The Government claims that this policy is required "to reduce the risk of inadvertent exposure" to RC-rated material.

The Government has failed to produce any evidence to show that there is any significant risk at all of inadvertent exposure to RC-rated material, nor that the consequences to society of inadvertent exposure to RC-rated material are themselves significant.

There is undoubtedly some value to a policy that targets deliberate access to illegal material, but this aim is specifically not the objective of this policy. Indeed, the the Government readily admits that its proposed filter can be easily circumvented by people who have the will to do so.

In the absence of quantified evidence to the contrary, common sense and one's own Internet browsing experiences suggest that the risk of inadvertent exposure to RC-rated material is vanishingly small, that the consequences of inadvertent exposure are minor and that the net social benefit to be obtained by reducing this risk further is therefore minimal, particularly when judged against the risks and costs of providing this and future Governments with the keys to an all-pervasive Internet censorship mechanism.

If the stated objective of the filtering policy is so specious, we are entitled to ask what the actual objectives of the policy are.