Internet filter initiator, Stephen Conroy, appears on Q&A tonight.
If the mandatory Australian internet filter is of concern to you, you may want to view tonight’s broadcast of ABC’s Q&A. The Australian minister for communications, Senator Stephen Conroy, will be attending as a guest panellist, alongside the controversial Andrew Bolt and Louise Adler.
Questions are still being accepted for the night, so be sure to take advantage of this rare opportunity to directly voice your concerns with the one responsible for trying to make moral police out of our internet providers. It’ll have to stand out, however, because as reported by Somebody Think of the Children, the show has already been inundated with messages. The show’s host, Tony Jones, told listeners of ABC radio this morning that Monday marked the checkpoint of receiving 1,000 letters of protest from viewers for the Senator.
There are many things wrong with implementing such a filter, the most jarring of which is how it’ll be completely ineffectual and only serve to slow down our internet traffic. We’ve previously mentioned the prominent technological issues, including dissenting comments from our nation’s leading ISPs. One of the impassable social issues facing the filter, though, is how it will simply serve to shine a spotlight on the very websites that the powers that be secretly deem as inappropriate. Because of the self-repairing nature of the internet, not only will people be able to view the original site through easily accessible proxy servers and virtual private networks, but multiple other sites will spawn in their place, if only to showcase the blocked content.
When someone tries to suppress online material, more often than not, the very same content receives a sudden boost in popularity. This mirroring reaction is commonly referred to as the Streisand effect and it’s a very real concept. It’ll be interesting to see if the show will bring up this very relevant internet phenomenon as a topic for discussion, because it’s exactly what Conroy is attempting to do. Trying to hide anything on the internet will almost always exclusively backfire, so aside from doing nothing to further his ‘protect the children and also the adults’ cause, it’ll actually have the reverse effect.
The show airs live from Melbourne tonight at 21:30 AEST, however you will also be able to watch a live stream on the Q&A website.
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