Australia's 2 Largest ISP's Start Censorsing the Web 133
unreadepitaph writes "Looks like after Stephen Conroy's web filter went down in flames he went quietly behind the backs of Australians and struck a deal with Telstra and Optus to start filtering an undisclosed blacklist of sites from organization within and external to Australia. From the article: 'Electronic Frontiers Association board member Colin Jacobs also expressed concern at the scheme, saying the Government and internet providers needed to be more upfront about websites being blocked and offer an appeals process for website owners who felt URLs had been blocked unfairly. "There is a question about where the links are coming from and I'd like to know the answer to that," Mr Jacobs said."
I wouldn't be too worried... (Score:2)
...because the current government is utterly doomed at the next election, and all their half-baked ideas will be junked, like they should be. Given the current - and trending downwards for over 12 months now - opinion polls, they'll be reduced to a mere rump of their former selves. The Australian Labor Party federally has the same disease as their state-based comrades in New South Wales and will be severely punished in similarly spectacular fashion at the next election, you mark my words :-)
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Then Australia will have the Mad Monk for Prime Minister. You'd better pray the Liberals have another spill before then- all too likely given the fact that there's a few years to go before an election has to be called.
Re:I wouldn't be too worried... (Score:4, Insightful)
Doesn't matter if they win or not. The Greens, who will have the balance of power in the Senate, have said they're opposed to any mandatory filtering, so the government would be unable to pass any filtering bills anyway.
Re:I wouldn't be too worried... (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't see them removing existing bills, though. This is the standard operating procedure: an unpopular law goes in, then after the election everyone mysteriously "forgets" about it.
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I don't see them removing existing bills, though. This is the standard operating procedure: an unpopular law goes in, then after the election everyone mysteriously "forgets" about it.
Except the law never went though,
In the last 4 years, it's failed in the house twice (never even made it to the senate).
Telstra and Optus are voluntarily filtering, no mandatory filtering here. Telstra and Optus are Australia's oldest and worst ISP's. Because they are so old, they have a large customer base.
And TFS is wrong, Australia's 2nd largest ISP is iinet (Optus is only larger when you include voice customers) which have been staunch in opposing mandatory filtering and have not implemented a
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Good thing I live in EU .... and its my right to have uncensored internet......but even if i wasnt .... we have vpns, ssh tunnels, and so on .... there's no real way to block a site ...so what's the point ? Stupid ppl think they can control the internet ? :) Super if you ask me :] That's why i like to encrypt huge files and send them to random servers from time to time :) If someone is listening on the pipe, let him code some double crypted porn ;]
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Keep in mind this is just a private decision made by two particular ISPs. I don't really have a problem with that - can always change ISPs to one that doesn't do this, if I so desire. Most people simply won't care though.
Re:I wouldn't be too worried... (Score:4, Insightful)
always
Use of that word is (almost) always inappropriate.
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A good point. However the proportion of Australia where there wouldn't be any alternative is considerably less than the proportion of some countries that there wouldn't be an alternative. Due to the fact Telstra is forced to wholesale access to its phonelines, if you have a phone line, you can most likely get a different ISP. In ~most~ cases (though not all).
Of course chances are that that other ISP will just be resold Telstra Wholesale access, but that would still get you around the filter.
Re:I wouldn't be too worried... (Score:5, Insightful)
why do people say things like this?
"Voluntary compliance" with a government is never necessarily voluntary, considering the weight behind government suggestions. If the government wants people to do it, it should be a law. It's not a law because it's invasive and improper. This doesn't mean the government can lean on businesses to get what it wants extralegally, because it can be indistinguishable from a threat.
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Re:I wouldn't be too worried... (Score:4, Interesting)
Good thing I live in EU .... and its my right to have uncensored internet
It is? DNS is filtered for child porn websites in at least the UK (for some major ISPs) and Finland (IIRC).
(In the UK last time I checked, by doing a DNS query on a blocked hostname, my small ISP returned the IP but my parents' large ISP gave a 'no such domain' message.)
For Finland, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapsiporno.info [wikipedia.org]
(At work, "Access to lapsiporno.info has been blocked as 'Adult / Sexually explicit'". Shouldn't that be 'Child / Sexually explicit' ... though I'm not going to ask them to change it;-)
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The link you provide for Finland explicitly states that all four major ISPs in the country to NOT censor anything, and many of those who sensor provide an "alternate sensored DNS" in addition to normal, non-sensored one. Only a few small regionals actually sensor (probably in attempt to market themselves to families with children).
