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The great porn war - Australia battles Internet porn filter

Jan 3, 2009 - 4:00:53 PM

Government plans to introduce mandatory internet filtering have enraged - and mobilised - the blogosphere, and no one knows where it will end, reports Nigel Bowen.

Clive Hamilton is keen to establish he is not a wowser. He did, after all, strip naked at Jim Cairns's Down to Earth hippie festival in 1974 and fought the good '60s fight against "neurotic Victorian sexual mores" in his younger years. He even volunteers that he has no problem with non-violent erotica. "If it treats all parties in a non-objectified way, then tell me where I can get it."

But Hamilton, a prominent left-leaning intellectual, wants the Rudd Government to crack down on what he sees as the virtual Wild West - "a cowboy culture that thinks itself beyond the reach of normal social control".

After investigating internet porn with Michael Flood in 2003, a shocked Hamilton called for serious action to shield young people from the extreme and violent porn swirling around the internet. He may just be about to get what he wants.

Stephen Conroy, the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, is pushing hard to introduce mandatory filtering at the internet service provider (ISP) level. A live pilot study into such a scheme's viability is under way.

The proposed filtering system would have two tiers. The first mandatory tier would block illegal material, chiefly child pornography. The second voluntary tier would block pornography that is legal but inappropriate for children.

The Rudd Government miscalculated if it thought public outrage over Bill Henson's photographs of nude children would help strip political downsides from a debate about making the internet a more child-friendly place - or that those opposed to filtering would be too intimidated to demur for fear of being labelled soft on pedophilia.

Several ISPs - including Australia's largest, Telstra - have declined to take part in the content filtering trial. The adult industry lobby group Eros, describing internet filtering as "the last straw", has launched the Australian Sex Party. The Greens and Liberals have stated they will almost certainly block any legislation to introduce mandatory filtering. And who knows how many netizens, incandescent with cyber-rage at the prospect of the Government deciding what they can and can't see, have mobilised on- and offline in ways not seen before?

The online activist network GetUp! was overwhelmed by protesting phone calls and emails. Eighty-five thousand people have signed an online anti-filtering petition and $40,000 has been donated to fund an online ad campaign against mandatory filtering.

Jerry Hutchinson, the national resources manager for the Digital Liberty Coalition, which organised public protests across capital cities last Saturday, says: "Grassroots organisations have sprung up all around the country over this."

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