Much has been made in recent weeks of the Federal Government's announcement that internet service providers would soon be required to offer a 'clean feed' to their Australian customers, with undesirable sites and content being blocked by default. Civil liberties groups in particular have been up in arms, touting the proposed legislation as nothing short of censorship and likening it to the infamous Great Firewall of China. But is this an erroneous comparison?
Although Telecommunications Minister Stephen Conroy has been accused of sneaking his legislation in quietly under the radar, the clean feed initiative has long been part of Labor policy. In a media release prior to the 2007 election, Labor stated that, should they win government, they would 'provide a mandatory 'clean feed' internet service for all homes, schools and public computers that are used by Australian children' and that ISPs would be required to 'filter out content that is identified as prohibited by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA)'.
Thus far, the government has been somewhat vague on the finer details of their Clean Feed policy. It is expected that the system will be run along the lines of that already operated by British Telecoms in the UK, with websites being blocked on a report/blacklist basis rather than the notoriously unreliable system of generalised content or keyword filtering. Exactly how this will be implemented and what effect it will have on internet speed, reliability and cost is also uncertain.
However, it is clear that, while the government will make it mandatory for ISPs to provide a clean feed service — so that all consumers will have access to it, regardless of which ISP they are signed up with — they are not making it mandatory for the feed be used by all Australians. Consumers who do not wish to have their internet content filtered or blocked can opt out of the clean feed system.
So, can this really be considered censorship? Surely not. The clean feed policy will ensure the provision of a service which allows consumers, with particular mind to children and minors, to surf the internet without running across content to which they'd rather not be exposed.
When boiled down to bare bones, the argument against censorship is essentially one in support of both freedom of expression and freedom of choice: the choice to read, view, write, create and speak whatever we, as consenting adults,