t’s politics day here on the iGeneration blog. The general election has been set as May 6th and today is the last seating of Parliament before the Queen dissolves it on Monday morning. Campaigning has begun, and the Prime Minister has set off on his travels to canvas for votes with the other respective political parties on their own campaign trail. Though today is no ordinary day. Today is the last day of full governmental control - and with that, legislation that has been sitting on the Parliamentary desks for weeks on end has been dusted off, handed to the clerks and is now, basically, being rushed through the Commons by the end of the working day. The Digital Economy Bill is the most controversial piece of legislation on the cards today and is set to be debated later on this evening. The bill, covered quite extensively on this blog, will give the state and government to tell ISP’s to disable and suspend broadband and Internet accounts of users through a three-strike system of copyright infringement; in a nutshell, admittedly.

Internet filtering has been a standard tool for fighting unwanted online content for more than a decade. However, the debate over its legitimacy and effectiveness continues to rage, pitting politicians and regulators against technologists and free speech advocates. From China, where activists fight against the country's "Great Firewall", to the US, where Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, recently promised to bring an Internet freedom agenda to the forefront of politics, discourse around filtering has reached a fever pitch. Once the domain of repressive regimes, Internet filtering has begun to make inroads in the West, with several countries harbouring secret blacklists, and still others weighing the practicalities and legal constraints of filtering.

Internet filter not censorship: Conroy April 12, 2010 - 6:54PM AAP The federal government's plan for a mandatory internet filter is a modest regulatory measure that will combat illegal activity, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy says. In a speech to The Sydney Institute on Monday, Senator Conroy again defended the plan against opponents who believe it's akin to censorship. "The internet is an incredible piece of technology and in our lifetime it's unlikely we'll see anything like it again," he said. "But for all its technical brilliance, the internet is a distribution and communications platform. "Having no regulation to combat illegal activity actually weakens all that is good about the internet."

This week, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals dealt what looked like a deathblow to "net neutrality," the principle that Internet providers shouldn't get to pick and choose which information moves quickest over the web. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has one last chance to prevent these companies from fundamentally changing how the Internet works—and not for the better. But will the commissioners take on the telecoms? For years, giant Internet service providers like Comcast and Verizon have wanted to erect "fast lanes" and "slow lanes" on the web. They say this is necessary to prevent file-sharers and heavy bandwidth users from slowing down the Internet for everyone else. But without strict net neutrality rules requiring ISPs to treat all content equally, there's nothing to stop them from radically reordering how the internet works. Comcast and other providers could speed up some sites and services and slow down others—a practice known as "throttling"—unless the hosts or ISP customers cough up more money.