It’s an oddity of the human character that brain surgery, a very serious matter, is often the subject of jokes.

Perhaps it’s our way of dealing with the frightening and unthinkable.

The notion of an utter incompetent engaging in something as delicate as tampering with our brains makes us squeamish. What might he do to our minds? Ouch! So we joke about it.

In similar vein, many informed Australians have been making jokes about Senator Stephen Conroy for some years now.

The sniggers began almost as soon as he begame Australia’s Communications Minister, after the Rudd Labor Government was elected to power in 2007. They took off the next year, when it became apparent the Minister was quite insistent on imposing a mandatory internet ‘filter’ on all Australians.

The internet can be viewed as the neuronal structure of a globalizing humanity. It provides the basis for closely interwoven global society. Information streams through the network – information about people, activities, ideas, money and other data. It travels at the speed of light. This is the information flow that binds us together and makes our interconnected world work.

Our generation has grown used to the technology and participated in its growing sophistication. We are alive at a most remarkable time in human history. It’s a time when the mind of humanity is literally coming together, in ‘real time’. We’re still at the beginning of this extraordinary metamorphic process.

Like other people around the world, many Australians quickly embraced the new technology and have been enthusiastically exploring its potential ever since. It connects us to each other – and to the world. In a large and isolated continent, both are important. The internet opens up a global market for buying and selling, a global information exchange for giving and receiving, a global playground for fun and creativity.

So far, so good. Then along comes Senator Conroy c 2007. As the newly-appointed Communications Minister of the incoming Rudd Labor Government, Conroy announced his intention to impose a mandatory filter on the internet connection entering Australia from the outside world. His rationale for proposing this was purportedly concern about ‘child pornography’.

At first, his proposal gained traction. Who, after all, wants to be branded a peodophile? Who doesn’t want to protect children? A handful of well-promoted supporting voices popped up to push the case for the ‘filter’ and for a short time all seemed to be going well for the Minister and his censorious schemes.

But a civil libertarian reaction of unparalleled ferocity slowly erupted. It has been spurting giant blobs of angry lava ever since. Conroy’s simplistic scheme for fencing off Australia’s internet ‘feed’ by mandatory filters, forcing ISPs to ban a secret government list of web pages, has provoked a quite unprecedented furore of outraged opposition from technologically literate Australians.

Quite soon, Conroy found himself despised by his natural constituency as Communications Minister: the IT industry and experienced IT users.

A Minister at odds with his industrial (and even his public) constituency can be just what’s needed, if a government believes urgently-needed reforms are blocked ny an intractable bureaucratic log-jam and shameless vested interests. But a Minister at odds with his constituency had better be competent. He’d better know what he’s doing – and been seen to know what he’s doing. Otherwise, he’s in trouble.

In Stephen Conroy’s case, there has been precious little sign throughout his term in office that the Minister has much of a clue about modern communications. His spoken contributions to debates are frequently the butt of ridicule. When he waxes lyrical about IT, it often sounds ridiculous.

By April 2009, with the Rudd Government’s three year term half over, there was no discernable progress towards new broadband. The Minister was bogged in negotiations with major Telcos (most notably Telstra) that seemed to be going nowhere. Most noticeable of all, he kept pushing an increasingly unpopular mandatory government censorship scheme. It seemed the wheels might be coming off for Stephen Conroy’s Ministerial career.

Then came a remarkable turn-around. Just at the moment when it seemed he was most in peril, Senator Conroy managed to extract an agreement out of Prime Minister Rudd for a MASSIVE new public investment – potentially more than $40 billion – to create a new government owned wholesale monopoly: the National Broadband Network.

This was upping ante in the Government’s broadband infrastucture spend by an order of magnitude.

A Minister who can extract a LOT more money for his portfolio is usually regarded as a hero by his constituency. Access to large pot of public loot is a good way to make industry lobbyists respectfully polite. Rudd and Conroy presumably calculated that the $40+ billion honey pot would calm the bees, and the IT industry could be expected to fall into line and back a man who’d turned out after all to be a very effective Minister.

That happened, to some extent. But by mid-term, Conroy was already a seriously tainted brand. Even though the NBN gave him a new story to tell – he still had to deal with the ‘filter’ issue.

If Conroy and the ALP Government had backed down on mandatory internet censorship at almost any time between then and the recent Federal election, I think Labor would now be back in power with a clear majority. That’s despite its much-reported failures in other important policy areas, most notably climate change.

The NBN was a huge advantage for Labor in the election campaign. It may still be decisive in pursuading cross-benchers to support Labor in forming Government now, after the knife-edge August 21st election. But Labor’s stubborn insistence on hanging onto the ‘filter’ policy took the shine off the NBN. Many IT fans would have pushed hard for Labor at this election because of the size of its NBN commitment, which dwarfed the Coalition’s counter-pledge. As it was, many of us had split loyalties. In general, we want a major new public investment in telecoms infrastructure. But many Australians – myself included – regard issues of censorship, net neutrality and data privacy as even more significant.

