The trial, to be launched in Tasmania this July and championed by Tasmanian Liberal Senator Guy Barnett, was expected to include the entire state's internet population. However, hopes of it reaching more than half of that population seem to have been dashed.

The trial is designed to test whether it is viable for ISPs to filter violent and pornographic internet content before it reaches the home PC. It will give parents and guardians involved in the trial the option to turn the filter system on or off.

Telstra and Optus said that Australia's current internet censorship regime was satisfactory and that they would not participate in the trial.

Telstra, Australia's largest internet provider said PC-based filtering was the most effective form of internet-access control.

"We've no intention of participating in a trial by a vendor hoping for large-scale uptake of their product," Telstra spokesman Warwick Ponder said.

A spokeswoman for Optus said the carrier was content with the federal Government's existing internet censorship regime.

"Our position is aligned with that of the Internet Industry Association, that the existing regime is already capable of the same outcomes (as the trial)."

Senator Barnett said he was disappointed with the telcos' response. "I'll be asking Telstra and Optus to reconsider their decisions, bearing in mind 80 per cent of ISPs in the US provide filtering for free," he said.

He said without the giant telcos the trial would reach only 50 per cent of Tasmanians.

Senator Barnett said while the Government would like the trial to cover a greater cross-section of Tasmanians, it already had enough to go ahead.

The trial is being sponsored by three technology internet filtering specialists: Internet Sheriff Technologies, US-based RuleSpace and Hewlett-Packard, which has agreed to provide servers for the trial for free.

Internet Sheriff insisted that its negotiations with the two telcos had made progress.

"When it comes to actually make the decisions (Telstra and Optus) might need to do something different and all I can say, again, is that we're working with upper level managers in each company," Internet Sheriff sales director Glen Phillips said.

"We believe the only effective way of filtering internet content is at the user's PC, and we provide heavily discounted internet filtering software for purchase by our members," Mr Ponder said.

But Senator Barnett said the Tasmanian trial was designed to test those assumptions.

Mr Phillips said the content trial was less focused on capturing local customers than it was about showcasing the filtering technology to countries with more onerous censorship laws and repressive controls over information in the Asia-Pacific area. "My market is really not Australia to tell you the truth," Mr Phillips said.

He was emphatic that Chinese internet services were "definitely" among his list of potential buyers for the technology.

Senator Barnett said he was not concerned that Tasmania could be used to showcase technology that could be applied in less democratic countries.

"There's no intention of likening Australia or any part of Australia to the censorship regimes in China or other like regimes. Adults will have access to all and any manner of content on the internet with a push of a button," he said.

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Australians Debate ISP Porn Filters

The Australian, 3/27/06 - The federal Government is planning to bolster NetAlert, its online safety agency, and give the media regulator greater powers as pressure builds from Labor and its own backbench to curb online pornography.

Communications and IT Minister Helen Coonan says, however, that calls from Labor and Coalition colleagues to force internet service providers to filter porn sites are misguided.
At its best, mandatory filtering by internet service providers was an expensive and ineffective way to limit children's access to online pornography, Senator Coonan told The Australian.

At its worst, mandatory ISP filtering was ineffective and seriously degraded the internet's performance, she said.

The issue was not the cost involved in building filters into ISPs' internet servers, but that the present system of offering internet users filtering software at cost price or less is more effective.

"I don't believe this is about money," Senator Coonan said. "You can do something if the issue is money.

"If we thought installing ISP filtering would solve the problem, I don't think money would be an issue.

"The issue is that it's demonstrably not effective."

A government review of mandatory ISP filtering in 2004 found that such a scheme would cost $45 million to set up, with annual ongoing maintenance costs of $33 million annually.

Opposition IT spokesman Stephen Conroy said Government research showed the blacklist ISP filtering system that Labor had proposed would have had minimal impact on network performance.

"In 2004, the Government received independent advice that ISP filtering to remove blacklisted sites would take just 10 milliseconds and that this delay is generally not noticeable to the user," Senator Conroy said.

