US internet speed: is not making significant progress in making it faster

[FaRmLaNd]

@mrstickball

I don't believe the Australian filter has been passed by parliament. And our internet isn't completely government owned. Telstra is partially owned by the government and the rest is owned by private investors (initially I believe the future fund that owned Telstra had a majority but I don't believe it does any longer). Regardless the board of directors of Telstra aren't affiliated with the government.

Unfortunately the issue Australia has is that Telsra has a virtual monopoly on the infrastructure (the other isp's buy bandwidth from them), this monopoly was caused by the fact that our internet infrastructure use to be government owned.
However due to the negligence of Telstra, many isp's have been creating their own ADSL and ADSL2 networks to compete. So the situation isn't as bad as it use to be.

The filter idea was initially looked into by Howard's Liberal government and was rejected because of the negative economic impact that running the filter would cause (let alone the freedom of information and actual effectiveness of the filter issues as-well). Which is why the bill has caused so many issues again.

Thankfully I very much doubt that the bill will be passed, in fact the Rudd government has already made steps to move themselves away from the bill.

So the issue of censorship (which unfortunately has a history in my country, look at risen) doesn't have much to do with the former federal ownership of the internet. Its being pushed by the government to protect children from "paedophiles" eg the usual, predictable tactic of appealing to peoples pathos, in order to scare them into compliance. Just like how most of the horrible anti-terrorism bills were passed in the US and the rest of the West/Europe.

Sorry for my long post :P