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.