Will Australia Follow China's Google Ban? 280
gadgetopia writes "A news report in Forbes says that China has blocked Google with its great firewall; now the world waits to see if Australia's Minister for Censorship, Senator Stephen Conroy, will do the same following his outrageous attacks on Google."
Re:Senator Stephen Conroy == Senator Joe McCarthy? (Score:3, Informative)
Since slashdot doesn't link to the actual comments, here's what was said:
Conroy went on television to take a shot at Google: "Recently the founders of Google have got themselves into a little bit of trouble because notwithstanding their alleged 'do no evil' policy, they recently created something called Buzz, and there was a reaction and people said, well look aren't you publishing private information?"
"They said the following: 'If you have something that you don't want anyone to know maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place'. This is the founder of Google. He also said recently to Wall Street analysts, 'we love cash', so when people say, shouldn't we just leave it up to the Googles of this world to determine what the filtering policy should be...."
Notice how this politicians ASSUMES that we want filtering (either by google or the government). We. Do. Not. I don't need my internet filtered either for me or my kids. Show me all the dirt and disgusting things that exist in the world. I can handle it.
So fuck off Conroy. (Yes I'm angry - I'm tired of politicians treating adults like their children to be babied.)
Simply: No (Score:4, Informative)
No infrastructure
Nobody is going to enforce it
No company wants all the phone calls saying "I can't access Google" broadband margins are that bad on a per customer basis, the moment they phone rings from a customer they are losing money.
Not going to happen
Re:Lol? Sif it will happen. (Score:3, Informative)
Most voters don't know what rule of law is either. Look how many of them think the Constitution is just a piece of paper, and therefore Parliament can do whatever it wants.
The Tea Partiers seem to be stirring up some interest. If they ever discover the real cause of their tax burden [warresisters.org] and the reality of effective commercial tax rates [reclaimdemocracy.org], I'm afraid their loving relationship with the GOP and it's corporate outlets [foxnews.com] will quickly deteriorate. [debbieschlussel.com]
Re:Lol? Sif it will happen. (Score:5, Informative)
They sure do, but it is still by no means certain this legislation will pass. The Australian Government needs the support of the Senate to get its legislation through Parliament, and it has already had several setbacks in that regard, hence the likelihood of a double dissolution election this year.
Conroy himself is an arrogant little shit, and apparently Kevin Rudd is being equally so by leaving the asswipe in that portfolio. But we can hope that the Opposition's taste for obstructionism might yet be put to some worthwhile use.
Re:Senator Stephen Conroy == Senator Joe McCarthy? (Score:3, Informative)
The comments look a bit suspicious to me.
If he's trying to spin it so the Eric Schmidt quote was _a reaction_ to the buzz privacy cockup, he's way off.
The quote was in Dec '09, and Buzz was released in Feb '10.
The Schmidt quote sounds inflammatory, but the gist is don't submit sensitive stuff to a public network that is constantly spidered.
Re:Lol? Sif it will happen. (Score:2, Informative)
The good thing is that the minister himself obviously doesn't believe in the effectiveness of his undisclosed blacklist. If the filter is any good, it shouldn't matter whether the contents of that list were made public or not, since the sites are supposed to be inaccessible in any case.
Bring on a minister who understands his portfolio...
[sigh]
Re:Senator Stephen Conroy == Senator Joe McCarthy? (Score:5, Informative)
Even if you grant that he was right (which I absolutely 100% do not) what he did was still horrible. He ruined people's lives out of idle suspicion, with little to no evidence to back it up. He split the country and indeed the world on how to handle communism and communist sympathizers and probably damaged his own goals at least as much as he helped them. Anyone who disagreed with him was immediately investigated and accused, regardless of how flimsy the evidence was. The man who called him out on the senate floor (Joseph Welch) was an American hero who showed real courage and could have just as easily have found himself being accused next.
As for the communists being 'everywhere', research has shown that of the more than 150 people accused by McCarthy evidence against them exists for only 9 of them. A significant minority of the people would have come back clean enough on a background check that they would have been granted security clearances. Finally, your assertion that communists took over one of the major parties I can only assume is idle trolling, I will simply respond by saying that if soviet controlled militant communists controlled 50% of the government for the past 40 years history would have turned out rather differently.
Re:Lol? Sif it will happen. (Score:4, Informative)
Very well seen. If the 20th century taught us anything, then it was this: any innocent-looking, peaceful society can almost without prior notice degenerate into a self-destructing monster, ruled by a tyrant. Which is a terrible and sad thing to say, but - alas - a true one.
