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As is Australia.

They are via WiMAX:
Enhanced broadband to rural and remote areas
http://www.internode.on.net/residential/wireless_broadband/fixed-wireless/terms_and_conditions/#Equipment
The "WiMax receivers and base stations must be sufficiently cheap" is the key.
You have to get it right, at both ends - ie skilled people on site and thats not "cheap"

"Why, for instance, should it be said that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed?

"Necessary and proper", "Interstate Commerce". There are parts of the US Constitution which are sufficiently vague as to justify regulating people growing wheat for their own consumption, under the commerce clause, despite the people growing that wheat doing so solely for their own consumption. This suggests to me that the mere fact that an exercise of power is not authorized by the constitution is insufficient to prevent that exercise.

What's more, the experience in other nations without a bill of rights is that not having a bill of rights fails to protect rights in the fashion suggested by Hamilton (that's not a dispargement of Hamilton, an admirable and intelligent man). For example, in Australia, I quote from the Report of the Independent Inquiry into Media and Media Regulation ”In the United States, free speech is given primacy among rights, and therefore the potential harm caused by restrictions on speech is thought to outweigh the potential harm caused by speech that is not restricted. In Australia free speech does not necessarily have the same primacy”. This, from the Hon R. Finkelstein, QC. Oh how I wish my nation had a first amendment so that highly educated and respected legal practitioners would not treat democracies most fundamental right with such open disdain.

Ahh, I see you're not good at reading, let me help you out.

You mean Conroy, not the Labor party.

Completely wrong. The beginnings of these policies started with Kim Beazley. Additionally, if it's not a Labor party policy, then you need to tell the Prime Minister that, and you might ask them to update their pages. While you can say the most recent ones are crafted and pushed by Conroy, it does have the support of "the party", where its leader and strategists speak for what the party supports.

Deputy comms minister Kate Lundy has been an outspoken critic of filtering

Partially wrong. She's been an outspoken critic of... THIS type of filter. She wants it to be an opt-out filter. She was however an outspoken critic of ISP level filtering... when LIBERAL was in power.

The contract was to buy that.

This is where the reading comprehension comes in. Even with the single line you quoted, in no way, can it be taken to mean 'they were paid to censor the internet'. Please re-read it. What it says is 'They censored the internet, at the same time as they were awarded a contract', not a contract for censoring the internet, but a contract for buying the infrastructure.

Please, keep up.

This is because they own 0% of the pits and ducts (or copper) that make up the last mile which is where the NBN is operating.

Now this is reasonably true, except that Agile (Internodes infrastructure company) does supply last mile connections for many rural communities. On top of this, they own a significant amount of interstate fiber, which is something the NBN also had in its deal, though to a lesser extent at this stage.

You dont actually understand what's going on here and should never have been modded up.

The thing I like about your post, is the arrogance it has, while being exceptionally wrong. It's almost like you're trolling me. Not sure if you're retarded, or trolling. I'm erring on the former.

My guess it will be that outside the Capital Cities it will be 100Mbps shared between all connections... which will probably end up being slower that the current system of Telstra enabling an ADSL2+ Exchange with an 8MBps backhaul, and then selling dozens of 20Mbps connections to the houses connected to it.

Also... thousands of "remote" users currently on ADSL or ADSL2+ will be relegated to NBN Wireless

This is all complete nonsense. The initial spec for the NBN is 2.5 Gbps downstream per GPON (not more than 64 homes) scaling to 40 Gbps, nothing like "100 Mbps shared between all connections". This fiber will then connect your house back to one of 22 points of interconnect, where ISPs will have connectivity (or rent it from a backbone provider). If the ISPs choose to under-provision their non-capital PoPs, that's really no change from today, but there's no reason to believe an ISP would cripple themselves with a 100 Mbps back-haul.

Telstra will also be able to maintain their copper network in places not serviced by NBN fiber. Indeed, they are obliged to continue phone service to these customers for at least 10 years under Universal Service Obligation. so why not run ADSL over those wires too?