Unexpectedly – and to its credit – the Liberal-National Party Coalition came off the fence during the election campaign on the ‘filter’ issue. It opposed the mandatory ‘filter’,  reaffirming its Howard era policy of assistance to home-users wanting ‘filters’ and no mandatory censorship. The Coalition undoubtably gained votes as a result. The number of votes that shifted is unknwon, but even one in two hundred would have proved decisive in this very close election. Interestingly, the much vaunted ‘Christian backlash’ against the Coalition never happened. Few Christians who’ve thought about the issue share the extreme pro-censorship views of their would-be spokeman, ex-SAS Commander Jim Wallace. The case for censorship had always been based on hype and exaggeration.

Viewing the internet as an evolving global brain explains why the internet-using public reacted as we did to the threat of censorship – to such an extent that in the pre-election peridod, articles published about the ‘filter’ attracted hundreds of comments and online polls showed an anti-filter sentiment as high as 99:1.

As the internet evolves, its needs sophistication in regulation. As a general rule, let freedom rule! Freedom to trade. Freedom to exchange information and ideas. Freedom to play.

Any attempt to interfer with these freedoms must be rational, demonstrably necessary, evidence-based and implemented with broad consent. If not, it will encounter staunch resistence – and rightfully so.

At this time, a week after the election, it’s still not clear who will form government from a parliament in which no single party has a majority.

Prime Minister Gillard and the ALP may have the best chance. Ironically, the NBN is a key issue which may give them the edge with the five or six cross-benchers. But with almost every political force in the country  now opposing the ‘filter’ apart from Labor and the one-Senator ‘Family First’ party, it would seem the public have dealt this unpopular proposal a fatal blow.

Let’s hope the Prime Minister is not so cocooned by out-of-touch advisers that she misses the significance of the filter issue.

During the election, on one of the few occasions she fielded a question on the ‘filter’, Gillard made  idiotic remarks implying the internet can and should be regulated like cinemas. If that’s what she truly believes Gillard is not up to the job. Perhaps, as she ponders her tenuous hold on power, Ms Gillard can find a better adviser than Stephen Conroy on the way forward for her communications policy.  She could do a lot worse than talk to EFA activist and telecoms engineer Mark Newton.

Australians won’t tolerate a lumberjack posing as a brain surgeon messing with our share of the evolving global mind.

The global communications web is a delicate miracle. Please show respect, Ms Gillard.

Tens of billions of dollars of new NBN neurones may well help speed up Australia’s mediocre data transmission speeds. That will be a blessing.

Even so, brain stimulus is no substitute for an enlightened mind.

Australia’s Minister for Communications Chaos, Internet Censorship and Moral Panic rose in the Senate early this week to defend the Government’s ‘Clean Feed’ policy yesterday.

It was not an impressive performance, but to paraphrase Dr Johnson, the remarkable thing is that it happened at all.

In recent days, Conroy has been taking hits from all quarters. The most recent thwack came from Young Labor in NSW.

Every time the Senate meets, he faces at least one uncomfortable question about his portfolio. Each time, the main issue is whether he’ll make a bigger mess of his answer than last time. Nobody expects a quality response from Conroy any more. Nobody is ever disappointed.

Conroy attacked the previous Coalition Government for what he claimed was an ineffective and costly scheme, whereby all households were provided with a self-install Internet filter on request. Generous sums were spent promoting the scheme.

Conroy’s point is that uptake of the voluntary ‘filter’ was very low. The Minister didn’t remember the exact figure, so why should I bother looking it up? In any event, it was low. 2% or so. ‘Nuff said.

One might reasonably infer from this that most Australians simply didn’t want to install a ‘filter’ on their Internet connection. That could be regarded as good news – a hint that the Government can concentrate on other important policy areas (and even make a modest saving scaling down the free voluntary web filter service).

But that is not the way Stephen Conroy’s mind works. He claims the low uptake of voluntary filters is evidence that compulsion is needed. If Australians won’t take filters for free, force them!

It’s an approach to governance that was popular, for a while, in the Soviet Union. But does it have a place in Australia today?

Senator Conroy is an incompetent control freak with no obvious redeeming qualities. He cannot mount a coherent case for his own policies. He cannot defend them without dissembling and evasion. He seems to be making a complete mess out of what is arguably one of the most critical portfolios to Australia’s short and medium-term prospects.

It’s time that Kevin Rudd invites him over to the PM’s office for that nice cup of tea. By jettisoning Conroy and backing down on compulsory Internet censorship (it was never ‘core’ Labor policy, by any stretch of the imagination) Rudd can ride the crisis and move forward.

Quite soon, if Rudd doesn’t stem the infection, it will damage his entire Government’s health and its prospects at the next election.

Of course, it is also possible – as I speculated previously on more than one occasion – that the real reason this scheme is being pushed (to the point of political suicide) is because Kevin Rudd cut a deal with forces who intimidate him.

A little support was given to this theory in Conroy’s extended answer to the Senate. It’s clear that overseas agencies – including national ‘law enforcement’ agencies such as the FBI – will be consulted when drawing up Australia’s banned website list. Whether or not other countries fall into line with similar schemes, Australians’ freedom to choose is being ‘outsourced’ to overseas interests. I doubt the Iranains will be consulted about the banned list. I imagine the Israelis will. 100 Years War here we come…

I hope there is not a smidgeon of truth in this outrageous ‘conspiracy theory’. But even so, a national Christian role-model like Kevin Rudd can surely be counted on to stand up to arm-twisting and act in the public interest – especially given the masses are clearly behind him?

