Piers Akerman, and socking it to the censorial tonsorial, short, no porn please, software ...

This is a solemn and momentous day for loon pond.

Piers Akerman, aka Akker Dakker, and sometimes fondly known as the Billy Bunter of the Daily Terror as he yaroops and garooars at Chairman Rudd, has jumped the shark and become a wild-eyed libertarian.

Censorship hides behind the great Conroy firewall, he furiously scribbles, in the first sign that the conservative commentariat might be turning against Senator Conroy and his great big new filter.

Inevitably Akker Dakker makes the leap to China, as an exemplar for the mandarin ways of Chairman Rudd and his cohorts:

Bizarre but true, Australia and China are allied in their determination to censor internet content. In totalitarian China, the plan is known as Green Dam. In Australia it should be called “freedom-be-damned” ...

... It might seem extraordinary that the Rudd Government would propose to install a filter that would make Australia one of the strictest internet regulators among the world’s democracies, possibly in the same league as China, when it proclaims to stand for openness and transparency.

Akker Dakker spends plenty of time berating the Chinese - and why not, because when you're in China it's fun to observe the bizarre ways the intertubes sometimes performs as the filters kick in. Fun, if you're on a plane out of the country ...

But he also spends some time working up a lather about ACMA and Conroy (and of course 100 illegal people smuggler boats, which doesn't have much to do with filters, but suits the Akker Dakker schemata of throwing in the kitchen sink and the bathtub when mounting an assault on Chairman Rudd).

He's even caught up with the news that Google doesn't think much of Conroy's plan, and even shows he's down with the leet skills of hackers:

Conroy’s planned censorship has already been outflanked by smart technophiles who delight in tweaking the egos of authoritarian buffoons and finding the loopholes in their censorial software.

Censorial software! A bit like a tonsorial trim of pubic hair back in the days when Penthouse took on Playboy!

Akker Dakker himself is no noob, but a fully fledged 1337 as he Sp33ks the speak:

A program called The Onion Router (TOR) can be found on the internet that permits users to anonymously access websites, thus thwarting the electronic plods detailed to smash internet pornography rings, or, in China’s case, possible subversives.

Well I guess if people google Onion Routing, they'll get to this, which just so happens to be an official U. S. Navy site - damn you, U.S. Navy, damn you and your Conroy-busting ways - and then they can move on to Tor (another US Navy initiative), and so on.

But perhaps the most poignant tale belongs to BoingBoing, an inoffensive site for nerds and wonderful things, which has at various times been banned or filtered as the result of dumb systems. Way back in 2006, when they discovered they were banned in UAE, Qatar and sundry other locations, they declared war on internet censors and filters.

You can read the tale here (unless you're in a country where funny things happen to the net), which proves that sometimes all censor and filter ware does is get folks mad as hell, willing to throw open the window, shout about it, and get then active.

Meanwhile, Akker Dakker seems keen to egg on the activists:

When Conroy erects the Rudd Government’s own Great Firewall, the IT race will be on to see who can breach it first.

Well actually it's already been breached before it's been erected - a VPN will do over what Conroy is contemplating - so if you're a geek with a bit of cash, away you go. And there are many other solutions. Thanks to China, and the netizens determined to climb its wall, there are many ways to defeat Conroy's plan.

What he's relying on is that the vast majority won't mind or won't care or won't go looking, sheep willing to be herded, while the evil dissidents who refuse to think of the children will be cast out into the electronic wilderness.

Here's how BoingBoing put it:

The fact is, there's no effective way to censor the Internet in broad strokes. Only dumb CIOs and totalitarian governments like the UAE believe that adding censorware to your network will prevent the naughty stuff from slopping in.

Sheesh that's cruel, calling Conroy a dumb CIO, down there with the UAE totalitarians.

Anyhoo, for a change of pace, you can always wander over to The Punch, to read Paul Colgan's contribution to Australia's dumbest conversation in Why Conroy's critics should censor themselves.

A highlight in Colgan's call for a rational debate?

... in February ABC TV’s Hungry Beast commissioned a poll which found 80% approval of a mandatory government internet filter that would block access to websites containing RC material. That was a phone poll of 1000 people conducted by a market research agency.

Images and information about one or more of the following:

Here's how the Hungry Beast poll defined the RC material to be blocked:

- child sexual abuse
- bestiality
- sexual violence
- gratuitous, exploitative or offensive sexual fetishes; and
- detailed instructions on or promotion of crime, violence or use of illegal drugs

It reminds me of that famous poll which asked people when they'd stopped beating their spouse. Fifty per cent said they'd stopped in the previous year, fifty per cent in the year before that, fifty per cent said they'd never started beating their spouse, and fifty per cent didn't understand it was a trick or leading question.

But it's nice of Colgan to act dumb, so that Conroy won't feel alone. It's just that it gets a tad problematic when he reprimands The Punch readers for their hysteria:

...nonsensical arguments that Australia is turning into Nazi Germany, quoting Mein Kampf, stating this single issue of trying to block access to child porn will bring down the government and personally attacking a government minister are counterproductive and drive away ordinary folk who might otherwise care.

For a group campaigning against censorship, the anti-Conroy crowd has got to learn to censor itself. Then maybe there can be a sensible debate about it.

Que?

Akker Dakker himself has explained how Chairman Rudd and his rather larger than four gang are trying to turn Australia into a communist gulag dominated by Red Guard thinking. Where does that leave Akker Dakker?

Stand down Colgan, the leet of the Daily Terror have spoken, unless of course you want to rubbish Akker Dakker who, as we scribble this, might, like any good Scotsman, be finishing his porridge, painting his face blue, and standing tall in the Daily Terror office roaring 'freedom, and damn you and your mandarin green dam Conroy', while brandishing Chairman Rupert's system administrator manual for making punters pay for their access to The Times online ... and then keep paying again and again ...

After all, access to page three bimbos in a filter-free world is vital for western democracy, but only if people are made to pay for the privilege ...

(Below: aw, look at the cute bunny).