Aussie Gov't To Introduce Bill That Would Require ISP-Level Censorship 200
bennyboy64 writes "iTnews reports that the Australian Government has announced its intention to introduce legislation that will make ISP-level filtering mandatory for all refused classification material hosted overseas. The Government intends to amend the Broadcasting Services Act in August 2010 to enforce the filter, and expects the filter to be operational within a further twelve months. 'The report into the pilot trial of ISP-level filtering demonstrates that blocking RC-rated material can be done with 100 percent accuracy and negligible impact on internet speed' Senator Conroy, Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy said." This despite, as reader Sharky2009 writes, the trial run showing that "a technically competent user could circumvent filtering technology based on ACMA’s blacklist."
what the fuck. (Score:4, Insightful)
Is there a way to vote this guy out of office or something?
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Well, his next bill will propose that adults are not only incapable of choosing what is and what isn't appropriate to be played or viewed by themselves and their children, but also to choose who chooses what is and is not appropriate.
Time for heads to [politically] roll... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Welcome to "net neutrality" (Score:2)
This is what governments do when they're allowed to regulate internet traffic. This is exactly what I was arguing can happen in discussions on "net neutrality." You don't want this kind of government control over your public medium.
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Nothing to do with a faith based filter via a political deal.
Every isp should have its packets treated in the same way, so should your p2p app
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Barring a double dissolution (the constitutional trigger for which has occurred, but the PM has said it will not happen), you probably won't have a chance to vote him out before late 2010/early 2011.
In addition to writing to your MP, if you are a member of the IIA, you might want to write to them urging them to lobby the government to ensure that ISP-level filtering will be offered on an optional basis and will not unduly burden small ISPs.
Would this block web stores? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Would this block web stores? (Score:5, Funny)
Well, since Australia, as we all know, is entirely populated by criminals, and criminals are used to having people not trust them, I can clearly not choose the unfiltered internet in front of me.
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But criminals are known for having devious minds, and knowing that people won't trust them will likely do the opposite, therefore I can clearly not choose the filtered internet in front of you.
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**WHOOSH!!!**
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I'm guessing the Australian Postal Service (or whatever it's called) will also implement "deep packet inspection".
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Wake up Australia (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wake up Australia (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Wake up Australia (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, sadly so, we need to introduce a new law. Must be at least this technically literate to hold a ministerial position governing technology. Sadly, that would exclude essentially all currently elected politicians, as well as the vast bulk of the potential electoral fodder.
This is essentially the end result of having a technological society where technological education is not mandatory. They require you to learn English, so you can speak to people, but the don't require you understand technology, so that you can understand the society you live in.
As a consequence, at best, the pollies are neophytes, and at worst luddites.
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The Greens, despite their reputation as being a bit luddite have proven themselves surprisingly literate with Scott Ludlum putting up a great fight against the laws, practically being the lone voice against censorship in the senate.
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The party as a whole doesn't seem to have a policy on it. Their candidate for the Higgins byelection was heavily involved in the scheme while he was at the Australia Institute, and is very much in favour of it.
(I'm not putting down Ludlum's work agaisnt the filter, just saying that it seems to be a personal rather than party policy.)
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Well, fortunately our illustrious government hasn't had such an easy ride lately at getting the numbers to do anything, and there's plenty of opposition to this filter, so there is still hope that sanity will prevail.
Re:Wake up Australia (Score:5, Informative)
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Labour, and pushing laws through that no one wants including their own supporters.
That sounds familiar.
Ah yes, I remember now, it's like our Labour party here in Britain trying to push through ID cards despite the opposition being against it and half their own voterbase being against it leaving them around 10% - 20% support for the scheme with 80% - 90% being opposed (yet ~35% still being stupid enough to vote them in each election which is all they need for 100% control under first past the post).
If it's a
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Hopefully we can do away with the international scourge which are Labour parties for good.
1) Don't hold your breath. Both sides are very happy with current two party system, and won't be changing it any time soon.
2) International scourge? What are the Tories/Liberals/Republicans... Scotch mist?
Re:Wake up Australia (Score:5, Interesting)
There hasn't been the opportunity to since they made it obvious they would stick to their idiotic promises and drop their useful ones (i.e. since they got into power). You realise we can't just get new elections every news cycle. (Although the Prime Minister can call elections for the House of Representatives almost as often as he likes, it's terribly inconvenient and if they do go early (or, as early as you're suggesting they should've gone), people are inclined to vote them out just for dragging them out to the polls one more time than is necessary.)
