Attorney-General George Brandis and Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced yesterday that they expect internet service providers (ISPs) to work with copyright owners to help police infringement.

Image: k3anan (Flickr) CC BY

ISPs will have to agree to a new industry code that passes on warning notices to their customers when copyright owners make allegations of infringement against them. They will also have to start handing over the personal details of subscribers who have several allegations against their name.

The government also plans to introduce an obligation for ISPs to block access to file sharing websites such as The Pirate Bay.

These announcements are better than the government’s last attempt to force ISPs to negotiate, which would have made a mess out of copyright law for everyone. But there are still real problems, and the measures will probably increase the cost of internet access for little, if any, benefit.

A quick negotiation

ISPs and copyright owners have 120 days (over the holiday period) to come to agreement on an issue that they have been at loggerheads over for the past five years.

The government hasn’t given ISPs much negotiating power, either. The clear threat is that if ISPs don’t give the industry what it wants, the government will do it for them.

These types of industry codes can be an effective way to regulate, but the only way they will reflect the overall public interest is if consumer groups are also given a seat at the negotiating table. We also need transparency and continual monitoring to ensure the scheme is not being abused, and public interest groups must have the power to effectively protect end users.

In this proposal, consumer groups are not invited, and rightsholders hold all the power.

Three strikes and you’re out?

Yesterday’s press release is careful to distance itself from claims that this new scheme will include a termination regime, without actually ruling it out. But because of the way Australian copyright laws work, there is a good chance that ISPs will also start terminating access of people who have received multiple allegations of infringement.

In the recent iiNet case, the High Court ruled that ISPs were under no obligation to go out of their way to protect the rights of copyright owners. The High Court explained that there was no basis for ISPs to be certain that the allegations made by copyright owners were true.

The Court also noted that there was no evidence about whether warnings would actually deter infringements, and ruled that it would be unreasonable to disconnect people from the internet purely on the unverified allegations of copyright owners.

Copyright infringement notices are not always accurate. Image: University of Washington Computer Science & Engineering

This announcement is the result of sustained lobbying to overturn the effects of the iiNet decision. There is a pretty good chance that if ISPs agree to a code that only requires them to warn users, not terminate their connections, then they won’t be liable.

But our law already includes a provision to ensure that ISPs are not liable in these circumstances. The “safe harbours” provide ISPs with a limited immunity, on the condition that they terminate the accounts of “repeat infringers”.

Smart ISPs will want some certainty that they won’t be liable in a future lawsuit. Their best method of protecting themselves is to implement a policy to cut people off the internet after they receive a set number of notices.

But there are problems with notices. Allegations of infringement are just that; they’re not proof. History has shown that notice-based systems get abused.

We have seen allegations that a laser printer downloaded Iron Man and Indiana Jones. The Chilling Effects Clearing House has thousands of examples of people who have used copyright threats to bully critics, silence their political opponents or shut out their business competitors.

‘Speculative invoicing’

The code will include a way for copyright owners to demand the personal details of people who have received multiple allegations of infringement. Presumably, this is to stop them from having to go to the trouble of proving the reliability of their methods in court, like iiNet is making the owners of Dallas Buyers Club do now.

The problem is, nobody wants to actually sue individuals. Copyright owners want warnings first, because they’re cheap to send out – particularly if they can convince the ISPs to bear the costs.

If warnings turn out not to work, the next step is not to sue individuals. The music industry found out six years ago that this was not only largely ineffective, but also a terrible PR strategy.

Instead, we will probably see more “speculative invoicing”. This is a way to “monetise infringements” by sending legal threats directly to users.

Say a consumer is alleged to have downloaded a few movies that she otherwise would have paid for. The actual loss to the studios would probably be between US$30 and US$100. But the letters that users get sent ask for US$5,000 to settle the claims. Because it would cost much more than that to go to court, consumers will often choose to settle, even if the notice wasn’t accurate to begin with.

No safeguards have been announced to regulate how copyright owners can get access to or use the personal details of Australian internet users under this scheme.

Will blocking work?

Image: Jonno Witts (Flickr) CC BY-NC

Other countries have tried getting ISPs to block websites such as The Pirate Bay before. There is very little evidence that this is effective at either reducing infringement or increasing profits of copyright owners.

Earlier this year, the Dutch Court of Appeal overruled previous orders to block The Pirate Bay, finding that website blocking was ineffective and disproportionate.

