INTERNET FILTERING:
Porn industry opposes Conroy's ISP-filter plan
News Weekly, April 26, 2008
Australia's pornography industry prefers the Coalition's voluntary internet-filtering to the Labor Government's mandatory internet-filtering at the ISP level.The Australian pornography industry's Eros Association has condemned the attempt by the federal Broadband Minister, Senator Stephen Conroy, to provide a "clean feed" through mandatory internet service-provider (ISP) filtering.The association also endorsed the previous Liberal government's approach, which was to provide voluntary end-user filters for those who want to use them.
The chief executive officer of the Eros Association, Fiona Patten, claimed that "Western governments are wasting millions of dollars in useless (
sic) regulation that is basically aimed at stopping adults from accessing adult sex sites".
She said that Senator Conroy was set to following the same course by forcing internet service-providers to spend large amounts of money to offer a "clean feed" to Australian consumers.
"This clean feed will do absolutely nothing to stop child pornography on the world wide web," she said. "It will simply stop a few people from watching it."
"John Howard spent $100 million dollars on internet-filtering software which works on the end-user. This approach is the correct one ... Governments who try to filter material by forcing controls on their national content distributors (ISPs) will end up failing," she said.