After all, Kevin, about the worst they can do is assassinate you and cover it up afterwards.

It beats eternal damnation any day.

Yesterday I published an article called Clive Hamilton & I: Getting Personal about Sex, Lies, Hate & Censorship

My main purpose was to rebut what I call the ‘Clive Hamilton Fallacy’, named in honour of its most prominent exponent. This is the argument “we already censor TV, radio, movies, books, magazines and newspapers. Why should the Internet be exempt?”

My article delved into related topics. I suggested why defending children against porn may be a smokescreen for eventual, much more alarming, political censorship. The end result was a long article.

In this shorter version, I’ll focus only on the ‘Clive Hamilton Fallacy’.

Why do I call it a fallacy? After all, it sounds reasonable on the surface… “We already censor TV, radio, movies… why not the Internet?”

It’s odd that the word ‘Internet’ (as opposed to World Wide Web) is usually the concluding word in this seemingly plausible appeal. After all, the Internet and the Web are not the same thing. The actual proposal that Dr Hamilton and Senator Conroy are promoting is a proposal to censor the Web – not the Internet in entirety (not yet, at any rate…). Even if censorship proponents get muddled. we need to be clear about key distinctions like this.

The World Wide Web, while not easy to define in a few words, is a suite of user-friendly interface technologies that provide easy access to the Internet (some of them may be used without an Internet connection). Along with email, the Web has been a phenomenally successful interface/technology. The invention of the Web led to an explosion of Internet use from the early 1990s onwards. ‘The Internet’, a term that refers to the worldwide interconnected matrix of communicating computers, predates the Web.

Opponents of the proposed mandatory web ‘filter’ often point out that Web filtering is not feasible. The filter is bound to be ‘leaky’. We may also assert that the Web filtering proposal is only partial and futile for that reason also. What about proxy servers? VPNs?  I’ve used that argument myself, but I think it’s risky – because it could embolden would-be censors to extend prohibition to other Internet technologies too.

But why not censor the Web? After all, we already censor TV, radio, films…

Here’s why.

It comes down to the difference between (public) broadcast media and (essentially private) narrowcast media. They are very, very different. The same rules should not apply to both.

Whereas TV, movies, books, magazines etc are mainstream public media, the Web is a medium that enables a different kind of communication. It’s typically not a case of a few ‘one-to-many’ communications. It’s a case of many ‘one-to-one’ communications. That’s more akin to the mail than TV.

Whereas public broadcast media deliver shared experience to vast numbers of people, day after day, the Web does not.

True, some specific websites are very popular. But in total there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of websites. Each user decides which websites to access. Given the vast choice, each individual has essentially a private experience when surfing the Web.

If I turn on my TV, I know what I see will be viewed by many others. It’s the same if I flick on the radio or visit a movie. But if I visit an obscure website, I may well be the ONLY Australian on that day to do so. Or there may be thousands. It’s impossible to predict. When we use the Web, we make use of a narrowcast medium to go where we choose to go. There’s no telling where our neighbour goes. We both use the same basic technology, but our choices may well be worlds apart.

Proponents of the ‘Clive Hamilton Fallacy’ (principally Clive Hamilton himself) skip over the notion that there may be any problems associated with the current, rather tight censorship regime that pertains to mainstream media in Australia. I beg to differ. There ARE problems with this. Powerful political elites can and do use their power to restrict public access – within the ‘public’ media space – to information and analysis that doesn’t suit them. That’s to the detriment of the truth and contrary to the general public interest.

However, since the advent of the World Wide Web, those of us who dislike having our information sources rigorously ‘managed’ have had the alternative of using the Internet. The Web makes using the Internet easy. Now the ‘mandatory filtering’ proposal aims to take this crucial freedom away.

Whereas filtering works rather poorly for most photos and other graphical objects on the web, it works exceedingly well for searchable text. Rather too well, in fact. This has led critics to point out the problem of overkill. An example: any page with the word ‘Socialist’ could get inadvertently banned because it contains ‘Cialis’. That type of overkill is certainly a problem with robotic filters. Of course, in some circumstances (eg. on a home computer accessed by small children) the downside is worth it. But under the mandatory filtering proposal, individuals won’t get to choose. We won’t be able to turn the filter on and off at will. The choice would be made for us by a central censorship system.

Even though the proposed ‘filter’ will be ridiculously infective as an anti-pornography measure, it would work very effectively if the government ever chose to ban specific texts and impede public access to them.

Such bans could be automated, so any website repeating the offensive text could also be blocked – more or less immediately. Indeed, any site LINKING to a site containing the ‘offensive material’ could be easily blocked. In this way, bloggers and other websites could be intimidated into not reporting dissent (or even hyper-linking to other reports) – lest they be added to the banned list.

I repeat, censoring’ the Web is not like censoring the mainstream media. It’s much more like censoring the mail service. The Government’s plans for ISP-level filtering, whether innocent in intent or not, are pre-adapted for eventual political censorship.

