Nick Minchin’s piece in yesterday’s SMH should be commended. If you haven’t seen it, read the whole thing – it’s a clear and cogent summary of the arguments against Stephen Conroy’s foolish plan to exert control over the Internet. I’m not going to quote any of it, because the whole thing is spot on.

The good news is that, given the Opposition and Greens appear to view the plan as fundamentally flawed, Conroy has no hope of getting any legislation through the Senate. The bad news is that, until public pressure or his own Government forces him to drop this, he will continue to waste time and money tilting at what, for him, appears to be the only windmill in the land.

ELSEWHERE: Mark Newton of Internode has developed a form letter to help people who have communicated with MPs and received a Conroy-derived form letter as a response.

Polling is starting up again after a break over the holidays. The first Morgan poll of 2009 shows the 2PP at 60-40. Discussion at The Poll Bludger.

However, the most important poll at the moment is for GrodsCorp’s 2009 unAustralian of the Year. I have cast my vote for Senator Stephen Conroy; Jeremy has done a nice job of capturing the achievements that make Conroy uniquely deserving of the award. Make sure you register your vote.

One more thought on the Conroy Internet Filter. Aside from its filtering proposal, Senator Conroy’s Department (DBCDE) has another major Internet-related initiative – the development of a high-speed national broadband network. If the personnel, time and money that are being injected into developing a flawed programme for regulating access to content were instead available for the latter objective, how much sooner would Australian homes and businesses have access to the benefits of an open-access fibre-based network?

Last night’s The 7.30 Report had a pretty solid story on Internet filtering. The major views were accurately presented – the bosses of iiNet and Internet got a fair say, Conroy was shown in Senate hearings after refusing to be interviewed for the show, and child protection advocates got to state their case. Of course, once the arguments for and against are stacked up against each other, I think the folly of this filtering approach stands out.

Arguments against the Conroy Filter:

MICHAEL MALONE: The basic problem with mandatory filtering of the internet in Australia is that it just plain won’t work.

DAVID QUILTY, MGR DIRECTOR PUBLIC POLICY, TELSTRA: Filtering everything that goes over the internet – that is simply impractical. It would be horrendously expensive. It’s likely to significantly reduce the speeds that people get on the internet.

MICHAEL MALONE: They all suffer from the same problems as any other solution in that they sometimes block content they shouldn’t and sometimes, of course, they let through things that they shouldn’t.

SIMON HACKETT, CHIEF EXECUTIVE, INTERNODE: Because of the presence of encryption and other sorts of techniques on the internet that make filtering really quite impossible to stop the bad guys, at the end of the day the only way you actually get them is good old-fashioned conventional policing mechanisms.

Arguments for the Conroy Filter:

CLIVE HAMILTON, PUBLIC ETHICS, CHARLES STURT UNIVERSITY: The idea that somehow the internet as another form of communication should be exempted from all of these social and moral controls, I find bizarre and repugnant.

STEPHEN CONROY, COMMUNICATIONS & BROADBAND MINISTER: Illegal material is illegal material. Child pornography’s child pornography and I trust you’re not suggesting that people should have access to child pornography.

BERNADETTE MCMENAMIN: It will block out some child pornography, but not all, and surely, anybody sitting out there in their lounge rooms would think that some is better than none at all.

So, on the one hand we have technically knowledgeable people discussing their area of expertise, pointing out that mandatory ISP filtering is not feasible. On the other hand, we have ethicists, politicians and advocates implying that if you are opposed to this plan, you want an Internet where anything, including child pornography, is freely available.

I know what I find bizarre and repugnant about this debate.

Mike Meloni at Somebody Think of the Children reports that an automated image analysis site correctly identified pictures of a dick the majority of the time.

Hey, look – there’s a political party that is asking the Government to answer questions that would justify its policy. Presumably, this party might base its decision about whether to support or oppose the legislation based on the satisfaction they get from the answers.

By the way, did you know Kevin Rudd is a bit odd?

