Optus' involvement in the controversial government blacklist project could fall on either side of the fence. In kissing the ring, is Optus conceding that censorship is inevitable — or hatching a scheme to discredit Conroy's folly from within?
In the world of business, principles and money don't always go
hand in hand.
Some principled companies — Starbucks or The Body
Shop, for example — make good money. Others, like Apple, make their
money first and then worry about principles once they can afford
to, or have to. Yet as the country's second-largest ISP joins the government's ill-conceived
blacklist-based web filter, one can only hope that its
intentions are good.
There
could perhaps be no better company to be involved in web filtering
than Optus which, with its roots firmly planted in censorship-happy
Singapore, certainly has the pedigree and resources to act
authoritatively on the topic.
We've seen several examples of the uneasy relationship between
principles and business opportunism within Australia's ISP
community in recent months. For example, I recently took Internode to task for its simultaneous
pro-Terria public stance and private negotiations with Telstra in
the lead-up to last November's NBN bid. And I still wonder how
Telstra expects to win customer loyalty by selling services based
on idealistic and deceptive speed claims rather
than competitive broadband plans.
In the battle of ISP principles, the king right now is arguably
iiNet, which is fighting the good fight against AFACT in a
legal case that will inform the global battle over ISPs' rights and
obligations to their customers. iiNet also recently funded a freedom of information request — which was
unceremoniously knocked back by the government — to deliver
sorely-lacking transparency around the cancelled NBN tender.
The extent to which iiNet has become a standard-bearer for ISPs'
principles became clear when even arch-rival Telstra backed iiNet's legal fight against AFACT. iiNet
may have started its fight against AFACT with a slingshot, but
there is no better friend to have than Telstra when you need
lawyers, guns and money. So to speak.
iiNet's principles were once again evident when iiNet pulled out of discussions to join the filter
trial, which it said from the start it intended to join simply to
prove the filter untenable. With the lack of a large ISP tainting
the trial process (remember that Telstra passed on the opportunity to participate and
was publicly slamming ISP filtering nine years ago),
Conroy needed a turncoat to champion his near universally
criticised cause. It has now, apparently, found its turncoat in
Optus.
There could perhaps be no better company to be involved in web
filtering than Optus which, with its roots firmly planted in
censorship-happy Singapore, certainly has the pedigree and
resources to act authoritatively on the topic.
Optus, with a
massive base of internet users, is now a feather in the cap for
Conroy, who faced a barrage of criticism over the diminutive size
of trial participants. Successful technical trials will lend
credence to Conroy's unpopular filtering regime, discrediting
opponents who oppose the filter on technical and pragmatic
grounds.
Yet while Conroy crows over Optus' participation as a way to
"ensure the government obtains robust results from the pilot", one
wonders where Optus' true allegiance lies.
Is the company picking up where iiNet left off — infiltrating
the other side in an effort to discredit the filter from the
inside? Does it have nefarious plans to sabotage the process in
retribution for Conroy's double rebuff (in the cases of the
cancelled Opel contract and Optus' once widely-favoured NBN bid)?
Or is it acting out of pragmatism, having simply accepted that the
filter will become reality and decided it's better to be involved
with shaping policy than having policy imposed on it?
Then there's the more worrying possibility that Optus has made
some risk-versus-reward decisions and decided that helping Conroy
with his pet project will give it the upper hand in coming
negotiations over ISPs' roles in the evolving NBN. Optus, after
all, was among the first to come out in support of the new NBN plan — a
surprising turn of events given the millions it invested and lost
in engineering its own NBN bid.
Did
[Optus] see kissing the ring — and selling out the anti-filtering
cause — as the necessary price to pay in exchange for getting a leg
up in the NBN?
Could that enthusiasm have been fuelled by a tit-for-tat deal
from a minister who badly needed Optus' participation to keep his
filter plan alive? Did the company see kissing the ring — and
selling out the anti-filtering cause — as the necessary price to
pay in exchange for getting a leg up in the NBN? What concessions,
exactly, did Optus negotiate out of a minister who previously
decried many ISPs' proposals as "cheap" shots at
government-subsidised network upgrades?
That, of course, was before the NBN announcement; now, all ISPs
stand to benefit from government-subsidised network upgrades. And
whether Optus is playing double-agent, or has simply become an
agent of Conroy's plan to filter Australia's internet, will become
clearer over time.
For now, suffice it to say that Australia's
second-largest ISP is playing a dangerous game that could just as
easily land it in the ranks of the principled as in the ranks of
the opportunistic.