In a recent TV interview, Clive Hamilton scoffed at claims that censoring for porn may be the thin end of the wedge. He said that’s just a ‘red herring’.

It will take more than a one-liner to convince your critics on that crucial point, Clive.

Large numbers of the most aware Australians treasure the freedom we now have to explore an uncensored Internet. It helps keep us sane in a world gone crazy. It helps us correct for mass media bias.

Above all, it helps us to make up our own minds. What’s so scary about that?

A decade or so ago, I knew Clive Hamilton personally.

We met a few times through common involvement in environmental issues. He appeared to be a nice man with a good head for policy and commitment to progressive politics. When, in the mid 90s, he became Founder/Director of the Australia Institute, it seemed like an excellent initiative. Public interest think-tanks that develop new ideas and policy can play an important role in bringing about positive change. Australia has few such organizations. Overall, while I didn’t get to know Dr Hamilton well, I liked what I saw and supported the causes he made his own.

Protection of the environment is one policy area where I believe wise and effective regulation is merited – and more of it. Take global warming – an issue on which Dr Hamilton has worked hard throughout the last decade. I believe that the potential for human-induced global climate change is significant and poses unknown but alarming dangers to humanity’s future. Left to ‘the market’ alone, the necessary changes in human behaviour are unlikely to happen fast enough, if at all. Collective, political action is therefore needed, including stronger regulatory measures from governments. Personally, I’d like a global carbon tax, but that’s another discussion for another time…

I mention this to make it clear that my dispute with Clive Hamilton over Internet Censorship is not the quintessential stand-off between a sensible mainstream view and an “unthinking libertarian” who opposes regulation in almost every situation.

I may have ‘libertarian leanings’, but my concern is that regulation is applied only when circumstances demand – not on whim alone. Moreover, regulation must be appropriate. Sometimes (an example is prohibition of murder), regulation should be strict and rigorously enforced. In other cases I believe there’s a strong case for a hands-off approach. Unnecessary regulation is a nuisance; inappropriate regulation can be downright dangerous. It all depends on the specifics of the case.

Australia’s Dispute over Internet Censorship

In the run up to the last Federal election, just a few days before the poll, the ultimately victorious Australian Labor Party released a ‘Cyber-safety Policy’. Internet censorship via ISP-level ‘filtering’ was featured in the policy. The exact words were: “A Rudd Labor Government will require ISPs to offer a ‘clean feed’ internet service to all homes, schools and public internet points accessible by children, such as public libraries.”

Not surprisingly, few people noticed or discussed this policy at the time. There was plenty else going on… the Government was about to change.

After Labor’s victory, Senator Stephen Conroy was appointed Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy. It’s a crucial portfolio, especially given the Rudd Government’s welcome acknowledgement of the importance of the Internet to Australia’s future.

One might expect that most of  Senator Conroy’s attention these days is dedicated to the thorny issue of the promised new continental broadband rollout. If not, it helps explain why this policy may be going nowhere fast.

A national broadband upgrade is one policy for which the Rudd Government most certainly does have a mandate. Many Australians – including business interests – are dissatisfied with our broadband speeds, which are often well below world best practice. Improving the network is a complex task and requires skillful Ministerial oversight.

Yet without having resolved the complex issue of the promised Broadband Rollout (it’s barely at Base One after a year in office) Conroy is increasingly becoming identified as the Minister for Compulsory Internet Censorship. Surely this is a distraction from his real job?

A month or two after the election, Senator Conroy suggested that the Government was going to bring in compulsory ISP-level Internet ’filtering’. That ‘clarification’ of the stated pre-election policy raised alarm bells in the community. Then he seemed to back down over compulsion. Now, in the last quarter of 2008, Conroy has made his intentions plain. He wants a compulsory ‘clean feed’ for everyone throughout the land. He wants it ASAP. And he wants to make an immediate start, by arranging trials with volunteer ISPs. These trials are due to begin by the end of 2008.

While there was some ambiguity in the wording of the ALP’s pre-election polices, I think its fair to say that “require ISPs to OFFER (a censored service)” has morphed into “require ISPs to OFFER ONLY (a censored service)”. That’s a fundamental shift.

There was no significant pre-election community debate about this issue. The Rudd Government has no clear mandate to introduce compulsory Internet censorship. If it does so, it’s going out on a limb, without the electorate’s prior endorsement and may well reap severe consequences at the next election. Proceed with mandatory Internet censorship, Mr Rudd, and you’ve lost my vote. I speak for myself, but there are plenty of others who feel the same way.

I do accept there are occasions when governments must act in the public interest, whether or not it has an explicit electoral mandate. That’s reality in a complex, fast-moving world. The economic crisis, for example, calls for unforeseen new initiatives. In emergencies, Governments may need to move fast.

But where’s the emergency that calls for Internet censorship now?

To my knowledge, the Government has presented no spectacular new evidence to support the proposed change to mandatory censorship at the ISP level. On first glance, it seems the policy has been made on the run.

I suspect, but cannot prove, that the truth is even murkier and more unpleasant. I believe this is the resurrection of an agenda that suits particular powerful interest groups, both within and outside government. It is actually part of a global agenda.

