Stephen Conroy, chairman Rupert's minions, The Australian, and sundry hippies and sneering sophisticates, including Michael Kirby and Catharine Lumby

(Above: desperate to reassure gentlemen readers that Senator Conroy's new intertubes filter won't interfere with their enjoyment of erotica, we attach samples from Chairman Rupert's Daily Terror which should make the cut. Phew that's a relief. The Chairman will keep supplying nice visuals ... perhaps in the future for a price).

Ain't it grand to know that Michael Kirby, one time justice of the High Court, is either (a) an old hippie refighting the censorship struggles or the 1960s, or (b) a sneering sophisticate.

You see, here's Kirby reported in Net filters 'thin end of the wedge': Kirby:

In an interview with Fairfax Radio this morning, Kirby said some circles feared the controversial policy would be "the thin end of the wedge of the Government moving in to regulating the actual internet itself".

"Once you start doing that you get into the situation of Burma and Iran where the Government is taking control of what people hear and what information they get," he said, adding that Australia's approach hadn't been attempted anywhere else in the world.

I guess that means senior management at Google are also either ageing hippies or sneering sophisticates, as they parade like effete ponces in Our views on Mandatory ISP Filtering:

At Google we are concerned by the Government's plans to introduce a mandatory filtering regime for Internet Service Providers (ISP) in Australia, the first of its kind amongst western democracies. Our primary concern is that the scope of content to be filtered is too wide.

We have a bias in favour of people's right to free expression. While we recognise that protecting the free exchange of ideas and information cannot be without some limits, we believe that more information generally means more choice, more freedom and ultimately more power for the individual.

... Some limits, like child pornography, are obvious. No Australian wants that to be available – and we agree. Google, like many other Internet companies, has a global, all-product ban against child sexual abuse material and we filter out this content from our search results. But moving to a mandatory ISP filtering regime with a scope that goes well beyond such material is heavy handed and can raise genuine questions about restrictions on access to information...

...Exposing politically controversial topics for public debate is vital for democracy. Homosexuality was a crime in Australia until 1976 in ACT, NSW in 1984 and 1997 in Tasmania. Political and social norms change over time and benefit from intense public scrutiny and debate. The openness of the Internet makes this all the more possible and should be protected.

The government has requested comments from interested parties on its proposals for filtering and we encourage everyone to make their views known in this important debate.

Those bloody hippies. Clearly they're in a conspiracy with that homosexual Michael Kirby to encourage free and open discussion of issues that threaten the future of western civilisation as we know it.

How do I know this? Why, The Australian and its valiant editorial team of course:

With the exception of old hippies refighting the censorship struggles of the 1960s and sneering sophisticates -- The New York Times compared Australia's internet plan to Iran and China yesterday -- the people opposed to the Conroy plan are in the industry. ISPs are unhappy at the time and expense in maintaining the filters. Tough. They operate under an implicit licence that requires them to place the rights of the vast majority of Australians who do not want sexually violent images on their computer screens above the desires of the very few who do.

Oh yes, that bloody Google, those bloody property thieves, worse than Tim Blair and The Punch put together, and that outrageous New York Times.

Well that was the killer of course. Once those effete New York ponces spoke out against it, sneered at Australia being a down under version of Iran, what else could the minions of Chairman Rupert say?

After all, the deviants have recently outraged Chairman Rupert by noting how Chairman Rupert has ruined the Wall Street Journal, by a tilt to the right which makes the Titanic look like it's steering a straight course, under the header Under Murdoch, Tilting Rightward at The Journal:

It certainly doesn’t appear that the $5 billion purchase of the newspaper was a big financial success — the News Corporation took a $2.4 billion write-down on the purchase — and Michael Nathanson of Sanford C. Bernstein said the Bancroft family, which sold the paper, “now look like geniuses” and described the purchase as “one of the worst media deals in history.”

But Mr. Murdoch and his lieutenants have made two significant bets: that the cachet and reputation of The Wall Street Journal are elastic enough to encompass a much broader array of news and that objectivity in a general-interest newspaper is a losing strategy.

Oh dear. But back to The Australian as it wholeheartedly endorses Senator Conroy:

Unlike television, the internet is not universal in our houses, but it is getting there, with the Australian Bureau of Statistics reporting yesterday that nearly two-thirds of homes have broadband connections. So why is anybody upset over Communications Minister Stephen Conroy's plan to bring control over internet content into line with other mass media -- television and DVDs, print and computer games? The answer is: nobody is, other than contrarians with a contempt for common sense. Senator Conroy wants to require internet service providers to block illegal material, such as bestiality and child pornography, from turning up on Australian computers, just as the screening and publishing of illegal images is banned in all other media.

Um, not just bestiality and child pornography:

The Government will introduce legislative amendments to the Broadcasting Services Act to require all ISPs to block RC-rated material hosted on overseas servers.

RC-rated material includes child sex abuse content, bestiality, sexual violence including rape, and the detailed instruction of crime or drug use. Under the National Classification Scheme and related enforcement legislation it is already illegal to distribute, sell or make available for hire RC-rated films, computer games and publications. (Conroy's press release here).

Please explain the exact nature of detailed instruction of crime or drug use? What's it got to do with bestiality or child pornography?

