Angus Kidman08 December 2008, 9:24 PM
If the nation's biggest ISP doesn't have anything to do with them, how much reliance can be placed on tests of the controversial "clean feed" proposal?
Federal government plans for filtering Australian Internet access have suffered another blow with the revelation that Telstra, the country's biggest provider of Internet services, won't be taking part in the ISP trials which form the first stage of the plan.
In a statement outlining its position, Telstra was quick to emphasise that it would be happy to participate in any scheme that finally gets implemented, presumably hoping to avoid the "anti-children" tag which the government is quick to fling onto anyone who points out problems with its cherished but deeply flawed scheme. "We have no fundamental difficulties with a legislated regime for blocking a defined ACMA blacklist of illegal sites," the statement noted. "Telstra shares the Government's desire to make the Internet safer for families and children."
However, Sol and the gang won't be taking part in the stage 1 trials of content filtering, apparently because the whole thing is hard to do in a practical sense (surprise, surprise). "Telstra is not in a position to participate in the Government's Internet filtering trial, primarily due to customer management issues," the statement said. Can you hear the sound of gnashing teeth in Canberra? And more to the point: if a company the size of Telstra can't manage a partial trial of the technology, what hope do Australia's other 600-odd ISPs have if it becomes compulsory?
Ominously, however, Telstra says it is running its own evaluation of blacklisting technologies. Those tests are likely to be better defined than the official effort, which simultaneously require that customers not to be told if they're testing a "clean feed" while being asked to fill out surveys on its effectiveness and impact on their Internet usage.
Other ISPs, including big-league players iiNet and Optus, are planning to take part, but both have emphasised that a key reason for doing so is to ensure that customers aren't saddled with a poorly-tested regime.
Some commentators have even gone so far as to say the Rudd Government is conducting the internet filtering trial as a charade to prove to the religious right that the entire concept is unworkable. David Marr's interesting analysis is published in this month's edition of The Monthly magazine, and he argues that the entire plan is concocted to make the government look like it is doing all that it can to stop objectionable material reaching the eyes of innocent citizens, while engineering a demonstration of how impossible the system would be to implement.
Meanwhile, customers can voice their own views at a series of protests against the plan scheduled for capital cities this Saturday.