Much has been said about the Australian Government’s proposed Net Filter legislation.

Outside of the Government, most of what has been said  is bad; except for this little gem by The Australian, which reports that  the new legislation is unlikely to be passed before the Federal election.

The Government was aiming to introduce draft legislation at the last sitting of parliament. This opportunity has been and gone.

Now, The Australian has reported that a spokeswoman for Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said that  the legislation would not be introduced in the May or June sittings of parliament.

Parliament will not then sit until the last week of August, and the next Federal election must be held before April 2011.

Today, Electronic Frontiers Australia (a vocal opponent of the Net Filter) reported that Senator Sue Boyce had called the proposed legislation ‘a farce’:

The Rudd Government’s hare-brained proposal to censor the internet was descending into complete farce with the Prime Minister admitting he didn’t have a clue what was going on, Liberal Senator Sue Boyce, said today.

“Yesterday, Mr Rudd at a media conference, admitted that he had ‘no advice’ about whether or not the legislation would be introduced before the election and fobbed the matter off to Communications Minister Stephen Conroy,” Senator Boyce said.

“This is despite the fact that Minister Conroy’s spokeswoman was quoted in the media yesterday morning (Thursday) as saying the legislation would be delayed at least until after the June sitting of Parliament,” she said.

Labor promised before the last election that it would force ISPs to block illegal content.  Now, with Labor’s time and resources focussed on the shelving of its Emissions Trading Scheme; extinguishing burning insulation batts; wrangling with the states over health reform and the GST; with any luck the Net Filter legislation will take a back seat, and quietly be abandoned under the guise of a Friday 4:55 P.M. media release like this:

The Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy Senator Stephen Conroy today announced he would introduce amendments to enhance protection for all Australians that use the internet.

After much consultation with industry groups and key stakeholders, the Australian Government is excited to announce the next stage of the implementation of its Cyber-Safety Policy.

The Government has determined that the function of ISP-level filtering, while efficient, effective and potentially of great benefit to all Australians, can be even better provided by the introduction of voluntary ISP-based filtering systems and Government-subsidised filter software for home users.

The Government has had constructive discussions with the Greens on this issue and now calls on the Opposition to support this ground-breaking strategy.

To facilitate the quick passage of the legislative amendments, and in the best interests of all Australians, the Government will not proceed with the proposal to implement a mandatory ISP-based Net Filter.

“A range of views were expressed in the public submissions, and I would like to thank everyone who contributed their comments and valuable ideas to the consultation process,” Senator Conroy said.

Senator Conroy said that the discussion period had been most valuable and that the Australian Government was now in a much better position to go forward with informed, decisive action to protect Australians from on-line dangers.

“Such a system will accommodate growth trajectories for internet usage, leverage investment in existing infrastructure and protect  family values through excellence in industry best practice,” Senator Conroy said.

“Control techniques will ensure continuous improvement in these systems and guarantee, at the end of the day, that a holistic approach to internet safety, including proper funding of law enforcement and availability of programmes for family education, is ultimately maintained.”

“This is a can-do government,” said Senator Conroy.

Expect sometime like this, anyway. I tried to think of more weasel words but my head was about to explode.

Feel free to copy and paste though, Senator Conroy, if it helps at all.

dbcde · isp filtering · legislation · net filter · no clean feed · Open Internet · Senator Conroy

Woooaah … truckloads.

There are 1001 blog-worthy things to blog in my blog about.

Sadly, time (lusty and blithe) is at his apogee.

In brief, I have:

• Had a shave, since the last blog post;
• Upgraded The Surgery WordPress blog from 2.8.3 to 2.9;
• Moved WordPress blog from Fedora 9 machine with crappy dynamic IP address (it was killing me) to shiny Fedora 11 machine with static IP address;
• Marveled at my ability to upgrade WordPress, SQL databases and move them across Linux machines, AND make grown-up changes to DNS zone files – am surely a guru of such things now and legend in my own lunchbox;
• Undertaken 2 of 8 Tech Talk Radio Summer Series productions, time-consuming but rewarding;
• Upgraded the HTC Dream / Google phone to the next Android operating system, very successful;
• Teetered on the brink of e-mail bankruptcy;
• Ordered a new PC for Christmas;
• Ventured inside an Apple Store for the very first time, and escaped by making only a minor purchase (a new iPod Touch); and
• Just today, assisted Mrs Dr Ron in restoring her iTunes library, after she deleted all the music files from her PC’s hard disk  - successfully achieved restoration by using a third-party app called iRip which we’ve spoken about on Tech Talk in the past (thanks JD, saviour of Dr Ron’s marriage).

I have also Tweeted mercilessly about our well-intentioned (yet incompetent, foolish and mis-informed) Senator for Communications and the Digital Economy, Stephen Conroy.  In case you hadn’t caught up with the news (which the good Senator saved until after the last live episode of Tech Talk for 2009), Australia will be ranked highly with the United Arab Emirates, Iran and China in its foolish deployment of an ISP-based Net Filter.

Adam Turner has had a lot to say about this, and made a clever analogy with a different type of infrastructure.  His blog posts here and here in The Age last week should be mandatory reading.

I’ll blog in more detail about these and other things soon.

I hope you have a great Chrissy and a safe and prosperous New Year.

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