The wonderful thing is that the issue of filtering pornography and most notably Child Pornography *cue thunder, lightning and the screams of fainting women* takes centre stage in most considerations of the matter, rather than those nicely vague terms 'violent websites' and 'inappropriate material'.
The main ways in which children are exposed to CP are not going to be regulated at all by an ISP filter - advances made in chatrooms and exchanges over instant picture sharing websites such as Hello.
It would be a very rare case that a child or young teenager would employ a search engine to look for 'child pornography' or some such search term.
Even those search terms that are more secretive, non-English or less well known would fail to produce anything that would be censored, more than discussion of the formerly employed terms.
I am given to understand from reading the child protection literature that the stuff (by that one means child pornography) is out there, but sufficiently well hidden that it isn't stumbled across; even this trend is changing through the shift to instant friend-to-friend transfer from actually remotely stored material.
It is doubtful that a child would find their way accidentally to certain websites hosted in certain countries in the former Eastern bloc; to find their way deliberately would involve having to trawl a lot of the shadowy backwaters of so called boylove websites to pick up the links and search lingo - this circumstance would suggest to me that the child needs a lot more than just access to a filter that can be easily circumvented, such as help and counselling.
There are indications that the proposed filter can be got around using quite basic methods, perhaps even just a proxy browser, although one does view that last claim with some skepticism.
Leaving aside the possibilities that it won't stop the exchange of child pornography, that it won't stop children being exposed to child pornography and that it does not address the matter at its source, there remains the original issue - included in the broad terms used is a category that a whole lot of websites could fit into, or be placed into following report.
This side of the argument is where we find the free speech issues; there is no real free speech right to accessing child pornography, although there is some protection given in some countries to written works.
If those responsible were genuinely interested in protection Australian children rather than simply presenting the semblence of doing so, then there are other, more pro-active measures that can be taken - education of children as to the dangers of online inappropriate conduct, hitting particular websites in their source countries so as to remove opportunities for the development and 'grooming' of child abusers*, working on ways of approaching the issue of instant transfer sites and using funds for human investigators dedicated to working the dark corners of the internet.
( * This term is usually applied to the deeds of child abusers - the grooming of victims. However, the perpetrators are also in a way 'groomed' into what they do and take part in.
With access to certain sites, their world view is validated, and they are assured that there is nothing wrong with them, that society is to blame. They can read all about the history of the 'movement', seek advice from those of more experience and share their situation and dilemmas.
They are also able to access websites where they can exchange nominally legal pictures (both naked and non-naked) of children and make contacts for a more private exchange of more sickening and hard core material, such as action pictures and videos.
The second follows from the first. Once an individual with that particular sexual proclivity is persuaded of the rightness of their cause and the injustice of their situation, then they are able to rationalize their access of illegal materials.
Prior to the widespread availabilty of the internet, there was no support network, there was no ability to easily search for others in the same situation; this did mean that many did not act on their inclinations in an active manner. Indeed, even considering the second stage, there was far less CP available, regardless of its accessability; most of the stuff going around was from a limited amount of pre 1974 nominally legal US productions and late 1970s-early 80s European photo sets.
We have a situation where there is a much greater amount of CP available and it is easy for the determined individual with the right grooming to find.
There are no easy solutions; there are some sociopaths who seek out such material and act on it for no real reason, there are others that do it for power, or because of plain evil. There are those, however, who fall into the community grooming situation, and that is where a reduction can be made.
If the opportunity is removed and replaced with the ability to seek real help and treatment for nascent proclivities and attractions, then the potential pool is drained somewhat, allowing more concentration of effort on those at the other end of the scale.
This has been a rambling addendum, but one feels it is necessary to have some understanding of what the problem is in order to consider potential solutions for it. A consideration of these solutions in turn leads us to the conclusion that the actions taken by the Labor Government are not those which would best help protect children; it is as a consequence of this that we can see other suggested motivations slipping in. )
