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It's what I would do if I was dictator of a country. Now get to work on my palace :D
The question I would like to have answered by Stephen Conroy is which of the top 100 sites in Australia will be blocked?
Not for long it won't. Somebody inside the industry will leak it, as has already happened in other countries.
Conroy is an arrogant self-righteous right wing Catholic thug, and he ain't that smart either. He is also not that popular within his own party. There is talk that he has been handed this job because the smarter heads in the government know it will fail, technically and politically, and they want to be able to pin the blame on him so they can get rid of him. Which might explain why he is so tetchy about it all.
There is also a lot of as yet unspoken opposition to this scheme. People I know who are not porn lovers, or politically active, are pretty angry about this illegitimate grab for control over information.
Leaving aside the prohibitively costly and unworkable amounts of content classification required (100s of millions of sites, and many billions of individual web pages), the only way the government can truly censor the internet is if they take control of the security certificates, and I can't see how that will ever be allowed to happen. Short of that, a simple anonymising VPN connection will get around any censorship scheme, piece of cake.
Thanks for this great summary. I have just referenced it in its entirety in a letter to Senator Conroy (whom I have already contacted and received a form letter from.
Something I would like you to consider as an follow up to this article: it is my understanding that iiNet is the only ISP that will be working with the Government on the next round of trials. We need to hold them to account for this, as a secret test with unknown judging criteria can be spun on the backend. iiNet's stated purpose in agreeing to the testing is to "put the final nail in the coffin"* of this idea, however any testing respresents a danger to our freedoms, as the technological problems of today can only be the source of innovation tomorrow - and this is an innovation that we don't need.
In short: anything that can be done to put a spotlight on iiNet and hopefully have them pull out of testing can only be a good thing.
* iiNet email to me on Dec. 10th, in response to this issue.
Conroy is from a lunatic fringe, who, while acknowledging the problems with his proposal, goes not way into solving them, and chooses to fire on with his draconian unworkable scheme despite the protests of, well everybody. Herein lies the problem with democracy (it was us that put him there) and now we have this- politicians with an agenda, trying to push through social reforms on technological issues, IT JUST WONT WORK. The minister for censorship seems blissfully unaware that censorship reflects societys lack of confidence in itself, and we will now all pay the price for it. It really saddens me that he can't see how this is a much bigger deal than him ramming home some vote grabbing populist nonsense, punishing the majority for the crimes of a minority.
It makes me wonder what on earth Conroy is thinking. I can think of only two plausible explanations:
1. Conroy is relying on a survey that showed more than 50% of parents were supportive of voluntary ISP-level filtering. He is too stupid to see how changing 'parents' to 'general population' and 'voluntary filtering' to 'compulsory censorship' might just possibly affect the percentage in favour.
2. Conroy is not actually that stupid, and this is a deal done behind closed doors that benefits all political parties by controlling anti-government dissent. Labor are rushing to do it now, hoping that the fuss will have died down before the next election, especially if a gentleman's agreement has been reached not to campaign to overturn the legislation.
I hope it's number 1 - number 2's just a bit too conspiracy theory for my liking.
Is this a domestic or government requirement? Who are they protecting from what? There is no evidence to say how and why we need this?
JMTC
Having emigrated to Australia as a political refugee from a country with no freedom of speech, I have never read a truer word being written! I am terrified of what this means to Australia if it is implemented, and am not exaggerating when I say that I will leave this country if it comes into being! I have experienced the terror of censorship and "law enforcement" at its worst, and have no intention of doing so again.
Therefore, Conroy must have another motive for introducing filtering on unspecified 'unwanted' material. It's time he came clean.
Putting filters in to stop child porn, is like putting roadblocks in the street, when the crims are using helicopters. Come on Conroy. Stop feeding us bull about how importantant it is to get 'empirical evidence' about something that's transparently stupid.
http://www.aph.gov.au/HOUSE/members/index.htm
and let them know what you think. Tell the ALP members they will be spectacularly voted out of office at the next election on this issue alone if they persist and finally implement the plan. Tell them to cross the floor and oppose the legislation when it come time for the vote if they value their seats.
Our only hope is to either kill it at it's source e.g. Conroy or Rudd or kill it in the senate. The Liberal Party won't be supporting it so if the rest of the minor parties vote against it, it won't get through.
and as for the ALP members being forced to vote along party lines that is illegal under the Commonwealth crimes act.
"THE CRIMES ACT (COMMONWEALTH) 1914 Part ll.
