Coming back through Subi from doing my shopping I saw a woman pushing a pram with three kids in tow. She crossed the road at a set of traffic lights while the pedestrian signal was on red. So far, only moderately stupid but still a bad example for the kids.
Anyway, only two of the kids went with her and the pram - the third (who had obviously not got his dose of stupid for the day) stayed on the footpath and was waiting for the light to change. Good kid.
Of course, the traffic moves towards this woman when she is halfway across the road. The two kids on the road run for the far side. Not too smart but the best they could do in bad circumstances.
The woman (who now has a surprised look on her face) sees the cars and then has a second attack of the stupids. She leaves the pram (with the kid in it) in the middle of the road and runs back to get the third kid who is still standing on the footpath; grabs him, rushes back across the road with the kid in tow; and proceeds to push the pram across the rest of the way. All while the traffic is approaching (admittedly, slowly becaue they can see this woman is having a real stupid attack).
What is with people? Sure, we all have an attack of the stupids occassionally and do dumb things. But who leaves a pram with a kid in it in the middle of the road with approaching traffic? Clearly, evoluation at work.
This isn't the only stupid thing I saw today and it certainly isn't the only stupid thing I've ever seen people do with their kids. But today, if I didn't know better I'd say there was some stupid injected into the water supply over the last few days.
I demand that the government build a system that identifies vehicles that are in this state (either illegal, being driven by unqualified people, carrying stolen goods or speeding in the presence of children) and immediately prevent them from travelling on the roads.
I don't really care how they do this - that isn't my problem. But if they don't do it they are clearly taking sides with the people who are performing illegal and unsafe acts on roads that I might be travelling on or that children might be using and that is just not acceptable.
You might think this is all a bit crazy but this is exactly the kind of proposal that the government is putting forward to the Internet Providers in this country. They want them to block illegal content (child pornography and other certain fetishes) and keep children safe from questionable content (regular pornography). No-one (other than the technical boffins) seem to have grasped exactly how difficult a task this is.
First, you have to identify the content. Porn is pretty easy to find but child porn isn't (in my experience - I've never gone looking for it but I have never come across it accidently unlike your regular, garden-variety porn). That doesn't mean our law enforcement people don't know where it is so I'm sure they can supply a list of child porn sites to add to any black list. But the list of porn sites will be never ending and always changing.
This brings up an issue regarding governmental control of such a black list - there has to be an independent body regulating the list to ensure that content such as political content (and others) is not censored by the system.
Second, you have to have a system in place that takes the list and somehow applies it to the traffic flowing through the Internet Provider's network. For a small ISP this is not necessarily difficult but it can still be expensive compared to their yearly revenue. For a large ISP a one-size-fits-all filtering system may not fit - there is simply too much traffic and the network is too complex.
Someone this evening at the WAIA meeting suggested using DNS servers to enforce the black list. This works for a lot of situations but not for everything. It is lightweight and pretty non-intrusive so it bears consideration.
Third, you have the maintenance of the list. Luckily this can be taken care of by the independent body I mentioned above. But it won't be cheap. And that body will need representatives from government, the Internet Providers and the public in order to do an effective job.
One way of funding this might be via subscription. Anyone who downloads the black list pays a fee per year (or per download - whatever) and that goes towards the maintenance of the list.
Fourth, you need a way of allowing Internet Provider customers to opt-in (preferably) or opt-out of the filtering. This will be a big burden on every ISP as this needs to be administered somehow. Even having a web page where customers can alter their filtering settings still requires software development and therefore time and money. Additionally, some customers won't know how to do that and will end up ringing the call centre. And how would the ISP pay for this software development and extra call centre staff? A surcharge for enabling filtering? Maybe but experience has shown that most ISP customers in Australia won't pay for filtering - that's why the previous Liberal government had to give away desktop filtering software.
This also raises a privacy issue. If you're opted-out of the filtering system (maybe you don't have kids and really don't care) what happens if the public finds out that you can view porn. Will that affect your status in the future if you run for public office?
Interestingly, the music and movie industries are pushing for this same filtering system to identify copyright material that is being transferred illegally and to block that as well. This is just crazy talk. How is the ISP supposed to distinguish between (say) a song being downloaded legally from an iTunes-type store (totally legal); a song that I've just ripped from a CD that I've just bought being transferred to my home computer (questionably); or a song actually being transferred via FTP between friends (a breach of copyright).
On top of that, the ISPs don't want to become the police and they certainly don't want to be answerable to the music and movie industries. They are already answerable to the courts (with the appropriate warrants) and that's the way it should be.
To go back to my highways and roads example: In order to provide the filtering I want we need to develop an identification system (millimetre-wave radar ala Snow Crash); some software to determine whether the content of every vehicle or the vehicle itself is approved; and a way to stop those vehicles from driving around - tyre traps embedded in every road should do it.
Of course, this is going to be hideously expensive and impossible to put on every road so anyone with half a brain is going to know how to avoid the system. Which is exactly the way that Internet content filtering is and will be.
So, it should be noted that no filter system is ever going to be perfect. China has invested a lot of money into building their country-wide firewall and there are ways around that. Specifically, there are people building systems to bypass exactly that sort of control in the interests of free speech. And we've seen in Australia exactly how foolproof content filtering is - kids can bypass systems in 20 minutes or less.
Also, it might pay to have a couple of black lists. One for the strictly illegal content. Another for questionable content that kids shouldn't be allowed to see. That way, Internet Providers can always block the first list and have an opt-in system for the second.
At the end of the idea, this is a political issue. There are people out there who will say that I'm supporting the pornographers and the people who exploit children. Not so. But you have to be realistic about how a solution can be implemented. And when it is implemented you have to know it is going to have holes in it.
Short answer: there isn't an easy solution.
