Australian Senator Wants to Censor the Net

Paul writes "An Australian Senator wants Australians' internet connections to be automatically filtered by ISPs. Anyone who wants to view pornography or 'other adult material' (details not specified) must apply to their ISP to be given access to it. Another step towards becoming a nanny state."

Comments

Re:Nasties on the net

[hyu]

It should be well documented by now that nobody believes we are capable of doing this. Every government representative or corporate executive seems to think that we need guidance. And they might have a point.

If there are so many incidents, then clearly there is some sort of issue, correct? It's all well and nice to say that we should supervise or self-censor, but how many people really do that effectively?

At the age of eleven, I was surfing pornography on the world wide web. At age twelve, I was playing highly violent videogames. I was enthralled by Grand Theft Auto 3 at fourteen. I may not have acted upon what I was seeing and playing, but I was still being exposed to it.

I'm not trying to say that we should censor the internet becuase parents don't know how. What I'm saying is that maybe there is a reason behind why everyone tells us we should have this censorship and guidance. Many government debates are started just to make an issue come to light, not necessarily to actually make huge reforms like this one happen.

Re:It's already in place

[bollocks]

If there's a difference it's this:
The first time round, the Howard government passed the law banning porn on the internet in exchange for getting independant Senator Brian Harradine's support for the partial privatization of Telstra (Govt owned Telco). So what happened was they spent a couple of million on setting up an agency to do it, then never enforced the laws.

The difference this time is that it comes from within the government itself, which means that we'd likely get more than just the laws this time, they may actually try to enforce them (and just because they can't get rid of net porn doesn't mean they can screw things up trying).

Re:Freedom of Speech, not just for anyone

[Smuffe]

>If you want to censor something, go after the important stuff, like how to build nuclear bombs in a weekend with spare parts.

You wouldn't happend to have a link do you? Been itching for something to do during the holidays...

Re:From the horse's mouth.

[darkewolf]

The best bit is:

A survey by the Australia Institute called Regulating Youth Access to Pornography dated 2003 found that 84% of boys and 60% of girls had been accidentally exposed to pornographic material on the internet, while two in every five boys had deliberately used the internet at some stage to see sexually explicit material.

Suggesting that only boys go out of their way to look for porn. I am sure there is one or two girls that actively look for porn. Of course, maybe guys are a touch more obcessive about it.

Re:Nasties on the net

[aussie_a]

Completly unworkable.

You're fucking kidding me, right? Parents supervising kids is unworkable? If parents aren't able to raise their kids, without big brother, perhaps they should put their kids up for adoption (which in Australia is even more of an option, as there is a shortage of unwanted children).

Are we supposed to set up a dedicated computer room instead of their bedrooms

Well, actually, many families do have a dedicated computer room. But that really isn't important to this discussion.

make sure there is a full time watcher?

Actually, I do remember knowing someone who wasn't allowed on the computer without supervision (and this was pre-internet). But normally that isn't necessary. It's all a matter of trust. How much do you trust your kids? How much CAN you trust your kids? If you've raised them right, then yes, they won't do the wrong thing. But you have to encourage openness and be someone they can open up to.

But even if you haven't instilled trust in your kid, you can monitor the computer (there's all sorts of programs that allow you to have varying degrees of monitoring), from a simple net-nanny type program to knowing everything they type on their keyboard. Buy a decent net-nanny program that keeps a log of when it's enabled and disabled. The only thing the kid can do, is delete the log, which will tell you, they've done something they shouldn't have.

But the real question is, are you going to buy cable with adult channels and not place a lock on the adult channels? Of course you aren't. So why do people do it with the internet?

Kids over 13 or so can stay home alone. Do we lock up the computer room when the adults are out?

Are you being satirical? Or are you truly ignorant of the most basic password function on a computer?

Censoring Pr0n on the Net is impossible...

[Chaffar]

Saudi Arabia has a special version of the internet, one that not only blocks you from accessing pr0n sites, but that also registers your name and IP if you attempt to access it. Urban legend says that if you attempt to access "illegal" sites too many times you get a phone call. According to this article:"the Saudi government maintains an active interest in filtering non-sexually explicit Web content for users within the Kingdom." Well guess what, Saudis can get their hands on pr0n all the time. It's harder, more time-consuming, but they end up with what they want. They started using "anonymizer" sites, and for a time it was a race between the pr0nsters looking for new unblocked anonymizers and the ISP (notice the use of the word "the") blocking them. Now you have P2P, and in the worst case you have a contact outside the kingdom who sends you "the goods".

So if Australia wants to block pr0n, go ahead, adults won't give a sh*t they'll register their names to get access. However, the teenagers who'll be craving for pr0n will also find ways to access it through the internet, but in process will probably learn a lot more shady techniques than if they had access to it like they do now.

