Yesterday the internet erupted in opposition to the opposition’s internet filter announcement. It feels like we’ve been down this road before when Stephen Conroy tried to introduce a filter and had to delay and eventually abort the plan.
It seems Turnbull went a little rogue announcing the policy on his website, but when put to his colleagues Joe Hockey on the Project and Coalition leader Tony Abbott, the announcement quickly became ‘an accident’.
The compulsory internet filter was going to be mandatory across PCs, mobile devices and routers, while allowing users to opt out, it would be on by default. Not sure if the plan was ever really a serious one, given that implementation would require every hardware manufacturer shipping products to Australia to build a custom version of their software. While platforms like Android support low-level application integration (like security software) iOS and WP8 do not.
The internet outrage seen ‘Internet Filter’ trending on twitter for most of last night and the traffic also took down Turnbull’s own website. Thanks to the wonder of the internet, the now withdrawn policy is now available on Scribd.
Like last time, the outrage against this mandatory filter forced the backdown / backflip, so great work internet. Now if we can just get this passion and coverage of the NBN, the election result may be very different.
