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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."
Well, I want monkeys to fly out of my ass. That doesn't mean it's likely to happen.
So what? Isn't the government the same as my parents? The government gave birth to me, raised me, fed me, taught me right from wrong. Surely they should be allowed to censor me?
The article talks about the Internet but my bet is that they are talking about content filtering on http traffic.
Peer to peer is much harder to filter and readily available to the porn industry.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
"Keeping kids from nasties on the net"
Here, I have a much better suggestion - supervision your children while they use the internet!
Wildly unpopular, impossible to implement and very, very expensive to even attempt.
Yup. Sounds like a winning proposal to me.
This is a Tasmanian senator. Tasmania is an Island long associated with jokes about incest and redneck stupidity. For you Americans think West Virginia style jokes (except that Tasmania is a very cold place and it's population quite tiny).
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
From TFA:
Does someone have a list of names of these idiots, so our Australian friends know who to rail against and vote out of office ASAP?
As a term of reference for you delightful residents of the US of A, Tasmania is like the US 'south' (rednecks, interbreeding et al) and the 'Liberal' party isn't actually a liberal party, but a conservative party (similar to your Republican party).
... and the other three were lying about it.
However, this motion/proposal is unlikely to gain legs as Howard (current Australian Prime Minister) would almost certainly leave it as a 'conscience vote' and I sincerely doubt that it will have the popularity to get through the lower house, let alone the upper house.
And, as I understand it, this sort of 'filtering' would be quite difficult to do and the current upper echelons of politicians *and* public servants switched on enough to listen to those who would advise them on the viability of 'filtering'... so false alarm and ignore the political posturing. The guy is (most likely) in a marginal seat and is trying to buy some credit with the local religious conservatives.
"while two in five boys had deliberately used the net to see sexually explicit material"
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. -- Leo Tolstoy
I believe the system should default automatically in favor of protecting our rights as adults before we start considering the children.
Big difference...
The adults who wish to protect the children in their custody can then opt-in (and pay for) whatever safe haven/playpen schemes they wish to create.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
They can filter all the porn they want -- as soon as they can define it: http://www.spectacle.org/296/opt.html (Safe For Work)
... porn?
(Or, even better, tell me why it's immoral.)
More seriously:
There are some fine lines between art and porn...stuff like: http://konzababy.tripod.com/photography.htm
(?Not?Safe?For?work?) Click the tiny image to enlarge. -- Is this art or porn? (I say art 100%)
Even closer still are things like http://www.domai.com (Not Safe For Work)
See this interview (Not Safe For Work) on domai.com for an interesting dialog about nudes/art/porn. -- Is Domai Porn? Difficult to say (I lean more toward yes, but I have reservations)
Any thoughts? What makes porn
Required reading for internet skeptics
Libraries worldwide have been contending (with varying degrees of failure) with this sort of proposal for years now. In the U.S., many states now require library Internet computers to be filtered; the federal government has also made it a requirement for most of the federal funding available to libraries.
... yeesh.
Because of these restrictions, the library where I work is filtered. We staff have to immediately disable the filter for any adult patron who requests unfiltered access (and we're supposed to, but often, er, forget to) restore the filter as soon as that particular patron's session is over.
You wouldn't believe the idiotic stuff that gets blocked -- innocuous, harmless, completely innocent stuff, right alongside the more questionable. One fellow from out of town couldn't log into his own business's web page with the filter on -- presumably because his first name, which appeared in the URL, began with a "D" and rhymed with "ick".
Meanwhile, the patrons blithely find all the porn and violence and four-letter-word-headphone-breaking rap music they like. They learn very quickly which sites the filter isn't catching, and openly share them with one another.
The staff terminals have the filtering turned off full-time (technically illegally, if I understand correctly). Although library policy says we are only to turn off the filter "as needed", it's dadblasted impossible to do our jobs with it on, so it stays off.
