Conroy is an international embarassment.

clownconroyConroy and of course the Labour party.

Colin Jacobs, Vice president of Electronic Frontiers Australia writes in Crikey:

The rest of the world has been smirking at Stephen Conroy’s ill-conceived plan to censor Australia’s Internet for a while now, but a new study published by Brooklyn Law School entitled “Filtering in Oz: Australia’s Foray Into Internet Censorship” is a serious embarrassment.

An abstract of the paper can be found here

The paper argues:

Australia represents a shift by Western democracies towards legitimating Internet filtering and away from robust consideration of the alternatives available to combat undesirable information.

And what have we heard from the government about the trials that were supposed to start over christmas?
….
….
….

I can’t help but wondering if some other Western democracies are hanging back waiting to see if Australia’s little experiement works.  Of course it technically won’t work or won’t actually do what Conroy claims it will do – protect us rom childp_rn, but rather,  significantly disrupt channels of clear communication, enabling government or undisclosed parties to shape political discussion and public opinion.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Related posts:

  1. Senator Conroy is watching you Click through to my zazzle page where I have some...
  2. Filtering Senator Conroy Last month I commented on Senator Conroy’s plans to...
  3. I am an extremist I often wonder if Labour realises that the election...

This website uses IntenseDebate comments, but they are not currently loaded because either your browser doesn't support JavaScript, or they didn't load fast enough.

Comments

  1. Enshoku says:

    "I can’t help but wondering if some other Western democracies are hanging back waiting to see if Australia’s little experiement works."

    No, most of the civilized societies of the world see both Australia and japan as their own little mini planets who won't bother us if we don't bother them. And to respond to the title of this post:




    …yes.

  2. Enshoku says:

    "I cant help but wondering if some other Western democracies are hanging back waiting to see if Australias little experiement works."

  3. I am not entirely convinced – conroy is quite fond of pointing to othe countries using filtering(albeit voluntary). If ther worst happened and the filter was brought in I can imagine other western governents pointing to Australia and using us as an example

    • Enshoku says:

      If it passes the aussies will be used as an example by morons like conroy for intarwebz censorship, that it doubtless. Every country is an example of something, because every country has its own policies.

  4. OzAtheist says:

    interesting to see an international law school take up the challenge, Conroy is going to look really stupid if he continues with this idiocy

Speak Your Mind