Australian Internet Censorship Fails

Codeine writes ""Technically it would appear they have complied with the law, in that it is not hosted here," Nugent said. "But to the end-user, it would appear that nothing has changed." And this is being described as a success by a government spokesperson. Check it out. "

about time

[freakho]

It took this long for this issue to come up? I had thought they were gonna start enforcing it ages ago. This is all a big "duh" anyway, other than Melbourne IT supporting the site, which was very cool of them. It would have been very easy for them to cave, but they didn't.

So is every other .au site you surf to now gonna point to a US server? Maybe after .gov.au sees the cash flowing out, they'll pull their heads out of their asses. One thing conservative politicians understand is money. Actually, make that the one thing.

fh

ps - michael, move this to the front page, ya dork. We all need something to cheer about in the month of the MPAA.

Re:Solutions

[Paul Johnson]

4)We need to get the ISPs to offer "offshore inshurance," i.e. the ISP is not allowed to shutdown your site, but they are allowed to move it offshore. Ideally, they should upload the content to the offshore site at the first sign of censorship.

Probably won't work, at least not in that form. A UK court recently convicted a man under the Obscene Publications Act for a pr0n site which he created in the UK and then uploaded to servers in the US. The legal theory was that the act of publication occured in the UK because the upload and some downloads were both in the UK, and the physical location of the server was therefore irrelevant. I suspect that judges in other juristictions are going to think in similar ways.

Having said that, for free information the mirror reflex seems to work rather well. As soon as there is a threat of censorship hundreds of people in lots of juristictions grab copies and mirror it. DeCSS has gone this way, and other information will do so. So while it would be nice for anyone anywhere to own a pr0n site, the truth will still be out there mirrored on somebodies server.

Paul.

Solutions

[Weezul]

"It's easy for commercial sites to relocate, but the average community site can't do that," Mr Yee said. "It is the Web sites of ordinary Australians that will be affected."

We need to develop a good system for individuals to host sites overseas. There are several ideas:

1) free hosting services. Unfortunatly, many of these censor content too, so we should publish information on how to keep your site active via these services.

2) We need to set up a network of people who will volunter to host censored content as an act of civil disobediance. We need to be more organized about miroring censored content and we need people who don't mind hosting things that need CGI and stuff.

4) We need to get the ISPs to offer "offshore inshurance," i.e. the ISP is not allowed to shutdown your site, but they are allowed to move it offshore. Ideally, they should upload the content to the offshore site at the first sign of censorship. The offshore site would activate the page if there was any problem with the main site.. and would not even remove it by the authors request; thus making it resistant to court orders. ISPs in many countries could band together to offer this offshore inshurance; thus keeping costs negligable and protecting from orginisations with a multinational presence (like the MPAA).

Jeff

Choose Your Datahaven

[jaed]

It's been said that the worldwide nature of the Internet is a potential weakness, in that any site can be subjected (in theory) to any country's laws. But we see in this case, the net's worldwide nature is one of its strengths, because in practice, you can choose your jurisdiction.

If your content is explicitly sexual, have it hosted in a country that has a relaxed attitude about these matters (I wouldn't exactly describe the US that way, but seemingly it's better than Australia). If it's politically controversial, have it hosted in a country with a strong tradition of free expression in political matters. If it's DeCSS, host it in a country that takes the fair-use doctrine seriously.

We don't need a single data-haven country that accepts everything, as long as there's at least one country that accepts any given kind of content.

No Change

[1DeepThought]

Although it is a good sign that the legislation won't change anything it won't change the legislation. This legislation was introduced sloely to appease one independant senator so the federal government could push though the sale of the state owned telco. I don't think they actually wanted it. This was their pathetic way of getting what they wanted. This legislation is toothless and will remain so. As draconian as it sounds it doesn't mean anything. Very little will change and eventually the press will get sick of writing about it.

Sounds good doesn't it. Well the only thing that worries me is that this legislation which has no sunset clause will lie around forgotten about for years. Then sometime in the future it will be dreged up and used against legitamate causes. A scary proposition. In the near term this will have little affect. We do need to work against it and stop it though otherwise it will turn around a and bite us. Once they have something like this in place where is the next step?

"Patience is a virtue, afforded those with nothing better to do." - I don't remember

Foreshadowing of Data Havens

[naloxone]

Well, this is certainly one of the most blatant bits of foreshadowing of international data havens. Funny that the "safe" country they moved it to was the U.S.! Never thought I'd see that day.

But this does sort of bring us back to the issue of truth-in-advertising for domain names. Frankly, I think this points to the need for content-based top-level-domains. What use is a country-code in an global network where the geographical location of the information is unimportant? They should create a .XXX domain and tell all sites that are openly pornographic in nature to that top level domain. Then ISPs could choose to block it or make it available. Choose your ISP accordingly.

Sure, it still leaves some gray areas. There will be highly sexual art that may or may not be pornography, etc, etc. But it will at least cull out most of the openly pornographic sites and set it up so I don't get "Nuns Blowing Goats" the next time I search for "freeware FTP clients" in a search engine.

There will probably be those who will cry censorship, but let's face it... if you're LOOKING for porn, it will make it EASIER to find. XXX sites with no pretensions of being anything else should appreciate that. And if you're not looking for porn, maybe it will make it easier to find some real content.

And maybe Little Johnny at the terminal in the library can get out of the middle of a political controversy that doesn't really apply to him and get back to looking for something healthier... like warez.

Re:Foreshadowing of Data Havens

[naloxone]

WOW did I wander off from where I was headed with that post. Data Havens

Will InterNic grant you a domain if you've renounced citizenship from all countries? If so, a boat on international waters with a satellite uplink would make a mighty fine (if mighty laggy) place to store politically-iffy data. Like the source-code for DeCSS. Or plans for making a nuclear warhead. Or the minutes of the StoneCutters' meeting with the Pentavarit to plan all of next year's Disney movies.

Seriously, though... how far off is this in terms of need, financial viability, and technical feasibility?