Stop Doing Stupid Things To Our Internet

It has recently been announced on various sources that a petition of 20,000 people has been given to the Australian Labor Party asking them to force Internet Service Providers to create "clean feeds" to families.



While it seems that it is "voluntary" for end-users to participate, this idea is not as cool as it first sounds. For this technology to work, it has to be done at the ISP's side using a form of proxy server with a content filter added. Putting one of these in could potentially do the following to the users that subscribe to these clean feed services:



* Increase Internet prices. The amount of hardware, software, and time required to put such a system in place can be excessive. Most ISPs would have to purchase additional hardware and Government-endorsed software to provide these services, and dedicate staff to build and maintain these systems. The end result? The cost of this gets passed back to the consumer. Considering the already high price of Internet services in Australia, increasing the prices further will not do much to increase Internet-adoption, particularly Broadband-adoption, in Australia.



* Slow the Internet down. Even though we have fairly high-end hardware available, if the ISP were large, then the demand placed on these servers could potentially slow down many Internet services, annoying many customers. These customers would then more than likely remove themselves from such a scheme, making the whole idea fall apart extremely quickly.



* Many services will not work. While some services, such as web browsing and FTP, can be placed through such a proxy system, many others, such as Skype and some Instant Messengers, can't be easily run through such a system. (Note that this is only a small example of what will and won't work!) This would mean that many services either would not be filtered (thereby reducing the effectiveness of such a system) or these services would simply not be available to people who subscribe to these services. Imagine how end users will feel when they get told that the VOIP system they pay a monthly charge for cannot be used to talk to Grandma cheaply in the United States because it cannot be used with such a system?



* Collateral Damage. No porn-blocker program is 100\% effective. They will all at some time let through sites that show porn, and block sites that don't show porn. This is known as Collateral Damage, and is not very widely known about. This Collateral Damage occurs because the filtering technology used to create these porn-blocker programs is quite restricted in how it works, based on the limitations of computer technology. They either use keyword filters, which can block sites that are actually quite legitimate (ie. they may block a site about "weed control on farms" when trying to filter out information on "making weed the drug"), or they use site-based filters, which require armies of individuals searching for pornographic sites and will only ever find a very small percentage of them. That's just not feasible.



* Privacy and Security breaches. Once you start introducing these systems, you potentially open up a new can of worms in regards to security and privacy of individuals. These systems could easily be used to store information such as users' names, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers, and other such information. While most ISPs in Australia are ethical in this regard, and most won't break privacy and security laws due to legal reasons, there is still room for this to occur. And even if it doesn't, there's still room for an accusation made against an ISP, causing costly and damaging legal action that in a worst-case scenario could put an ISP out of business.



Frankly, I could go on for ages listing the problems with such a system. However, I think that the points I've highlighted show that the idea has not been very well thought out.



Therefore, this online petition is a call for the Australian Labor Party to act rationally in this case, and implement a system that works. And the way it's going to work? Don't get the ISP involved. Do it at the end-user level. Educate users on how to surf the Internet without "accidentally" downloading porn. Educate users on the types of systems that are available that will stop them from viewing porn. Encourage parents to not use the Internet as a virtual babysitter, instead be involved in your child's life and take interest in what the child is accessing while on the Internet.



With current technology, and with the technology that will bcome available in the foreseeable future, this is the only way that these sorts of "clean feeds" can effectively operate. Anything else is, as mentioned above, just unfeasible.