The UK is still pressing ahead and currently blocks a large list of websites. Even professional “anti-piracy agents” point out that not only is website blocking not actually useful for blocking access to sites such as The Pirate Bay, but it’s actually creating a wasteful game of whack-a-mole that makes everyone’s job more difficult.

What obligations does the copyright industry have?

The government has been careful to explain that it expects the industry to do better in providing access for Australian consumers. We currently pay much more for access to digital content, and are still faced with significant delays in getting access to both physical goods and digital downloads compared to consumers elsewhere.

This is important. The only way to fix the problem with copyright is to make it fair.

But the truth is, the industry has little incentive to do better. Often, its choices to exclusively restrict access to premium channels – such as Foxtel – are more profitable than making the same content available faster to more people at a lower price.

We are still waiting for the government to announce how exactly it plans to convince foreign copyright owners to treat Australian consumers more fairly. It has been nearly 18 months since the IT Pricing report recommended serious action. We’re not holding our breath.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

As of last night both major Australian political parties can claim to have at one time backed and then rejected internet filters. Is this an epic win for netizens? Yes, for the battle against censorship; no for the larger war for comprehensive digital rights.

Liberal Party MP Paul Fletcher yesterday released The Coalition’s Policy to Enhance Online Safety for Children, which included a proposal for a UK-style mandatory opt-out Australia-wide internet filter.

At 5:30pm Malcolm Turnbull, apparently caught on the hop, defended the policy on Triple J’s Hack program:

What [our policy] does is essentially install that software either in the smartphone or in the modem as a default which you can switch off but then that’s at your call.

Then the internet exploded. Australian Twitter users took to the tweets and Facebook users set their statuses to stun. The backlash angrily denounced the filter as unwarranted censorship, as a chilling effect on free speech, but most damningly, apparently, to further slowing down the already likely slower speed of the Coalition’s proposed fibre to the node (FTTN) national broadband network.

While Mr Fletcher continued to argue for the value of a filter for reducing the confusion of filter choices, by 11pm the Coalition backflipped. Malcolm Turnbull lead the charge and took the fall in a number of tweets from his @TurbullMalcolm account, claiming it was a mistake and that the Coalition opposed filtering on principle.

Mr Turnbull also argued later that such that filters are unworkable. Tony Abbott agreed that it was a “failure of quality control” and that the Rudd government was the only government to support internet filtering.

The Coalition is still dealing with its error in the media this morning, pushing the “mistakes were made” angle, although the “administrative error” defence did not work very well for the Wikileaks party preferencing blunder earlier in the campaign.

The ALP tango

Mr Abbott’s claim that the Rudd government supported filtering was in reference to Steven Conroy’s long-standing attempt to bring internet filtering to Australia. Mr Conroy’s plan was vigorously opposed for several years by civil liberties groups such as Electronic Frontiers Australia (of which I am a board member) in its Open Internet campaign.

Such groups point to numerous reasons why such filters are unworkable (see our Internet Content Filtering and Blocking page and fact sheets).

Mr Conroy eventually backed down in November 2012.

The war is ongoing

Australia’s politicians will sashay away from unpopular individual policies – sometimes slowly, sometimes rapidly – but, as I have noted previously in this election, politicians and journalists have largely been silent on comprehensive policies for positive digital rights.

Both the ALP and the LNP policy announcements concentrate almost on the cost and aspirational benefits of their NBN infrastructure plans. As part of their official policy platforms documents, both The Greens and the Pirate Party Australia treat the NBN as necessarily also requiring a parallel commitment to a range of digital rights issues.

Electronic Frontiers Australia’s Election 2013 scorecard shows that only these two parties have a consistent positive position on surveillance, copyright and censorship.

Whatever the outcome of tomorrow’s election, yesterday’s filtering backflip by the Coalition is in large part due to the power of social media’s amplification effect when used by an angry populace. Elections may be the showcase event, but when it comes to digital rights they are no longer the only game in town.

Australians have an opportunity in the election, and the period immediately following, to move beyond negative reactions to individual digital policies and push towards lobbying whoever is in government for a considered holistic approach to our digital rights.

It is possible that the policy was only intended to be released after the election; that the Coalition backtracked due to community outrage; or that it was indeed a genuine error and never actually Coalition policy in the first place. In any case, it has put the issue of an open internet firmly back on the agenda just hours before Australians go to the polls.

