Censoring Australian Censors' Blacklist

steveroehrs writes: "'Your access to the Web is being censored by the Government -- but it refuses to reveal exactly what it is we are not allowed to see.' Despite the attempts of Electronic Frontiers Australia in obtaining a copy of the Australian Internet black-list, the Australian government is still refusing to release the list to the public. This is in stark contrast to the situation for film classification, where the list is freely available. Article here "

Comments

Why do they think it would work?

[martyb]

Is google blocked/censored down under? If not, then a good chunk of the blocked content should still be readily available.

Instead of using, say:
http://www.foo.com
prefix it with a string to access google's cache:
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:www.foo.com

I'll be the first to admit it is far from perfect (robots.txt, not up-to-the-second, lose access to on-line interactive sites (e.g. e-bay, etc.)), nor is it easy for the casual user. Still, an enterprising user could readily get past some of the censoring. Further, a simple ssh to a host in a different, non-blocked host in a different country would afford access as well.

As for determining WHAT has been blocked, I would think a simple pair of scans across all IP addresses, once attempting access in Australia, and another from, say, USA; then just compare notes and voila! That would seem to be a heck of lot quicker than the months they've been at it trying to go through formal channels.

Re:Ironic..

[bartyboy]

For those of you who have missed the censorship on Slashdot, here are some links:

• The post that started it all - by negativekarmanow. At the time of this posting, 506 moderations.
• K5 story on this subject
• An explanation by Jamie McCarthy. (posted on K5 for some reason)

And no, this is not offtopic. Read the links before you moderate.

Bart