Political agenda drives Internet filter plans

Senator Stephen Conroy and the Labour government are espousing an Internet filtering plan, which is likely to be ineffective and seems to run counter to their strategy for a digital economy and plans for a national broadband network (NBN).

Plans for a mandatory Internet filter were announced by Conroy back in December 2007 and in the lead up to the last election as an election promise. The plans fall under the Content Services Code, which is a ‘new industry code of practice for providers of online and mobile phone content’.

Conroy seems to be re-visiting his filter plans during the NBN lull as telcos get their bids together for this major project. Bids have to be submitted before the end of November.

The filter would aim to restrict child pornography and illegal content with black-lists for the each but no opportunity for users to opt out.

Experts argue that Internet filtering will reduce Australian broadband speeds by 25 to 75 per cent. This would be somewhat counter-productive given the fact that Australia already lags the rest of the developed world when it comes to broadband speeds. Any gains delivered by the $4.5bn investment in a broadband network will be wiped out - hampering Australia’s ability to establish a true digital economy.   

Experts also argue that the plan will fail to achieve its goals:

• It cannot control peer to peer networking - providing an easy get out for those that want to access illegal content (and are probably already using peer connections). P2P traffic represents 30 to 55 per cent of all traffic.
• Technology for by-passing Internet filters is freely available.

The Aussie filter plan has been compared to censorship systems in Iran (less severe) and China (equivalent). Civil libertarians are concerned. Will this be the start of censorship creep? Who decides what is illegal? What precendence does it set for other countries? What if the Government begins to determine inconvenient content as illegal to further their own agenda and to stimy debate in this country?   

The following passage is from ZDnet on October 27:

The IIA has been a long-standing opponent of mandatory ISP filtering in Australia. Its stance on the issue since 2000 has been for ISPs to provide customers with filters or an optional filtered service, not to filter the entire network, according to CEO Peter Coroneos.

“Only the most repressive regimes in the world have attempted such an approach,” the IIA said in its 2006 statement regarding mandatory ISP filtering.

We have every right to be concerned if the Government’s recent actions in relation to Mark Newton, an Internode network engineer and opponent of the plan, are to provide a guide. An advisor to Conroy contacted the IIA to request that they control the views of Mark Newton. Internode - Newton’s employer is a memberof the IIA.

So what is the point? This looks like a case of a Government that is influenced by a desire to be seen to be doing the right thing.

Visit the Anti-Filter campaign here for more on this, including the following video by Winston Smith. And have your say here. Other sites and bloggers of interest on this topic:

• No Clean Feed - official campaign website
• Electronic Frontiers Australia - not for profit representing Internet users
• Somebody think of the children - blog
• Stop Australian Censorship - petition
• NetAlarmed - information & resources
• Internet censorship and civil liberties in Australia - forum & community

Arguably, well intentioned this policy is ultimately ineffective, misguided and wasteful.

I’ve seen a few bloggers comment that parents should be responsible for their children’s Internet habits and usage in the same way that they are for TV, computer games, music and movies. I think that’s the bottom line. The Government already gives away free Internet filtering software to parents.

This is a waste of money, which will have minimal effect on consumers of illegal content, and maximum effect on the majority of users (consumers and commercial) that understand and enjoy a high speed, open Internet.

The driving motivation for this policy could well be political. Is the Labour Government appeasing minority interests (Family First & Independents) in the Australian parliament in an effort to secure its position of power for the long term?

Unsurprisingly, Obama is streets ahead on a global basis with one significant exception.

In Macedonia, the former Yugoslavian Republic, McCain is recording a landslide 86.8% of the vote.

On a global basis - at the time of writing - Obama takes the Presidency with the same share (86.8%) of the vote.

No such research exists for Australia as far as I am aware.

Forrester Technographic 2008

Dealing with the YouthForce

The Millenials and Gen Ys are an increasingly important segment of our workforce. This demographic has had the luxury of a prosperous economy during their teenage years and adult life. They haven’t experienced an economic downturn or heaven forbid - an R!

Accenture coined the term user-determined computing. The relates to the increasingly tech savvy workforce and the dramatic increase in the availability of free, customisable and easy to implement software.

The Accenture argument goes that new technology within the workforce is just as likely to be deployed by users as it is by the IT department, which poses the question: How much control should IT (the business) exert over its users in the Web 2.0 world?

In recent years, we’ve seen social networking applications, instant messenging, RSS readers and so on enter the workforce in a big way. They may or may not be being used for work related activities.

Companies are presented with four options:

Get Back to Work Make a Phone Call!

BLOCK: Prevent access to social networks, sites and services that aren’t obviously related to work.

TRUST: Allow access and leave workers to discover their own professional uses for the technology.

APPLY: Work with employees and third party consultants to identify ways in which the technology can be applied to work. Lay down guidelines for the use of social media and other tools in partnership with staff and communicate these guidelines.

