Question: When is an internet filter not an internet filter?
Answer: When Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull says so.
On Wednesday, the minister announced the government's response to an "online copyright infringement" discussion paper that he and Attorney-General George Brandis put out in late July.
Brandis, famous for his now Walkley award-winning "what is metadata?" interview on Sky News, was notably absent from the announcement bar his name on a media release.
As part of the reform, the Copyright Act will be changed to enable movie, music and TV show rights holders to seek an order in court to prevent access to overseas websites linking to - or hosting - unauthorised content.
But try to suggest this is a form of internet filter to Turnbull and he'll disagree.
"That's nonsense, Ben. There's no internet filter here at all. What on earth are you talking about?" Turnbull told me (transcript) in a teleconference with journalists on Wednesday when I reminded him of the Coalition's pre-election policy not to introduce a filter.
The Liberal Party proposed a filter just days before the September 2013 election to the surprise of Turnbull. He then abandoned the plan.
"Can I just say this to you ... Don't ... I mean, I know the temptation to sort of engage in journalism by click bait is very strong but this is not, repeat, not an internet filter," Mr Turnbull said.
"I mean that'll get you a lot of clicks [if you call it an internet filter]," he continued.
"But that is complete BS. It's not a filter."
 
After his announcement on Wednesday, conservative think tank the Institute of Public Affairs said it was a filter, the Australian Greens Senator Scott Ludlam called it a filter and so too did consumer group CHOICE.
"It waddles and quacks like a filter," telco industry veteran John Lindsay, of Lindsay Strategic Advisory, said.
Turnbull's filter denialism is reminiscent of his defence of Tony Abbott's "no cuts" to the ABC and SBS pledge the night before the election. He eventually came clean, though.
It's time for Turnbull to come clean and call his site-blocking regime what it is: a filter.
Yes, there will be oversight by a court with the blocking but that doesn't make it any less a filter.
Internet providers will need to use one of a number of mechanisms to block websites. And if they don't want collateral damage - ie many legitimate websites being knocked offline because they're hosted on the same server as a website hosting copyright infringing material - then they'll need to use either "DNS poisoning" or deep packet inspection technology to filter out the list of banned websites.
If internet providers go down the route of IP address blocks, as financial regulator the Australian Securities and Investments Commission did when it lawfully asked Australian providers to block financial fraud websites, then thousands of legitimate websites will be blocked.
According to Tony "no tech head" Abbott, Turnbull "virtually invented the internet". So he should, after all, understand that courts directing internet providers as to what's in and what's out is a form of filter.
Or are we just going to call this a website efficiency dividend?
