RSSAustralian ISPs give thumbs up to controversial content filtering, see no speed reduction
By Tim Conneally | Published July 27, 2009, 5:50 PM
The Australian Federal Government's controversial plan to install ISP-level content filters has managed to make it to the widespread testing phase, and challenging the long-held criticism that such filters would slow down Internet speeds as much as 75% percent, ISPs testing the filters now report minimal slowdown.
The Australian Communications and Media Authority began testing the filters in February 2008 in Tasmania before open testing was slated to begin. In these tests, one of the filters tested registered 2% "network degradation," while three registered under 30% and two degraded network performance by more than 75%.
One year later, five of the nine major ISPs participating in the government's tests (iPrimus, Netforce, Nelson Bay Online, WebShield, and OMNIconnect) say the filtering solutions do not present any significant slowdowns or improper blocks of acceptable content. The remaining ISPs in the test did not comment.
"From a technical perspective we're more than confident that if the government decided to roll out a mandatory Internet filter based on or around an Australian Communications and Media Authority [ACMA] blacklist or subset thereof, then it can be done without any impact whatsoever to the speed of the Internet," WebShield managing director Anthony Pillion told ARN.
The controversial "clean feed" plan mandates this filtering technology for all ISPs, and these tests will likely be used to refute the opposition that use slowdowns as a cornerstone to their anti-filtering campaigns.
But now that speed is no longer an issue, the accuracy of the filters will be. Unfortunately there are no parameters for just how accurate the filters have to be, and the Minister for Broadband, Communications, and the Digital Economy Steven Conroy refuses to set them up until after the tests are finished.
Hi Tenoq, maybe it would be fair to clarify a couple of points.
First I cannot find any verified quotes from the ISPs saying the tests were not adequate nor proved the filters worked. The filters were chosen by the ISPs themselves, and they advocated these filters and submitted EOIs confirming that the proposed filters worked.
So I am at a loss whwre you got that mis-intelligence from? Do you know at all how the trials were run and that the filters used were chosen and confirmed to work by the ISPs?
Or are you just mis-quoting and injecting some stuff you would like the readers to believe.
I also cannot find that emphatic "No" anywhere either...
And, it is not just one filter, again each ISP chose their own filter. The filters are actually all accurate, they are only blocking a blacklist. That is how the trial was run.
As for you mis-information about the blocking of political interest sites? get a life man, there was no such thing.
One page of one site on the issue of abortion has been blocked, not the site (if you know what a site is?) which was the result of a complaint from an anti-filter activist... One page of images deemed to contravene the current laws. Not sites... Yet another exaggeration...
And what about the fourth largest ISP: iPrimus: Very happy with the results and no slowdowns, no verified complaints stemming from the filtering itself...
All round a good technical result that you can argue around as long as you like.
No slowdowns... LOL... So now that this question is a dead fish, it is back to the Blacklist itself being the "only" question again, because for the activists, the fight around accuracy and "massive slowdowns" just died in the water.
Score: -1
|The slowdown is a red herring. If you give government the power to filter the Internet they will abuse it to control information access. Your might think your current representative would never do such a thing but the power remains for all subsequent generations to exploit. That should be reason enough to stop this crazy plan.
I am so glad I don't live in Australia.
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|The ISPs that refused to comment are the ones that matter - the likes of Optus (the second largest Australian ISP) in particular. Moreover, when asked, the ISPs said they did not think their testing was adequate nor proved the filter worked. The answer in one case was an emphatic 'No', and reminded us that only 1% of that ISP's users were actually involved in the testing.
I'd be surprised if it didn't slow down connections, but I'm far more concerned about the free speech implications. It's already been proven many times that the filter is not just blocking child porn, but other, perfectly legal sites as well (redtube.com, for example). It has also blocked political interest sites - funnily enough, those that don't necessarily agree with the opinion of the government in power.
Welcome to Australia: China, v2.0.
Score: 3
|Exactly scott@bn... that's the ONLY question, really. Is this seriously the direction we're headed? [INSERT SMART DEAD 1984ISH AUTHORS] must be rolling over in his/her grave.
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|So what is on the black lists and who decides how it gets there?
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|Here's an idea of what the Australian government internet censorship blacklist had, updated to 11th of March 2009:
https://secure.wikileaks...lacklist%2C_11_Mar_2009
I guess the Australian government decides what gets in there.
Score: 1
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