it leaves the door open for them to try again in a few years. They’ll say something like “Current technology is unable to provide the level of accuracy required to effectively shield our children from inappropriate content. We will reassess the plan when the available technology improves.” Watch for massive handouts to companies that build filtering software.

I further predict that filtering technology will improve at a precise rate: it will be deemed suitably effective approximately 6 months prior to the next federal election.

If you haven’t already, ring your pollie and tell them you won’t vote for them if they support this plan. Now, or the next time they try it.

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