Question Time: Senator Conroy responds to Libro-wackos over filter fear
PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT: 7PM EST, JANUARY 4, 2008
CONROY: Thank you for attending this press conference. Undoubtedly, you have better things to do on your Christmas break. I guarantee you I do as well. Consider yourselves to blame though. If it wasn’t for the teary outbursts from your colleagues this week, we would all be home watching reruns of Law and Order and most of Australia wouldn’t even know this plan existed. They’d still be shoveling down Christmas Turkey -- well anyone who didn’t order a Chrisco hamper would be [Laughs]. So you have roughly the same time to ask me questions as it takes for a website to load under my new Internet Filtering scheme, 4 minutes. Go ahead.
JOURNALIST 1: What guarantees will you be providing Australian Internet users that their services will not be slowed any further than they already are?
CONROY: Australia has the fastest Internet speeds in the modern world. Faster than those cyber wizards in Japan. If every website you visit now loads in a measly 3 minutes, it will load in a super fast 3 to 4 minutes once the clean feed begins. It’s like traffic lights. Sure a red light slows your journey down, but it’s there for your safety and to protect other road users. The same applies with the clean feed.
JOURNALIST 2: How do you propose to actually collate the block list, Mr Conroy? The Internet is huge and the manpower required to build a list of prohibited content would take years. Even than you would have only blacklisted at best 5% of content. That’s not counting the thousands of new sites uploaded each day.
CONROY: It’s a numbers game, so you make the numbers work for you. What we’ve done is turn the Internet on its head. Rather than search for prohibited websites to blacklist, we simply blacklist the entire Internet and then unblock suitable websites. Because so much of the Internet is dangerous anyway, it will take fewer resources to just shake out the good stuff. Next!
JOURNALIST 3: Why not an opt-in system?
CONROY: An opt-in system is like going to the dentist. People don’t do it just for the heck of it, they only go when needed. If no one opts-in I’ll have wasted more tax payer clams than I’d care to imagine. We all know if that happens Four-Eyes will kick me to the door faster than he can say Zai jian.
JOURNALIST 4: Will sixteen year old schoolboy, Tom Wood, who cracked the Howard Government’s filter, be able to crack this one?
CONROY: Tom Wood is a filter-buster, not a feed-buster. I certainly don’t expect I’ll be shoving him in front of your cameras this time though if he does break on through. If anyone does I suspect you’ll find they are elite hackers.
JOURNALIST 5: What about online games Mr Conroy? How will they be handled?
CONROY: Deviant games such as World of Warcraft and Second Life, where you get people preying upon people's weaknesses will be blocked on a case by case basis. We will be inserting undercover NetAlarmed operatives into these games to pinpoint the problem areas. After which they can be blocked. Insidious, terrorist training games like Battlefield and Call of Duty are classified as MA 15+, and as such they will be blocked from the get go. ISPs, Australian operations and home users running game servers for these games will need to make sure those on the clean feed are unable to play. One last question before I scram thanks.
JOURNALIST 6: Mr Conroy, have you ever actually used the Internet?
CONROY: Have I ever actually used the Internet? Listen here. If people equate using the Internet with operating a computing device to access what is known as the World Wide Web, then the Rudd-Labor Government is going to disagree. Thank you; don’t bother me until next week.
This website is fictional. It is a work of satire in response to Australian Government's absurd Internet censorship policy and the former NetAlert policy. Despite national criticism from industry groups, professionals and citizens, Kevin Rudd and Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Stephen Conroy, plan to implement mandatory internet filtering in 2008.
The dangers of Internet censorship outlined here are real. Educate your children about the internet just as you would warn them about the dangers of everyday life. Australia does not require a Government babysitter. Contact NetAlarmed. Please visit my blog, Somebody Think Of The Children if you would like to find out more information about Internet Censorship in Australia or NetAlarmed.