Largest Aussie ISP Agrees To "Ridiculous" Net-Filter Trial 231
Klootzak writes "Michael Malone, head of Australia's largest ISP iiNet announced today that his company would sign up to the Government's live trials of the Great Firewall of Australia. In an article published by The Age, Mr Malone is quoted calling Stephen Conroy 'The worst Communications Minister we've had in the 15 years since the [internet] industry has existed.' Despite at first giving the impression that iiNet is rolling over like a good Government puppy the article quotes Mr Malone saying that the reasons for participating in this trial is to show how unfeasible and stupid it is — Quoted from the article: 'Every time a kid manages to get through this filter, we'll be publicizing it and every time it blocks legitimate content, we'll be publicizing it.' Let's hope that in typical fashion of government-instigated Internet-filtering that this stupid idea is just as useless, inefficient and ineffectual as the last one, and that the Australian Government realizes this before wasting more taxpayer dollars on it (seeing as the first attempt only cost taxpayers $84,000,000)."
Oh no... (Score:3, Interesting)
"Filter advocates need to check their facts" (Score:5, Interesting)
Mark Newton (of Internode, not the same mob as this story is about) has an opinion piece on the ABC (which I submitted to Slashdot, but still pending...), entitled Filter advocates need to check their facts [abc.net.au].
The other camp includes people who just make lots of mistakes; including Senator Conroy, who claimed that Sweden, the UK, Canada and New Zealand all have similar filter systems as are being proposed.
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Anyway, if Conroy is the worst minister, that's pretty damn bad. After all, Richard Alston [wikipedia.org], Daryl Williams and Helen Coonan [wikipedia.org] were all communications minister under Johny sticken Howard.
According to Wikipedia, Alston tried "to ban online gambling, and make email forwarding illegal, he was dubbed 'the world's biggest luddite'. [1]".
Maybe this "representative" thing isn't all it's cracked up to be? Anyone up for some Demarchy [wikipedia.org]?
Re:What a scam (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyone that has traffic on lets say... port 22 is *obviously* getting around it and will have their name paraded as a violator.
Re:Oh no... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm with iiNet and I fully support Malone's plan to continue with the trial. Reading his comments, it's perfectly clear that he is opposed to the filter and that he doesn't think Senator Conroy is playing with a full deck. The internet industry has been telling him all year that his plan will never work, and he continues to ignore and harass them. The only way to bury the plan once and for all is to get it out in the open and let the spectacular failure of the filter be visible to all.
At the moment, 90% of the politicians don't understand the issue (clearly including Senator Conroy), 90% of the public hasn't heard of it, and the Labor party just keeps parroting the same bullshit about protecting children whenever someone objects to the filter on technical or censorship grounds. Nevermind the fact that even if the filter is a perfect list of kiddy-porn websites, when it leaks, they've just provided the most comprehensive list of such websites to the entire online community.
When the test goes live, I'll opt-in to the kiddy filter and complain when I still see some naughty bits. I'll find the sites that have been accidentally blocked (there is no doubt that there will be some, the government's own tests showed that between 2% and 8% of the internet will be accidentally blocked), and complain when I can't reach them. I'll complain when the ~30% speed penalty hits. I'll find every flaw that everyone in the industry is predicting, and complain at every step.
The government is conducting a test, and we need to let them know it failed by demonstrating the failure ourselves. If the only people participating in the test are people naive enough to want ISP-level filtering to begin with, the problems won't be revealed and Conroy gets his pet censorship project through.
Re:Oh no... (Score:3, Interesting)
iiNet is a good ISP. They were the first to support ADSL2 by installing their own DSLAMs (at least in West Oz), they were the first to trial naked DSL. They help push the industry forward. If it wasn't for these types of ISPs we would still be paying $50 / month for 512k / 5gig.
Also I appreciate the fact that MM built the company from his garage like a true geek. Also they were the first to offer TCP/IP.
Not to say that iiNet doesn't have some bad moments, but they are far from the worst in Australia.
They really hate this firewall crap, and have been one of the biggest voices against it.
Re:"Filter advocates need to check their facts" (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd never heard of Demarchy before. Thanks for the lesson.
I can see where a lot of reelection pressure would be removed, but I think it would lead to even worse corruption than we have now, or at least less expensive corruption.
A randomly selected segment of the population would be likely to have far less personal wealth than current politicians and thus be easier to influence with current lobbyist practices.
Add to that there would definitely have to be some way of ensuring that the person selected could actually fill the capacity they're supposed to. Perhaps a competency test and the appointee is chosen randomly from that pool.
Re:Oh no... (Score:5, Interesting)
if they have a list of all the kiddie porn sites on the web, why don't they just go after the site owners? even if the sites are hosted overseas, there are very few countries in the world that tolerate that sorta thing, and with a little international pressure it shouldn't be too hard to get their own governments to shut them down.
if the RIAA can get the Swedish government to illegally shut down the pirate bay and seize their equipment, i'm sure it'd be no problem for the Australian government to pressure other governments to go after their own kiddie porn sites.