When the ALP announced plans to introduce a mandatory internet filter back in 2007, EFA led the Open Internet campaign to oppose the policy and protect internet freedoms. We remain as opposed as ever to plans for internet filtering at the ISP level.

Internet filtering, whether mandatory or ‘opt-out’, is a major affront to the rights of freedom of speech and press. The very purpose of the internet is for the free flow of information. An internet filter is an attack on the internet itself.

While we welcome the Coaltion’s backdown on this policy, EFA is concerned at the apparent lack of cohesion within the party on the issue of an internet filter. We encourage all voters to consider the different parties stances on digital rights, and have created an Election Scorecard to assist voters to make an informed decision.

You can view the Scorecard at our election page.

Attacks on our digital rights can come at any moment. Help EFA continually fight for digital freedom, access and privacy by donating or joining today.

DNS for Dummies cover image. Copyright: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

As reported by Bernard Keane in Crikey yesterday, Australia’s corporate regulator - ASIC - has admitted to another incident in which a website blocking request has lead to the inadvertent blocking of thousands of websites.

In a written statement [PDF: 474KB] provided to the Senate Economics Legislation Committee, ASIC have admitted that one previous blocking request in which they specified an IP address, rather than a domain name, resulted in some 250,000 websites being blocked.

They claim that “the vast majority (in excess of 99.6%), appear to contain no substantive content. In this instance we believe that less than 1000 active sites (less than 0.4%) may have been temporarily affected. None of these are .au sites. There are various reasons why such a large number of sites with no substantive content may use the same address, such as through a ‘domain for sale’ operation.”

Given the evident lack of even a basic understanding of the functioning of the Internet’s addressing system within ASIC, these claims are simply not credible. Has ASIC actually reviewed all 250,000 sites to determine whether they contain ‘substantive content’? How do they define ‘substantive content’? Do they believe that ‘only 1000 active sites’ is an acceptable level of collateral damage? The fact they none of them were using .au domain names does not mean that they are not sites operated by Australian entities (such as melbournefreeuniversity.org) nor does that mean that they are not sites that Australians wish to access.

While ASIC’s motives are of course laudable - to protect Australians from fraudulent investment schemes - their use of section 313 of the Telecommunications Act to block these websites is extremely problematic.

In their statement, ASIC has committed to consult with other government agencies and police “to determine how we can best disrupt websites that are part of criminal operations without impacting on legitimate sites”, and are looking at:

• how to ensure only specific websites are targeted (use the domain name, not the IP address, it’s really simple!);
• contacting hosting or domain name providers to have sites taken down at their source, and;
• redirecting blocked sites to a landing page indicating why the site is inaccessible.

They have also committed to publicly report on their use of s313 on an annual basis.

These steps are all very necessary and have our support, but EFA believes that ASIC must cease all use of s313 to block websites until they have:

• learnt how the Internet addressing system functions;
• implemented, in consultation with the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, clearly defined processes for the use of this power, including some form of independent oversight; and,
• implemented a landing page to which blocked sites can be redirected that will inform affected users trying to access a blocked website.

EFA believes that the use of s313 to block websites should be subject to judicial oversight, through a requirement for a warrant to be issued for each request.

View Senator Ludlam’s questioning of ASIC officials from last night’s session:

EFA has been a leading voice against internet filtering in Australia, through our Open Internet campaign. You can support our work in fighting for digital freedom, access and privacy in Australia by joining or donating today.

Access Denied. Image: Beatrice Barton

Under intense questioning from Greens Senator Scott Ludlam at Senate Estimates hearings this week, the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Environment has revealed that there are three agencies that have used section 313 of the Telecommunications Act to block websites.

These agencies are ASIC, as publicised recently, the Australian Federal Police, who the Communications Minister announced last year would be using this power to block ‘the worst of the worst’ websites containing child exploitation material, and ‘one agency within the Attorney-General’s Department’.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy refused to name this third agency and referred Senators to the Attorney-General’s Department. DBCDE officials advised that they had hosted a meeting last week which included a variety of Federal Government agencies to discuss the use of s313 for website blocking. Having listed the entities represented at the meeting, it was only very reluctantly revealed that ASIO had also attended the meeting.

