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Australian Labor Party Proposes ISP Level Filter
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.'"
Just who defines "violent" or "pornographic" material? What is "violent" or "pornographic" material? Frankly, people who are smart will eventually get around it anyway...
I wonder if anyone who "opts-out" of the ISP filter will be more likely to have their internet usage monitored and their home raided?
How would adults contact their ISPs to re-enable the content? Also, if adults did request to have the conent put through, they could be descriminated against. This sounds like a bad idea!
Cry me a fucking river.
Can't install filtering software? How about sitting down with your kids and keeping an eye on what they're doing instead? Move the PC out to a communal area - the front room or dining room, somewhere you can see it from. Hell, you could even end up taking an actual interest in what they're doing, discussing things with them and perhaps even taking a part in their education (dangerous, I know). You never know, they might even learn a few limits of their own.
God forbid that parents should have to take some personal responsibility for what their children are exposed to. I know parenting isn't easy, but this trend of shoving responsibility and effort off to third parties is sickening.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Without something like this, parents would have to do things like be responsible, or supervise their children!!!
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
The ALP is currently in unelectable self-destruct mode, and appears to show no real signs of getting that fixed before the next election. Which is unfortunate, as the incumbents are a bunch of equally obnoxious nazis, though for other reasons. I doubt that having such nanny-state type policies is likely to help them in any way. What I can't figure out is why they don't just hand over the leadership to Julia Gillard and start working towards making themselves actually attractive to voters. None of this stuff is relevant to that goal, or will help them in any way shape or form. And I speak as a parent.
A study just released by the Labor Party shows that 99.9% of the other parties's web site are considered violent, pornographic or both. "So if we block them after we are elected, it won't be censorship, it will be because we need to protect those poor, hapless households", says Mr Weazley, head of the Internet Content Tagging Office at the Labor Party HQ.
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Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
I'll go set up my own ISP. With blackjack. And hookers. In fact, forget the ISP and the blackjack.
"I'd hate to die twice. It's so boring."
- Feynman's last words.
Tomrrow, dissident speech and knowledge.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It seems just about every week we're hearing more and more censoring and blocking and "You can't do that here" talk from Australia. I always thought this was a free-wheeling, "come and say g'day" kinda place. But it sounds like it's more puritanical than the US, something I didn't think was possible.
What is up with this country?
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
what'dya expect? Australians are one of the very few countries actually rivalling the US when it comes to being hung up on sex issues. I mean, the wear swimsuits when they take showers.
Thenagain, I come from the other extreme, so I guess I'm sort of biased here.. (the other being Scandinavia).. I remember once seeing a late night show in the US, the whole idea of which was to show commercials that could never have been aired in the US.. like that was the whole point of it.
Blew my mind, that one..
Nyhetsankaret.com -- det bÃsta av Sveriges Nyhetssido
Since when did the democratic party want to censor internet access? I usually here proposals like this from the other side of the isle.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Porn is anything you lose interest in after you cum
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
Probably because AU has little in the way of a tech development industry, so this is the only kind of story we can get onto slashdot. Really, we are pretty easy-going. These comments should be taken with the context that the man proposing them (Kim Beazely) is absolutely unelectable.
President Clinton, one of the best presidents we've ever had
Thanks for the laugh; you started my day off right.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
If I would run an ISP, I would offer 'adult content filtering' as a service, their is obviously a big market for this.
Where I live, there are not that much differences between ISP's, I'am pretty sure a lot of parents would take such a service into account when choosing for an ISP.
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
My 2 cents:
Filtering is fine, if its *your* choice not to view, not someone else imposing their filtering on you. This is why the British model is not a good one.
Opt-in would be better, it should be a regular purchased service like any other net service. Parents should also have the option of decided WHO defines their filter list. So that they could choose the filtering according to their own religious/Moral beliefs. If you're Islamic you might want to block Danish cartoons for example. If you're a Google fanboy, you should be able to order the Google safe filter. The *parent* should get to decide who they want to do the blocking, the ISP should simply offer the service of routing it.