Well I guess we shouldn't mind, or pay attention to the alarmist twittering of that aged hippie Catharine Lumby in Sex, drugs, and other things you can't read about:

Under a mandatory filtering regime – which would mean that Internet Service Providers were required to block content hosted overseas as well as here – serious questions arise about the scope of content filtered when the pool of material will be so large.

According to Minister Conroy’s announcement yesterday the mandatory filtering of internet content in Australia will proceed according to a list drawn up on the basis of the RC classification. It’s a category that doesn’t just deal with abhorrent material like child pornography, bestiality and active incitement to violence. Given the current broad terms under which material is slotted into the category it would also potentially embrace sites where people talked therapeutically about child sex abuse experiences, accessed information about safe sex and drug injecting practices, or engaged in serious political dialogue about what motivates terrorist groups.

An equally important question that remains unanswered by Senator Conroy’s announcement yesterday is what kind of information ordinary Australians will have about what goes on the mandatory filtering list.

If Australia adopts a mandatory internet filtering regime – a regime that puts responsibility for blocking at the access end of the spectrum – it will distance us from our Western liberal counterparts in the US, the UK and across the great bulk of the European Union. They have all adopted systems that emphasise collaboration between industry, government and the public to prevent access to the worst kinds of material. Where there is mandatory filtering – in Italy and Germany – the mandatory filtering is carefully confined to child pornography and gambling sites.

Silly old hippie, or should that be sneering sophisticate. Now back to The Australian, which knows how to dissemble and write a press release for Conroy better than Conroy himself:

It is that simple. The ban Senator Conroy wants to put in place has nothing to do with suppressing ideas; if officials start censoring political expression, public opinion will soon stop them. It does not reflect a wowser's wish to stop adults indulging in erotica. Nor is it about stigmatising the consensual sexual preferences of any Australians. Instead, the minister is determined to defend boundaries of behaviour that no significant group wants breached. Arguments that the technology will not work, blocking innocent images or slowing the system down, are misleading when they are not plain wrong. Certainly, curious young netizens will defy the most vigilant parents and find ways around online filters, but this is like arguing against a minimum drinking age because teenagers illegally access alcohol. While a trial run of the filters blocked innocent sites, the software will improve with use. And assertions the filtering process will slow downloads are outrageous, given the way ISPs now artificially reduce speeds to push people to pay more for online access.

Well pardon me if I barf. There's so much in the way of distortions, untruths, innuendos and arguments that are misleading when they are not plain wrong that I wonder why anybody would bother to buy a newspaper that runs this kind of shameless editorial line.

But here's one thought. If internet filters won't work, and teenagers will be able to get around them, who imagines that pedophiles won't be able to get around them too? Does technical skill or intertubes wisdom drop off as a result of the ageing process, or the degree of perverse sexuality?

In which case precisely what is this filter's utility, at vast expense? Because child pornography is already illegal, and suppliers and consumers can be targeted by the criminal law. Is it just so we can head back to the happy days of the nineteen fifties when the molestation of children could proceed in sundry altars across the land, and none dare speak the name of the crime? Because censorship had reduced sex education to the level of a film about the birds and bees?

Is it designed to target those in the business of child pornography, or is it to stop teenagers and children accessing pornography? Is it a censorship regime designed to reduce Australian adults to what a teenager might access online?

But what's that I just read as part of the Oz's pious homily? It does not reflect a wowser's wish to stop adults indulging in erotica. But what about SM or BDSM between consenting adults? Is that sexually violent imagery? Oh spray me with hot wax from a candle, and bring out the cat of nine tails if you expect me to believe this level of gibberish from The Australian. (That was a joke - you there with the collar and the boots, back into your cage).

Never mind. No need to read The Australian, when you can just read the dissembling Stephen Conroy for free on The Punch, straight from the horse's mouth, as he runs his own half-baked pile of steaming and disingenuous rhetoric in Australia's most misleading conversation, under the header The truth about net filtering.

Why that header reminds me of many other opening lines: The truth about the Catholic church, the truth about property deals and the NSW Labor party, and the truth about Sydney's second airport. Just understand that truth spoken with a forked tongue can hare off in all kinds of directions. As soon as a politician tells me that they're telling me the truth, that's when I know for sure that they're lying.

Call me an ageing hippie, call me a sneering sophisticate, but whatever you do, don't call me a dunce who will pay The Australian for this kind of malarky passing as content when they put it behind a paywall.

Never mind, the world faces bigger problems for a snow job filter which will be easy to evade, and which if anything will most likely make child pornographers harder to catch via the intertubes.

Meanwhile, after that little flurry of irrational floozies from The Australian, please bring on the paywall. I yearn for it on a daily basis. Meantime, give them my coins? No way.

Think. Again. Why disturb the redback in your wallet or purse? Feed it the coinage you save by not supporting Chairman Rupert and his ill-mannered sneering minions ...

(Below: oh dear what a shrew that Dorothy is. Why here's Chairman Rupert helping out at the Daily Terror with another image safe for Senator Conroy's intertubes filter. All's for the best in the best of all worlds for the gentleman reader removed from sneering sophisticates, ageing hippies, wayward feminists and certain former High Court Judges ... provided he's ready to tickle his wallet in the future of course).