At a later session, with the Attorney-General’s Department and Australian Federal Police present, Senator Ludlam took up Minister Conroy’s invitation to ask the Department who this third agency is. The Departmental officials responded with ‘we don’t comment on National Security issues’ and refused to elaborate. It is reasonable to conclude therefore that this third agency is ASIO. ASIO’s Director-General David Irvine later refused to confirm nor deny whether they were this agency but did confirm that they have the power to do so. He stated that if ASIO was to use this power, it would only be in a case where there was a ‘significant and probably relatively immediate threat to lives’.

We are unlikely to ever hear much, if anything, about ASIO’s use of this power, if they are in fact the ‘third agency’, so we must be hopeful that the Inspector General of Intelligence and Security exercises their oversight powers to ensure this power is not being used inappropriately.

The Federal Police Deputy Commissioner Michael Phelan advised the Senate that the first time they used s313 to block websites listed on the Interpol ‘worst of the worst’ list was 24th June 2011, which was some five months before Communications Minister Conroy announced that this power would be used in this way, in lieu of the government’s decision to finally abandon its proposed mandatory internet filter. Where sites are blocked in this context, users are redirected to the Interpol website.

Deputy Commissioner Phelan did however confirm that the AFP does not currently use s313 to block website content for any other purpose, noting that it is “far more valuable to get in contact with those that are hosting the material and block the content at its source...and working with the various companies and countries that actually own the domains and that’s a far more useful method than to try and block from here.”

It is somewhat reassuring to see that the AFP, at least, are using this power within the scope that has been publicly announced and that they recognise the limited effectiveness of website blocking as a means for preventing access to allegedly harmful content.

Meanwhile, ASIC chairman, Greg Medcraft, in response to his organisation’s recent blunder in blocking over 1,200 websites (including over 90 websites using .au domain names), yesterday told a stockbrokers conference that “We are reviewing our procedures to ensure that this does not happen again" but also indicated that they are not about to stop using this power to block sites, saying, “we don't apologise for blocking the sites of criminal fraudsters and we will continue to take action to prevent scammers ripping off Australians."

EFA remains deeply concerned about the scope for government agencies to take unilateral action to block websites. Though there is no evidence available to suggest that any State government agencies have also used this power, it would appear to be possible for them to do so under the current interpretation of s313 of the Telecommunications Act. As Senator Ludlam raised in his questioning of the AFP, it is possible that local councils may also be able to use this power, using the justification of ‘protecting public revenue’.

It is clearly a totally unacceptable situation to have dozens, if not hundreds, of individual government entities with the power to unilaterally block websites. Minister Conroy has called for and is understood to be taking action to ensure 'greater transparency' in the use of this power, and while this is an important first step, EFA believes more needs to be done.

Clear guidelines and constraints need to be placed around the use of this power, and EFA believes that judicial warrants should be required for its use. A review and potential amendment of this part of the Telecommunications Act is therefore required to ensure that Australians can have confidence that a mandatory internet filtering regime is not being implemented by stealth.

View Sen. Ludlam's questioning of Comms Minister Conroy & DBCDE

View Sen. Ludlam’s questioning of the AFP & AG's Department

View Senator Ludlam’s questioning of the Director-General of ASIO

EFA is your voice for digital freedom, access and privacy. You can support our work by joining or donating today.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy. Image: CeBIT Australia

After lobbying by a number of internet users and civil liberties groups, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has told Computerworld that he believes greater transparency is needed in relation to actions taken by government agencies to block access to websites.

Referring to ASIC’s blocking of 1,200 sites as a “mistake”, he said that he would ask his Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (DBCDE) to put forward suggestions on how to strengthen transparency, which could include a notice alerting people that a website they are attempting to access has been blocked, including a point of contact to find out more information.

It was revealed last week that ASIC had blocked up 1,200 websites in an effort to shut down one allegedly fraudulent website. Concerns were raised in April when Melbourne Free University were told by their ISP that the IP address hosting their website had been blocked by Australian authorities. Subsequent investigations revealed that ASIC was the source of the block, and that they had been using Section 313 of the Telecommunications Act to block websites for as long as 9 months.

Minister Conroy claims that both he and his department were unaware that ASIC was using s313 to have websites blocked. This, and the technical incompetence displayed by ASIC, which lead to some 1,200 completely unrelated sites also being blocked (including over 90 sites with .au domain names), demonstrates the need for clearly defined processes to be put in place for all government agencies.