In any case, even if we could, the other lot aren't any better... Most people would rank this (known) temporary inconvenience as a lot less bad than the (unknown) evils a government ran by Tony Abbott, Leader of the Liberal Party, would bring.
In the last case, we have a Senate and the Australian people are generally not idiotic enough to give the Government unmitigated power there. I expect the Liberal party will oppose it on the basis that they're the opposition, the Greens will oppose it on the basis that it's neither left nor liberal, and the independents will probably vote quite randomly on the basis of stellar alignment and what their advisors tell them people think.
So ... don't say stupid things like that. The least you could do before commenting on our political system is inform yourself of the absolute basics of how it works. And in this particular case, almost every political system in the (developed) world works comparably.
(If you really *were* telling us to use pitchforks, then either you're completely unrealistic, or completely crazy. In any case, whoever said "those who would give up an essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety" was obviously crazy and/or making use of hyperbole and/or hadn't thought about his own position, and if you're an American you've probably been brainwashed into both believing that and not acting on it. Our society is so great, and so free, precisely because we complain and wait until its time to vote instead of getting out the guns and pitchforks and executing anyone in Parliament)
Re:Wake up Australia (Score:5, Informative)
That would be Benjamin Franklin who said that, I believe, and I don't see anywhere where he is suggesting the wholesale slaughter of those who oppose liberty.
Where's Sir John Kerr when you really need him? (Score:2)
That is all.
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Yes, but he'd need way too much sauce to dissolve parliament.
Re:Wake up Australia (Score:4, Insightful)
Benjamin Franklin, one of the more influential thinkers in the American Revolution, was the one who said that. He was eccentric, but I don't think he was crazy. He certainly was aware of his situation.
At the time, people living in America had relative safety (individually). The British crown generally tried to protect them, and wasn't out to kill them. However, there were certain injustices that the Crown perpetrated on them -- things like taxing them without letting them have representatives in Parliament, and the British military effectively forcing civilians to quarter (Feed+board) them for indefinite amounts of time. Franklin, and the other revolutionaries who drafted our Declaration of Independence, were very aware that they were making a choice to either revolt (and risk capital punishment should they fail or be caught) or continue sacrificing the Liberties which they felt were absolutely essential.
Many of these liberties and related concerns are addressed directly in the first 10 amendments to our Constitution: the rights of freedom of religion, speech, a free press, and the right not to have troops quartered in your house are four examples. These are principles which Franklin and the others were absolutely prepared to die for.
Franklin and his friends knew a lot more about the matter than many of us do. Right now, we live in relative prosperity and comfort, so the risk and "temporary safety" are amplified in our minds. We're not likely to die to disease, cold, or raiding natives, for example. Our populace has basically been seduced by the bread and circuses (so to speak), and has willingly traded away freedoms which some of us consider essential (freedom to copy a DVD you own, freedom to communicate securely, etc) in order to have a more blissful and convenient existence. The security theater we see in American (and other) airports is another example of this: we've pretty much irrevocably squandered our right to not be treated like a herd of potential criminals, in exchange for "safety". This is absolutely the same sort of things over which Franklin and others were willing to shed blood over: tyrrany, however petty.
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Thanks for your coherent response; it was way better than "Fuck you, you little internet pissant. You don't know shit." and probably better than I deserved. I will try
Benjamin Franklin, one of the more influential thinkers in the American Revolution, was the one who said that. He was eccentric, but I don't think he was crazy. He certainly was aware of his situation.
Well, that leaves hyperbole Not a suprise; people often do. But something people often forget when they refer to him. I think too many people ju
Boycott (Score:2)
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Yeah, hence "generally". We got scared by the thought of Latham in power. It's one of the disadvantages of a two-party (for government) system.
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Meet the new boss, even worse than the old boss.
Re:Wake up Australia (Score:4, Funny)
The Labor party (Current government) was meant to be liberal and reformist. The alternative is the Liberal party who despite there name are mostly socially conservative Christians. They just finished voting out Malcom Turnbull their former leader who was clearly too liberal and replacing him with Tony Abbot a Christian conservative who suffice to say holds a number of opinions that don't exactly resonate with the more liberally minded.
Anyway despite that I say fuck the Labor party. I'll vote for the Liberals next election. Maybe for 3 years it wouldn't be the perfect government. But it's better than voting for the status-quo of simply being ass-raped by greedy bastards.