These interest groups (which include elements within the mis-named ‘security services’) won’t argue their case openly and explicitly in public. To do so would damage their interests, by exposing their overweening and largely unregulated power and their desire to accumulate more of it. So they’ve pushed this policy onto Rudd – just like they tried to foist it earlier on the Federal Coalition (as well as on former ALP Leader Kim Beasley). They’ll use any window-dressing arguments that work to help get their way.  Who knows, they might even encourage suitable ‘experts’ to give the government a little assistance, so Internet censorship better survives public debate and Parliamentary scrutiny?

I may be wrong about this, but I fear not. Whereas he proposed filter makes no real technological sense as means to secure the Internet against pornography, it would work effectively as a way of controlling access to information. Specific speeches or articles could be tracked and every occurence blocked. This could be done automatically and very effectively on searchable text.

At the very least, I believe we should not reject out of hand the possibility of a hidden agenda behind the push to censor the Internet.

The Moral Panic

Foremost among the arguments that are used openly in favour of ‘mandatory filtering’ is the proposition that the Internet is a dangerous world, replete with smut and vice. No normal people want this! Children are unquestionably at risk! There’s an epidemic of pure filth! Therefore the Government must act now!

That’s about the intellectual level at which Senator Conroy has been pitching the case for Internet censorship. I may, indeed, be doing him a favour. The rare occasions when he’s reluctantly fielded critical questions on the topic, he’s made a hash out of it.

Let’s hope he’s not so incompetent when he argues the Government’s corner in the high-stakes poker game over the much-vaunted new broadband infrastructure. If so, heaven help us. The Telco bosses will swallow him whole.

But Senator Conroy has been lucky. The mainstream media, while covering the story to some extent, has yet to get really stuck into the Minister over Internet censorship. (It’s possible that may change – and change soon. We’ll see.)

The relative calm in the mass media contrasts with an extraordinary grass roots uproar that has issued forth from ordinary Australians, connected mainly via the internet, who express in websites, blogs, comments and other ways their profound opposition to the Rudd Government’s attempt to impose mandatory Internet censorship.

There’s no shortage of articulate critics of the Government’s plans – if the media wants to interview them. Electronic Frontiers Australia is running a superb campaign. There doesn’t seem to be an equivalent articulate chorus from the pro-censorship lobby – rather belying the Government’s claim that it’s new policy is inresponse to public pressure.

On past performance, if Senator Conroy was forced to debate Internet censorship with articulate critics on anything resembling a level playing field, it would be like blood sport.

So when I heard Australia Talks – an ABC Radio National talkback show – was covering the topic, I wondered if Minister Conroy would debate, on air, with technologically-savvy, articulate critics.

I relished the prospect. But I was to be disappointed.

Clive Hamilton’s Key Role

At the beginning of the program, Australia Talks listeners were treated to some pre-recorded remarks from the Minister in a softball interview. Then Conroy vacated the scene entirely (perhaps he listened in?). The task of arguing the Government’s case was left to others – principally to Dr Clive Hamilton.

The Government’s censorship proposals have an articulate spokesperson in Clive Hamilton.

He speaks reasonably and in a calm voice. Unencumbered with links to any religious denomination, he’s a secular humanist who’s argued in the past for a more ethical way of life. Dr Hamilton is someone any member of a decent Australian ‘working family’ could respect, whether religious or not.

A few years ago, Clive Hamilton and the Australia Institute first entered the internet censorship debate with some widely reported papers and media releases.

I corresponded with him at that time. I was keen to seek clarification of his position and also wanted to convey my deep concerns about the censorship proposal he was advocating. We had a brief exchange of emails, but neither of us were persuaded by the other’s arguments. Dialogue fizzled out.

It was during that exchange that I first heard the very persuasive case that Dr Hamilton uses again and again in this debate. He used it on Australia Talks last week.

The argument was re-iterated in Clive Hamilton’s recent article, which begins as follows (emphases added): “What’s so special about the internet? All but the most unthinking libertarians accept censorship laws that limit sexual content in film, television, radio, books and magazines. Yet the hysterical response from the internet industry and libertarian commentators to the Government’s proposal to require ISPs to filter heavy-duty porn shows how the internet has become fetishised.”

A friend of mine, who doesn’t use the Internet but has children who do, listened to Clive say something similar during the recent Australia Talks discussion. He found it a very persuasive argument and repeated it back to me afterwards.  Superficially, it is persuasive. What’s the big deal if we already censor other similar media?

But as I said in my correspondence at the time, I believe the argument is based on a false analogy. Dangerously false.

Hamilton’s Fallacy

To say why, I’ll give another analogy that I think is more appropriate.

But first, a word of caution. The Internet – and the World Wide Web which rests upon it and provides a user-friendly interface – are truly without precedent. There is no exact parallel in history and we should be cautious of all analogies. None of them really work – and the simple truth is that we must work out for ourselves the most appropriate social, cultural and legal ‘response’ to this new technology, conscious of the novelty of the situation. The past is only a guide. Analogies are useful only to a point.

Even so, were I to draw an analogy for the Web, I’d be more inclined to compare it to the postal service. In my correspondence with Dr Hamilton years ago, I may have used email as a comparison.