Minister Conroy has denied that s313 will be used a backdoor way of implementing an internet filter. This is his opportunity to prove it.

EFA welcomes this move by the Minister and stands ready to assist in the development of appropriate controls and processes relating to the use of the Telecommunications Act to block access to websites, including a publicly available list of such blocked websites. EFA therefore reiterates our call for the Minister to:

• identify which agencies are/have been requesting ISPs to block websites under section 313 of the Telecommunications Act, and how many such actions have been taken to date;
• define the processes that are in place to ensure that such requests are justified, subject to appropriate auditing and oversight and do not impose unnecessary operational burdens on ISPs; and,
• clarify the legality of such actions.

Australians deserve an open internet and have a right to know by whom, under what circumstances, and for what reasons any attempts at filtering or censorship are being made. Help EFA continue to fight for digital freedom, access and privacy by donating or joining today.

It is a real concern that after the government finally abandoned their plans for a mandatory internet filter last year, we now discover that not only do individual government agencies have the power to block access to websites, they have been doing just that for the better part of a year without any public accountability.

EFA recognises that agencies like ASIC have a duty to enforce Australian law and to protect Australian consumers, however these examples raise some very serious concerns, including the following:

• the lack of transparency about the fact that agencies such as ASIC were unilaterally blocking websites, and what other government agencies may also be taking such action
• the lack of any apparent oversight of the decision making process to block sites
• the obvious lack of technical competence
• the lack of clarity around the appropriateness of the legal powers used by ASIC to justify its actions, under section 313 of the Telecommunications Act

If individual government agencies are taking independent action to block websites without appropriate oversight and transparency, the implications are arguably more serious than those involved with the government's thoroughly discredited and now abandoned mandatory internet filter. Having potentially dozens of separate agencies acting to block sites independently, with different internal processes and varying levels of technical understanding, and with differing levels of compliance from different ISPs, is a recipe for chaos.

This approach is also remarkably ineffective. When this incident first came to light last month, EFA's own investigations showed that only some ISPs had in fact implemented a block on the IP address in question. Many Australians were therefore still able to access the fraudulent site(s) that ASIC was targeting, a fact that made it very difficult to determine the source of the block. It is only due to the excellent investigative work by Renai Le May from Delimiter, and others, that the real story has now come to light.

As we noted earlier Communications Minister Stephen Conroy himself said last year that notices under s313 would only be used to block the 'worst of the worst' of child pornography.

EFA remains opposed to government-imposed internet filtering, and calls on the government to urgently address this issue, to:

• identify which agencies are/have been requesting ISPs to block websites under section 313 of the Telecommunications Act, and how many such actions have been taken to date
• define the processes that are in place to ensure that such requests are justified, subject to appropriate auditing and oversight and do not impose unnecessary operational burdens on ISPs
• clarify the legality of such actions

Australians deserve an open internet and have a right to know by whom, under what circumstances, and for what reasons any attempts at filtering or censorship are being made. Help EFA continue to fight for digital freedom, access and privacy by donating or joining today.

ASIC believed that the website in question was operating in breach of Australian law, specifically section 911a of the Corporations Act 2001

Under Section 313 of the Telecommunications Act, websites that breach Australian law can be blocked.

Melbourne Free University’s website was hosted at the same IP address as the fraud website, and was unintentionally blocked.

Once ASIC were made aware of what had happened, they lifted the original blocking request. The government is working with enforcement agencies to ensure that Section 313 requests are properly targeted in future.

Source: http://delimiter.com.au/2013/05/15/interpol-filter-scope-creep-asic-ordering-unilateral-website-blocks/

ASIC used Section 313 to block www.globalcapitalwealth.com and www.globalcapitalaustralia.com but due to technical incompetence failed to realise an IP address can host many websites - the action taking down 1200 other websites including education site Melbourne Free University in the crossfire.

Section 313 notices can be issued by officers and authorities of the Commonwealth and of the States and Territories.

This is not the first time ASIC has moved to block websites. In October of last year ASCI blocked prestigeprivatewealth.com, a scam that purports to provide brokerage services.

Brendan Molloy of Pirate Party Australia has requested documents under Freedom of Information from Australian Securities and Investment Commission relating to the above censorship.

Section 313 notices have no public oversight. Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said in November 2012 that these notices would only be used the block the worst of the worst of  child pornography.