UPDATE: Via Jeremy, here is video of Senator Ludlam’s questions and Senator Conroy’s non-responses:

As if Stephen Conroy’s grand plan to protect us from the Internets wasn’t bad enough. Now his office has taken to attempting to stifle criticism:

On Tuesday, a policy advisor for Senator Conroy, Belinda Dennett, wrote an email to Internet Industry Association (IIA) board member Carolyn Dalton in an attempt to pressure Newton into reining in his dissent.

“In your capacity as a board member of the IIA I would like to express my serious concern that a IIA member would be sending out this sort of message. I have also advised [IIA chief executive] Peter Coroneos of my disappointment in this sort of irresponsible behaviour ,” the email, read.

It is understood the email was accompanied by a phone call demanding that the message be passed on to senior Internode management.

Newton said he found the bullying “outrageous” and Senator Conroy was “misusing his influence as a Commonwealth Minister to intimidate a private dissenting citizen into silencing his political views”.

I hoped that abandoning conservative government would have made a social and digital nanny state less likely. The Rudd Government has done some things for Australia that I am proud of. It has done some things that I disagree with. But Stephen Conroy’s portfolio is the one part of our current Government that I am truly disgusted with.

The Government is being by hit by this from all sides – and they bloody well deserve it.

On the upside, I am proud to be an Internode customer and a Whirlpool community member – well done, Mark Newton.

Helen Coonan shouts, “hurrah!” – we’re ninth among OECD countries in broadband speeds. She is referring to this report.

Problems? Stephen Conroy sees some:

“These figures and this statement by the OECD that these figures are just based on departmental estimations demolish [Communications Minister] Helen Coonan’s claims that Australia has leap-frogged up the table,” he said.

“Helen Coonan has put in the fix, she’s knobbled the figures and it’s a disgrace.

“She’s got her own department to supply statistics that back up her claims.

“Helen Coonan needs to get out more. She needs to travel Australia, meet with the thousands of Australians to here how much Australians are crying out for faster broadband.”

Coonan’s office disputes this:

A spokesman for Senator Coonan has strongly rejected Labor’s claim, saying the Australian Bureau of Statistics provides the broadband speed data to the OECD.

Although the speed data in the OECD portal does not list its source, the broadband penetration data (on which we rank 12th) certainly says “Estimate: DCITA estimation in absence of official ABS statistics.” However, it is worth noting that the speed data is based on the average of the advertised speeds of 48 services. Many of the high-speed services (e.g., ADSL2+) have relatively low penetration in terms of the number of telephone exchanges and the number of ISPs in a given area that offer it. Furthermore, the advertised speeds are theoretical maximums, with actual speed declining as distance from the exchange increases. The end result is that while the ads might paint a nice picture, many people in many parts of the country cannot get the speeds they claim are available – which Senator Coonan doesn’t seem to care about right now.

Other problems? iTWire has some:

Australia’s increased broadband ranking was the good news. The bad was that, with FTTH presently stalled, we are falling even further behind the most advanced nations. The OECD reports that: “Operators in several countries continue upgrading subscriber lines to fibre. fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) and fibre-to-the-building (FTTB) subscriptions now comprise eight percent of all broadband connections in the OECD, up from seven percent a year ago, and the percentage is growing. Fibre connections account for 36 percent of all Japanese broadband subscriptions and 31 percent in Korea.” The figure in Australia was so low as to be rated zero!

There is also now lots of information on data prices including a chart showing average monthly data cap size in those countries that use this pricing model: Canada, Czech Republic, Portugal, Iceland, New Zealand, Australia and Belgium. Australia had the second lowest cap size (15GB) after Belgium (13GB) as against leader Canada with 65GB). Australia’s price per additional MB (in $US purchasing power parity) was way above any of the others, at $US.105. The nearest was Portugal at $US0.04 followed by Iceland at $US0.03. New Zealand came out quite well at $US0.10.

So, our broadband connections are expensive, have relatively low download allowances, and we are not developing the fibre infrastructure that is required to keep up with the world. To borrow an analogy from today’s festivities, we’re like a horse that’s running ninth as we come around the final bend with 500 metres to go, except that we’re five wide and the jockey has dropped his whip and stopped encouraging the horse.

Thanks for the pep talk, Senator Coonan.