As for young people the best way to make a real difference on this is to talk to your parents and grandparents (If they're still alive). Your vote alone isn't worth as much as the votes of both your parents and yours combined.
Re:Wake up Australia (Score:4, Interesting)
The Labor party (Current government) was meant to be liberal and reformist. The alternative is the Liberal party who despite there name are mostly socially conservative Christians.
I refuse to believe that there is a whole continent-sized country with two and only two political parties. If you can confidently vote for neither the Labour nor Liberal parties, why not try one of the following options:
Don't vote for the "not quite the worst" party: use your vote responsibly.
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I'm happy to put third parties at the top of my preference list. Last election I did just that as did many other Australians. But realistically in the elections for the house of representatives, which is what will determine who governs us, the decision is going to come down to either Labor or the Liberal/National coalition. Thus the real choose when voting for
Re:Wake up Australia (Score:5, Informative)
I refuse to believe that there is a whole continent-sized country with two and only two political parties.
Well, believe it or not, that's how it works in Australia, both practically and politically.
We have a compulsory, preferential voting system here. This means that in most cases, you actually have to vote for one of the two major parties.
The way this works is as follows: say there are three candidates, Labor, Liberal and Green. Every voter must put them in order, 1, 2, 3. Then all of the 1s are tallied up. The candidate with the least 1s gets eliminated (say, the Greens candidate). Then all of the votes for that candidate are re-allocated according to which of the remaining two candidates got voted 2. In this way, in a typical Australian electorate, 100% of the votes will ultimately be divided between the two major parties.
So let's say I really, really don't want to vote for one of Labor or the Liberal party. Well, that's a shame for me, because at the end of the day I have to rank one of them last and one of them second last, and because of preferential voting the one I put second last will get my full vote after all of the other parties have been eliminated.
On top of this, voting is compulsory. Even if a decent sized chunk of highly motivated people go out and vote for the Greens, the fact that all of the sheep will also be herded out of their pen to vote whether they like it or not means that the major parties inevitably get a very large default vote. Stick a non-political person in a voting booth and tell them they have to vote and chances are they go with what they know, which is either the government or the main opposition party. Compare with the USA where something like 40-50% of people don't vote, IIRC.
Add to this that most Australian cities have one or sometimes two newspapers, and that we get serious political coverage on only one TV channel which many intellectually lazy Aussies wouldn't watch because it's the boring government channel. All of our newspapers are actually owned by either Murdoch (in which case they are sympathetic to the Liberal Party) or Fairfax (in which case they are sympathetic to the Labor Party on the whole).
Politically, Labor and Liberal hate each other but not as much as they hate the minor parties. So they spend a lot of time either discrediting or outmaneuvering any small party they see as a threat. For example, they both demonize the Greens as a bunch of environmental crazies who all want to take heaps of drugs and have orgies in the forest. A few years ago there was a far right party with a bit of clout ("One Nation") which the government promptly dealt with by subsuming most of its policy positions on key issues. That party is all but dead now.
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In the house of representatives they don't get elected, as a general rule. The only minor party which consistently get lower house seats are the Nationals but they only run in rural electorates and campaign on rural issues. They also have a permanent coalition with the Liberal party and there usually aren't any Liberals running in the same electorates as Nationals candidates.
The minor parties and
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We have a third party and independents, until the last election we also had a fourth. These members generally reside in the senate and act as a check on the government which is decided by majority rule of the house or representatives.
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Your refusal is well founded. There are many political parties in Australia but, just like the USA, there are only two horses actually in the race to govern the nation: Australian Labor Party and the Liberal Party/National Party coalition. Votes for minor parties typically convert to a preference vote for one of the major parties (directly by voter choice, or indirectly). The only place that small parties or independent members hold any direct sway is in the Federal Senate where, by accident and not d
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"Spoil your ballot paper." - How does this help?
It's a poor man's vote for "none of the above."
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http://aec.gov.au/Parties_and_Representatives/Party_Registration/Registered_parties/index.htm [aec.gov.au]
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Ha! What good has it done in the US?
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You thought we have a parliament?
Conroy is a Traitor. (Score:5, Interesting)
If he opposes the bill, the government can accuse him of hypocrisy. If he supports it, he faces rebellion in his own party.
