New Zealand Introduces Internet Filtering 215
Thomas Beagle writes "The New Zealand government has been stealthily introducing a centralised internet child-pornography specific filtering system. Voluntary for ISPs but not for their users, ISPs representing over 94% of the market are already intending to join. Read the general FAQ and technical FAQ about the proposed Netclean Whitebox implementation."
Hey (Score:1, Informative)
Those "teen thais" are actually grandmothers there, we just can't tell the difference.
Re:Oh god :( (Score:4, Informative)
There are people who live in the US that you wouldn't be able to pay to live in San Francisco.
Re:Safe Harbour (Score:3, Informative)
The idea of "common carrier" status (as opposed to "safe harbour", which applies to copyright) is that the liability for actions is passed downstream to the users, where, IMHO, it rightly belongs. It's the user's actions that caused the offence, and the ISP has no feasible capability to prevent them from causing those offences. It can't apply to people because there's no-one downstream of the end user (hence the name), so there's nowhere to pass the liability, nor would we really want to, since we've already found the culprit.
It's certainly not supposed to be a "get out of jail free" option for anyone.
Re:Oh god :( (Score:5, Informative)
Of the ones that don't, a third make over $50k
$50k is the median income, and in many places barely pays for food, rent, and utilities. It's about what I make, and it's not expensive to live here, UNLESS you have to buy insurance (thank God my employer offers it). Private insurance is damned expensive if your employer doesn't offer it.
Saying someone making $50k "chooses" to be insured is like my saying I "choose" not to buy a Ferrari.
Wages are higher here than anywhere else.
[citation needed] Wages are only half the equation. Costs are the other half. And speaking of citations, Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] says you're wrong.
Education (and health care and wages for that matter) are all suffering from central-government control.
Education here doesn't suffer from government control, it suffers from lack of funds. The government doesn't control health care unless you're eligible for Medicare or Medicaid, and wages (see linked wiki) suffer from too little government control.
You should stop listening to that Oxycontin-addled radio personality.
Re:Governments love crime (Score:3, Informative)
Where would your government be without childporn? If it didn't exist, the government would surely invent it. ... in Germany, "Zensursula" von der Leyen has come up with statistics about the amount of commercial Childporn distributed via Internet, none of which she to date has been able to actually back with any facts. Additionally, the "large number of countries" without legislation against child porn supposedly was the reason filtering (useless, as it's based on faking DNS results) is based on a year-old study, which on top of the age is also containing information that is plain wrong (e.g., if a country does not have specific laws against child porns, it is counted, even if it has outlawed all porn!). Upon examination of said list, it was found that out of almost 100 countries listed, only like 9 indeed didn't have laws against child porn. Of those, nearly all are well down on the technological scale, making distribution of child porn d@mn near impossible from there ...
What do you mean, "would surely invent it"? They are inventing it, at least as far as numbers and facts are concerned
Of course, what politician can resist finally getting his wet dreams of actively taking charge of all of the country's citizens access to free information fulfilled?
Politics suck.
Re:ISP's are in a tough spot (Score:4, Informative)
As hard as it is to accept censorship, at the same time, do you really want to make a stand over child porn? It's a rough spot, because it does open the door to more censorship, and if it isn't stopped now it won't ever be able to be stopped, but at the same time this is a really sneaky way of doing it because of the subject mater and the general publics view on it.
It has nothing to do with child porn. These list are NOT used to block child porn. They are used to block whatever the government or those in charge of the list finds [wikileaks.org] objectionable [wikileaks.org].
If it was about child porn the objective would be to catch and punish those who are actually producing and publishing the material. They are committing crimes and hurting people. Blocking has no effect on the production and distribution of child porn. Filters and blocks are trivial to circumvent. It's probable easier to circumvent the filters that it is to actually find child porn on the interent. If it's not it should be relatively easy for the government authorities to shut down the sites and prosecute the guilty rather than introducing censorship that, by all rights, will have a terrifying chilling effect on free speech and freedom of the press. One of the articles included in the summary [publicaddress.net] states that legally objectionable material in NZ includes:
All 'objectionable' material is banned. In deciding whether a publication is 'objectionable', or should instead be given an 'unrestricted' or 'restricted' classification, consideration is given to the extent, degree and manner in which the publication describes, depicts, or deals with:
â acts of torture, the infliction of serious physical harm or acts of significant cruelty
â degrades or dehumanises or demeans any person
â promotes or encourages criminal acts or acts of terrorism
â represents that members of any particular class of the public are inherently inferior to other members of the public by reason of any characteristic of members of that class being a characteristic that is a prohibited ground of discrimination specified in the Human Rights Act 1993.
So this includes that video of the police beating that man who was rude to them. It includes the riot police attacking the crowd of peaceful protesters. It includes the police opening fire on the protesters who turn violent after being beaten. And don't say that won't happen. Finland's list already contains anti-censorship web sites.
I find it strange and ironic that governments are in an uproar about the censorship in Iran and some are actually considering punishing the companies that sold equipment and software used for censorship while at the same time out of the other side of their mouths they are advocating establishing the same type of censorship here (where ever here is: US, Australia, Europe, Canada). It's about child porn my ass.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
I don't see what the issue is (Score:3, Informative)
If I own an ISP and I want to opt into this in order to prevent some child porn from being distributed, why don't I have the right to do so? It looks like the ISPs are being up-front about it and not hiding what they are doing.
As much as people on /. complain about this sort of thing, I think that in practical terms, this makes the world a better place.
Re:Oh god :( (Score:4, Informative)
Haven't been keeping up with the developments, have you?
This "laughably insane" idea is alive and well, as of two hours ago [abc.net.au].
And with precisely the same reasoning - any time you disagree with the government... "but, child porn!". The filters won't work, they'll be trivial to defeat. "Child porn!". This is a top-secret blacklist without a scrap of accountability, confirmed to contain mostly adult pornography... "CHILD PORN!"... and multiple political websites "you don't support child porn do you?". Your top-secret list of the most evil content on the internet leaked, exactly as we told you it would "kiddy fiddler!". Even PG-rated material is on the blacklist... "PEDOPHILE!".
Ugh. And more depressingly, the tactic's working.