It’s NOT the Law YET! Why should we or the ISP’s roll over like good little sheep to appease the Neo Christian Right of the Labor Party that are driving this debate.

LOL – routing network self heals, following and tracking the entire internet in Australia is not possible. It works for a simple model not on mass.

Thats right, they can’t force them to take it down but they can (in theory) block it at the ISP level. Back to the book analogy, you can’t ban a New York writer writing a book on How to kill yourself (i.e. the Site) but if it is Banned in Australia, you can stop it at customs (i.e. ISP). Can you get around that? Yeah, probably but it doesn’t mean we should just throw the doors open.

Why should ISP’s be the gatekeepers? Good question. Why should Newsagence be the Gatekeepers of 18+ magazines? Why should the Pubs/Bottle Shops be the Gatekeepers of Alcohol sales. Because thats the law and they want to be in that business. If the internet filter becomes law, it will be there choice if they want to continue to be in business or just shut up shop.

Yeah, but if you do a trace route (tracert), I am almost willing to bet you could see that there is a local point of presence some where in the system. Computers are pretty smart things, I am sure the ISPs can work it out if there existence depended on it.

That brings up another point why should the ISP be the gatekeeper.

ISPs are not State based anymore. I use a mobile ISP that feeds IP addresses from Sydney, but I’m in Perth. Boundaries on the web are meaningless and the ideas of the 1990′s.

Sorry, I am lost with the borders example still. Are we still talking off-line banning as it would be for a book today? Or are you talking about online webpages now?

If its the latter, it wouldn’t matter where they were or where they would be hosted (other then if the site was Australain Based they might be asked to remove the content as the Government/Law enforcement has some control over them) as the blocking is done at the ISP level.

HTH

Borders can display and preview the illegal book, the little guy can’t. Banning internet trailers for movies banned here. That’s another hard one.

Q2) Borders can’t import illegal books the same as everyone else. I am not sure your point on this?

Say the online bookstore is Borders, it doesn’t get banned, but a local bookseller (hosting overseas) does. Is that fair. No. Can they Appeal. It seems not as it is hosted overseas.

The book store is an intesesting question. In current non-internet world, if the book store had to import the book and it was banned from being imported the answer would be yes, it would be banned (Philip whats-his-face has had his book/s banned and stopped from being imported). You bring this to the porposed filtering system and you would say if the site is over seas you can’t ban it from overseas people but you can (in theory at least) say that you want it banned here.

Yes, there are a many problems with banning (the reason I will be one of the first to opt-out of the optional filter when/if it comes in) but if they believe it is the right thing then they have to investigate it as they or be hypercrits.

Frankly the use of the old style media rating is the wrong way to go. For example do you ban a bookshop for selling a video that is banned in this country. Note you can’t ban a page on a site (technically very difficult).

Interesting, Why do we NEED the govt to police the Web, can’t we be trusted. Aren’t we adult enough. Or does Nanny have to look after us.

Yes there is something romantic about the Wild West Web, but if the government aren’t will to police it or try and police it (even if they fail) then they should remove ratings from all forms of media.

JMTC