Re:What a scam (Score:5, Interesting)
The thing is there's no motivation for them to screw us over. iiNet are out to make money, and filtering is just going to be a massive problem/money hole for them. Sucking up the government won't get them anything because of the telco situation here.
So iiNet are taking the long term view that being seen as 'the guys who stopped the filtering' will be seen as a positive for their brand and mean when people ask their local geek who they should get their interwebs from said geek will be more likely to suggest iiNet.
Re:"Filter advocates need to check their facts" (Score:3, Interesting)
I think you misunderstood where I was trying to go with my rambling.
I wasn't trying to say that working class people are bereft of morals or less fit to govern. I was speaking directly about the separate issue of bribery and illegal corruption that you spoke about in your last sentence. Basically I skipped a few steps in between and assumed oversight would stay as it is now, allowing lobbyists to work their magic on an equally impressionable but less wealthy group of people.
I'm all about getting rid of the "rich" requirement to be in public office. I'd like to be involved in politics myself, but don't feel I have the time or background to have a chance.
Re:Oh no... (Score:2, Interesting)
why don't they just go after the site owners?
Because this isn't, and never has been, actually about protecting the children.
No, it's far more likely that the kiddie porn site operators themselves are much harder to find even if their sites aren't. They would have to be pretty stupid to run their sites with real names and addresses. Not to mention that they are likely to operate in countries that have different laws about what is illegal (like the age of consent).
I think that it would be better to go after the credit card processors. Make it more difficult to get peoples money.
Re:What about TPG? (Score:3, Interesting)
Moving from iiNet to TPG has proved to be one of the worst decisions I've made with my ISPs.
Their support is not good. It's terrible. It seems whenever I call I get put on hold and forgotten about. I once made the mistake of admitting I was using a Mac and the problems I was having with the TPG-supplied modem not registering with the SIP proxy for VoIP were suddenly because I wasn't using Internet Explorer.
They have accidently made charges to my account I had to have them revoke.
TPG use transparent proxies in some areas - thankfully not where I am anymore - which don't re-write the IP address properly, and (for the six months I was in their proxying pool) I'd find sites would tell me I was banned because someone else on the same proxy had incurred the wrath of the moderators and they'd banned the IP. You'd have similar problems with sites like RapidShare.
Finally, there are a lot of ways they get money out of you. Their contracts are long and their disconnection fee is very high. You have to buy one of their modems for many of their plans. Perhaps most annoyingly changing plans resets the contract period.
My experience with TPG has been one of pain and suffering I would only wish upon child molesters and people who talk in the theatre. As soon as my contract is out I'm dropping them for iiNet, Internode or Netspace.
Re:"Filter advocates need to check their facts" (Score:3, Interesting)
Extreme example - and at risk of taking the thread in an unwelcome direction - oil industry ads are very "green" these days. Surely the goal of those ads is to make us feel better about the product we are buying into?
There are a lot of things I like about the "Demarchy" idea (new to me) but I think it runs the risk - like any system - of becoming self-serving. Demarchy's goals need to be aligned with citizens', i.e. mankind's (etc., etc. - easy to say, but what are they?). I imagine it could be a very "responsive" system, given current technology.
I also agree with your "competency" point: maybe citizens might be allowed to nominate "proxies" to opine on their behalf on various topics (different proxies for different areas of expertise) and veto their proxy's (possibly explained?) vote instead of trying to understand subject matter 100% themselves. Of course, that idea opens another means for external interests to "game the system"; I don't think that kind of thing can go away until "the game" bans bots
it's more like a shark net (Score:2, Interesting)
Many Australian beaches have shark nets. They exist to stop swimmers from being exposed to sharks. Sure, swimmers can just climb over the shark net, and sure, the net isn't 100% effective at shielding swimmers from sharks, but does that really mean we shouldn't build them?
The fact that some of us might like to swim with sharks is completely lost on the majority of the population who don't want sharks near their kids.. and, frankly, think we're being unreasonable by insisting that the shark net be optional.
Re:iiNet (Score:3, Interesting)
iiNet was actually named as a bit of a pun on uuNet. It also used to always be pronounced as "eye eye net" too, but a few years ago the few ads I saw or heard had changed it to "eye net".
I would've thought Telstra Bigpond was the largest ISP here, quite an achievement if MM's company has managed to overtake them.
Re:What a scam (Score:2, Interesting)
Knowing Michael (and I do), he'll happily encourage his staff to break around the filter from their home connections.
They will do just that, document their methods and he'll have his findings to present to the government.
But that is immaterial. He doesn't need his staff to do this alone and give it a hint of bias. He has a wide basis of support on this topic with the technical masses who will all do the same thing.
As has previously been stated, this is all to appease a tiny minority group that represents a tiny minority of the population. It needs to be stopped dead in the water.