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I wish I could be smug just laugh at India and its stupid corrupt politicians.

Unfortunately this kind of hare brained ideas aren't limited to the third world.

In Australia the filtering plan seems to be on hold for now, but you don't even need a slippery slope argument to know how batshit insane and scary the idea of a secret internet censorship blacklist is: http://nocleanfeed.com/

Or have we already forgotten the UK plan to censor social media during times of social unrest: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/blog/2011/aug/11/uk-riots-day-five-aftermath-live#block-33

Think of how easily that could be used in the style of the Arab governments to cripple organised protests against the government.

Or we can mock India for wanting to intercept and read Blackberry messages, and ignore the implications of legislation like the Patriot Act: http://politics.slashdot.org/story/11/12/02/1923207/patriot-act-clouds-picture-for-tech

Or have we forgotten the domain seizures to try to block pirated content with no due legal process: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/07/domain-seizures-defended/

Even extending to attempts to block a Firefox add on: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20060636-281.html

Blocking sports streams when they still cannot find a way of offering pay per view streaming of major sports events over the internet, where your only way of viewing a couple of hours of sports content a week is to sign up for an expensive cable package that gives lots of stuff you will never watch and THEN purchase an extra expensive add on for the sports content. And the US government is protecting that business model by seizing domains with no legal notice or court enforced legal process.

I would love to be able to just mock India, if we could afford to be that complacent...

At least it's more honest than in Europe countries where politicians/lobbyists in several countries were using the fight against child abuse as a pretense for the implementation of such censorship systems.

Just look at Australia, where there's already rampant abuse of online filters which were introduced like that:
http://nocleanfeed.com/learn.html

The list of material that will be banned under a mandatory filter is much broader than illegal child sexual abuse material. Based on previous decisions of the Classification Board, it includes:

        Information about euthanasia;
        Movies such as Ken Park or Baise-Moi;
        Books such as Join the Caravan and Defence of the Muslim Lands
        Many, many computer games, because Australia lacks an R18+ rating, although the filter will not immediately ban such games.

Items that have been banned because they 'promote, incite or instruct in matters of crime or violence' include things such as:

        A satirical article title "The Art of Shoplifting" in a student newspaper (see libertus.net's summary of the case).
        A computer game that features "an amateur graffiti artist [...] who uses graffiti and tagging as a way to protest the corrupt Dystopic city of New Radius, in a future world where freedom of expression is suppressed by a tyrannical, Orwellian city government" (wikipedia) because it "provided elements of promotion of the crime of graffiti." (see libertus.net's summary of the decision).

Schedule 2 to the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 places three key requirements on the broadcasters of political advertisements. Clauses 3, 3A and 4 of Schedule 2 require broadcasters to:
...
cease political advertisements in the three days before polling day (from midnight on the Wednesday before polling day to the close of the poll on polling day).

The Act in question Doesn't seem to include social media -- it has television and radio.
I'm no lawyer, but to be honest if any of Australia's laws were that current I would be shocked. I mean, we have a communications minister who thinks that you can filter bit torrent without killing it

Australia = elected government. China = military dictatorship.

That's probably about right. Since Australia prides itself as a democracy

As an Aussie I can assure you that a vast majority of Aussie DO NOT WANT THE BLUDDY FILTER!
The number of polls and surveys have run at around 80+% against.
Why are they doing it? For basic political gain of right wing votes - plain and simple. See: http://nocleanfeed.com/ for more details

the new you-beat protect the children internet filter which was originally to stop child porn but magically grows a new arm each day to cover something else.

http://nocleanfeed.com/ for more

Personally I'll be voting for the pirate party giving preferences to the sex party in the next federal election.

And no, I didn't vote for Rudd in the first place either.

Australia,

The Wannabe-Nazi asshat in charge is talking about rolling out a national fibre network, but I ask "Whats the fucking point?" if we can only access government approved content.
http://nocleanfeed.com/

and the irony is that if the police or gov did do something it would stuff it up for the majority leaving the scammers, spammers and hackers free to find new ways to break, annoy and work around stuff. Oh hang on they are already doing it...

http://nocleanfeed.com/ - i personally have not been and likely never will go to australia, but if you are a citizen, you would be hurting the rest of the world if you didn't help fight censorship. keep on trucking, aussies.

Please visit NoCleanFeed for more information on the proposed nationwide ISP-level filter.

noone ever said our country was perfect. and i'm all for fixing it, as are the majority of australians according to opinion polls. the point i was making is that your view of what the majority think is quite obviously not what the majority actually think, and posting your opinion as fact without citations or any evidence to back it up (when it takes 30seconds on google to do so) just shows how closed minded and stuck inside a reality of your own creation you really are.

if you want to step out of your bubble for a moment and be a part of the solution go here (if you haven't done so already): http://nocleanfeed.com/

It's been seeing a bit of press. Both the ABC and Sydney Morning Herald have had articles. The issue set a record in the ABC's comments section. It was the first time a story with any serious number of comments (100+) had not received a single dissenting comment. Every single commenter was against the filtering proposal. Also see the No Clean Feed website.

