[ProgSoc] Public lecture - Do we simply accept the Australian Internet filtering scheme or do we need to ask hard questions?

sanguinev at progsoc.org sanguinev at progsoc.org
Wed Apr 1 10:35:45 EST 2009


For those who might wish to hear a lecture on the topic... or avoid 
Friday afternoon class:

==================================================

Public lecture - Do we simply accept the Australian Internet filtering 
scheme or do we need to ask hard questions?

Speaker: Associate Professor Bjorn Landfeldt
School of Information Technologies, The University of Sydney

Time: Friday 3 April 2009, 4:00-5:00pm

Location: The University of Sydney, PNR Building, Farrell Lecture Theatre

Abstract
The Australian government is currently planning to introduce mandatory 
Internet content filtering. The move would clearly set Australia aside 
from all other democratic nations in the world. The initial purpose of 
this scheme was to protect Australian children from accessing unsuitable 
material such as child pornography.

Even though there is widespread consensus in society that such material 
is undesirable and potentially harmful, the issue of filtering is 
extremely complicated and it is far from evident that the proposed 
scheme will achieve its goal. In addition, over the past few months 
evidence has been presented indicating that the side effects of such 
filtering could have severe negative impact on society.

Associate Professor Bjorn Landfeldt was part of a team that studied the 
feasibility of implementation of Internet filtering at the ISPs. The 
report was commissioned by the Howard government and handed to the 
current minister in charge of this issue, Senator Stephen Conroy.

In this talk, Professor Landfeldt will detail some of the major 
difficulties associated with ISP level content filtering, some of the 
possible side effects and discuss why such filtering may not be 
effective. He will also give examples of the many difficult moral 
questions such filtering inevitably raises and demonstrate the need for 
a comprehensive public debate an the issue before legislation and 
implementation takes place.

Speaker's biography
Professor Landfeldt was born and raised in Sweden where he studied 
electrical engineering at the Royal Institute of Technology in 
Stockholm. In parallel with his studies he also ran a communication 
systems consulting company. After moving to Australia he completed a PhD 
in telecommunications at UNSW, before moving back to Europe and working 
for Ericsson Research, Networks and Systems, for 2 years. During his 
time with Ericsson, Professor Landfeldt worked on system aspects of 
content adaptation and filtering, mainly in cellular networks. He 
returned to Australia in 2001 as a CISCO Senior Lecturer in Networking 
at University of Sydney. He has been with the University of Sydney since 
then and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2008.

Professor Landfeldt has published over 80 publications in international 
journals and conferences on different issues in computer networks and he 
also holds over 10 patents in this area. He is also an associate editor 
for two international journals, a frequent guest editor, technical 
program chair or technical program member for international IEEE and ACM 
conferences and symposia. He is also a frequently invited speaker to 
industry events.



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