Mon, 20 Jul 2009 12:00a.m.
In the blurb to the right of my column I describe the internet as being a place with Wild West morals.
It is a beautiful thing, to exist and work in this frontier world. We have a great opportunity to shape the rules that govern the internet in an egalitarian manner that could have repercussions throughout the world.
If we can govern the internet fairly and without imposing draconian and limiting laws, there will inevitably be some rub-off on countries whose laws restrict human freedom.
But creating and agreeing on these rules is a difficult thing. It is fairly safe to say that the vast majority of the world would agree that child pornography should be resisted absolutely and those that have control of the internet should do everything in their power to stem its flow.
It is primarily for this reason that many western governments, including New Zealand, are considering imposing internet filtering on a national level.
Australia is already embroiled in this controversy with the proposed implementation of Clean Feed, an internet filtering service that was originally touted as a way to eradicate child pornography but has already been used to ban other less objectionable sites.
New Zealand’s software is called Whitebox. It costs $150,000 but will be provided free to ISPs in a couple of months. The scheme will be voluntary, but Telecom, TelstraClear and Vodafone, who represent more than 93 percent of the market, have all expressed an interest.
The system in Australia, which is similar to the one proposed here, relies on a list of banned sites. Traffic is rerouted by ISPs to a government server, which then blocks access to anyone trying to use a banned website.
The list was supposed to be secret but was leaked by the website www.wikileaks.org and was found to contain a dentist, animal carer and a school canteen consultant on it.
A site about euthanasia and adult pornography sites, which were not linked to paedophilia, had also made their way onto the list.
Filtering systems in the UK and Denmark have also been criticised for similar flaws – with some small businesses and Wikipedia pages being inadvertently blocked.
New Zealand’s list promises to be even longer than Australia and the UK’s. According to www.theregister.co.uk, the list, maintained by the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA), will contain 7000 sites that contain child pornography.
This is five times the size of the UK’s list.
Like Australia, the New Zealand government do not want to make the list public. Instead, the DIA will rely on a publicly available code of practice to ensure only child sex websites will end up on the list.
But why not be transparent and open up the list for public scrutiny?
IT Minister Steven Joyce gives the rather disingenuous excuse that releasing the list would encourage people to visit the sites. Unless he is talking internationally, his comments make no sense as this would be a list of “banned” sites – people wouldn’t be able to visit them: this is the point of his policy.
The debate as to which material we find objectionable is a national one, and should not be solely the decision of the Government.
If the list is published, the risk of heavy-handed government banning legal sites with heterosexual and gay pornography is diminished and the mix-ups that have occurred with legitimate small businesses in other countries can be avoided.
Any increase in traffic to sites with child pornography should be negligible. In fact, I would argue that those people who are desperate to see such material will quickly find ways of getting round such a filter.
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