A Sad Day For the New Zealand Internet 221
An anonymous reader writes "Another one bites the dust, as New Zealand's Internet filter stealthily goes live with two smaller ISPs, and three of the largest already rumoured to have signed up to do the same. However, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is apparently 'committed to helping people to circumvent government internet filtering,' so perhaps the USA will launch an invasion to free the poor downtrodden Kiwis from their own evil government?" Clever of one of the acquiescing ISPs to have named itself "Watchdog."
Re:Like many fads, (Score:5, Insightful)
"Like internet censorship too will never last."
Censorship will exist as long as either
1.) There are governments with secrets to hide
2.) ZOMG SAVE TEH CHILDREN
I forsee neither of these going away anytime soon. As in, Ever.
Re:Um why (Score:5, Insightful)
It's called politics, mutual backrubs, one hand washes the other and so on; probably somewhat of a longterm investment that pays back in the form of favours and goodwill from the government.
Politics and business are about benefiting on the back of the least powerful party, i.e. citizens/customers. Communication companies help the government with their surveillance. In turn, governments keep new regulations and consumer protection laws to a minimum or erode existing ones.
Re:Two words (Score:5, Insightful)
So drop all e-commerce and anything that requires a password, including half the forums on the internet? Yeah, that won't have any blow back.
Human Rights? (Score:4, Insightful)
Ok, I do have to admit that this is the first time I heard about the filter... but how can they possibly square that with human rights [hrea.org]? Especially this part:
I get that various dictatorships and so on around the globe might not care all that much about human rights, but New Zealand was still a democracy last time I checked?
Re:Human Rights? (Score:3, Insightful)
Just because it's a democracy doesn't mean people care about freedom. People vote in dictators all the time.
Re:Two words (Score:5, Insightful)
Dropping connections that want to hanshake encryptions / look encrypted.
IP-bans of proxies; general useleness of open proxies; ease of proxy detections.
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Do not solve social problem with technical means, it will never work (see: drm).
That's probably true, but I wonder how far things will go? For example, where I live, there are already kids setting up local wireless mesh networks to share their music collections and other stuff around. Sure, these are small and operated by pizza-munching geeks, but if the idea gained general traction and the Internet as we know it simply became something similar to cable TV today (plus perhaps a comms network similar to email), would not the people be able to steal the Internet revolution back? I'm also interested in whether this might mean a return in some form at least to the ancient (and perhaps default) mode of human life: that of small, tightly-knit communities.
Re:Human Rights? (Score:5, Insightful)
I get that various dictatorships and so on around the globe might not care all that much about human rights, but New Zealand was still a democracy last time I checked?
Democracies don't give you good government, they give you the government you deserve. If the people don't pay attention, the government will be corrupt. If the people is willing to put up with human rights abuses, the government will be willing also. If the people are willing to put up with unbalanced budgets and lack of healthcare for some people, the government will be willing to also. See also slavery in America prior to the civil war.
A bad precedent (Score:4, Insightful)
Nooo...
That means there's more chance the proposed filter might come to fruition in Australia. Now the Government can point and say "see, NZ did it!".
Although it's sorta funny ... I was being berated by a kiwi on this very forum a few weeks ago, who was going on about how crap Australia was and that he couldn't wait to go home to NZ where there was "no chance of an internet filter". Joke's on him now, I guess. At least our 'filter' is still only an (unpopular) proposal, rather than actually implemented. Yet.
Re:Like many fads, (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps the uncensored internet is the fad coming already to a close?
Re:NZ Filtering FAQ (Score:5, Insightful)
This, to me, is the strangest thing about these filtering/censorship proposals. On the one hand, it's claimed that only really, really illegal stuff will be blocked by it -- the worst of the worst that pretty much guarantees a prison sentence merely for possessing, and that the lists will be accurate and won't block legitimate content. On the other, people who are detected trying to access this stuff won't be charged or even investigated?
It seems very strange. Obviously there's simple explanations for this lack of coherency, but the self-contradictory nature of the proposals is so much more transparent than usual in politics.
Re:Um why (Score:5, Insightful)
"voluntary" in politics is doublespeak.
It's doesn't mean: do whatever you feel like, there will be no consequences one way or another.
It means:
For now we leave you a choice but you better pick the right one or we'll just pass a law that will be even worse for you. By the way, nice tax-free service you're offering there, would be a shame if something happened to it.
Re:NZ Filtering FAQ (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Um why (Score:5, Insightful)
You *do* understand what an encrypted ZIP file is ?
Rapidshare is full of them, and no filter in the world can block randomly encrypted bits.
Unless you are suggesting shutting down every FTP, filehost, P2P application, Yahoo Group and other massive swathes of the Internet, this filter like all others is a waste of taxpayers money and government resources and time.
I don't know why you think pedos are so dumb that they will name their files "little_naked_boy.jpg" ?
They are possibly some of the most sneaky and conscientious people around when it comes to incriminating evidence, simply because of the very act they perform.
Re:Um why (Score:3, Insightful)
First they came for the Pedophiles...
While this filter ostensibly targets child pornography, what is to stop it from being used to censor other 'obscene' or 'unwanted' material? It would not take much to tailor this filter to target political speech.
Re:Um why (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Um why (Score:5, Insightful)
Aside from the fact that this stuff generally doesn't work at all I'd hazard a guess that you're wrong about pedophiles and their relative degree of laziness.
Ya see, these are people who do something which is pretty much universally reviled. Even serial killers, drug dealers, murderers, and normal every day run of the mill rapists hate people who do this sort of this to kids. If they were capable of just "jerking off to something else" I reckon they would have. There's plenty of freak porn that won't have your neighbours trying to burn down your house and/or kill you. Terrorists are more popular than these people.
The corollary of this is of course that the automatic filter is supposed to be targeted at people who are likely to be more careful and paranoid than, as previously stated, terrorists. It would be harder to eliminate child pornography than it is to defeat terrorism, and we can all see what a lovely job the governments are doing at that.
I'm perfectly happy for them to block child pornography(though I confess that the recent court decisions here in Oz about the old Simpson's cartoons we all saw back in the late 90's are going a bit too far). The problem is that these filters don't work, they're not even particularly good at stopping accidental exposure to this sort of thing let alone deliberate exposure, and they require resources and add a burden to internet connectivity which should not be born for so little benefit. The example I alway give is that even oppressive regimes who have the authority to burst into your house and shoot your for no real reason at all(China, North Korea, Iran) can't actually make them work.
Re:Um why (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sure they would much prefer that all state employees should not be brutal knife-wielding homicidal maniacs, as opposed to just prevented from ever entering the Kitchenware department of a local store.
Once again, the regulation has gone the wrong way. Regulate the officials, not the environment they live in.
Re:Filtering NEVER works (Score:3, Insightful)
That idea sucks. Why couldnt all the homosexuals in the USA get extradited to Iraq so their heads can get chopped off?
Re:Um why (Score:4, Insightful)
While this filter ostensibly targets child pornography, what is to stop it from being used to censor other 'obscene' or 'unwanted' material? It would not take much to tailor this filter to target political speech.
It's not ostensible at all, since the scope of what is filtered is secret. In effect, its only use is political. IMHO.