Internet Censorship and ISP Filtering in Australia

So Internet Censorship is a hot topic at the moment and even though here in Australia we couldn't stop the government implementing an ISP filtering system there is still a great deal of talk. This article talks about Google, China and the freedom of global Internet and it points to a number of articles and posts on the subject around the world. In particular it pointed to this blog post Australian government's efforts to censor the Internet down under which details the Google view and how openness and freedom is essential to development as opposed to oppression and denial.

The article says "Germany and Italy have mandatory ISP filtering, however in both cases they are of a clearly limited scope. In Germany, the scope is child abuse material and in Italy, it is child abuse material and unlawful gambling sites. Australia's proposed regime would uniquely combine a mandatory framework and a much wider scope of content, the first of its kind in the democratic world. "

We all know child abuse material is wrong and forbidden and we would never endorse it but there is a limit to how much you can control especially over the Internet. This action will not automatically stop these people from doing illegal activities it will just force it even further underground and harder to pin. What is affected here is democracy. The aforementioned blog on Google and China quotes Jonathan Rosenberg, Senior Vice President for Product Management in The meaning of open and I paraphrase:

"Open will win. It will win on the Internet and will then cascade across many walks of life: The future of government is transparency. The future of commerce is information symmetry. The future of culture is freedom. The future of science and medicine is collaboration. The future of entertainment is participation. Each of these futures depends on an open Internet."

So if open and transparent government is the future then perhaps the solution for this problem is no to cut and filter individuals freedom of information but rather ask the people for a solution, give them power and opinion, use the open system to solve the problem, why not get people to report illicit activities and being rewarded etc... we need to think forward not backwards.