But if it is brinkmanship, Conroy is playing with fire. There could be a very serious electoral backlash from this.
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I don't follow. How would it make Abbott a hypocrite if he opposes internet filtering?
I believe the GP meant to imply that proclaiming oneself as Catholic and speaking out against censorship could somehow mark one a hypocrite. I assume the anticipated knee-jerk reaction would consist of "He says he's a Catholic, but he doesn't want your children to be safe on the Internet" or something along those lines. I suppose the natural response would be "The responsibility falls to the parent, not the Government", though that doesn't win over as many voters as one would like.
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This is politics. There will be posturing.
If Abbott opposes the filter, various family groups will be trotted out to express horror that he endorses pedophiles having access to filth on the (uncensored) internet.
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It's sad because this is true everywhere. And while I'm preaching to the choir, I have to ask, how is child pornography already not censored? If you find a site that (regularly, as in, not some random douchebag on a forum posting it as a shock image) hosts child porn, you can alert the ISP or the cops and the site will be taken down and, if possible, its creators arrested. How much more censored can it get?
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Apparently to me, the implication is that a "good Catholic" should support censorship because it leads to a more "moral" society.
Religion: (Score:2)
Apparently to me, the implication is that a "good Catholic" should support censorship because it leads to a more "moral" society.
Harmless?
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The implication is that a Catholic politician is not really free to make his or her own decisions, as their bishop can instruct them to do things on threat of excommunication (look at Bishop Tobin's instruction to Rep. Kennedy in RI).
This is not actually true. As far as I am aware, Pope Benedict XVI's encyclical Deus Caritas Est is the authority on this, and it says:
It is not the Church's... responsibility to make this teaching prevail in political life. Rather, the Church wishes to help form consciences in political life and to stimulate greater insight into the authentic requirements of justice as well as greater readiness to act accordingly...
As citizens of the State, they are called to take part in public life... The mission of the lay faithful is therefore to configure social life correctly, respecting its legitimate autonomy and cooperating with other citizens according to their respective competences and fulfilling their own responsibility.
I interpret this to mean that Catholic politicians are not expected to prescribe Catholic morals through legislation. Rather, their responsibility is to block legislation that would make it difficult or impossible for the faithful to live a Catholic life.
We had a classic example in the UK recently. Many of the largest and most successful adoption agencies in the UK were Cath
100% Accuracy? (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm sorry but done with 100% accuracy? I think that is an internet filtering first. I'd love to know what filtering technology they are using because it is far better than anything I've used to date.
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But all of people blocked from the site failed to reach the site, ergo 100% of those blocked were blocked.
What happened Australia? (Score:2)
You used to be cool.
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Politicians are not cool. It is universal.
Anyways, we'll just have to wait until the next election. Then we can vote yet another douchebag in.
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Things changed here? Sorry. I missed it. Perhaps you could enlighten us on what you think really is significantly different now.
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I know what has changed!! The Illegal Aliens, allied with Wall Street criminals, have won their war. Almost all American citizens are broke, losing their homes, and wondering if they can find a job in time to buy groceries before Grandma starves. (alright, I'll compromise - it's not really "almost all" Americans - it's only somewhere between 15 and 20%)
Re:What happened Australia? (Score:4, Funny)
Hardly any of the chicks in Neighbours are hot nowadays for starters!
Even Steph now has a few rough edges, and Susan is getting too old to be milf material.
How could you let your finest export slide like this?
in democracies (Score:2)
they are one and the same
the opinion of one asshole senator is not the majority voice of the australian people. so the problem will work itself out eventually
in nondemocracies, such a retarded filtering policy could be established by fiat, in spite of what the people really want. and so in nondemocracies, the government and the people really aren't the same
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They became apathetic.
When I was last there, the majority of people I met were more interested in drinking, surfing and watching TV than they were with politics or voting.
Is there a country where this isn't true after replacing surfing with some more culturally viable sport?
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I think the only "cool" Australian politician ever was Bob Hawke, even if you hated him you had to love him.
"Any boss who sacks anyone for not turning up today is a bum." -- Bob Hawke, September 27th, 1983.
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Bob Hawke also held the world record for the fastest time to drink a yard glass. That not only makes him cool, that makes him hard as rocks.
lame (Score:2)
this is stupid, so i can make a cards game on the internet, and ignore aussia boards, and these isp are forced to block my game (maybe on sf.com?).
guys, change this aus govern NOW
Of course... (Score:3, Insightful)
Everyone (or at least, most people) here at Slashdot knows that on a network as large as the internet, no blacklist method will achieve 100% accuracy.
