Hi Guys

Whilst I accept that my responses could justifiably have been left out completely as I am no longer a candidate I am disappointed to find that comments I have made critical of the BoT have been reported verbatim, but those critical of the MPs have been edited out.

I would not have expected that from you. Neither would I have expected you to edit responses in that fashion and not advise your readers that you had done so.

I think your interpretation of my position on the Internet is incorrect by the way. I am opposed to censorship unless illegal activity is taking place. That should count as a 'No' in your list shouldn't it?

Cheers

Hey Peter,

I wasn't originally sure what part of your response you were referring to, but I've gone back to your original email and checked.

The part I think you're referring to occurred during the ACT National Council last year and those meetings are closed door members only, so I wasn't willing to publish it publicly on the internet - it certainly had nothing to do with politics or who the comments were about.

If you'd like to re-write it to exclude the National Council meeting I'm happy to add it back in and update the document.

Regarding internet censorship, the problem is that there isn't really a way to determine whether something is illegal, unless you are (or have the ability to) monitor everything.

The new Australian internet filter is ostensibly only to filter out the illegal stuff that everyone agrees is bad, but it's still internet censorship.

The usual analogy would be the post service. We don't allow the government to read all of our mail in case some illegal activity is taking place in some of the letters!

Thanks Peter

That puts a different slant on things and I'm glad to read of it.

Only part of my comments referred to what someone said to me at that meeting but on the basis of your response I will not amend my comments and happy to have them all left out.

In terms of Internet censorship I think the question may be one of definition.

I interpreted censorship as a different mechanism to continual monitoring. For instance if a person or organisation had a website carrying out activities related to criminal ends then I think it is right that that site be able to be blocked.

That's not the same as the need to monitor everything. To use your postman's analogy. It isn't necessary to read the letters, it just enough to know that letters from J.T.Ripper will not be carried.

However I'm not wedded to the viewpoint and I can see your point.

Willing to accept that it's not necessary (or possible) to continually monitor every website to find things to block.

However only blocking websites where you become aware they are illegal is still giving the government the power to filter the internet.

Putting aside technical issues whether this would even be possible for a government to successfully pull off (proxies and other avoidance techniques, as well as false positives etc), it's very open to political manipulation too - once a filter is in place for child porn, it's very easy (politically as well as practically) to expand it to things like information about bomb making or even something like euthanasia - something that some people may think should be legal.

There's more info about what Australia are trying here: http://nocleanfeed.com/learn.html

It's possible that some of the people that said "No" in the survey, were also thinking along the same lines as you, but as they didn't go into this kind of detail I have no way to know that.

Surely the best way to deal with what your talking about is going after the specific websites breaking the law and having them taken down?

I am open to your argument on this and at the end of the day if it was an issue that looked like the thin end of the wedge I would be agin it.

But there is a problem with your solution - what if the sites are hosted by rogue jurisdictions that do not play ball in terms of illegal activity?