Australian Internet "filter" will censor peer-to-peer traffic too

Back at the beginning of the 20th Century the Australian government was obsessed with constructing the Rabbit Proof Fence; a hundred years on it is even more obsessed with enforcing its own brand of Internet censorship and building the Content Proof Electronic Fence. The Rabbit Proof Fence didn't work for long as the critters simply burrowed under it. The content Proof electronic fence won't work either because content will out.

Yup, those delicate flowers, the Australians, are going to be protected from themselves for their own good - whether they like it or not. Mind you the Rabbit Proof Fences (all three of them) failed and the nature of the Internet itself should hopefully ensure that efforts to make parts of the Web inaccessible to ordinary Australians will also fail.

The Labour government's bull-headed determination to build what is being referred to as "The Great Aussie Firewall" - not least for its remarkable similarities to some of the more pernicious aspects the Great Firewall of China - is causing great resentment and fomenting increasing resistance amongst ordinary Australians as they slowly become aware of how swingeing are government proposals to curtail and censor access to parts of the World Wide Web that a handful of politicians deem to be "inappropriate" for the hoi-polloi.

And as the groundswell of opinion against the government grows, the off-handed, indeed cack-handed and casual arrogance of Stephen Conroy, the current Minister of Broadband Communications and the Digital Economy, one of the prime movers in the introduction of mandatory ISP-level internet filters, is making him one of the most reviled figures in Australian politics.

Now his already tarnished reputation has taken another dent after he casually let slip that censorship plans have been extended to cover peer-to-peer traffic.

Hitherto, expectations, that have been assiduously fostered by the Rudd administration, were that the proposed "filter" system would apply to data and content transmitted over HTTP or HTTPS.

That alone would be bad enough for democracy, individual rights and the free dissemination of information but Conroy, responding to media comments that his plans would inevitably drive up levels of peer-to-peer traffic, put his puritanic zeal on open display (and yes, I am aware that he is a Catholic).

In a blog (of all things - how deliciously ironic) he says,"The Government understands that ISP-level filtering is not a 'silver bullet'. We have always viewed ISP-level filtering as one part of a broader government initiative.

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