To my way of thinking, censoring the World Wide Web is more like censoring a public mail service. That’s because – unlike radio, TV, newspapers etc – the web is not a broadcast medium. Not in the main. It’s a narrowcast medium, in which different users choose their own material from a vast range.

Developing the mail analogy, the Web is more akin to millions of pigeon holes. Each user chooses which pigeon holes to open and explore. The range of possibilities is vast. He/she may visit www.abc.net.au – or www.bugggaboo.org – or something else again, millions of times over.

When I turn on my TV or enter a newsagent, I know that what I’ll find is similar to what Dr Hamilton – or anyone else in Australia – will also experience. I get much the same mass media fodder as Clive, I imagine.

But when I turn to the Internet, I go where I choose. I have no idea where Clive goes. That’s up to him. We may be using the same general ‘medium’ – but we’re likely to inhabit very distinct, essentially private universes when we use it. That’s very different from the situation when we both turn on the TV. In that case, in separate houses in separate States thousands of kilometres apart, we have a limited choice and  most of the programs are identical.

I know certain ‘standards’ are maintained in these public and broadcast media. Taken as a whole, the information industry and mass media deliver a shared portrayal of reality to millions of Australians.

Personally, I’m concerned about the level of effective censorship this conformism entails. Some rather important topics, such as the real truth about 9-11 and some of the events that took place during World War Two, are never subjected to genuine, open, balanced scrutiny in the western mass media or within the mainstream publishing industry. There is blatant bias in favour of some perspectives and against others. Clive, I guess, isn’t bothered by this phenomenon. He may well support it. I am bothered. I wonder why Clive’s not bothered – but that’s his business, I guess?

As there are only so many hours in the day and only so many worthy causes one can put time into, I haven’t spent much time campaigning to push back the boundaries of mainstream censorship in Australia (in bookshops. Newsagents, on TV etc). Correspondence with Philip Adams a few years ago gave me a taste of the condescending evasiveness one is likely to encounter. If Late Night Live won’t cover an issue as important as 9-11 in a balanced way, I think it’s a serious problem – and I support more balanced and accurate mass media coverage. But rightly or wrongly, I haven’t put a lot of energy into this myself.

The Web as Information Liberation

One reason why – the main reason – is the access I have to a free Internet.

Thanks to the Internet, I don’t need to wait until hell freezes over at the ABC or at News Ltd.

Instead, I can look inside many, many ‘pigeon holes’ to which I’d otherwise have no easy access.

Let’s take an example. If I learn that an elderly Professor of Literature in France has been repeatedly beaten up and arrested – and only recently had his home raided by police – I don’t have to put up with the minimal reporting or non-reporting of distorted reporting of this man and his plight in Australia’s mainstream media. I can check out the source material myself. I can read directly what he has written. In this way, I can get a better appreciation of what all the fuss is about – and form MY OWN view.

What’s more, millions more Australians have discovered the same thing. Of course, each of us looks into different topics – from aeronautics to algebra, bees to beetroot, Cairo to Chinese cooking.

The ability to research independently, using the internet, enabled me to run a website in the run up to the Iraq War in 2002/3. Among other things, it argued that:

1. the invasion of Iraq was justified by blatant lies
2. claims of Iraqi WMD’s rested on highly suspect (fabricated) ‘evidence’
3. invading Iraq (and Afghanistan) was both illegal and immoral
4. the occupation of Iraq would end up being a major disaster for Iraq and the aggressors
5. the Iraq invasion – and the entire, bogus ‘War on Terror’ – was primarily orchestrated by Zionist (pro-Israel) interests

Half a dozen years later, only the last of these propositions remains contentious (although evidence in support has accumulated and gone mainstream).

Yet at the time, all these propositions were heresy in Australia’s public discourse.

During the run-up to the invasion, Australia’s newspapers and mainstream electronic media overwhelmingly parroted the official legend about Iraqi WMDs and an ‘imminent threat’. Of course the ‘War for Oil’ line spouted by the ‘official’ peace movement was reported too. But there was broad consensus that Iraq was a rogue State with WMDs. The notion that a real rogue State with genuine WMDs was, in reality, setting up another nation for its own sectarian gain, was never discussed by  our mainstream media.

So – how did I figure out a reasonably accurate take on Iraq and related issues while the mainstream media in Australia and most of the bums on seats in Parliament couldn’t or wouldn’t? Was I using Superior intelligence? Magic?

A bit of both, actually. Instead of only reading and listening to conformist media, I spent a lot of time reading intelligent analysis via the (magical!) Internet – trying to figure out the reality beneath the surface.

I was motivated to do this. I am passionately anti-war and have been throughout my adult life. I was appalled at the drift into yet another wholly unnecessary and evil war, based on absurd fabrications. I couldn’t leave the subject alone. (Incidentally, I ran my website from a shed in a paddock. At the time I didn’t even have broadband!)

Glancing through his website, I observe that Clive Hamilton has left these topics well alone. I can find remarkably little on that website critical of Australia’s swelling military budget, the so-called ‘War on Terror’ and the mass destruction of western civil liberties that’s been underway for several years. Perhaps I haven’t found the right pages?

