The Great E-Barrier Reef
Peter Black’s Freedom to Differ:
Eugene Volokh at The Volokh Conspiracy, one of the leading legal blogs in the United States, has blogged about the Australian Government’s proposal to filter the internet. He also coined the phrase the “Great E-Barrier Reef” to label the policy (at least I think he was the first to use that phrase). Here is part of his commentary:
As I argued before, it seems to me quite likely that once
government-mandated nationwide filtering is imposed on one sort of
content, there’d be considerable pressure to extend it. After all, we
already mandate provider-based filtering of child pornography, and this
is just a small extra step, since it’s only going after illegal
material.
True, the filtering may be overinclusive, because it will inevitably
block even some material that, on closer examination, would have proved
to be constitutionally protected. But we’ve already crossed that bridge
in the earlier proposal, haven’t we? So why not take this a step
further? The slippery slope is a real phenomenon, in legal and political systems that are heavily influenced by notions of precedent and logical consistency.
Now perhaps the bottom of the slippery slope isn’t that scary. Maybe
service providers, in Australia or America, should automatically block
access to sites that private filter companies — or the government –
has decided contain illegal hard-core porn, child pornography,
copyright-infringing material, libelous statements, statements that
express hostility based on race, religion, or sexual orientation (at
least when accessed from those Western countries that outlaw such
statements), copies of the “Hit Man” murder manual or the Anarchist’s
Cookbook, and the like. Rather than requiring trials to decide whether
each site contains illegal information, a process that would be so
cumbersome that it would keep the regulatory schemes from working
effectively, we should just have providers instantly block…