There’s two main problems with this: Firstly the Australian classification system is broken and completely irrelevant in an Internet era (but that’s another story,) and secondly now that Conroy has dug himself so deep into this policy, it would kill his career should he actually listen to reason and drop it.

My solution to the second problem is as follows:

Optional, Opt-In Child Filtering

The current scheme is a blanket censorship proposal which will apply to homes and businesses alike. It is highly inefficient and demonstrably flawed in almost every way. The government has admitted it won’t even attempt to protect children from content on-line, it’s a token gesture because by design it will miss the vast majority of content it will try to block, and it’s an exceedingly expensive tool to boot.

The solution is not to proceed with the broken policy that the majority of experts have decried. Rather, the solution is to have a opt-in reduced risk child Internet experience that’s owned and operated by the government itself. That is more true to the original policy, and that is what the Australian people (arguably) voted for.

The irony of this is this idea is that it’s already been done. The minister himself decided to axe it when he saw how very few people were actually interested, but to save face in light of such extremely poor judgement it would be feasible to implement the very same thing, just using dedicated hardware and DNS poisoning instead.

OpenDNS… But Better

OpenDNS has been running this kind of thing for a while now. Once the user sets up the DNS servers in their router the entire home Internet connection uses these servers to get addresses for web pages as they ask for them. If the option is enabled, any non-child-friendly sites are poisoned and redirected to the OpenDNS site instead, where a nice reminder not to be naughty appears on the screen.

This is very similar to what the Rudd Government was originally proposing except that instead of every single Australian ISP needing to do it themselves, it’s centralised in one location. The current policy is a fool’s errand, and the Government should put it’s money where it’s mouth is and do it’s own dirty work.

While political hacks like Conroy — driven by the Australian Christian Lobby — are claiming that Australia voted for exactly this, the truth is a little more confused. As Kate Lundy recently found out, many people weren’t aware or misunderstood this policy at the last election. At some point the “offer” of a “clean” Internet feed to “children” has turned into a mandatory, measurably ineffective tool for every Australian, which is not only an obscene policy shift but also completely different to what was proposed at the last election.

So that’s why this solution is so elegant. The Government can run their own in-house censorship machine and at the same time do a more efficient job of actually protecting children.

The benefit of this solution is that it makes it orders of magnitude easier to opt-in. Visit www.the-government-should-look-after-my-children-for-me.com and click “filter inappropriate content from my internet,” and the site will automatically lodge a request with the ISP. The ISP then puts that user in a pool whose modems are configured to send requests the Government’s DNS servers, and hey presto; after being kicked off the ‘net for thirty seconds while all this takes place, you now have a filtered Internet connection. No muss, no end-user fuss.

Unfortunately the current proposal doesn’t even offer an opt-out any more, so it’s difficult to come up with fair and reasonable alternatives to the scheme.

Reasons Things Won’t Change

The reason this scenario will never eventuate is entirely political. It seems the Australian Christian Lobby, Senator Steve Fielding, and a small number of vocal individuals with a vested interest are driving to push this policy through.

It’s an entirely sticky issue, because despite the original policy Senator Conroy is no longer interested in protecting children at all. There’s a highly intelligent analysis of the Government’s comments on the issue at libertus.net, which outlines how differently the policy is shaping up compared to the 2007 election promise, but essentially it’s a complete backflip on what was originally proposed. Indeed, one could consider the promise broken based on what Minister Conroy is saying today because it doesn’t involve protecting children whatsoever.

Ideally there should be peer reviewed studies into how and what –  if anything — should actually be censored off the Internet before we spend such a massive amount of money, but the Rudd Government to date seems content to implement knee-jerk policy based on speculation alone. The current policy will have no measurable benefits whatsoever and unless something changes fast, we’re going to be footing the bill for this system to permeate our digital infrastructure and weigh down every packet with superfluous political protocol.

In the light of the Australian government’s trials of a national and mandatory Internet filter, questions have started to arise as to how it will be implemented. The government has recently released a call for participants in the live filtering trial, along with some documentation that hints at what we can expect.

From what we know the filtering system is most likely to be blacklist and keyword based, and will have two secret block lists. For web developers and other IT types, this is going to equate to a massive headache, and a significant shift as to how we do business.

Should the live trial be declared a success and the filter become mandatory — which is likely considering the way one Senator Steven Conroy is steam-rolling over the legitimate concerns — there are several policies that should be mandatory for such a program to be implemented in any kind of democracy.

As such I present to you wish list, if you will. These points deal with transparency and accountability of the system.

1. The program must be completely accountable.

   We know for a fact that this initiative is going to block completely legitimate content, going to poison completely legitimate DNS entries, and through its very nature be completely random in it’s discretion. There needs to be absolute disclosure in the event of a block, intended or accidental, with in-line tools to report, protest, and discuss any discrepancies. Anything less is completely unacceptable, and will only help further legitimize the claims of similarities between this and the filtering programs of other more repressive regimes.

