Australian Govt Holding Secretive Anti-Piracy Talks

daria42 writes "Looks like Australia's Government prefers to keep its ongoing anti-piracy discussions behind closed doors. It held an initial meeting in September last year to try to get the content and ISP industries to thrash out an agreement on how to handle Internet piracy. Consumer representative groups were explicitly blocked from attending the meeting, and attendees are not allowed to reveal what was discussed behind closed doors. Now a second meeting has been held, and again, no information has been revealed about what's being discussed. Quelle conspiracy?"

Re:First

[__Paul__]

because nobody's crazy enough to vote for Abbott

Unfortunately, the polls don't show that at all. Despite the fact that a huge overwhelming majority of Australians don't like him, they are still indicating that they will vote for him.

Re:Good luck with all that, you idiots ...

[Nursie]

Where do you live Mr AC?

Because I can guarantee you that it's not as bad as you think. The police state mentality here is a long, long, long way behind the US and there are far fewer speed cameras than you'd think.

here in Perth we just got our first one. Somebody shot it.

Here's the thing - here on /. you hear an awful lot about genuinely crappy proposals that various parts of the Australian government make. 99.99% of these never see the light of day.

Re:Good luck with all that, you idiots ...

[FatLittleMonkey]

look up the port arthur massacre. none of us have guns anymore because of that.

Actually gun ownership numbers are higher now than before Port Arthur. A bit under 5 million registered firearms, and god knows how many unregistered.

You just can't legally own auto or semi-auto rifles, or some large calibre handguns and high capacity shotguns. Manual-action rifles and small-calibre handguns are fine, and we import about 80,000 each year, 40,000 rifles, 10,000 shotguns, 20,000 handguns (Yes I know there's a missing 10,000, no I don't know what it is.)

Re:Slight correction

[sensationull]

Or you could grow a pair and cope, not everywhere is the US, you lot have not invaded everywhere yet, give it another 100 years of MPAA rule and you'll probably have your wish though.

Re:Slight correction

[strack]

yes. because the US invented the *english* language.

Re:First

[Anonymous Coward]

Being on the record as saying that what he says should not necessarily be believed, unless it was written down first is a start.

I think some of us can subconsciously see the micro-twitches that can give away the deceitful.

Throw in a habit of saying whatever he thinks the audience wants hear, opposition to everything the government proposes, no matter what it is, an underlying religious extremism and a lack of any real policy statements.

Re:The nature of the beast.

[caitsith01]

The current (minority) Australian government is ruled by the Labour Party, which is left-wing. As a rule, right-wing parties are more favourable to participatory democracy, while our left wing parties prefer a "nanny" state, controlled by an oligarchy. Their secrecy is a natural outcome of this, as they believe they know what is good for us.

What absolute crap.

For starters, Labor is centrist or perhaps slightly right of centre on most social issues.

Secondly, the previous (right wing) government favoured authoritarianism and money-as-power and introduced things like: indefinite detention of refugees; harsh anti-terror laws, including detention without trial; scrapping cross-media ownership to reduce diversity and allow corporations to control the media; stacking the independent public broadcaster with right wing loonies to shut down objective news reporting; vilifying minorities; supporting the torture and detention of foreigners and Australian citizens via the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; etc etc etc.

Labor isn't much better. But the Liberal Party is about as anti-participatory democracy as it gets.

Re:First

[crutchy]

I don't usually vote unless there's someone I really don't like (so I vote for the other guy), but I'll admit I voted for Gillard (via my local Labour MP) because I there aren't really enough female role models in the world, and I have a daughter, and I figured she couldn't possibly be worse than all the blokes before her. I actually reckon she's done OK so far. Every politician makes mistakes (some with monotonous regularity), and she's made some tough and seemingly unpopular calls, but she's stuck by her principles and it takes a lot of guts to stand by that (Abbott would no doubt back flip). She also seems level-headed in interviews, which the media probably doesn't like because it doesn't make for exciting headlines, but the fucking media can suck my big fat hairy cock for all I care.

At most elections (particularly local and state) I just attend to get my name checked off the list so I don't get fined... how the fuck is that for democracy?

I guess in Australia if we didn't have to vote (or at least get our name checked off) there wouldn't be much of an election because I reckon many Aussies don't really gives a shit about stupid greedy corrupt lying bastards spouting their filth on TV and filling our mailboxes with taxpayer-funded junk mail.