MANAGE: Tap into workers enthusiasm for online communication by rolling out a Facebook-like platform for internal (and external with trusted partners) company communications.

Telstra and Channel 7 are two companies in Australia that have received negative media coverage for blocking access to social networks (Facebook in both cases).

It will be interesting to see how the issue of the tightening economy and the use of social networks in the work place converge during the next twelve months. We’ve seen a rash of retrenchments in Australia and around the world, which looks likely to continue.

Recent research by the people at Wikinomics found that 50% of the Net Generations surveyed spend more than 2 hours every day using work technologies (Internet, IM etc.) to complete non-work tasks. 

My bet would be that corporations will increasingly opt to BLOCK as staff are cut back.

The forward thinking companies will respond to this issue by trying to find ways to use new technology to increase productivity in the workplace rather than adopting the punitive BLOCK mentality.  

Here are the results from Wikinomics:

Disclosure: Accenture is a client.

Australia’s Top 100 Influential Twitterers

Check it out here.

It’s useful as a guide but influence is subjective and one could argue that Twitterers that post often on personal topics (i.e. respond literally to the question: What are you doing?) are Active as opposed to Influential.

I also came across this tool: TWinfluence, which analyses social networks to provide a measure for an individuals influence. TWinfluence goes one step futher than the Holmes à Court analysis by extending the analysis to the second and third layer of a social network i.e. it goes beyond direct connections.

This type of tool is really useful for agencies when conducting influencer audits.

contactdjy’s Rank: #3302 (38%)

In related news, we are currently trialling a social media monitoring tool. More on this later.

I just came across this story in Smart Company by Brad Howarth on the top 15 best business blogs in Australia. Brad laments the slow uptake of corporate blogging in this country, as do I.

This is a good piece which includes a 101 guide to corporate blogging but I’d argue that only four of the 15 are actually corporate blogs, these would be RaboBank, RedBalloon Days, RealEstate.com.au and Telstra.

We have Sydney Observatory and Sydney Writers Centre and the rest: a mix of independent thinkers and consultants representing large marketing agencies. I’d argue that these guys are blogging for themselves as opposed to representing a corporation. It may be a fine line but I’m sticking to it. Corporate blogging still has a long way to go in Australia.  

We’re currently consulting to a couple of clients in this area and hopefully can play a small party in getting Australia up to speed.

Cess + Pool

Google CEO Eric Schmidt referred to the Internet as a “cesspool” at the annual American Magazine Conference. He argued yesterday that the Internet is becoming a breeding ground of misinformation.

Apple felt the effects of the cesspool earlier this month. A comment made by a ‘citizen journalist’ on a CNN hosted message board lead to ten point fall in its stock price. The comment falsely claimed that Steve Jobs had had a heart attack.

In some ways this seems like an odd comment to come from the CEO of a company that has been very successful as an organisor of the ‘cesspool’ and I’m sure that Eric would agree that user generated media is not all shit.

We should recognise that Schmidt was addressing an audience of journalists, magazine publishers and content creators. This is the old guard in media terms, a community which has an issue with the lack of journalistic standards in the blogosphere and feel threatened by fact that the keyboard is now mightier than the pen (or print press).

Google is treading a fine line between its role as a search engine and content creator. The company is in a hugely powerful position when it comes to determining what is value online, which makes Schmidt’s comment a cause for concern.

He says that brands are the answer to the problem of quality on the Web, says Schmidt. Brand affinity is hard wired and brands represent authority.

The inherent point in Schmidt’s argument is that brands - by definition commercially viable and therefore good for Google - are somehow more credible than human, individual voices. It’s the rejection of this premise that has fuelled user generated content and commentary and the blogosphere.

Furthermore, by Schmidt’s rule CNN is an authoritative brand. CNN has attempted to co-opt citizen journalists and user generated content with its forums and message boards (including iReport where the Apple rumour first appeared) but still the cesspool seeped through. 

CNN has attempted to tap into the cesspool in order to drive traffic to its site, which has ultimately created conflict between its brand and its perceived authority. A halfway point between the two would see it apply journalistic standards to the user generated content that it promotes but that discussion brings us back to the debate about moderation, which leads on to a discussion about resources and freedom of expression and then the risk of editorial bias.

As an aside, CNN bills iReport as:

iReport.com: See it first. Your Stories. No Boundaries.
You won’t believe what people are uploading.

I think this is further evidence that we are really at the very beginning of a digital transformation in the media sector. There is so much to be ironed out. The battle between traditional media and new media is just beginning.

Look out for a post from me over the weekend about what impact an economic crisis might have on this transformation.

More on the Schmidt story here from WebProNews.

USD200,000 on hotel rooms

USD150,000 on catered banquets

USD23,000 at the hotel spa

USD1400 at the salon

USD10,000 leisure dining

But… its OK… it was in the interests of staff retention.

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