I would like to follow up on the internet censorship law proposal pending in Israel.  You can read my previous posts about the proposal and the fact that it passed in the first hearing in Knesset.  A few days ago the law proposal was up for a hearing in the financial committee - one more step on the way of this proposal becoming a law.  Naturally, this hearing attracted quite a lot of attention, particularly by the activists who care about this medium.

Unfortunately, it looks like not much progress was achieved at that hearing.  On the semi-positive side, the authority to decide what content is appropriate and what content is not, was taken from the sole ownership of the minister of communication.  It will now be determined by a committee consisting of 3 government representatives and 4 representatives of the various sectors of the society (it is not clear how exactly all this is supposed to work).

On the ironic, or should I say sarcastic, side, it was decided that the current clients of the ISPs will not be automatically shifted to the censored internet.  However all the new clients, incluing those whose plan ended and they are renewing it, will have to state whether they want or not to use the government filter.  The punch line of this (not so funny) joke is that if you will not provide an answer, the ISP will not be able to provide you internet services.  In other words, there is no change, since within a span of few years everybody will have to be classified in a government database as porn wachers or not (my exhaggeration).

On the annoying side, the newspapers seem to misinterpret the conclusions of this hearing calling them “significant changes” to the original proposal (HE1, HE2).  Moreover, the continuous use of children safety as an excuse for promoting this law, is particulary annoying because it shows lack of willingness to really deal with the substantive issue creating visibality of control, but not addressing the proposed problem.  From reading the opinoins presented in the news articles, it seems that people who has the least interaction with this medium tend to support the filtering solution, while those who have more interaction tend to criticise it.  Unfortunately, it seem that the former group has more impact on shaping this law and moving it forward.

At the end of the day, it looks like the cencorship law still has its momentum.  I think one of the comments on Ynet summarized this hearing in the following way (my unprofessional translation): “It looks like they took a zucchini, painted it green, and are now selling it to us as a cucumber.”  Couldn’t agree more.