The Great E-Barrier Reef

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 access to any site that some government agency has decided is indeed illegal. Much more efficient, indeed perhaps the only efficient way of effectively shielding Australia and America from potentially harmful off-shore speech.

In my view, such a solution, efficient as it may be, would nonetheless be wrongheaded; and under U.S. law, it would be an unconstitutional prior restraint, since it would involve the government mandating the blocking of potentially protected speech before a final court judgment that the speech is indeed unprotected. But in any event, we should recognize that it's quite likely that any filtering proposal -- even one pitched as being aimed at child pornography -- will indeed end up being quite broad. And we should evaluate such proposals with an eye towards these long-term consequences, and not just their initial scope.

Read more here.  I think Eugene's analysis that the slippery slope is a real phenomenon is particularly important.  If so if you are sceptical about the merits of this statement, you should read his very comprehensive articie that was published in the Harvard Law Review on this topic, "The Mechanisms of the Slippery Slope".