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why do governments and people in charge want to censor the internet?? i don't get it?!?!!?
Why does anyone want to censor images of child sexual abuse? Or details governments' top secret invasion plans?
I'm just saying that censorship is not necessarily done for bad reasons. If it is illegal to possess pictures or videos of child porn, there is no logical reason for it not to be illegal to access over the internet. Whether it is practicable or not is another matter.
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...because the current government is utterly doomed at the next election, and all their half-baked ideas will be junked, like they should be.
Unfortunately for us, the Liberal opposition to filtering schemes is that Labor don't go far enough. When I last discussed it with my local Lib candidate, he said that Labor were missing the boat by not including gambling, abortion, and other such sites on the black list. And that I should vote for him to make sure we get a proper family-friendly internet in Australia, instead of the dangerous and scary half-assed Labor internet. Both sides are playing the family-fear card here. They've got Today Tonight vi
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The Libs' idea of family friendly internet is a voucher for free "security software" that families may *choose* to install if they wish (and families probably should). Thankfully, the Libs believe in freedom of choice (and strong law and order to hunt down illegal stuff and shut it down where necessary, to balance things out).
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They've got Today Tonight viewers convinced that overseas pedos can crawl up your phone line and out of your computer to rape your kids!
Speaking of which: how many people here have seen the Brass Eye pedophilia special? Sadly it doesn't seem to have caused politicians anywhere to reform their ways.
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Maybe, but the fact is the other party is the libs, a bunch of useless conservatives who don't think we should have fact internet, think we should ignore climate change, reduce taxes for mining companies, keep troops overseas, and a lot more stupid ideas. So Labor may get through again, especially with the leaders the libs have.
And in fact, apart from this obsession with the internet filter, the current government actually has the best ideas.
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"And in fact, apart from this obsession with the internet filter, the current government actually has the best ideas."
Labor's last good idea came under Hawke and Keating in the 80s and 90s. This current lot are the crumbling shell of a once proud party, packed full of former political staffers and union apparatchiks. They are devoid of good ideas, and even if I agree with you for the sake of argument that they might actually have some, their implementation of them is a complete joke.
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Unlike the current party, a bunchg of useless hippies who want us to have ridiculously fast internet (within the nation only, without bothering to improve our pipelines overseas - whoops!), want to pretend climate change is 100% anthropogenic and tax us to "fix it" but can't tell us where the money will be spent or how it will reduce "carbon emissions", increase taxes for all industries to pass on to consumers, tell us they want the troops home but in fact increase their presence (and get more troops killed
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Please show me a Liberal party which is opposed to internet filtering and who would roll back the changes the Labor party is proposing?
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I dont think Telstra or Optus have the technical ability to mess with their wholesale customers in this way.
Wait until the list is leaked. (Score:5, Insightful)
WikiLeaks will show them the stupidity of this.
In the meantime, time to fire up Tor and change ISPs.
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time to fire up Tor and change ISPs.
Isn't that redundant?
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Churning to a different ISP doesn't occur instantly, unfortunately. Not in Australia at least.
Re:Wait until the list is leaked. (Score:4, Informative)
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You need an organized protest/boycott. A little dribble of people complaining one at a time won't accomplish anything.
Easily written off as nutjobs (assuming the tier-1 support taking the call even thinks about it that long).
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Plus if you don't change they will think that their actions are acceptable. If at the point you contact them to cancel their service you tell them why and enough other people do likewise they may realise that filtering isn't acceptable and stop doing it.
Churning DSL takes all of 4 hours of service disruption (changing DSLAM operators may take up to 10 days though) which only indicates the whingers need to harden the fuck up the bigger issue is the fact most ISP's try to force you into 24 month contracts (Internode does not, signed, happy Internode customer).
This would definitely constitute a change of contract, under Australian law allowing customers to terminate the remainder of their contract, so this is actually a good thing for people who dont want
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WikiLeaks will show them the stupidity of this.
In the meantime, time to fire up Tor and change ISPs.
Better move to another country [nytimes.com]...
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Will that actually change anything though?