NoCleanFeed has a pretty good site on how to take action on this.

If you're only bitching about this, and don't do anything, you are nothing more than a goatse.

ws

NoCleanFeed has a pretty good site on how to take action on this.

If you're only bitching about this, and don't do anything, you are nothing more than a goatse.

ws

Everyone knows? Can you explain to me why I was at a party last night (that's shocking enough for starters), and when the filter topic was brought up (this party was full of really hot chicks as you can tell), one of the guys turns around and says, "But all they're doing is banning anorexia and euthanasia sites..."

This is the general thought behind the Australian community because they read sites like news.com.au which spin that type of media bullshit :) The only thing that we can do would be to start spreading the words ourself, http://nocleanfeed.com/

The EFA (Australia EFF) are. see: http://nocleanfeed.com/learn.html
http://www.efa.org.au/censorship/mandatory-isp-blocking/

There's a website setup listing all the things you can do.

http://nocleanfeed.com/

I'm losing my mod points for this...

This whole situation is atrocious. Sadly all we are able to do is bitch and moan and hope someone who can do something listens. This topic came up on /. a few weeks ago and the general consensus is about the same. It sucks.

Sorry to come on and link-drop, but as many people as possible should visit this and write to Conroy. If you're lazy at least sign the petition. 7616 signatures and counting...and its gone up 10 sigs since I started posting.

You'll notice I said "more technical interference", even our communications minister isn't as bad as the Ayatollah. :)

The quote appeared in the paper here.

For anyone interested check out, our (Electronic Frontiers Australia) campaign site.

What you have to do is throw some very large numbers at them instead of the small percentages.

I for one will be "writing" to Sen. Conroy and Co, once I figure out how one "writes" a "letter". I've also been plugging this to everyone that'll listen, which is a surprising amount of people. Once you throw the aforementioned numbers at them, and tell them they're paying for this crackpot's scheme, they start to get rather irate about it.

Call your local MP's office.
Write to your local MP. (Find their details here at http://apps.aec.gov.au/esearch/)

Call Conroy's office.
Write to Conroy.

Tell your friends and family about it, draft up a letter for their concerns too.
We need to get it as easy and quick to oppose as possible for every day Australians.

Check http://nocleanfeed.com/ for more info.

Why is censorship of illegal material bad? If the material is illegal, why shouldn't it be censored?

When you read further into the policy, they will also be filtering legal material. This is the part that has insensed most of us. Nobody is arguing against censorship of the kiddy porn.

It is the legal content that is the issue. Legal content will also be filtered out, with no Australian being able to opt out of the filters.

This is the true crux of this argument and the point we should be concentrating on.

I take great issue with someone else telling me what legal content is appropriate, and inappropriate to view. I take even greater issue when there are no children within cooee of this home, and the youngest person to touch my computer is on the wrong side of 40. Why should I only be allowed to view someone else's sanitised view of the world, suitable only for a ten year old?

This explains it far better than I can at this hour of the morning.

email: minister@dbcde.gov.au

phone: (03) 9650 1188

snail mail:
Senator Stephen Conroy
Minister for Communications, Broadband and the Digital Economy
Level 4, 4 Treasury Place
Melbourne Vic 3002

The EFA also has a form letter you can copy and send here if you need it.

This is very real, and very scary.

http://nocleanfeed.com/

I'm not sure why you think we're immune from this stupidity in Australia, or why Labor would be any better in this regard. Australia's censorship laws are some of the worst in the Western world.

Too bad this is actually just one potential filter to be used in a government mandated filtering system, with no complete opt out. Every ISP in Australia will be required to provide a 'clean feed' that filters out illegal and inappropriate material. http://nocleanfeed.com/ http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;1399635276 The great firewall of China is being rebuilt in Australia

What I have not seen mentioned is the following, planned by the same government:

A great firewall will be erected around Australia. Australians will not have the option to opt out of 'illegal' content.
If you are Australian, take ACTION NOW!!! I've already contacted the current local (Liberal) member and Senator Conroy. This firewall, if it is to work at all, will slow speeds by up to 75% and will cripple the communications of an entire nation. The solutions needed to make sure that corporate VPNs and other tools keep working is non-existent. This is not a hoax. Please let the tech community be able to tell them what we think.

http://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/76ya5/australians_will_be_unable_to_optout_of_the/
http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php?id=1399635276&eid=-255
http://nocleanfeed.com/takeaction.html This is being discussed on Whirlpool but NEEDS TO HIT THE MEDIA TODAY!