References:
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/1511009
http://www.dbcde.gov.au/broadband/national_broadband_network/nbn_policy_statements

Now to complain to my content filter provider for not catching it

Here's his website for you... http://www.minister.dbcde.gov.au/

Here's what the tag cloud looks like with and without the censorship
http://i46.tinypic.com/v79v7c.png

When you click the link for "ISP Filtering" it takes you to a "power by google" search
http://www.minister.dbcde.gov.au/search?q=ISP Filtering

The fact that a Senator is trying to hide his filtering advocacy from his constituents should tell you all you need to know about the proposal. Most Senators (at least in the USA) go out of their way to trumpet their initiatives and achievements.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, the minister attempting to ram the great firewall of Oz down everyone's throat has been removing all traces of the unpopular legislation from his main website with a javascript filter.

The summary of this article is a ball-faced lie. The JavaScript in question removes the term "ISP filter" from the tag cloud on the home page of the site, nothing more.

There are still plenty of pages on the site that mention "ISP Filtering" such as the following:

Media Release - Measures to improve safety of the internet for families

Measures to improve safety of the internet for families

Media Release - Optus to participate in ISP filtering pilot

Media Release - Pilot to assess technical feasibility of ISP filtering

PS: I still think Conroy is an ass-hat. It's a very small minority of Australian citizens who want internet censorship - Kevin Rudd and his government need to remember that they were voted in by the majority. Say "NO" to Kevin in 11!

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, the minister attempting to ram the great firewall of Oz down everyone's throat has been removing all traces of the unpopular legislation from his main website with a javascript filter.

The summary of this article is a ball-faced lie. The JavaScript in question removes the term "ISP filter" from the tag cloud on the home page of the site, nothing more.

There are still plenty of pages on the site that mention "ISP Filtering" such as the following:

Media Release - Measures to improve safety of the internet for families

Measures to improve safety of the internet for families

Media Release - Optus to participate in ISP filtering pilot

Media Release - Pilot to assess technical feasibility of ISP filtering

PS: I still think Conroy is an ass-hat. It's a very small minority of Australian citizens who want internet censorship - Kevin Rudd and his government need to remember that they were voted in by the majority. Say "NO" to Kevin in 11!

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, the minister attempting to ram the great firewall of Oz down everyone's throat has been removing all traces of the unpopular legislation from his main website with a javascript filter.

The summary of this article is a ball-faced lie. The JavaScript in question removes the term "ISP filter" from the tag cloud on the home page of the site, nothing more.

There are still plenty of pages on the site that mention "ISP Filtering" such as the following:

Media Release - Measures to improve safety of the internet for families

Measures to improve safety of the internet for families

Media Release - Optus to participate in ISP filtering pilot

Media Release - Pilot to assess technical feasibility of ISP filtering

PS: I still think Conroy is an ass-hat. It's a very small minority of Australian citizens who want internet censorship - Kevin Rudd and his government need to remember that they were voted in by the majority. Say "NO" to Kevin in 11!

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, the minister attempting to ram the great firewall of Oz down everyone's throat has been removing all traces of the unpopular legislation from his main website with a javascript filter.

The summary of this article is a ball-faced lie. The JavaScript in question removes the term "ISP filter" from the tag cloud on the home page of the site, nothing more.

There are still plenty of pages on the site that mention "ISP Filtering" such as the following:

Media Release - Measures to improve safety of the internet for families

Measures to improve safety of the internet for families

Media Release - Optus to participate in ISP filtering pilot

Media Release - Pilot to assess technical feasibility of ISP filtering

PS: I still think Conroy is an ass-hat. It's a very small minority of Australian citizens who want internet censorship - Kevin Rudd and his government need to remember that they were voted in by the majority. Say "NO" to Kevin in 11!

In Australia judicial and policing roles are generally not politically appointments (with some exceptions) and the influence of corporations is very limited.

In cases like this it is more a case of convincing the government to change the law. Unfortunately this is something AFACT will probably find relatively easy to do with our current Federal government particularly the Senator Conroy as the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy.

The Federal Government plans to implement mandatory ISP filtering for "refused classification" websites, it was .

The government also released the report on the ISP filtering pilot, which was provided to the government by Enex Testlab in October, detailing the results of the blocking accuracy and performance of the filters.

Senator Conroy announced the new initiatives in a curiously scheduled press conference, with journalists only being notified 90 minutes prior to the start of proceedings.

