Just been doing some more reading on the mandatory Internet filtering being proposed by the Federal government. Seems like the only people in favour are the government and right-wing Christian groups.
One argument being employed by supporters of the scheme is that the government already filters (ie: censors) other media – magazines, music, video games, films, etc; therefore, why should the same censorship not apply to the Internet?
The issue is that the Internet is a fundamentally different medium – it is profoundly different to magazines, movies, etc. Systems that work for “old” media don’t work with a new medium like the Internet.
An analogy if I may:
The main form of transport for most people now-a-days is the car. Actually, I should probably qualify that – for most people “in the Western world”. And there are rules which govern driving – speed limits, traffic lights, etc. These rules are enforced by means of speed cameras, red light cameras, police patrol cars, etc. Now, jump forward 10 years from now and pretend the main form of transport is personal flying devices (AirScooter and SkyCar are just two examples). This would represent a fundamentally different transport “medium” from those which are in use today (cars, motor bikes, trains, buses, walking, etc). Yes, I know that there are already airplanes, but this is completely different. At the moment there are only a few airplanes (relative to the number of people); airplanes only land and take off from airports, and generally only travel through narrow flight corridors (when they are over populated areas). Yet even with the relatively small number of planes in the air, air traffic control is vital to safe air travel. Imagine if there were as many SkyCars as there are regular cars. It would be like a scene from the Jetsons or The Fifth Element. Sky cars whizzing all over the place – in three dimensions. It would require a whole new system of rules to ensure that we didn’t all kill ourselves. And the current methods of enforcing “road” rules would be completely inadequate – the cop who currently hides behind a tree with a speed radar gun has nowhere to hide 10000 feet off the ground.
Each year in Australia, how many movies are released at the cinema? Or how many albums? How many magazines are on sale in a news agent? A few hundred? Even a few thousand? Monitoring and enforcing censorship laws for these media is relatively straight forward. Actual real live people watch new movies and play new video games and listen to new music etc to decide what rating to apply or to determine whether it violates any laws.
How many websites are there? Hundreds of millions. We are talking a difference of several orders of magnitude.
Given the mind boggling number of websites, current censorship (ie: filtering) processes are completely inadequate for the Internet. The only feasible way to filter websites is to use some form of technology that automates the process – there are just too many websites to have humans test every one. On top of which, each website has any number of pages. The number of web “pages” on the world wide web is in the billions. And these are constantly changing. If a new movie is released and reviewed by the censorship board, it only needs to do this once – the movie doesn’t change over time. But websites and web pages change constantly. And herein lies the flaw in the argument – any non-human mechanism is going to fail in (at least) two ways: firstly, it will incorrectly block websites which shouldn’t be blocked; and secondly, it will allow websites which should be blocked.
Suppose a website is blocked today because the filter decides it contains “prohibited content”. Suppose the administrator of that website removes the content. Does the filter now allow people to browse that website? Conversely, suppose a previously OK website is updated with some content that is deemed “prohibited”. (Something similar happened recently in the UK). The implication of this is that EVERY web page needs to be re-scanned EVERY day. And this is clearly not feasible.
So, what’s the answer?
There isn’t a single answer. It’s a multi-faceted answer, but even then it isn’t a complete answer. The fact is that we will never eliminate unwanted websites – there will always be people with extreme views or interests, and this will inevitably translate into extreme websites. It’s part of the human condition. There have always been murderers and rapists, and there probably always will be. But we don’t force everyone to wear GPS locator bracelets to prevent rape and murder. We accept that with freedom comes risk.
Things we can and should do:
- Educate parents about the dangers of the Internet and how to combat them (eg: make sure computers are in a common space, not in a child’s bedroom)
- Spend lots more money on law enforcement to identify and prosecute those involved in child pornography
- Invest in technology that can be implemented at home to help parents protect their children
I’m sure I will have more to say about the proposed mandatory Internet filter in future posts, but that will do for now.
