FastMail.FM's Jeremy Howard on Sunrise, 20060514
00:00:00.000 | Well, if you're one of Australia's six million internet subscribers, you could soon have
00:00:05.720 | some new ammunition against online pornography. The federal government is reportedly preparing
00:00:11.400 | to launch tough, new controls. Users would be given free filtering software.
00:00:16.360 | But how does it work? Well, Jeremy Howard is an internet and computer expert from Fastmail.
00:00:20.720 | Good morning, Jeremy. Good morning.
00:00:22.980 | Can you explain to us the basis for how you use this software? How does it work?
00:00:27.600 | Sure. There's actually been two proposals that have appeared in the last week. The first
00:00:32.080 | one came from the ALP in Beasley's Budget Apply. And his proposal was that internet
00:00:38.320 | service providers, the people that you dial up to or who provide your broadband connection,
00:00:43.080 | would be forced to install filters, which then you could optionally choose to use. And
00:00:49.320 | then the response from the government has been slightly different. It's been to provide
00:00:54.480 | optional free software for you to install on your own computer at home. Both of these
00:00:59.520 | two systems work essentially the same way, which is that the company that runs the system
00:01:05.200 | has a list of websites, which they consider inappropriate for young people, and a list
00:01:11.760 | of words, which if they appear on a website, they consider could be inappropriate. And
00:01:16.320 | in each of those cases, the website would be blocked from viewing.
00:01:20.000 | Okay. The problem we parents have these days, of course, is that our kids, once they go
00:01:25.360 | into school, they start working on computers from day one virtually. So they're all very
00:01:31.140 | computer savvy. So kids know how to get around a lot of things that we, you know, slightly
00:01:37.000 | less technologically minded parents don't have. How easy is it going to be for kids
00:01:41.500 | to beat these types of software?
00:01:43.120 | Look, Lesa, I think there's two target markets here. The first is for the very young children
00:01:49.960 | it is possible to accidentally stumble across content, which you may not want them to see.
00:01:55.720 | A great example was a couple of years ago after Casey Donovan won Australian Idol, and
00:02:01.080 | Telstra Big Pond put up these big advertisements in the paper saying come and visit caseydonovan.com.
00:02:07.120 | They forgot the .au and directed all of these people to a gay pornography site by mistake.
00:02:12.480 | So if these people were running internet filters, then they would be, their kids wouldn't be
00:02:17.820 | accidentally coming across this content. Now, on the other hand, of course, there's the
00:02:22.440 | older children who aren't just stumbling across this stuff, but would love to find it. Now,
00:02:29.120 | I had a little look, and I found that there's a paper widely disseminated on the internet
00:02:35.960 | which talks about how to get over internet filtering, and they describe 47 different
00:02:42.140 | ways to do it. I took a look at just one of those 47 ways, which listed 277 places that
00:02:48.840 | you can get that particular method. So there are many ways to get around it, and yes, they
00:02:53.480 | do work.
00:02:54.480 | Apart from the question of whether it's effective or not, and I guess this is a question as
00:02:58.080 | much for you as well as Jeremy, Les, I mean, do we need this kind of measure? Is it really
00:03:03.640 | the government's responsibility to be playing this role, or should it be a question of more
00:03:09.400 | stringent and active parenting?
00:03:11.680 | Well, Andrew, I'm not an expert in this area, but I'll tell you who is, and that's a group
00:03:17.480 | called NetAlert, which was set up by the government a few years ago, when they would be actually
00:03:21.800 | responsible for administering this new scheme as well. On their website, they actually list
00:03:27.000 | a number of things they suggest parents do. Towards the top of that list is make sure
00:03:31.640 | that the computer is in a public part of it, such as the family room, not at the back.
00:03:36.040 | Right, absolutely.
00:03:37.040 | And that you should be discussing these things with your children. And one interesting point
00:03:42.480 | they make, which I thought was really important, is that, okay, your children don't only use
00:03:46.920 | a computer at home, but friends house, library, school. The only way they can make informed
00:03:52.520 | decisions about what they view is if you give them the trust and the discussion when they're
00:03:57.880 | at home.
00:03:58.880 | Yeah, indeed.
00:03:59.880 | It's a very interesting point.
00:04:00.880 | Yeah, and very good advice. Jeremy Howard, thanks so much for your time this morning.
00:04:04.200 | You're welcome.
00:04:05.440 | We've actually got NetNanny on all our computers at home, which we put in very early on.
00:04:10.320 | Does it work?
00:04:11.320 | Look, it does, but sometimes it's overzealous. For example, when my information was coming
00:04:16.360 | through late last night for doing this story, the word "porn" appeared, so I couldn't
00:04:20.440 | downline the brain for it. But my eldest son, who's in high school, and of course they all
00:04:25.040 | have laptops, he's just gone into high school, he actually can't download his maths homework.
00:04:29.960 | Really?
00:04:30.960 | Because there's something in the maths homework.
00:04:31.960 | Great excuse.
00:04:32.960 | It's a brilliant, better-than-dog-ate-my homework.
00:04:35.400 | Yeah, that's right. The NetNanny ate my homework.
00:04:37.320 | I reckon even an email that said, "I'm now seeing this to your laptop" would probably
00:04:41.160 | get filtered out.
00:04:42.160 | Yeah, very impossibly, very impossibly. But that is great advice, making sure that you've
00:04:46.760 | got the computer in a public area, somewhere in the family room. Because, as we know, kids
00:04:51.880 | can disappear into their rooms for hours on end when they've got that sort of access.
00:04:55.040 | Yeah, that's right. And it's not just porn, but it breaks up the sort of family dynamic
00:04:57.820 | Absolutely.
00:04:58.820 | This room all night, doesn't it?