So now these Australian senators want to impose this state of affairs on an entire country
How can a post be modded "overrated" or "underrated" when it hasn't been rated yet?
No, it's not even good in theory! It's extremely bad in theory! It's opressive and totalitarian, and is a policy better suited for those "towel-head" theocracies that the US and Australian government are -- allegedly -- enemies of. In fact, it's the kind of idea that in a sane world would get this senator kicked out off office almost immediately, because it's dangerously close to treason for any allegedly "free" society.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
The only, repeat only way to police what kids see on the net is to have a human in the loop in real time, for every kid. And we could be waiting a while for that to happen.
Well, I guess the developers of Freenet, I2P and other anonymising networks will be grateful, as support, userbase and donations surge.
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
The main problem is that this is generally about preventing underage kids from accessing porn. The thing is that if kids are intent on acessing porn then this isn't going to stop them. If kids are just accidently coming in to contact with porn then a lot of the time it would be through spam email. Lets see them try to filter a ssl connection to hotmail.
Some people don't understand the technology, but think they are qualified to make decisions about laws governing that technology. Some People are idiots.
...and that is all I have to say about that.
http://jessta.id.au
"I worry about my child and the Internet all the time, even though she's too young to have logged on yet. Here's what I worry about. I worry that 10 or 15 years from now, she will come to me and say 'Daddy, where were you when they took freedom of the press away from the Internet?'"
--Mike Godwin, Electronic Frontier Foundation
I wholeheartedly agree that the only sensible course ofg action is to vote them out of office ASAP. If only!
Just yesterday, the Australian govt. passed two contentious laws - one that basically undoes hundreds of years of hard-won freedoms at a stroke in the name of "anti-terrorism" - you're not even allowed to makes jokes at the govt's expense now - in fact this posting breaks this new law. Free speech has gone. The other contentious law effectively removes hundreds of workers' rights in the name of 'streamlining the economy' and 'remaining competitive'. Basically it gives employers carte blanche to demand what the fuck they like of an employee, and if they don't like it, they can always leave. This is modern 'liberalism' though quite frankly it's a total abuse of that term that the current regime use it to describe themselves.
This situation has come about because the Australian people were duped into voting for a totally unevenly balanced parliament, railroaded into this vote by a series of lies and distortions and scare tactics at the last election. (Don't vote for the other lot, they'll take away your right to SHOP!) The resulting majority means that they can currently pass whatever they like and no-one can really fight it. This is NOT what the Australian people thought they were voting for, as neither of these new laws were part of the election manifesto. Just like the USA, who our Prime Minister appears to be in thrall to, we are sleepwalking into a nightmare of Orwellian proportions.
If they so choose, this porn bill (if it becomes one) could well pass, then they'll worry about implementation later, no matter howe impractical it might actually be. However, in the scheme of things, this is nothing compared to what they've ALREADY done.
While I agree that children stumbling upon pornography is a concern, this is NOT a good solution. For instance, why is it an opt-out solution, instead of an opt-in solution? Or why not let the market deal with it: sooner or later, there will be a demand for this service. At that point, any ISP can take it up, and those who want their Internet censored can simply use that ISP.
Those with a conspiratorial mind may see other uses for this. It's a first step towards general content control. Even though this almost certainly is not the intent, there will always be people who feel that such a great tool can always be used for many more things. Next step might perhaps be blocking (without the opt-out, of course) child pornography. That's not likely to garner much opposition. After that they'll go for snuff, or prostitution. After awhile they'll start finding things that aren't really illegal, just morally reprehensible (to most people). Pretty soon, censoring yet another thing won't be such a big deal.
There are times when censorship might seem like a good idea. However, anything that might lead to a less free society is not a good solution. It might sound callous, but I'd rather have a few children messed up by seeing pornography accidentally (if that really is such a trauma) than live with a perpetual censoring filter, just waiting to be abused. Parents, find another way to protect your kids, please.
L'homme est né libre, et partout il est dans les fers.