Now, no single person or organization can work on every issue. Focus is essential. Who am I to criticize the choices Clive has made in his activism? I accept that no one has a monopoly of wisdom! I certainly don’t.

Australia’s New Memory Hole

But here’s the big difference in our respective positions.

I have no interest in restricting Clive Hamilton’s freedom to review whatever material he chooses.

On the other hand, he is vigorously promoting a Government-run system of censorship; if implemented, it will mean that at any time I may be unable to find some of the ‘pigeon holes’ I’d like to look inside.

I won’t be notified that the pigeon holes have been blocked. I may never learn about them at all. Over time – if the government is serious about ‘cleansing’ Australia’s Internet ‘feed’ – there will be tens or hundreds of thousands of blocked up pigeon holes. I’ll have to go to great lengths to find them. Indeed, quite conceivably the very act of trying to find them may become an illegal act in due course.

Who’s to say that some of those pigeon holes may not be the ones that may help me obtain a more accurate take on reality than the Government, News Corp or the ABC – in the event of YET ANOTHER atrocious, illegal and immoral war?

Will the Government guarantee that? Will Clive?

I’ll re-iterate this key difference between Clive Hamilton’s position and mine.

Clive Hamilton wants to restrict what’s available to me via the Internet. I don’t want to restrict his access. Our positions are asymmetrical.

Clive claims to be protecting ‘victims’, but from where I sit, the scheme he supports will create millions of victims.

I’m one of them.

The Special Case of ‘Hate’

During the discussion on Australia Talks, Dr Hamilton said he doesn’t want political censorship on the Internet. He claims that he doesn’t believe the government’s ‘mandatory filetering’ is intended for that purpose. The censorship push is only about very nasty porn.

I have some skepticism about this. It’s partly the language he used. As I recall, Hamilton said he’d ‘even’ support freedom to view ‘hate sites’. His tone of voice clearly implied he considered such things odious – yet he stressed that that’s how tolerant he is – and how little we have to worry. Why – he’d even support access to hate sites!

But what is a ‘hate site’? The fact he uses the term suggests that Clive thinks he already knows. I make no such claim. In fact, I’ve come to reject the notion that it’s sensible to define or use the term. I think expressions like ‘hate speech’, ‘hate sites’ and ‘hate crime’ are sneaky absurdities, introduced into the language to do violence to our civil liberties. I believe they are routinely used to protect relatively privileged interests from scrutiny. The main beneficiary has been the Zionist Lobby.

Clive is entitled to a different perspective on this, of course. But here again there’s a huge underlying difference. He sees no problem, apparently, in categorizing speech and websites into two categories, ‘hate speech’ and ‘non hate speech’. The implication is that there’s an accepted consensus about what the terms mean. At the moment, he’s saying he doesn’t support censoring ‘hate speech’. But of course, with a ‘filtering’ system in place, it will be a very easy add-on for any Government. Overseas experience suggests it will happen.

In the case of websites critical of the ‘official’ narrative of World War Two, if they disappear from Australia’s web, the public will face a double whammy.

First, we’d have to notice they are missing (it would be as though books have been removed from the shelves of a library and catalogue entries deleted. How do we know what was there originally?) Next, we’d have to campaign against the ban on any given site.

Such a campaign itself may well be defined as ‘hate speech’ and criminalized – which would probably include blocking web coverage of the debate. In Finland, a country that mysteriously chose to implement internet filtering, one of the sites on the (leaked) banned list was a site opposing Internet censorship. In Turkey, where Internet censorship was also introduced recently, Index on Censorship reports “there are more people working on censoring the Internet than developing it”.

Kafka and Orwell would appreciate these tales.

Getting Personal

At this stage in a rather long article, I’ll stop writing in the third person and address Dr Hamilton directly.

I’m going to get personal.

I trust, Clive, that I’ve given some indication about why I’m so concerned about the Internet Censorship issue?

You are advocating a system that entails people I don’t know – and have no reason to trust – systematically blocking off pigeon hole entrances in the gigantic, evolving global library known as the World Wide Web. You’re out to restrict my access. By contrast, I’m not trying to do any such thing to you.

Why are YOU trying to restrict my freedom – and that of other Australians – in such a way?

I’ll go further. How dare you!

What About Porn?

Now to the phenomenon you claim is at the heart of the case for compulsory Internet censorship – pornography.

First, I’m not persuaded by the claim that internet pornography is, in reality, a significant social crisis in contemporary Australia. There are undoubtedly many people looking at porn on the internet. But where are all the casualties? Where’s the solid research that demonstrates real and serious harm? Where the academic consensus that this is a serious problem?

Please bring forward your evidence. Let’s have it all debated, discussed and exposed to public scrutiny! How about an open Senate Inquiry into this specific topic – if there’s really enough basis for concern to merit the time of our busy politicians?

Second, what makes you think it’s remotely feasible to block the web’s pigeon holes so successfully that the Internet will be ‘safe’ (whatever that means) for the young and vulnerable? Even your fellow censorship advocates admit the proposed mandatory ‘filter’ will be very ‘leaky’. Isn’t there a risk of misleading parents, if the Government falsely pretends that the Internet has been rendered ‘safe’ via a leaky filter?

