It seems only fitting that we kick off our Monday morning with word that Australian ISP iiNet has bailed on the the firewall trial citing censorship concerns.
Overseeing some 750,000 customers, iiNet is Australia’s third-largest ISP and run by a particularly outspoken fellow named Michael Malone. Malone has previously been exceptionally critical of the firewall, going so far as to call it “ridiculous.” Malone has also been less than pleasant with the blacklist’s creator, Communications Minister Conroy, whom Malone has called “the worst Communications Minister” Australia has had in its 15-year Internet industry.
From the beginning, Malone has reiterated the expert, industry and consumer opinion that the firewall would do little to mitigate offending content at the great expense of network speed.
Now that iiNet has actually engaged in the trial, the outspoken ISP exec is even less laudatory of the program and has echoed our concerns that the filter is more about stopping “indecency” than illegal material:
We are not able to reconcile participation in the trial with our corporate social responsibility, our customer service objectives and our public position on censorship. It became increasingly clear that the trial was not simply about restricting child pornography or other such illegal material, but a much wider range of issues including what the Government simply describes as “unwanted material” without an explanation of what that includes. Everyone is repulsed by, and opposed to, child pornography but this trial and policy is not the solution or even about that.
Malone also noted that the vast majority of illegal content such as pirated goods and child pornography are traded on darknets and over P2P, neither of which the firewall addresses in any way.
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