Perhaps then you can cite an example where this occurred?
The problem with the Weimar Republic was that it was a weak government deliberately imposed by outsiders who wanted Germany to stay crippled after the First World War. In addition, Germany paid huge war reparations and suffered through two horrible depressions including some of the worst hyperinflation ever seen. There were brutal suppression of certain dissent (for example, the National Socialists and the Communists). Finally, you have numerous parties including the German military and various categories of elites plotting the end of the Republic. The Republic mostly certainly was not an "innocent-looking, peaceful society".
Re:Lol? Sif it will happen. (Score:3, Informative)
>>>Stewart's last-night moment of Zen - they had a clip from Fox
No they didn't. That was a comedy bit. It was fake. You can't tell the difference? As for the communist bit, I think Obama's policies are more simply: Anti-choice. And being I'm a Pro-Choice kind of guy, I find Obama's taking away of my choices ("buy healthcare or be fined!") to be objectionable. It makes me feel like I'm a serf rather than a free individual.
"What we have in the USA, today, is fascism" (Score:3, Informative)
i stopped reading there
the usa has plenty of problems
but if you believe the usa government is fascist, in any way, simply means you're low iq, highly propagandized, and beneath the intellectual charity of paying anymore attention to your ignorance
please wake the fuck up from your delusions
Re:specifically (Score:4, Informative)
when your economy is trashed by greedy speculation then fear and hysteria. that's what sent germany to the dogs: the great depression, the collapse of the financial world
Germany went downhill because of the brutal raping it received in the peace treaty after WWI. That is also what caused the overwhelming resentment of the rest of the world (or at least the rest of Europe and the US) which resulted in Hitler's rise to power.
we need strong government regulation in the financial sector
We need regulation - however, once you hit a certain point, regulation turns into control, which then harms the economy due to government officials not having the slightest clue about how to run a company, let alone an entire industry.
the assholes (greenspan and co) who dismantled the 1930s era (irony) protections need to be grilled a la congressional hearings and roundly castigated for their dangerous irresponsibility
Actually it was the CRA (Community Reinvestment Act) that lead to the housing bubble / slew of bad mortgages. The CRA was started by Carter and strengthened by Clinton and it existed to put pressure on banks to give loans to people (specifically mortgages) who would normally be turned away by banks (due to the high risk of them defaulting) because the government thought everyone should own a home, even if they can't afford it. That resulted in millions of people getting mortgages when they never should have had one as well as ballooning home prices. Add on top of that the fact that the average American spends way more than they earn each year (usually on crap they don't need) and you have a recipe for financial disaster. If the banks had been left alone and the CRA never existed, then home prices would have stayed in check (look at historical averages, home prices always adjusted for inflation but in real dollars, they stayed essentially constant - once the CRA was strengthened, all of the sudden home prices started going up way faster than inflation) and there wouldn't be anywhere near as many people defaulting on mortgages. The current recession is about 60% the fault of average citizens racking up way too much debt (mainly on credit cards) and about 40% the government naively pushing banks to give risky mortgages (which exacerbated the problem of people racking up too much debt).
I find it amusing that you demonize the Tea Partiers (who have no official group, it's a generic term given to anyone upset about government control of our lives and government taking away our freedom) for being "fascists" when the whole reason they're upset is because they don't want fascism.
Re:Lol? Sif it will happen. (Score:3, Informative)
There's a video of the actual interview here [mediamatters.org]
Re:Lol? Sif it will happen. (Score:4, Informative)
Not any more. Victoria Jackson really is a whacked-out teabagger.
You owe the OP an apology for calling him an "idiot or a troll", but my guess is you don't have sufficient manners to fess up and give him one.
Re:Lol? Sif it will happen. (Score:4, Informative)
I present to you the first two paragraphs from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Jackson [wikipedia.org] for your edification:
That only took a quick glance at wikipedia to find out that she really is a teabagger. Take a minute before you toss around accusations.
Re:You, sir, lack imagination (Score:1, Informative)
Furthermore Australia has not had the best record of transparency regarding censorship either. For example, 9 Songs was given permission for screening but Comstock Films' documentaries were not, despite those documentaries winning awards (both contain graphic, explicit sexual content). Given that the government won't let citizens see what they are banning, what makes you confident that this won't be exercised in arbitrary ways?
Untrue. The classification board publish [classification.gov.au] all of the classifications and reasons for the classification applied (or classification refused)