Or the internal workings of the filter (Score:1)
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Like the GIANT ENEMY CRAB, it's bound to have some weak points making it vulnerable to MASSIVE DAMAGE one way or another.
Fixed that for you.
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Er it's only two ISPs that have made a decision themselves to do this - not a law, and not something that affects 'Australia' as a whole. Easier to change to another ISP than to start talking about proxies and stuff...
"Second Largest ISP" (Score:5, Informative)
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What matters is the number of people affected by the blacklist, even if they are on dial-up only.
Yep. iiNet have been running a fairly extensive "The New No2" (ISP) after a series of recent acquisitions, although this reflects only DSL subscribers, so my comment was in relation to people that might dispute OP's post which stated that Optus was the #2 largest ISP.
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Blah Blah Blah (Score:3)
Get your real info from here :-
http://whirlpool.net.au/wiki/cleanfeed [whirlpool.net.au]
Hmmmmmm.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Why does everyone want to save me? I am happy to be damned!
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I think the real issue is that incentives to think make you dangerous to established structures.
Related to the NBN deal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Gizmondo recently wrote that Optus and Telstra have just signed [gizmodo.com.au] a lucrative NBN deal. Coincidence?
Can't force it through parliament, so get the major ISPs to voluntarily do it via an offer they can't refuse?
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Coincidence?
I say yes, I doubt one influenced the other.
Both the ISP filtering and the NBN/Telstra/Optus deal have been in the works for years now. Neither is a surprise, they both were obviously going to happen.
Re:Related to the NBN deal? (Score:4, Interesting)
Telstra and Optus announced support for filtering back then [gizmodo.com.au] too.
Looking through the comments of that old link, I see the suspicions have long been present.
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The ALP wants to stop National party members from watching sheep facing web cams ! - Ha
Not cool! (Score:1)
You ain't seen nufin yet - NBN will be the end (Score:4, Insightful)
This is only the start of it.
The NBN will kill the Internets as Australians know it.
The current plans to force everyone to connect to the NBN weather they want to or not gives the Grubbermint instant control over all net traffic.
FWIW, the biggest winners from NBN will be Foxtel and other media providers who will simply suck up as much bandwidth as they can get. The current cable TV networks will be shut down and everything will be moved to the NBN. Where do you think the bandwidth is going to go then?
All telephone lines including POTs will be routed though the NBN.
The people who actually believed the garbage about 100Mb to their homes were only dreaming. They never had a hope of getting those sort of speeds as it was never in the game-plan.
The NBN is going to make Telstras Bigpond look like a good deal. All of the current ISP's will simply be relegated to be billing companies. In one swoop the Grubbermint get the control they want and their friends in big corporations that will hire them when they get thrown out of office will have somewhere cushy for htem to sit while they continue to suck on the public tit with their pensions.
Australia, is having a lemon shoved down it's throat, while the vocal kiddies who dream of 100Mb porn to their screens are being flashed a pair of titties to tease them.
Re:You ain't seen nufin yet - NBN will be the dawn (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, to put it more rationally:
The NBN takes the aging copper network out of private hands where Telstra was using it to restrict competition, and replaces it with an open-access high speed network open to full competition.
Just to be clear: almost everyone being forced to switch to the NBN is currently using Telstra infrastructure. If you're on iiNet, Internode, TGP, Optus ADSL etc then you're using Telstra copper. The only people being forced to switch to the NBN who aren't using Telstra infrastructure now are the relatively small number of people on Optus Cable Broadband. After the switch to the NBN, you'll still be using iiNet, Internode, etc for your internet access (if you want to) but instead of using Telstra's infrastructure you'll be using NBNCo's infrastructure. And it will be damn fast and more reliable. And it won't be Telstra... which in itself is simply wonderful.
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I know.
I'm always amazed by such comments.
The first thing is you have to have a floating paranoia. Then the paranoia become focused on something. The government is good because it's so vast, so integral to the functioning of the community and has such enormous power. Next you see conspiracies in most things (it goes with the paranoia) and finally whatever is being done by the 'Grubbermint' must be suspect thus the paranoid conspiracy theorist makes connections to to things were are not and fails to see the
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Today, Gillard and NBN paid Eleven Billion Dollars to buy the Telstra copper network. Do you really think they're going to rip it out or decommission it?
