Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Australian Labor Party Proposes ISP Level Filter

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the education-and-parenting-also-too-hard dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Australian Labor Party (much the same as the Democrats in the US) are claiming they will force ISPs to block violent and pornographic content if elected. From the article: 'Mr Beazley said all households would be included in the policy unless there was a specific request for access to such material. It was "too hard" for many parents to install internet blockers on their computers to prevent offensive material being downloaded.'"

4 of 459 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Australia seems to be more repressive than US by fabs64 · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's more of a "the government says this" and the public says "yeah try and enforce it" kind of thing really.
    The two major governments are reasonably conservative (although an analogy of the labor party to the democrats is just plain farsical) and so we get crap like this proposed.

    Also, puritanical implies religious, Australia is very secular, and this is more a case of "working class mums and dads don't want their kids looking up porn".

    That said, this is a completely ludicrious proposal by the labor party and needless to say they've lost my vote for the next federal election.

  2. Re:Australia seems to be more repressive than US by troll+-1 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Hosting porn sites in Australia has been banned since 2000 under the Broadcasting Services Amendment (Online Services) Act 1999,

    They have the same restrictions for web content providers as they do for broadcast television producers. More info here.

  3. Meanwhile, in Italy... by grand_it · · Score: 5, Informative
    ..Judges are requiring ISPs to restict certain websites by filtering their IP addresses. Child porn, of course, but also sites that aren't doing anything illegal in their place of activity, such as:

    - chinese Web-TVs that stream sport events whose broadcasting rights in Italy are owned by satellite operator SKY;
    - Gambling/sport betting/online casinos, that are required to pay a royalty/tax to operate in Italy;

    The worst part of the deal is that no formal trial is done before the order is given to ISPs, so websites don't have any chance to defend their rights. Oh, and citizens don't have the right to know the full list of restricted websites.

  4. Re:Australia seems to be more repressive than US by spirality · · Score: 4, Informative

    Not sure how or why you got modded up. Seems like a troll to me, but I'll bite.

    Kids are not free human beings! Parents are the custodians of their kids until the children have been properly trained to become full-fleged members of society with all of the rights and responsibilities that implies. To put it another way, until you are under the law, liable for all of the consequences of your actions you are not truely free because freedom implies a certain amount of responsibility. You are infact subject to your parents' whims to a certain extent. The way they raise you is their responsibility/problem, but make no mistake you are not free. John Locke really does a much better job than me explaining this. You might look at his Second Treatise.