Third, what’s wrong with the current situation? For several years, Internet filters have been available, free of charge, to those Australians who want to install them on their family’s own computers. Why doesn’t that suffice? I know uptake has been low – but doesn’t that suggest most Australians don’t share your obsession with censoring the Internet? Why are you so concerned to make censorship compulsory for ALL Australians?

We probably differ over the definition and dangers of pornography, Clive.

As time goes by, you increasingly strike me as a bit of a prude.

I wonder if the censors will share your values? How many will the Government need to employ? (there are tens, hundreds of thousands of websites to review). What will the selection criteria be for a censor? Will prior experience be an advantage? How will the censors themselves be protected from the ‘damage’ you allege pornography causes? How to avoid recruiting people who just want to watch lots of porn (legally) in air-conditioned offices at the taxpayer’s expense? Or doesn’t it matter? The mind boggles at the practicalities of this crazy scheme.

Anyhow, here’s another question.

Who the hell are you to determine sexual morality for ALL Australians? Who is Senator Conroy, for that matter? Who are the porn-monitors? Who are ANY of you to perform that role?

Why do you seek to impose standards on me that I may well not share?

Do this for your children by all means – especially when they are little. But leave me out of your moral regime. I’ll make my own decisions, thanks. I don’t want you – or anyone else – telling me what to see and what not to see.

What I choose to view does you no direct harm. Please butt out of my private life!

If you experience more authoritarian urges, try re-reading John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty! Refresh your memory on the principles that underpin liberal democratic society.

I don’t intend to defend ‘child porn’ or any of the other very exotic phenomena that apparently strike you, Clive, as the gravest dangers of the moment. I’ll just point out that there are already laws in all jurisdictions against child abuse. If pictures of abuse are posted on the web, the criminals make it all the easier for law enforcement agencies to arrest them.

Let’s Talk About Hate

If obscenity is the issue, can we discuss real obscenity?

How about illegal wars, based on lies, wars in our own times, that this country participates in and/or supports?

These are wars in which innocent people – many, many people including many, many children – have been and continue to be killed, maimed, suffer poverty and disease, all as a direct consequence of armed assaults by Australia’s ‘allies’.

These appalling and entirely avoidable obscenities don’t seem to bother you much, Clive, judging by your website. Yet you’re shocked about pornography on home computers.

For what it’s worth, I think you have your priorities backwards. I think they are seriously screwed up.

Would you agree that if ‘hate speech’ has any meaning at all, it is ‘hate speech’ to promote illegal wars based on lies?

If not, why not?

If so, why aren’t you concerned about the proliferation of such ‘hate speech’ in the mainstream media, every time there’s another war in the offing in the middle east?

Why do you agonize publicly over the fate of children exposed to the ‘plague’ of porn on the Internet – but say little, as far as I can see, about children who are victims of depleted uranium dropped by Australia’s military allies with the connivance of our own Government? Why aren’t you using your advocacy skills to lambast our mass media for helping to sell wars based on lies? How do you choose your priorities?

The bottom line, of course, is that you are free to pursue your own interests and concerns. But start impeding MY opportunities to do the same and you become my opponent.

Actually, I’m disgusted that you even try, without adducing compelling evidence of the alleged net social benefit. The ‘evidence’ you have come across may persuade you, but you’ve clearly not persuaded the majority of people actively concerned about this issue and you haven’t persuaded me. Why not try again? Are you a democrat – or an authoritarian?

Your grubby desire to restrict the freedom of your fellow Australians without good cause revolts me.

You fret like the Reverend Fred Nile over photos you’ve seen of men and women with semen on their faces. Dear me. Why not change the page?

How about real children with their arms or legs blown off, in Palestine, Somalia, the Lebanon or Afghanistan? Why DON’T we Australians see MORE of those pictures which show the direct consequence of our own nation’s foreign policy?

You seem to think there’s too much shocking material in the media. I think there’s not enough of what we should find truly shocking. You obsess about illicit sex. I’m more concerned about unnecessary death.

You are quite entitled to believe your moral perspective is well-considered.

So are the rest of us.

In Conclusion

Clive, please keep your hands off all the entrances to all those pigeon holes – the millions of them that make up the ever-changing World Wide Web! That’s public domain. Back off!

The Government’s Internet Censorship plan, for which you have become the most visible apologist, is counter-productive, unreasonable, divisive and outright dangerous.

If your role as Public Advocate No 1 for this scheme becomes the crowning achievement of your career – the key policy change for which you can later claim major personal credit – then I believe you will leave a sorry legacy.

History will remember you as fondly as it recalls the enthusiastic commissars, who started tidying up the means of communication – and history itself – on behalf the Soviet regime, once the Leninists consolidated their power.

You’re not my Big Brother, Clive. The impersonation ill becomes you.

Why not lighten up and take a holiday?

Alternatively, get back to issues that matter to all sentient Australians, issues on which there’s strong and growing consensus for intelligent new policy – issues such as climate change policy or the current economic turnoil.

I don’t ask you do this for me, Clive. I’ve no right to make demands on your time.

Do it for the sake of the children!