Yes, they are decommissioning the entire copper network: http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/350563/telstra-nbn_co_deal_telstra_plans_phased_copper_decommission/ [computerworld.com.au]
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You're a complete and utter moron, you know that? Right now Telstra owns EVERYTHING. You're already "footing the bill" *and then some* by being forced to sustain Telstra's ridiculous monopolist profit margins.
Why would you NOT want the government to build and own the infrastructure, exactly the same freaking way it builds and owns the power lines, the sewer lines, the roads, etc. You don't have to pay for a bunch of CEOs' $10 million bonuses, or shareholder dividends. All revenue goes towards paying o
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So how does this compare with any other country's telecom infrastructure? I mean it's not Telstra has been a private company for ever. This also isn't a problem in other countries where the government funds infrastructure.
Or do you propose we sit and wait patiently for Telstra to upgrade it's network? May happen any century now.
Also "Grubbermint"? How old are you, 12?
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Why are the so obsessed with this? (Score:2)
It seems like he's taking it _way_ to personally. It's as if he wants to filter the net just to spite everyone.
What's the bet this is just going to be DNS filtering?
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Because Conroy is an utter Jack@ss and has no idea about the internet. He won his portfolio at a pub raffle.
He's that sort of person (Score:4, Interesting)
Thanks to the necessity of dealing with Telstra the Communications Ministry is almost a punishment post so it has been historically been given to a complete dropkick that a Government hates but has to give something to keep a powerful faction happy. Thus the long string of utter bastards and incompetant wankers in the job. Sadly Conroy is a competant wanker so actually manages to make progress on a filtering policy that his own party hates and only put up to get the reactionary weirdo vote. If he stuffed about on the policy for a decade saying it was a good idea and he'd do something soon (which is what the previous government did) everyone would be happy - even the weirdos that may get a few more paying customers in their fake churches.
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The faith based groups had a 20 year plan to infect both sides of politics.
They have their people in place now. "Family First: A Federal Crusade"
http://www.abc.net.au/compass/s1358912.htm [abc.net.au]
Ideological reasons. (Score:2)
Conroy isn't doing this for "political" reasons (of the sort that most Australian politicians have were they back down when it polls badly). He apparently strongly believes in censorship. Also people who blame Christian and other faith based groups for this are wrong, Conroy is pushing for it for his own reasons and not to buy votes. The rest of his party have pretty much dropped it because they are polling at around sub-30% approval or something silly.
I am an Evangelical Christian and am against filtering
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Why the hell is Conroy still pushing for this? He has a face saving excuse to drop it with the hostile parliament so why doesn't he just drop it?
Because like most politicians, he has pandered to some influential individuals to get them to use their influence to get people to vote for him. Thus he owe's them favours. Conroy buddied up with the Church who are in favour of censorship. Most others have aligned themselves with unions, business/industries, educational institutions for the same purposes. Few politicians get in on their own merits unfortunately.
Not defending Conroy, I think he's an utter twunt but it's not hard to see why he's trying to
Censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
The act of censorship is always more obscene than the material being censored. My personal opinion.
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Breaking the Internet (Score:1)
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Optus and Telstra? Who cares? (Score:2)
Nobody with a choice and a clue goes with them anyway (and there is quite a lot of choice in the DSL market in Australia). While I'm vehemently opposed to government enforced filtering, I have no problem with individual ISPs doing it - as long as they inform their customers that they're doing so. As long as we don't have the market collapse into a duopoly, and there's no government-mandated filter, those who want a clean feed have that choice.
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My ISP (Exetel) uses Optus to provide their Internet services. It is unclear to me if this means I will get the block list, but I don't want to take any chances.
The article mentions two other smaller ISPs voluntarily censoring the web. I'll bet one is Primus. Anyone got any idea what the other one would be?
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I doubt it. All information I hear indicates that it's a DNS-level block, and every ISP I've ever used runs it's own DNS servers. Haven't used Exetel, but I doubt they're an exception. Telsta/Optus just provide access to the infrastructure for most of those arrangements, no service on top of it.
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http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2008/03/canadian-isps-furious-about-bell-canadas-traffic-throttling.ars [arstechnica.com]
"... traffic-shaping hardware even on the lines it resells."
Does your Australian isp work on a shared best effort network or have some real dedicated optical 'deal'?
