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

This seems a bit obvious...

[dagoalieman]

I mean really- if the people are allowed a glimpse at what they're missing, they'll just scream "GIVE IT TO US!!" And that's precisely what the government doesn't want.

Also, if they reveal the list, everyone will start second-guessing their judgements. Anyone can tell you that any slight lack of confidence on behalf of the people is very bad for people in the government. With some people out there, give them a slight reason, and you'll see pipe bombs coming through your front window.

If only there were a way for the government to publish the list without getting themselves deeper in the alligator pit, they would likely do it. But until then, I fear they're SOL.

I may not like our government, but I am thankful for what I have here in the US...

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Before you shoot down Australia

[Anonymous Coward]

Im a Aussie [Sydney based] who has had the chance to live and work in many difference places around Europe and the US. [Seems to be an Australian cultural thing to get drunk in strange places]

Our government does some stupid things. Attempting to censor the net is one. When Australia gets mentioned on /. like this alot of people who dont understand the country get on their high horses and yell "Australia = facists", "If they had guns they could defend their rights", etc etc.

When it comes down to it, our government is no more stupid than the next guys. We're still free down here [wish there was more free beer!], and I honestly believe Australia is one of the best places to live in the world.

The man who passed the rule will no longer hold the balance of power in 2 years in the Senate elections, and we can move forward and change policy. This is what a democracy allows us to do.

As a matter of interest for some of you US based people -- Australia has no freedom of speech legislation. This is a myth. The only freedom of speech that is mentioned in the constitution and our laws is that of Political free speech.

Does that make us a a facist state? No. Would we react well to this changing? No.

Ineffectual hot air , no real impact

[indaba]

No impact, ineffectual legislation is poor law, and just ends up making us look silly.

My guess is that the government is too embarrassed to show how pitifully few sites have been taken down for the money expended

You need to remember that Alston et all are only really interested in pandering to the popular press, and not in actually making any real changes.

As far as I can make out, I still have unrestricted access to everything I have ever had

i saw this because:

I have NOT been forced to install blocking software

My ISP is not running blocking software (nor any others to my knowledge

If the ABA has taken down a site, I'm sure it's just popped up again overseas

It's probably just more boring pr0n anyway ..

ho , hum , back to work...

I think the point has been missed here..

[rat7307]

The intent of Alstons bill is to shutdown sites WITHIN Australia or by Australians that publish content which is deemed inappropriate as per australia's publishing laws. This is not always a bad thing..

They do not filter incoming content, They just shut down those sites within the countries borders that, in effect are breaking the law (Kiddy porn etc..)..
How effective that is, well, thats another debate.
But at least this way there is some accountablilty for what these people put on the net.
There has (to date) been no policlitical/anti govt. sites closed down that I am aware of.

The government doesn't care

[Goonie]

They're not *really* interested in censoring the net. In fact, I'm sure Richard Alston (the Minister responsible) wishes this stupid legislation would go away. It was rushed through the Senate in a (failed) attempt to impress a whacko Bible-basher independent Senator from Tasmania whose vote the government wanted at the time, and to a lesser extent to impress some of the government's more wowserish backbench and junior ministers.

However, when the government actually looked at implementing the legislation, they realised that all they could practically do was require ISPs to *offer* commercial filtering software, and for those commercial filtering providers to filter stuff that the classification board deemed offensive. It's not like the Great Firewall of China, people.

In practice, everyone's happy. The government is seen to be doing stuff (thus keeping the wowsers happy), the Bloggs family installs the filtering package on their PC, young Joeseph Bloggs gets around the filtering package, and the rest of us keep downloading porn and bomb recipes totally unencumbered by any filtering software at all :)

I agree that an unenforced bad law is still a bad thing, but it's a hell of a lot nicer than an enforced bad law.