iiNet Pulls Out of Australian Censorship Trial 77
taucross writes "ISP iiNet today confirmed its exit from the Australian government's Internet filtering trials. iiNet had originally taken part in the plan in order to prove the filter was flawed. Citing a number of concerns, their withdrawal leaves only five Australian ISPs continuing to test the filter."
Re:Still 5 too many! (Score:5, Informative)
Stephen Conroy, Australia's Minister for Censorship to appear on ABC's Q&A on Thursday March 26 [abc.net.au].
Submit your questions people, Thrust
Re:They never took part in the trial anyway (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Only 5 Aussie ISPs left? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Only 5 Aussie ISPs left? (Score:4, Informative)
I've heard of Primus... and that's it.
Article correction (Score:5, Informative)
"their withdrawal leaves only five Australian ISPs continuing to test the filter."
Correction; There were, and remain, six participating ISP's in the trial; Primus Telecommunications, Tech 2U, Webshield, OMNIconnect, Netforce and Highway 1
Iinet have only withdrawn their application to participate in the trial.
To put it in perspective, Optus, the second largest ISP still has an (as yet unaccepted) application to participate. iiNet is the third largest ISP. Primus is possibly in the top 20 ISP's in the country, and the other 5 might sneak into the top 200. There are no other notable publicly known applications from other ISP's
Something I want to clear up (Score:4, Informative)
Before I start I want to make it absolutely clear that I am completely opposed to filtering, and I am an Australian.
What I want to point out is that there is a pretty solid chance that the list on wikileaks isn't the ACMA list. If this was leaked from a vendor (eg. Websense) then they may have incorporated the ACMA blacklist into their own blacklist and then a staff member leaked _that_ list.
This would still mean that the entire ACMA list is in the leaked list, but it means that a lot of the sites that are questionable (not illegal but listed) may not be anywhere to be seen on the ACMA list and were added by the third party (the sites everyone is complaining about).
This also means that Conroy stating that "that isn't the ACMA list" is actually true, the fact that it contains the ACMA list is a point that was skimmed over.
Now that wikileaks have some new 'leaked lists' that apparently show a great drop in the number of banned URL's and suggesting a government 'clean up' could easily be attributed to the fact that their new leaked lists are the genuine article, and not a list leaked from a third party with additional URL's.
Just want to put it out there. If the government are trying to ban non-illegal content they should be strung up.. but I just don't want to jump to the conclusion that everyone seems to be jumping to.
Parent NOT "Insightful" (Score:5, Informative)
Re:They never took part in the trial anyway (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Herpes (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Still 5 too many! (Score:5, Informative)
That might appear to be the case because initially it wasn't: [smh.com.au]
Senator Conroy and ACMA initially tried to discredit Wikileaks by saying the leaked blacklist was about double the size of ACMA's list. However, they admitted that both lists shared "some common URLs".
Wikileaks said the disparity was due to the fact that the leaked list was from August last year and contained a number of older URLs that had since been removed by ACMA.
It quickly followed up by leaking a second version of the blacklist, dated March 18 this year, that is approximately the same size as the ACMA list and contains many of the same seemingly innocuous websites.
And the clever part about how they got the list?
The list was obtained by Wikileaks from internet filtering software that parents can opt to install on their computers. ACMA provides its list of prohibited sites to these software developers for inclusion in their products.
Re:Hate to say I told ya so (Score:1, Informative)
It isn't illegal to own the porn or view it in the Australian states. It is just illegal or businesses to sell it in most Australian states. One can still legally buy it from the territories or overseas.
Re:This isn't a technical problem for the governme (Score:5, Informative)
Nick Xenophon has gone a little bit past having "lost interest" previously stating his opposition to the filter. He has also stated he isn't convinced the trial should go ahead in its current form:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/02/27/2503830.htm?site=local [abc.net.au]
"But I think the means of doing it really are very problematic and when ISP after ISP [are] saying that this won't work, it will slow down the internet for everyone, and it won't deal with the issue of the peer to peer networks that paedophiles use, then I think we really need to rethink this."
More importantly though, you seem to be under the impression that Conroy doesn't understand the political problem here. The last sentence from the above article states it quite nicely:
"A spokesman for Senator Conroy says the Minister is still looking into whether the filter would require legislation, or could be implemented through another means."
He's very aware that this isn't going to get through the legislative process. There are obviously other agendas involved that prevent common sense prevailing.