With suburbia filled with RIMs (digital loop carrier ), closed exchanges what one ' cheaper ' isp resells in your area might be sitting on a big clean telco network.
Do Australians admi
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Will it be like Canada where the whole telco network is shaped or will other isp's get a real internet connection vs the Telstra clean feed?
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We have something like this in the UK (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a 'voluntary' scheme whereby the biggest six ISPs implement a block list maintained by an organisiation called the 'Internet Watch Foundation'. They claim that only child pornography sites are blocked, but of course there's no way to know what is on the list.
Recently the first efforts to expand block lists to include 'other illegal' content have been made, and to set up a list for copyright-related restricted sites.
It seems governments have realised that legislative oversight is a bit of a nuisance, and it's just easier to coerce and/or bribe big business to get what you want.
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there's no way to know what is on the list.
There is a simple way you can discover many of them. Check to see if a site is accessible over normal HTTP, and if it isn't check with Tor or a foreign ISP. Obviously you need to have an idea of the banned sites before hand by Wikileaks provides handy lists of what other countries have blocked which is a good start.
I used this technique when I noticed that I couldn't access mobilism.org from my phone. I opted out of net filtering but Vodafone still blocks sites it doesn't like. I keep meaning to tether it t
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Crowdsourcing is the best way to get these lists, until someone breaks in and takes it.
Create a list, on a forum, or anywhere else anyone could contribute to it... and start announcing.
There are ways around it, but the idea in general is pretty offensive... Censor?
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It seems governments have realised that legislative oversight is a bit of a nuisance, and it's just easier to coerce and/or bribe big business to get what you want.
I think you have it the wrong way, I would rather say: "It seems big business have realised that legislative oversight is a bit of a nuisance, and it's just easier to coerce and/or bribe governments to get what you want." The push behind those schemes comes from copyright holders and they have the means do what is necessary to get to their goal.
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T&C? (Score:1)
Introducing mandatory filtering to customers (who, in the case of either ISP, are likely bound by 24 month contracts...) falls slightly outside the bounds of 'we reserve the right to alter terms and conditions at any time.'
This is far beyond a sick joke.
Cool (Score:1)
Does this matter ? (Score:1)
Wow, I'm amazed (Score:1)
You mean that large companies can agree together to mutually do bad things to their customers without having any problems with the customers leaving them?
I'm so amazed, this wasn't written in my "Free Market 101: Why it works".
Where is the list ? (Score:2)
With the usual backlash that'll ensue when it's discovered that it contains dentist websites, political opponents websites, typos or simply unfortunate names (expertsexchange.com)
Anti-Democratic, Anti-Republican (Score:2)
Re:Anti-Democratic, Anti-Republican (Score:4, Informative)
Mussolini did NOT say that. He did love the phrase and tried to claim credit for it, but it wasn't his.
The phrase was written by philosopher Giovanni Gentile in the Encyclopedia Italiana much earlier.
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Mussolini DID say that.
"Did not say that" != "Did not originally say that"
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You don't credit a quote to somebody when there is documented history that he tried to steal credit for something somebody else said first.
The Doctrine of Fascism (Score:3)
The list is the problem? (Score:1)
From the wording of the summary, the submitter seems to be worried about the contents of the blacklist. Who cares what's on the list - the fact that some persons feel they are more qualified (than the person paying for access) to judge what is appropriate should have all of Australia in an uproar. Child pornography or not, I don't want anybody determining what is "appropriate".
About 5,250,000 results (Score:3)
When you google "Australian Evangelical Churches". Maybe that is why they claim social media tools edged out pornography as the nations No.1 internet activity by 09. Or better yet, how they know.
http://www.eyefortravel.com/news/online-travel/social-channels-top-porn-sites-australia [eyefortravel.com]
just thinking out loud here but... (Score:1)
does anyone else think it's about time to build a new internet that doesnt allow this kind of bullshit?
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Yippee!!!
If I was Stephen Conroy, I'd censor posts like that.
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The post was intended as clarification (for those unaware) that the NBN was proposed (by the same party - Labor) well before 'clean-feed' or filtering of any form had been publicly mentioned, or suggested in Parliament.
It's debatable whether the government's original intent for the NBN was for use as a means of filtering/monitoring. I've only highlighted that any form of filtering was proposed well after the original NBN announcement (and Labor's rise to power). Not before, as suggested in your original p