Yet Another Byte

This is fairly depressing… why oh why can’t we just have some investigation without pre-concieved ideas, and some discussion without crazy ‘you-must-be-for-child-porn-if-you’re-not-for-the-filter” talk?

… So this is a fairly lengthy list of reasons why it can’t work, and we’ve only just scratched the surface. There are many more issues and many more workarounds available to both users and content providers. (And that is without even exploring non-technical issues such as censorship and freedom of speech). Even Enex Labs’ commissioned report on this issue to the government listed 37 different methods by which such a filter could be bypassed.

Industry experts (such as SAGE-AU members) are all saying the same thing: that legislating to force ISPs to perform such filtering is a costly exercise in futility. Gizmodo – Why The Filter Won’t Work, A Technical Story

A comment on the story by T

it’s telling that input from Sys Admins working in education hasn’t been sought.

We’ve been fighting this battle for decades now. We were on the front lines well before this stupid plan was a twinkle in the eye of whoever is ultimately responsible for it.

Why, then, were the people who’s life and career is all about blocking and filtering technologies and and child safety not accessed as a resource?

Simple answer is; because we’d all say the same thing “It doesn’t work. We’ve tried it. It doesn’t work.” Which isn’t an answer that fits with the agenda driving this crap.