Filter our freedom of speech right

The new mandatory filtering regime proposed by the Government is the kind of election pledge most wish the Government would just forget about.

It goes without saying that child pornography is a disgusting, horrific and detestable crime.  This is why the Government is masking a mass online censorship program as a debate on child porn.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has repeatedly said that "if people equate freedom of speech with watching child pornography, then the Rudd-Labor Government is going to disagree".

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But this is not about child pornography.  There is no evidence the filter will halt the distribution of child pornography.  No filtering system has ever proved impenetrable.

Paedophilic material will still be accessible to the determined criminal -- but the proposed filter will also block sites that have nothing to do with child pornography.

The proposed legislative amendments to the Broadcasting Services Act will require all Internet Service Providers to block Refused Classification content materials.  Most material that has been refused classification is not actually illegal to possess or access.

Although RC content includes child pornography material it also includes content that has nothing to do with child pornography.  Some examples of RC range from content involving fetish activity between consenting adults to images demonstrating safe drug use and even certain video games.

Implementing such a filter is also highly problematic.  A mandatory internet filter will slow our internet.

The Government's claim that the online filter will have "negligible" impact on internet performance is unfounded.

The report on the Government's trial of internet filtering provides no data which verifies the claim that the online filter will not slow internet performance.  In fact, those well versed in net tech insist that it is impossible for a filter not to slow internet operations.

Depending on how it is implemented, the proposed internet filter might also accidentally block a lot more web pages than it is intended to.  This could lead to some extensive, if unintended, censorship.

There are more than 1 trillion web pages on the internet.  If 2.44 per cent are blocked -- and that's the percentage of sites that even the best filters unintentionally cut -- it will mean the loss of 24 billion sites.

But the biggest problem is that the proposed legislation threatens to seriously impinge on our freedom of communication.

A mandatory online censorship program is incompatible with a liberal democratic society.  It is unlikely that censorship legislation like the one proposed here could be enacted in countries such as Canada or the United States -- such enactments would greatly impinge on the freedom of communication of the individual, contrary to guaranteed constitutional rights.

The details of the Government's internet filter still aren't clear.  We will apparently be seeing legislation introduced early next year.

But what we do know is that the current regime will limit free speech.  We would only ever accept such a limitation of liberty if there was something substantial to gain.

Here, clearly there is no such gain.