"The Government should stop making excuses and do all in its power to prevent children from being exposed to prohibited internet content."

Senator Coonan yesterday told the Senate that the Government would continue to investigate the technology used in ISP filtering.

However, until the system was found to be effective and that it could be installed without degrading internet speed for all users, the Government would retain its policy of encouraging families to use PC-based filter systems, she said.

Labor leader Kim Beazley last week put internet pornography back on the agenda saying Labor, if elected, would force ISP's to offer a "clean feed" internet service to Australian families.

The clean-feed plan pioneered in Britain by BT was based on a simple blacklist of sites and could be set up without seriously slowing the net, Mr Beazley said.

Labor acknowledged that a clean-feed service was not a complete solution to the internet pornography, but said it was a useful starting point in the fight to limit children's exposure to offensive online content.

Mr Beazley has called for NetAlert to be given resources for a more extensive educational campaign for internet safety directed at children and parents.

Pressure from the Coalition backbench is more likely to result in action.

A group of 62 coalition members and senators, led by Tasmanian Liberal Senator Guy Barnett, wrote to Prime Minister John Howard in December demanding ISP filtering.

"It is too easy for children to access all manner of material on the internet, and I believe that the system should default automatically in favour of protecting our children before we start considering the rights of adults," Senator Barnett said.

The Coalition backbench has been agitating for action behind the scenes, but demands for action are now growing louder.

On the Senate cross benches, Family First's Steve Fielding has become downright angry.

Action against net porn had been delayed for too long, he said.

Appeals to Helen Coonan's office for action had "fallen on deaf ears", he said.

Family First had sought technical advice on "how a ban on internet pornography could work" and had been told ISP filtering was workable.

"Family First raised the issue with with the prime minister's office many times and is disappointed that we are still waiting for the Government to act," Senator Fielding said.

The Government was pursuing technology to control the net, Senator Coonan said.

Three reviews had been done on ISP filtering. The first was in 1999 by the CSIRO, the second as a department Online Content Scheme Review in 2003-04, and the final report is being prepared of a third review - including a trial of ISP filtering - which has been done in Launceston by NetAlert and Telstra.

The latest study found that ISP filters continued to create network performance problems, Senator Coonan said.

The best-performing filters slowed network performance by 18 per cent, while the worst-performing filters degraded the network by 78 per cent.

"They found that even the best-performing filter missed about a quarter of the content on a small prepared list of sites."

That level of degradation was not workable, but the Government had not ruled out using the technology as it improved in future, Senator Coonan said.

"We would never, and have never, ruled out doing anything that can be demonstrably proven to protect children and to protect families," Senator Coonan said.

"We have a very sound history of doing whatever we possibly can that works to help kids and their families.

"We are continuing to look into it," she said.

PC-based filtering offered parents greater flexibility than the one-size-fits-all approach of ISP filtering, she said.

Meanwhile, the Government was developing an action plan for net pornography that was likely to include a funding boost for NetAlert. It was likely to be announced in the May Budget.

"We can certainly bolster NetAlert and do more to assist parents with awareness of filters and what they can do, and with how to install them," Senator Coonan said.

"There may be a case to turn it into more of a regulatory function and to involve the regulator, the Australian Media and Communications Authority, more. That will be a part of an action plan."

Representative of internet service providers oppose mandatory filtering as being ineffective and too costly.

Internet Industry Association chief executive Peter Coroneos says the evidence from government investigations points to PC-based filtering as the best way to protect children.

"Mandatory ISP filtering probably sounds like a good idea in theory, but it adds very little to the current scheme, which exceeds the protections the clean-feed system offers in Britain," Mr Coroneos said.

"Any cost for any scheme would invariably be passed on to internet users.

"One would question why you would do ISP filtering when families are able to secure protection that far exceeds the clean-feed approach," he said.

See ...
Australians Get Free Internet Porn Filters.

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