This, of course, means that Senator Conroy is either completely ignoring the technical results, or the technical results are being flubbed to match Senator Conroy's agenda.
Are others in your parliament actually going to vote for this bill, or is he more of a rogue senator who isn't actually supported?
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Guy is a fucking turkey. iinet only took part in the trial to prove how idiotic it was, anyone who has a ssh tunnel to somewhere in the rest of the world can immediately bypass this foolish plan, and that has been pointed out to him. Repeatedly. Should I mention the turkey thing again? Not even to mention stenography, gpg encrypted emails, etc, etc, etc. This guy is without a doubt the biggest dumbfuck in the current Labour government.
Why don't we vote the other guys back in, I hear you ask? Why, because in
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and those very few capable people with a strong sense of ethics tend to join a party with an ethical basis, such as the Greens,
I hate the greens with a passion, primarily because of their two-faced reactions to certain freedoms. Half of what they do is alright, but they want to get rid of recreational shooting, all forms of camping, fishing, etc. Even when fishing permits etc tend to cost for the hatching of more fish than what is caught with them.
What is the point of preserving nature, if people are not allowed to see it?
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I should have been more specific, they want to ban target shooting as well as hunting. It is hard to argue target shooting on a range effects them at all.
Point still stands why try to ban fishing when by people going fishing MORE fish are produced through the cost of permits to go do it?
It's all the little things combined, that at least to me make it seem that they are two faced in regards to freedoms.
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Conroy is a minister in cabinet, and the communications portfolio he has is one of the higher profile ones. If he's pushing for net censorship it has the full backing* of the government.
* Full backing = 51% or more of the Labor caucus.
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and presumably it doesn't measure the accuracy of the blacklist either... as in whether or not the URLs on the blacklist A) shouldn't be there but are or B) should be there but aren't.
100% Accuracy? (Score:2)
I would love to see this filter of his. I've never seen a filter for *anything* that could truly be said to be 100% accurate.
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Remember - it's the Government, not Australians (Score:4, Interesting)
This is an EPIC FAIL.
Australia has led technology trends and adoption for so long, and the Government is prepared to kill it and our children's future for a single lousy vote of a Senator who has the support of exactly no one.
The Government is terribly misguided on this one. Conroy might be pushing this as a wedge policy, he might be doing it for Fielding's support, but this issue alone will lose the ALP the next election, as well as many for years to come.
All of Gen i, Y and X will remember this and vote accordingly for years to come. The ALP will be in the wilderness for many elections, and struggle to form a strong government in their own right without doing the independent / Greens coalition tango that is working soooo well for them right now.
Seriously, I could see the Greens take this to the election and coupled with effective climate change policies and no internet censoring, they could become the balance of power for years.
Conroy is Public Enemy #1. He has committed electoral suicide for himself and his Government. I really do think they have no idea exactly how unpopular this policy will be.
In short - how to fight this thing:
* Ring your politicians tomorrow. All of them. Make the phones run hot.
* Write them letters.
* Ask to see them. Talk to them about this issue, and only this issue.
* Write letters to the news sites
* Blog and Twitter and Facebook away.
* Attend rallies. Publish photos and write ups about same.
* Join the EFA.
* Sign up to Get Up if you feel inclined
* Use #nocleanfeed religiously.
* Do not do work for Conroy's department. Resign or transfer if you work there.
* Support ISPs that are against this idea. Leave ISPs that support it or who have no position.
If it becomes law, mass civil disobedience is required. I will be blogging about how to get around the filtering.
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I will be blogging about how to get around the filtering.
It seems that the URL to your blog was filtered out.
They're at it already!
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That's when ISP's like iinet, node et al start offering VPN accounts in Sweden as standard with all of their plans, and routers pre-configured to use them. Smart people/companies work around stupid laws when they need to.
Th
clearly a humbug reason for filtering (Score:3, Insightful)
"Why did the Government cease providing free PC filters when ISP filtering will not be available until 2011?
The PC filter program experienced low take-up and very low ongoing use. It was therefore closed to new users six months earlier than originally planned.
Only around 12.5 per cent of the approximately two million households with dependent children and an internet connection are estimated to have tried one of these filters, and less than one per cent of these households continue to use their filters."