Hell they might end up with the same situation as in the States, where adults buy beer for the teenagers who want to drink:

Teenager: |-|3Y D0od C4N J0o 637 /\/\3 t3|h lAt3St J3N|\|4 J4m350|\| ?!??!111? Opportunistic adult: Jenna Jameson? It's gonna cost ya big...

Re:So?

[Seumas]

I'm not a historian, but one time a really smart person said something along the lines of "I don't want to be part of any government that gives a completely ignorant and careless moron the same power to decide the fate of my society as the brightest and best informed".

And when I hear people say some of the things they do these days, I have to agree. Just because you have an opinion doesn't mean you should have the same weight as someone else. The dude who wants to turn the country into one of the "proud white aryan race ONLY" shouldn't have the same voting weight as . . . well, most anyone for that matter.

The other day, someone asked me why I cared about privacy. Then I suggested that they go out to the parking lot and unlock their car and leave the doors open and the keys in the ignition while they go back to the office for the rest of the day.

"What?! Why?!" they asked.

"Well, because - if you have nothing to hide, what do you care if someone has access to your vehicle and everything in it?", I replied.

"Yeah, but a bad person could just as well dig through all the stuff in my car or steal it as a good guy!" they complained.

"Exactly", I answered.

Re:They have a way around it...

[Seumas]

Yeha, it's not like they'll ever decide to require you to sign up and go through a special set of hoops to be legally allowed to view news or political or activist content over the web in the future or anything!

Speaking of Censorship

[Tsiangkun]

is "The Revolution Will not be Televised" being censored from the American public ?

I've been googling for a place to buy a copy, and it's not coming up for me as a possible purchase item. I can find sound tracks, reviews, and books, but no movies.

Was this never released for purchase ? I haven't seen it in a couple of years, when I caught it at a film festival in San Francisco. I was wanting to show it to some friends.

I'm refering to a documentary movie on Hugo Chevez/Venezuela, a CIA staged coup, and the revolt of the people caught serendipidously by some Irish film makers. It's seemingly not available for purchase on the intraweb from the US.

It is also is known as 'chavez inside the coup' according to google. Anyone ever seen this on DVD or VHS ?

Re:Nasties on the net

[Koatdus]

Completly unworkable. Assume a household with 3 children. Are we supposed to set up a dedicated computer room instead of their bedrooms (where kids have had their PCs since ..forever...1981 in my case) and make sure there is a full time watcher?



Um... Yes it is called parenting your children. You, as the adult, are supposed to be in charge of your children and what they are doing. You are supposed to be taking care of them and making sure that they are ok. Not ignoring them while they play on the internet in their rooms with the door closed.

There is no way in hell children under 16 should have unsupervised internet access. As the parent it is your job to supervise them. Counting on the Government or some "net-nanny" software to do it for you is shirking your responsibilities.

In my house there are 7 computers. Only 3 of them have access to the internet and they are all in a public room where anyone can walk by and see what is on the screen. My wife and I do walk by on a regular basis.

The PC's that are in the kids rooms do not have internet access. They can play games, watch dvd's, listen to music, burn cd's, do homework, etc, in their rooms but if they want to use email, IM, or the Web they have to do it in public.

Coupled with the fact that we actually talk to our kids about what is approprite and what is not, this seems to do the job.

Re:So?

[stupid_is]

Other good quotes (from wisdomquotes.com):

Eugene V. Debs: When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right.
George Bernard Shaw: Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.
Jane Auer: Voting is one of the few things where boycotting in protest clearly makes the problem worse rather than better.
John Simon: Democracy encourages the majority to decide things about which the majority is ignorant.
Thomas Jefferson: A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.

Heinlein wrote something similar to to your quote - something along the lines of "democracy is the idea that one intelligent person has an equal weight as a million stupid people in deciding the future, where's the sense in that?"

I think the Thomas Jefferson quote is slowly being eroded thanks to Corporate America, sad.

Re:You don't think they actually comprehend that!

[dwandy]

What the Chinese are doing, and what Australia is discussing are two different things.
China blocks for all citizens, and they lock up people who work around it.
(So Far) the Aussie is only talking about adopting an opt-in policy. Meaning that people who want to see an unfiltered view of the net can request it. No one's going to get locked up for working around it, since anyone who wants pr0n can just ask...

I am glad that I'm not in Australia though, because all this means is an increased cost of internet to everyone for a system that can't possibly work, but will leave parents with a false sense of security and a higher taxation rate to pay for "enforcement"...oh, and a list of deviants for the governement to use if there's some kind of problem.