Six ISPs to Participate in Internet Filter Trial

By Greg McNevin

February 16, 2009: Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has announced that six ISPs will be participating in the initial phase of the government’s controversial mandatory internet filtration program. However, the announcement has drawn even more criticism with many commentators arguing that the ISPs chosen will not reflect real-world conditions.

Highway 1, Netforce, OMNIconnect, Primus Telecommunications, Tech 2U and Webshield will be running the initial six-week test, however, with the exception of Primus the ISPs listed are all small operations which will, according to some commentators, be unable to provide anything but watered-down results as they are simply too small.

Shadow Communications Minister, Senator Nick Minchin claims that it is “extremely puzzling why two of the nation’s three largest ISPs, Optus and iiNet, have not been included in the first phase of these trials, despite expressing a willingness to participate.”

“Australia’s largest ISP, Telstra BigPond, has refused to participate and without the ‘big three’ it is difficult to see how these trials could in any way be credible,” says Minchin.

In its refusal, Telstra dubbed mandatory filtering as “an attempt to boil the ocean”, a statement that many commentators may agree with considering it has been said that the scheme may decrease network performance by up to 87 percent.

Beyond the purely technical, many have with Primus comparing the scheme to the censorship currently seen in countries such as China, particularly considering the Government has so far refused to discuss the contents of its URL blacklist, and will also not define what it considers to be “unwanted content” to be blocked.

Those ISPs included in the initial trial have defended the trial, with Highway 1 writing in a statement on its website that it is the objective assessment of “the technical viability of the filtering solution we have proposed to implement, not the relative merits of proposed legislation” that it is interested in.

Webshield on the other hand already provides filtration to its customers, and claims that it can demonstrate that the filtering system can work, depending on what content the government wants to block. If it’s just a blacklist, the company says this is easily done with little performance degradation, however, blacklists themselves have been repeatedly dismissed as a real solution, as they rapidly become outdated and can also be easily circumvented.

Primus says customers will be able to opt out of the trial, what kind of effect this will have on the trial results we shall have to wait and see. Until then, it’s a pity the Government doesn’t respect the rights of its citizens enough to at very least provide the same courtesy in its overall plan.

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