1% of the population still uses this filtering ... ... ...
12% has tried it out
this means:
88 % of all people didn't even want to try it out,
out of the remaining 12%, 90% of those who've tried it out dumped it afterwards
conclusion: 99% of your population do not want filtering, the other 1% can still filter their own PC by installing the software on their own PC.
Riiiiight... (Score:2)
The report into the pilot trial of ISP-level filtering demonstrates that blocking RC-rated material can be done with 100 percent accuracy and negligible impact on internet speed
Riiight...
Protip: Darknet [wikipedia.org], tunneling proxy [wikipedia.org], EPIC FAIL [encycloped...matica.com]. ^^
What the hell happened down under? (Score:2)
I grew up knowing of Australia as this country that is about the same size as America - with a very free and independent spirit.
Then, in the mid 90s they come down with drastic firearms legislation, and now all we hear about is how obsessed with censorship many in the government there are - censoring film, games, etc to that point that some games aren't available or have to be changed, and they are trying again and again depite heavy Aussie and worldwide opposition to censoring the entire internet.
Is it jus
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Then, in the mid 90s they come down with drastic firearms legislation,
I smell the stench of rabid gun nut about your post.
Frankly, the gun ban was the only decent thing the Howard Gov did!
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I smell the stench of rabid gun nut about your post.
*sigh* so you are all for drastic overhauls in legislation from single events? Over time the rules are getting tighter and tighter. The anti-gun lobby are slowly winning, only a matter of how long until we are like the UK and cannot privately own firearms.
The one or two firearms I wouldn't mind owning, I cannot for various tiny reasons (barrel length 1cm too short etc etc) but never the less have found on the black market. I still don't have them entirely out of principle. To get one illegally is to give i
Does this mean (Score:2)
That Aussies will be able to sue their ISPs for spam?
If they are taking control of the content being sent over their networks I think it's only fair.
Hurray Australia!
They have to do this (Score:2)
Basically the whole island is full of bad genes from all the old British criminals. Give them a bit of freedom and they live like animals.
They have beer cans and knives much larger than any normal human would need. You just can't trust people like that.
Cameras everywhere (Score:2)
LEAVE AUSTRALIA ALONE! (Score:3, Funny)
How fucking dare anyone out there make fun of Australia after all it has been through!
Leave Australia alone! Right now! I mean it!
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Making fun of Ozzies is mandatory for Americans. After all - many of the criminals shipped to Australia were first and second cousins to the criminals shipped to the American colonies, right? If we didn't bash each other verbally, we'd resort to bashing each other physically. ;^)
Whoosh. (Score:2)
Apparently the GP wasn't emo enough for Runaway1956 to get the joke.
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Perhaps it is because we in Australia did not find a civil war necesary, thank goodness.
The last thing we need is a US style "Democracry".
We LIKE being thought of as civilised you see.
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I think people would be right to mod you down.
Firstly, Australia & America have been friends since WW2 when the shock of the british defeat by japan in the asian theatre(most importantly, the loss of singapore) lead to australia moving further from britain to america for defensive pacts, which would lead to trade, etc etc.
Secondly, that has _WHAT_ to do with internet censorship?
i was wondering how a thread (Score:2)
about something the australian government is doing wrong can be spun into an attack on the american government
why do you have such a giant hard on for the usa?
do any governments besides washington dc actually do anything wrong in the world worthy of your condemnation?
Re:national character? (Score:4, Insightful)
Us Australians don't want this except for the lunatic fringes that exist (as they exist in every other country). However, like everywhere else politicians here like to pull the tough-on-crime/think-of-the-children card when it comes to appeasing the large number of voters that favour 'shoot first and ask questions later' responses to perceived problems
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Not many Australians happen to like it, but the Minister has the bit between his teeth and does not have our concerns at heart. And this is with the collusion of a Prime Minister who seems determined to adopt a Tony Blair-like position as conservative cuckoo in the nest of the Labor Party.
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They know people might think this way. That's why they're negotiating treaties in secret, so they can try to foist restrictions on us all simultaneously.
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.. from hackers, thieves, terrorists and child pornographers, they'll roll over and accept it.
Of course, the "Christian Lobby" wants to extend the filter to cover much more than that [itnews.com.au].
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Pirate Party Australia seems like a good place to start.
Especially as you dont have to worry about whether their issues on health care, the environment, taxation, abortion or the like align with your views or not.
Re: (Score:2)