   These tools must enable anyone inconvenienced by a (false or positive) block to discuss and protest such a block in a public forum. We’ve already seen that the current administration has been hostile toward criticism of the project, and will likely continue to be so in its handling of net filtering “bug reports.” Only a truly public discourse will help keep the government accountable, and serving the good of the public.

2. The program must provide a publicly available & centralised forum of discussion.

   The Government knows it’s a trivial matter to get around the filter anyway, so there’s likely no way we’re going to have actual disclosure of the blacklist. The best compromise we can hope for is a centralised forum to allow public discourse on protested blocks. It’s going to be a major (expensive) headache for the government having to deal with a national publicly available forum, but providing a “black-hole” comments box is simply not acceptable.

   This discourse will need to utilise common technologies such as email, RSS and a publicly accessible API to allow concerned citizens to follow the discussion. Additionally the system should prioritise reports and requests from holders of valid ABNs, to help businesses and web professionals resolve false blocks quickly and with minimal loss of revenue.

3. The program must provide technical data

   Reports of requests, packets, and pages modified by the system must be made available on request, in (as close to) real time (as possible.) It’s simply unacceptable to expect web professionals to work with a system that interferes with the very medium they make a living from, without any form of “error checking” at their disposal.

   Reports must be available via web (signed by digital signature should the filtering software have the ability to alter or otherwise interfere with the data being transmitted,) and available via hard-copy on request.

   The same API that makes the public discourse available must be able to report inappropriate content, as well as check if and why a particular page has been blocked. If ACMA wants to classify and rate the entire Internet, it must be in a transparent and accessible way. Providing the ability for software to keep tabs on these ratings is the only responsible way to do so.

4. Privacy is Paramount

   While this technical shenaniganry is going on, the major dismissed aspect of the system is privacy. The live filtering pilot will be trialling circumvention detection, which is a really ambiguous and concerning concept. The only insight into this is that the government plans to monitor such common tasks as using a proxy server, and provide warnings when this activity is detected. The notion that “you’ve got nothing to worry about if you’re not hiding anything” is unacceptable, and Senator Conroy’s equating privacy advocacy to paedophilia is blatantly offensive.

   Putting aside the numerous legitimate uses of proxies, and the plethora of different products available to do just that, the privacy implications are just astounding. The notion that one false positive exposes an individual’s private activities to government scrutiny is astounding.

   Any solution implemented must completely anonymise data until it’s proven beyond a doubt that the activity is criminal in nature. Should this occur, it can naturally be forwarded to the police, but any other access to personally identifiable data should be completely obscured (preferably encrypted) until that need arises.

Cynical Politics

It is more than likely we’ll end up with absolutely none of the above, which is a a crying shame.

Granted, some of these points may seem unreasonable or a little over the top at first glance, but when you consider we’re dealing with a government that is aiming to purge the entire Internet of “illegal” and “inappropriate” content based on a criteria out of touch with the majority of Australians, civilian oversight seems only too reasonable.

Though the plan may be shocking for a vast majority of Australians, and completely irresponsible toward the digital economy, it’s going ahead despite the protests. As such we are still free to demand a quality system in which public oversight is an integral part.

People who know nothing of technology bleat on about how they need to “protect” their intellectual property. They don’t want their content “unprotected” on the Internet because people could steal it.

I’ve got news for these types: people who want to STEAL your content will do so anyway. There’s no way to stop that, and to try would be to disrespect the legitimate patrons who support you. DRM and artificial restrictions don’t work and will not work until you’ve held every person in the world at gun point.

There will always be a way around content protection, and it’s only the legitimate customers who will be hurt over by it. Mainstream DRM schemes seem to be hanging around, despite lawsuits and constant humiliation. Discuss.

If I release code under the BSD license, you can do almost anything you want with it as long as I’m credited for my part of the work. That’s all fine and dandy. With the GPL the authors that contributed before you have a lot more control over your subsequent contributions — it sounds a little like a pyramid scheme if you don’t agree with the GNU philosophy.

There’s another thing I can’t stand in the world of licensing: Thoughtless phrases like “free for non-commercial use.” Why should I be allowed to use a piece of software at home, in the park, at school, but not at the office? What is the difference? There’s none, but because it’s been the standard tagline of proprietary software for so many years now, it’s become ingrained into the way people think.

Considering this, I’d like to point you over to the GPU page on sourceforge where the developers have modified the GPL to include Asimov’s first law of robotics. It’s a seemingly innocent thing to do, but at the same time it’s caused an uproar for all kinds of reasons.

My primary thought regarding changing a well-known and accepted license to include a seemingly trivial addition is this: Why bother? Aside the fact that it will give you a little thrill every time you read it (“Hey, aren’t we funny, look!”) what purpose does it really serve?

People have said it’s a good idea: This way the armies of the world can’t use the software to kill and maim. My take on the issue is that even if the righteous American war lords respect a software license, there’s always going to be people who don’t. There’s no way you can shame someone into respecting your intellectual property if they’re pointing a superweapon toward your face.