Section 28
Interfering with political liberty
Any person who, by violence or by threats or intimidation of any kind, hinders or interferes with the free exercise or performance, by any other person, of any political right or duty, shall be guilty of an offence.
Penalty: Imprisonment for 3 years."
Not that Kevin747 and his ilk are likely to to hinder a member from carrying out the will of their constituents
You all voted for him so be happy and reap what you have sown you idiots.
It could done, nothing is 100% secure.
There are other protocols that will rise up if they get their elitist claws on .torrents.
MUTE comes to mind, which is totally anonymous, there are others out there too.
Screw Kevin Bloody Dudd and his cronies..
What needs to happen is let any party occupy the lower house, that will solve a lot of problems.
It's happened time and time again, to the detriment of millions of people killed in the 20th century by their own governments.
It would be like goping fishing in the middle of the desert, you aint gonna catch anything.
So who voted for Labor? I know i didn't.
If it does fall over I'd expect Conroy to resign from his position, or the Labor government may as well fall on their sword next election.
are we becomming communist.. hell yes.. labor are sociallists and tthere is nothing better than making us all commies... it is for this reason i never buy products made in china.. commies... pah.
but chairman rudd wants us to be communist...
you all voted him in... so suffer..
Soon enough, the nutjobs at Family First will have anything related to abortion filtered.
And time to bring in a few terrorists from Guantanamo Bay... what else has this government got in store? Thanks KRud for the 'transparency' we were promised!!!
Regardless of if you objections are on technical or freedom of speech grounds (or both), just about everyone agrees that this Internet filter is BAD for Australia. Technically ineffective, with potentially a huge impact on freedom of speech. Think about whose interests this filter could be easily adapted to serve. Think about what industry has proven itself throughout the world as being sociopathic in serving their own interests. Think about who has powerful lobby groups to get in the ear of government. Beware of the wolf in sheep's clothing people!
If it's about Protecting the children make the whole filter optional so that parents can enable it. Don't force beliefs on everyone.
Not only are we in a country where we have ridiculously small download limits so cant download much at all, We pay through the roof for it, And soon alot of the internet will be unaccessable for us..
Not to mention the 'real' people that you are trying to stop here wont be affected by this at all, At least i know this wont stop me downloading my TV shows and such from Bittorrent, 5mins to load up PuTTY and setup a tunnel to a server on the east coast of US and this billion dollar filter is useless.
This is friggin ridiculous really, In a time of economic crisis what do we do.. throw several billion dollars at a filter that will not even work. Don't we have better things to spend our money on ?
Conroy, in his response to representations notes that ACMA refers to the United Kingdom Internet Watch Foundation for listings of unwanted material. Yes, this is the organisation that had Wikipedia banned in the UK over one image on its site; the decision was reversed after a public outcry and confirmation that the 'offending' image has been in the public domain since 1976. Interestingly, it insisted that it was the correct decision to ban the site based on its 'rules'.
The UK Internet Watch Foundation is a self regulated charity! Meaning, Australia's determination of acceptable content is being sourced from a foreign charity that has now parliamentary control in ANY country.
Clearly, Conroy and his departmental advisers just have not got a grip on what they are doing, saying or the consequences of their actions. A classic case of poor policy development leading to a draconian outcome for the Australian public.
http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2007/08/31/170...
you think that the Australian filtering proposal is made up?
please, just get back to your rock.
i just had the best idea for a get rich quick scheme
1. register for a site that is legal but you know will get blocked anyways have to pay to join
2. sue the government
3. ?????????????????
4. Profit
5. leave australia and go live in Canada or something
6. ????????????????
7. Profit
The government has kept this one very very quiet and almost nobody I know has heard about it. The problem is that the mainstream media don't understand what implications this would have, they just think it blocks CP and terrorism
Three cheers for Big Brother! Hip Hip....why is nobody cheering?
There needs to be more otucry about this becuase as it stands few are truely aware of the extent of censorship in Australia, there needs to be concerted politcal outcry and action.
Anyone for a protest?? lets get this moving
way to spin
Very few were in favor of the censorship, and those who were only supported it due to the misguided notion it would help fight child pornography, which it will not in fact do.
Many others such as myself felt the money would have better spent cracking down on that kind of thing, rather than trying to turn us into the next China.
Yesterday, the first of June 2009, a law came into effect barring cigarettes from being sold at a counter with anything else, and they must not be kept out of site in some states.
This country is sliding downhill fast, I'm sad to say.
Ireland wants to burn books and have blasphemy laws now. Ironic isn't it, we are hammering totalitarian governments to ease up when supposedly free countrys are going the other way.