"The Government will introduce legislative amendments to the Broadcasting Services Act to require all ISPs to block RC-rated material hosted on overseas servers", said the announcement.

"RC-rated material includes child sex abuse content, bestiality, sexual violence including rape, and the detailed instruction of crime or drug use.

"The report into the pilot trial of ISP-level filtering demonstrates that blocking RC-rated material can be done with 100% accuracy and negligible impact on internet speed", said Conroy.

Conroy acknowledged that the filter would only block "inadvertent" exposure to R/C content, and the pilot report bluntly states that any technically competent user could circumvent the filtering.

The report also found that the filters on average "over-blocked" 3.4% of sites that were not intended to be filtered, and that high volume sites would likely cause the filters to fail.

Initial reactions to the pilot report have been mixed, with participating ISPs praising the results (in prepared press releases), while others such as Electronic Frontiers Australia stating that it "brings more questions than answers".

The DBCDE website is unavailable due to demand for the report, which we have mirrored here.

Unfortunately they're not quite that honest - that title is from the author, not the Australian Government.

His actual title is "Minister for Home Affairs".

I would have said that the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy was more deserving of that title. He's the one pushing for mandatory state-wide internet filtering, three-strike copyright infringement laws, and privacy/interception exemptions for ISPs so they can prove their users aren't breaking the law. Also known as the internet villain of the year.

Nobody tell Stephen Conroy!

But it still puzzles me that the AU people, which I've always considered as easygoing and enlightened, accept this level of government "protectionism".

We don't. We're not happy about it and we're making our opinions known. The minister in charge (Stephen Conroy is dismissing our objections. Come election time, he will discover this relationship is transitive.

Methinks the xenophobia is strong with this one.

Far more likely is that Optus cuts a deal with Conroy to give the trial an air of legitimacy in exchange for concessions elsewhere, particularly against Telstra (c.f. recent competition rulings making further competition concessions).

I've no doubt that Optus would find any inroads into Telstra's death grip on it's networks valuable. So would all the other ISPs in Australia. Any advances to competition in the Telcos could only make the industry better.

Far from being xenophobic, a realistic assessment would be that the upper levels of management in Optus and Singtel could have a culture that is significantly different in relation to civil liberties in general, not necessarily limited to the proposed censorship. Optus management have never commented about the censorship scheme when most of the large ISPs did. They were late in their participation in the testing. Optus are not particularly open about their internal corporate arrangements. Most of the public statements have related to competition matters and most were justified. Not a word from them on censorship using DPI having disadvantages for their customers in a democracy. They have taken a neutral position, where most other ISPs have been more active on this issue. Websheild is a special case: they are a non profit organisation, they sell a censored ISP service, are agents for censorware systems, part of the trials and have a seat on the hand picked Cyber Safety Working Group that is contributing to the development of the policy.

There are 21,262,641 people in Australia. Forty-three billion is 2,022 Australian dollars for every man, woman, and child in the country. It's difficult to believe that the government could spend that much money, particularly since I understand that Australia does not have sufficiently fast internet connections with the rest of the world.

Read the Australian government announcement.

LOL: "... if you're in Tasmania (and who isn't?)"

More likely the list is real, and it has been salted with additional sites. It is very much in Conroy's interest to try and make people believe that it is fake.

Conroy's press release does not say the list is fake. It says:

"There are some common URLs to those on the ACMA blacklist. However, ACMA advises that there are URLs on the published list that have never been the subject of a complaint or ACMA investigation, and have never been included on the ACMA blacklist."

A huge difference. You can be sure that "some common URLs" translates from politico speak as "1061 URLs", meaning the list is ACMA's. The delightful irony is that the only way Conroy can defend himself is if he actually says which URLs he considers to be fake, thereby giving even more info on the contents of ACMA's list.

Ask yourself this question: "If it's not ACMA's list, why is Conroy threatening:"

"...referral to the Australian Federal Police. Any Australian involved in making this content publicly available would be at serious risk of criminal prosecution."

It's not illegal to distribute a list of random URL's. The only way Conroy could make the above threat is if the list is the real thing (or a superset of the real thing).

I'm curious as to whether Conroy's threats extend to the off-line world. For example, would it be illegal to print out the list of URLs and attach it to a noticeboard?

