You can’t stop the signal. Hell, you shouldn’t even try. #nocleanfeed

As debate between the people with the brains and the people with the mandate rages over Senator Conroy’s attempt at becoming Big Brother, some very good reasons have been suggested as to why the filter should not go ahead. Here is a look at three of these reasons.

1. Conroy’s proposed scheme will result in more child abuse.

An interesting point made in Mark Newton’s latest letter is the possibility that the internet filter will result in an increased capacity for global access to child pornography.

This makes sense when you take into account the Rudd Government’s inability to keep anything from being leaked. The probability that the ACMA blacklist will be leaked continues to move towards 100% every second that it is in the hands of ISPs.

Imagine that, a black and white list of all the places you can go to watch children being abused. Well done, Senator Conroy, you’ve just enabled countless paedophiles around the world in their sick perversion. The only question that comes out of this is whether Conroy’s an idiot or a paedophile.

2. A tool as blunt as this blacklist will have unintended consequences

The government has been very clear that it will be ignoring the public and only engaging ‘the industry’ in Conroy’s noble ‘consultative process’, but when it starts ignoring Michael Malone, boss of one of the largest ISPs in the country (iiNet), you have to ask, to whom exactly are they listening?

When peak bodies such as the Network Administrators’ Guild sits back and tells you that your plan isn’t going to work, there must be something hideously wrong with the technology you are trying to implement. Here’s some hypothetical situations that, just off the top of my head, would ruin everything for everyone.

1. The filter bugs out completely: When a filter doesn’t work properly, it generally doesn’t switch itself off. The more likely scenario is that at some point, at least once, it will block everything going through it. It’s not an unlikely scenario. This has far more far reaching consequences than just having to wait for facebook to reload. Here’s a list of other things that would be broken when the filter stuffs up:
   - ATMs
   - ASX transactions
   - VOIP
   - Post and parcel tracking systems
   - EFTPOS
   - Emergency services systems (you know, the ambulance, SES, police, fire brigade and any other group using the internet to co-ordinate things like emergency responses to major storms)
   Have a look around the internet and you’ll come to appreciate how much shopping is done online in Australia. How many millions of dollars would be lost for every minute one of Australia’s tier one net nodes crashes?
2. The filter accidentally filters out the Opposition’s web page (or any political party, for that matter) for even as much as a minute. The government has included in its Expressions of Interest literature that the filter include a dynamic filtering component. This is where Conroy’s defense that he’s only stopping people looking at illegal content falls down. Dynamic filters cannot get it right 100% of the time. Watch the fireworks explode across the centre table of the House of Reps when that happens.
3. The High Court will be bogged down for months possibly years as the EFA and everyone else with a lawyer takes the government to court for violating the Constitution the second someone’s political blog is blocked by the filter. According to the Criminal Code Act of 1995 (Cth), blocking internet access is only permissable in the event of that blocking being done to prevent the transmission of child pornography. If Conroy’s blacklist contains anything else he’s going to have to legislate against it specifically.

3. The emerging global economic climate will force nations and industries to fight for consumer confidence to stay alive.

How does this relate to the topic? Well, industy is already pulling investement in the big National Broadband Network rollout because of the clean feed. The government has a hard enough time pushing Telstra to provide unprofitable broadband connections to rural areas without Rudd’s other hand crippling the Australian internet infrastructure.

Australian business relies on technology to compete globally; we’re too far removed geographically to compete any other way. Our proximity to Asia is only a competitive advantage for so as long as Asian demand for the goods of our lagging primary industries is strong. To hamstring industry’s competitiveness now by imposing an even worse broadband connection than what we have now is going to destroy the slight edge Australia has.

Watch as our stock market plummets when Conroy hits the ‘on’ switch.

In conclusion

There you have it, three very realistic, very practical reasons why Senator Conroy should say “Due to consultation with industry, we have decided to pursue other means of protecting children from abuse.”