So when it comes to issues like this, there’s a need for software, the software exists, and no license is going to stop anyone who’s really intent on using it. I know that if I had a battalion of troops at my front door hungry for my blood, I’d use all the help I could get to get away. In addition, there’s no point taking away one more freedom from a license that’s designed entirely to hinder your right to modify and redistribute in the first place.

I don’t disagree with the GPL as I don’t see the overwhelming need for it in my line of work. Pascal has a somewhat less inflammatory coverage.

In theory, DRM is a good idea. If you’ve got a top secret document, or are trying to organise a surprise birthday party, you can lock away emails and voice conversations. The key to this whole scheme is “trust” — you can specify a number of people whom you trust with the birthday preparations. Having a rights management system on the other hands means that the person imposing the rights doesn’t trust the person receiving the content. Imagine if your friend gave you a new top-secret demo of their band’s newest song, but wouldn’t leave the room “just in case” you tried to make a copy of it. That’s the main driving force behind DRM.

I’ve only ever seen MSDRM used twice: First on the Telstra Bigpond music download service (Which is a rip-off, and a joke,) and second on the website belonging to Muse. I would have happily forked over a couple of dollars to download an MP3 file that would sit right in my collection.

Unfortunately there’s no way I’m going to to download a song from a company that tells me I have to reboot my computer every time I want to listen to it. The reasoning behind that last statement is that the download would only work in one piece of software, that only runs on the very expensive Microsoft Windows platform. Sure I’ve got all the required software, but I use Linux for day-to-day work — including listening to music — and would have to reboot into Windowd to listen to this one track.

Why would anyone want to go through all that hassle just to listen to one song in their collection? There’s absolutely no way I want some foreign company telling me that I can only burn this song onto two CDs, or play it on two computers, for the rest of time. It’s silly, plain and simple.

For every ‘net savvy artist, CEO, or content producer, there’s about five hundred technological Neanderthals that want to regulate how many squares of toilet paper you’re allowed to use per flush. Companies might be trying to update their business models, but the major players (Sony, Microsoft, Apple to name a few,) are all pushing these restrictive technologies on consumers, expecting people to accept them.

For the most part, people do.

Personally, I refuse to buy a CD with “Copy Control” technology on it, because aside the fact you can’t technically call it a “CD,” I don’t like the idea of it not being able to be read in my computer, or installing dangerous software behind my back. My Windows installation is unstable enough as it is, without adding more software that you can’t get rid of; I’m sure you’re sick of your Windows system crashing too.

I’m sure Sony, or Mushroom won’t notice one little fish in the sea not consuming their DRM branded fish food, but at least I don’t have to put up with nonsense when I put my headphones on. I urge you to do the same too: If you see the copy controlled logo on a CD, just don’t buy it. If it’s going to mess with you, you’re better off without it. Aditionally, try to steer clear of the cellophane-coated online music stores with ribbons all over: iTunes, Bigpond, Yahoo… They’re not worth the hassles.

Personally, I’d prefer to go up against the malware on Gnutella than the malware included on some of these copy protected discs. There are plenty of bands out there that are against DRM too, but ultimately they have no say in the matter: It’s all down to the record labels who won’t get the hint until we all do something about it collectively.

Whatever your current position, I urge you to consider what I’m saying and make up your own mind.

I was researching into copyright last night seeing it’s a bit of a touchy subject, and I have a few creations that I’d love to share with the world, but can’t. Of course, having a few screws loose and very little restraint I went and typed up a great big rant on how copyright law sucks, and this and that, throwing the odd expletive into the mix just for the sake of it. Luckily a little voice in my head gave me the idea to sit on it for a few days, go to bed, and re-read the article in the morning.

Lucky, indeed. It was kind of crap, and ill-informed and generally cringe-worthy. Essentially, I’m going to rewrite my findings from a fresh perspective in the hopes that I can get it off my chest.

Copyright in general sucks for the end user. In Australia (and most of the world,) copyright is automatically applied to anything that someone creates, and lasts their entire lifetime plus 70 years. Don’t ask me who controls the copyright after you’re gone, but that’s the way it is. Essentially, if Bloe Joggs created a recording of her voice and put it on the Internet for everyone to use, it would still be copyrighted for give or take a hundred tears. If someone wanted to use it in a ring tone, song, presentation, whatever… They’d have to wait around for one-hundred and twenty years. That’s a massive amount of time.

Considering copyright’s automagic, if someone creates something and doesn’t release it with a license… Or doesn’t declare it into public domain… It’s still copyrighted and they can still reserve rights, regardless of whether they plan to or not. So if this person dies in a fire, whomever the copyright is transferred to can suddenly demand royalties. This just ends up being both a sticky and tricky situation for people like me, who have unknowingly sampled copyrighted material on a good-natured basis.

Of course, I’m not pretending to be an expert: I’m just regurgitating things I’ve gathered from repositories such as Wikipedia. Essentially I’m not going to be able to release aspects of my work until at least 2132. I’m not sure about you, but I’m not planning on being around at that point. With all the proposed copyright extensions, let’s just hope there’s going to be a shakeup (Or preferably: Break up) of copyright law sometime in the near future.