Contacts page for Stephen Conroy is here

Here's the text of the letter I sent him:

Subj: Please do not block all peer-to-peer

For one thing, World of Warcraft (a passion for our entire family) depends on P2P for the distribution of updates.

And where I have absolutely no problem with suppressing child pornography, I believe that in the long term censorship by filtration is not the answer. It's never the answer, in a free society -- no offence, mate, but you're the government and I don't entirely trust you. Once you start filtering content for good reasons, you'll soon be filtering content for bad ones.

The answer is to find the perpetrators and take them out. I believe your efforts should be directed toward finding the source of the trash and taking it down, not slowing down the pipes for the rest of us.

(real name supplied)

Consultant (IT industry since 1969)

Devoted husband and father of two

(real address supplied)

i thought he actually was a "Censorship Minister". it's actually Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy. regardless of that title, the blatant corporate cronyism is appalling.

is a whole ministry for broadband, communications and the digital economy really necessary?

The Government understands that ISP-level filtering is not a 'silver bullet'. We have always viewed ISP-level filtering as one part of a broader government initiative for protecting our children online.

Technology is improving all the time. Technology that filters peer-to-peer and BitTorrent traffic does exist and it is anticipated that the effectiveness of this will be tested in the live pilot trial.

To give Australian households the necessary confidence, the Government is working to promote an online civil society through its $125.8 million Cyber-Safety Plan. This contains a comprehensive set of measures to combat online threats and help parents and educators protect children from inappropriate material.

It includes funding for:

* education and information measures

* law enforcement

* helplines and websites

* ISP filtering

* consultative arrangements with industry, child protection bodies and children

* further research to identify possible areas for further action.

The Australian Government has also launched the first of potentially many blogs blogs asking for input on key issues, including Senator Conroy's "filtering" initiative.

These concerns will be carefully considered during a 'live' pilot of ISP filtering which will test a range of content filtering solutions in a real world environment, with the cooperation of ISPs (including mobile telephone operators) and their customers.

- Ref, http://www.dbcde.gov.au/communications_for_consumers/funding_programs__and__support/cyber-safety_plan/internet_service_provider_isp_filtering/isp_filtering_live_pilot

What "customer" would willingly go to an illegal Web site in order to test a government filtering system. Unless the government is giving them a list of banned URLs and an amnesty from prosecution then this testing will largely be bogus. Though I don't know how they define "cooperation".

That'll work fine unless they're using Name Based Virtual Hosts.

Regardless, as (almost) all of us know there's a number of ways to bypass this bloody stupid filter.

Disclaimer: I don't think Child Pornography should be legal. However, I very strongly disagree that the Government has the right to put in access-Level filtering, regardless of their case.
The ends DO NOT justify the means.

Opponents said the most accurate filter chosen by the government will incorrectly block up to 10,000 Web pages out of 1 million.

Uh, why didn't they use the metric of 10^4:10^6 or 1:100? Sounds like somebody wanted that statement to be heard as much more impacting than it is. The thing that worries me is that if we look at other technologies designed to "protect the people from themselves," a false positive rate of 1% really isn't that bad--especially on a fully automated system. A high false positive rate is--in my opinion--what's holding back facial recognition but I fear that 1% blockage of websites is completely acceptable to most folks. Maybe a better analogy is that of the FCC in America and the words you can't say on TV ... even though there is no research showing how these words negatively affect people, this small percent of our language and expression is blocked. This analogy (like all) is flawed, however, as you might never know what was on that website that caused the super happy and helpful animated kangaroo to appear on your computer and gently chide you that this site is not for Aussies.

Hopefully (and I'm betting on this) it will turn out to be a lot like prohibition. The outlawing of these sites and data cause their value to skyrocket, the government is made to look a mockery, your average citizen (I've heard talk of simple SSL encryption stopping this) knows how to reach them, in so doing they inadvertently supply criminals with capital and the very stupid law is repealed. Twenty years later, everyone is joking about "the Grand Experiment" and how pathetically futile it was to begin with.

Lastly, how is this any different than what China is doing? I'm surprised nobody has made this connection and accused the government of being no better than anti-free-speech China.

