Another rant from Stilgherian

Stlgherian has ranted on Crikey again today about filters.

Simple question. Does this raving lunatic think there should be no classification system on any media.? Or that there should not be a Refused Classification category at all? If so I look forward to his campaign on that change.

I heartily agree that the policy is being handled atrociously. But Stil continually misrepresents what is proposed. Nothing about the filter is about the threat to children from being entrapped on line. The "protection of children" the Minister talks about is the protection of children from taking every action he can to stem trade in the images.

It is the functional equivalent of protecting elephants from poaching by banning the trade in ivory. It doesn't mean you don't also have programs to catch poachers. But you sure as heck don't put up a special entrance way at your ports saying "if you have potentially illegal items please enter here".

And at this point all the Minister is asking is that ISPs try blocking acess to the websites and tell him how it works - that looks like real evidence based policy rather than just one persn saying "it doesn't work". By the way, saying something more than once doesn't make it true.

And exactly why is Crikey providing his rants. Since when has Crikey been a paragon of a complete libertarian view on content. Goodness me only yesterday Stephen Mayne seemed to be promoting ASIC's investigation of those Packer stories and - horror - quite calm about the idea of the journalist being forced to reveal their sources. Somehow I thought that was on the taboo list.

(Stil has responded)