Dear Kevin Rudd

Dear Kevin Rudd,

Hows things? Good I hope. From all reports you seem to be pretty busy since being elected. Understandable I guess. Things to do, people to meet, decisions to make.

I don’t mind admitting that I helped vote you in. I mean, really, the choices were you or John Howard, and really, if you hadn’t won I probably would have left the country.

I don’t even blame you for the current financial crisis. Although, just keep an eye out at the next election, that one is going to come back and bite you on the ass — the Liberals are going to be going on about how the told us so, even though they would have been in the same situation had they been in power. Hope your PR team is ready for that one.

But, this isn’t just a letter (blog post, whatever) to see how you are going, there is one huge idiotic thing you guys are planning to implement. And you know, I’ve been watching this all play out thinking ‘Surely, at any moment, he’s going to say it wont work and pull out of it’. But you haven’t. And it worries me that you’re taking the idea seriously.

ISP Filtering.

I mean, sure. Great idea in theory. Protect all the kiddies eyes from porn and violence and the world will be a better place. I didn’t mind so much when there was talk of an opt-out. That gives us choices, and freedom to do what we like. And even the freedom of speech argument has been stupidly turned around as if to say I’m now someone that wants to look at kiddie porn:

“Labor makes no apologies to those that argue that any regulation of the internet is like going down the Chinese road,” [Senator Conroy] said.
“If people equate freedom of speech with watching child pornography, then the Rudd-Labor Government is going to disagree.”

C’mon guys. Now you’re just being silly. Besides, whether you like it or not, child pornography didn’t start with the internet, and you blocking it certainly isn’t going to rid this country of it. If anything, it’ll just make paedophiles harder to track down.

You guys also keep implying that UK, Canada and a bunch of other countries have ISP-level filtering, and that it works over there. But, um, guys? It’s voluntary over there. And in the UK at least, the sole purpose is for preventing accidental access to a small list of identified bad sites. Not even close to what you’re trying to implement here.

Not even the ISPs are on your side:

“The idea that ISPs could somehow or other filter the Internet is one, technically impossible and two, a bad idea anyway,” he says. “If you want to filter the bad guys out of the ‘net, quite apart from the fact that technically you can’t do it, you would need to pass a lot of legislation, a huge packet of legislation, to make that properly carried out, to make it stand up.”

“Various successive governments have seized upon ISPs as being a convenient choke point or gatekeeper point on the ‘net. They would love for ISPs to become judge, jury, policeman, posse, hangman, the whole deal. And I think it’s a very inappropriate thing to do.”

- Justin Milne, group Managing Director for Telstra Bigpond.

My favourite quote is this one:

Michael Malone, managing director iiNet, said he would sign up to be involved in the “ridiculous” trials, which are scheduled to commence by December 24 this year.

Optus and Telstra both said they were reviewing the Government’s documentation and would then decide whether to take part.

But Malone’s main purpose was to provide the Government with “hard numbers” demonstrating “how stupid it is” - specifically that the filtering system would not work, would be patently simple to bypass, would not filter peer-to-peer traffic and would significantly degrade network speeds.

“They’re not listening to the experts, they’re not listening to the industry, they’re not listening to consumers, so perhaps some hard numbers will actually help,” he said.

“Every time a kid manages to get through this filter, we’ll be publicising it and every time it blocks legitimate content, we’ll be publicising it.”

Malone concluded: “This is the worst Communications Minister we’ve had in the 15 years since the [internet] industry has existed.”

(The Age).

I could go on for a bit, but was really just after a favour.

Could you spare a moment and grab the plans from your Communications Minister, have a read, then sit down and really think about this? I’m sure you’ll come to the same conclusion that the rest of Australia has. And just remember, it’s okay to change your mind. Sure, the opposition will give you shit about it, but the rest of Australia will thank you. And you’ll gain more street cred with the kids.

Love and kisses,

Liz.

PS For you, and everyone else, there’s a really informative site here if you’d like to have a read.

Tags: Australia, Bigpond, Filtering, idea, iiNet, ISP, isp filtering, ISP Level Filtering, Justin Milne, Kevin Rudd, Kevin Rudd PM, Level, Michael Malone, Senator Conroy, Stephen Conroy, stupid, Telstra, what where they thinking

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