After reading a bit of the plan on Australia's Cyber-Safety, it's evident this quickly degrades into a "think of the children" mentality:

While the internet has created substantial benefits for children, it has also exposed them to a number of dangers, including exposure to illegal and prohibited content. Parents rightly expect the Australian Government to play its part in helping protect children online.

So why isn't there an "opt-out" plan for those Aussie adults who like our interwebs a little dirty (and are over 18 years of age)?

actually,

the _vast_ majority of us didnt want guns fucking over our stable society as they do in the USA.

alas, the proposed filtering scheme will not ( aside from slowdown of networks ) affect the _vast_ majority of people at all - and the ones that it seems to be intended to foil ( kiddie porn fiends, copyright fiends ) will very quickly and easily be able to work around the filters.

i've written to the relevant senator here ( and of course got no reply ), trying to point things like ssh tunnels and proxy servers, but to no avail. ( not to mention https or any other transport layer security schemes )

it should also be noted that the project was started by the previous government, and looks more to be the relevant body (ACMA - australian communications and media authority ) following through on the original direction.

all up, it is pretty sinister as it really does imply someone will be watching over what you see, and i presume there will be a need to capture and analyse all request and response data in order to let someone consult a little red book of sanctioned content.

what is really obvious in all of it is that the people directing this really dont have much of a grasp on how the internet works.

in my comment to the minister, i even used a car analogy: to prevent the spread of unauthorised material, police will be required to stop and inspect every vehicle on every trip, and to keep a detailed inventory of everything on board.

Write to Conway directly. If he cops enough backlash from enough people, and from a wide enough cross section of the community, then he's going to have to reconsider his position.

The ABC has an article up about it now, and a lot of people have vented on it http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/10/24/2399876.htm . Contact details for Conway's office is there. It's also suggested that you write to your Federal Member. The more people the better.

Senator the Hon Stephen Conroy
Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy
Ministerial office
Level 4, 4 Treasury Place
Melbourne Vic 3002
Tel: 03 9650 1188
Fax: 03 9650 3251
minister@dbcde.gov.au
http://www.minister.dbcde.gov.au/contact

Even the tests show it was at least as bad as 1%...

http://www.minister.dbcde.gov.au/media/media_releases/2008/060

1% is wishful thinking.

http://www.minister.dbcde.gov.au/media/media_releases/2008/060

"# Overblocking (the proportion of content that was blocked that should not have been blocked) was between 1% and 6%, with most falling under 3%. The median overblocking rate was significantly improved from the previous trial."

Read the other dot-points at the end - performance hit was between 2% and over 75%... All to block "between 88% and 97%" of "bad" content.

Somehow, the tradeoffs don't seem worth it to me.

(Disclaimer: personal opinion; I work at an Australian ISP; ...)

Contact the Minister,

http://www.minister.dbcde.gov.au/contact

I did, this is our freedoms at stake I'll be contacting everyone. Once you lose a freedom you will never get it back, not with the current collapse of democracy.

All Aussies contact the minister and let him know what you think!

http://www.minister.dbcde.gov.au/contact

Ignoring everything else for a second. That kind of money would allow you to hire more than 3000 people working full-time at a yearly salary of 20.000 Euro (that's more than I make), or 52 people full-time for most of their working life (60 years) at the same salary.

I couldn't quickly locate any budgets and only found a press release by Hon Stephen Conroy stating that:

The Government's cyber-safety funding will provide $49 million [24 million Euro] to law enforcement, ensuring that the Australian Federal Police (AFP) Child Protection Operations Team can expand its capacity to detect and investigate online child abuse, with 91 additional AFP members dedicated to online child protection by 2011.

And another factoid (not related to this specific plan perse) from the Electronic Frontiers Australia that:

Filter vendor's claims about the suitability of their product need to be treated with extreme caution given filter vendors stand to make a very large amount of money if their product were to be selected for a government mandated system. Of the estimated $33 million per annum cost (as at 2004) stated in the Government report, $14.3 million per annum was the cost of filtering software licences that would be paid to filter vendor/s.

can anyone with sources verify if this is real?

Sadly, it is

Quoting:

working with Australian Internet Service Providers (ISP) to make a filtered internet service available to all homes, schools and public internet points accessible by children-a laboratory trial of ISP filtering, followed by a real world live pilot, will inform implementation