I would not be comfortable to moving to a system that is more likely to accidentally block material, does not meet Australia’s laws in terms of Australia’s legal definition of child abuse, and does not have appeal mechanisms.

- Senator Conroy, Senate Environment and Communications Committee hearing transcript, 18 October 2011

This is just the latest in a growing number of examples where surveillance and censorship powers have been subject to scope creep. Starting off to fight the boogie man, terrorists and child pornographers only to spread like a bushfire blocking anything without a second thought. Given the complete lack of transparency it is hard to imagine this is the only case of friendly fire.

-SR

Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA) welcomes today's announcement by Communications Minister Stephen Conroy that the government has finally abandoned its plans to introduce mandatory internet filtering. EFA, through its Open Internet campaign, was one of the many civil society groups that campaigned hard against this policy over a number of years.

The internet is built on open standards, and EFA strongly believes that maintaining its open nature is critical to ensuring that it continues to be a powerful platform for disseminating information, connecting communities, increasing transparency, driving innovation and enabling global commerce. EFA fully understands that such an open network also creates a number of serious challenges for government, particularly in relation to law enforcement and security.

Top-down, one-size-fits-all approaches to dealing with these challenges, such as the government's now-abandoned mandatory internet filter, are not appropriate, nor likely to be effective in terms of outcomes or value for money. More nuanced policy approaches that employ proportionate technical responses, combined with empowering individuals, particularly through education, are in most cases likely to be much more successful.

We are therefore pleased that the government appears to now finally accept that its mandatory internet filter policy was such a top-down approach that was unworkable and posed a serious threat to free speech in Australia.

While the government's new plan, for having ISPs block child abuse sites based on an Interpol-maintained list does amount to a form of internet filtering, it is currently of a very limited nature and involves a degree of transparency and accountability in relation to the list of blocked sites.

We continue to believe that filtering based on block lists is a relatively ineffective approach with a number of potential problems, however, this new policy appears to be a workable approach to addressing one aspect of the problem of harmful content.

We encourage policy-makers to undertake meaningful engagement with civil society groups early on in the policy formulation process to ensure that such poorly-designed policies are avoided in future.

The latest line, that the Minister trusts "to the common sense of the Australian public with respect to the classification system", is a little strange. Censorship policy is complicated, especially when it comes to the internet, and it's not clear how pursuing this scheme is somehow leaving the whole matter up to the folksy wisdom of the Australian people. Of course, if you ask people whether they want something done about child pornography (for instance) they are likely to say yes. Who wouldn't? But the more they learn about this particular "something", the more skeptical they become.

Last year, several large ISPs including Telstra, Optus and Primus announced they were voluntarily pursuing a blacklist filter against child pornography. It's disappointing, and a little surprising, that the Government did not use this announcement as a good pretext to put the filter policy out to pasture. The reason is, of course, that they don't believe it goes far enough. The Minister at one point in his remarks at the Estimates hearings commented that: "If you believe a voluntary filter should block child abuse, how would you justify having a voluntary filter not block a bestiality or pro-rape website?" This language will be very familiar to those of you who have followed Senator Conroy's role in the debate.

If, like us, you believe that the word "bestiality" does not automatically end a discussion, you can probably think of a few answers to that question. One reason might be that those forms of content, unsavoury as they may be, are not criminal to possess. Another reason might be that child pornography is defined in the statute books, but something like "pro-rape" is quite vague. Perhaps one calls to mind a website that encourages, and even provides instruction on, attacks against women - something none of us would tolerate. What about a website set up by fetishists to explore power games amongst consenting adults? It might not be popular, but is it a menace to public decency?

Playing the bestiality and "pro-rape" cards also begs some important questions. How many bestiality sites are out there? Is there any evidence that Australians are seeking them out? Would those who do be stopped by the filter? If they aren't stopped, will they be harmed? Of course, these questions are not answered by the Minister. If they were, the answers probably wouldn't add up to a public emergency that could be solved by the proposed blacklist.

We must be resigned to the fact that as long as Senator Conroy remains at the helm of internet policy, we're going to be hearing about this great Bestiality Shield. Luckily, there are others in Parliament who have weighed the policy more thoughtfully, and for now it appears the filter would be unlikely to pass through even the lower house. We still remain resolutely opposed to internet censorship, especially the Labor plan, and we'll work to make sure that those other policymakers don't fall for the moral panic line.