ISP should *sell* the service, then there is a commercial incentive to offer a market in good filtering choices, rather than a reluctant half assed service.
Governments should be kept at barge pole length, because they have a tendency to censor views they disagree with.
Parents should be able to change the preferences on a website with their login/password they get when they order net connections, so that as their children grow they can turn the filtering down, or when they want to supervise their kids internet usage they can turn it off.
Finally, some filtering services should be whitelisted services rather than blacklisted, i.e. a whitelist of known good sites, for parents that are particularly sensitive to porn/violence issues.
Well if China has a Great Wall
Mark Twain once said that "Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it". Evidently, people have been using children as a means of taking things away from adults for a long time now.
"protecting" their kids from everything short of bottled water.
You trust that shit? It could be zebra cum -- you just don't know!
I know AOL UK offers parental filters as part oftheir package. Surely AOL Australia, and various other ISPs offer the same. So if local filtering software is too much hassle, Change ISP, morons!
Welcome to Australian politics, everyone. *rolls eyes*
For those not familiar with Australian politics, let me help out a little. In Australia, we have a healthy disrespect for our politicos. Your average Australian will happily diss both major parties, even if they actually voted them in. Occasionally, one of our politicos will say something that is so out there, so backwards, so poorly thought-out that it causes many of us to hang or heads in shame.
And when it comes to IT, our politicos are famous for coming up with poorly thought-out schemes that can make people from even the most backwater of country towns sadly shake their heads, thinking "luddites". So please, don't judge us based on our "representatives". Please look at us as the designated driver who is ashamed of their drunken friend who is making a fool out of himself but still needs someone to drive them home at the end of the evening. This is a shameless attempt at grabbing support from the "think of the children" voter demographic by a party that has been getting spanked in the federal elections for many years by a party that isn't that much better. Hopefully this attempt (not the first) will die the death it deserves and we won't have to hear about it again. Fear not, there isn't any significant grassroots desire for this sort of censorship. Not that I know about anyway! I'd say that the bulk of informed people find the whole proposal to be ridiculous.
And will the list of people who "opt out" be kept confidential? How confidential? How do people know that by opting to receive porn, they won't end up on a list somewhere -- since obviously by definition there has to be a list at their ISP -- of "Social Deviants who Like Violence and Pornography"? Just the fact that such a list could or might exist, could easily cause people to not want to opt out. Everyone has a price; how long before some overzealous investigative reporter or tabloid journalist bribes someone at an ISP for the list, just to see what interesting people are on there? I can't think of a better story than revealing which government officals are on the "Porn List."
The way to do it is to make the system opt-in, not opt-out. If people have kids, all they need to do is make a phone call to their ISP; various ISPs can even market the feature as a selling point of their service if they wanted to. But any scheme that automatically filters everything and requires you to put yourself on a list in order to get uncensored access is inherently a bad idea.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Of course "the idea" dates from a time and place when the firepower available to the populace was roughly equivalent to that available to the government. Outdated since the arrival of the gatling gun - let alone the vast, vast gap between the semi automatic rifle or shotgun (legal for Aussie citizen) and the kind of stuff the RAAF or Australian Army has (eg Metal Storm)
They might kill you, yes, but not everyone.
The same principle can be applied with more effect using a strategy of unarmed, peaceful revolution. Shooting an armed revolutionary can be seen as a valid thing for a government to do. Shooting an unarmed civilian is not - shoot a few and you'll have no support, and no army to do your bidding.
- 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.
I mean, kids just aren't interested in porn. If they happen on an iffy site that has porn ads they'll just go EWW! and move on to something more interesting.
If on the other hand they're old enough to actually be looking for porn I don't see how making porn harder to access for them is going to make them Better People (TM) when they grow up.
And if you wanted to censor violence you would first have to shutdown all tv channels basically, and bomb hollywood.
What excuse do we have for voting these people in, even if we know that they are bloody morons? There is more than two political parties in Australia. The Australian population is stupid for not researching the alternatives.
(P.S. I am an Australian, and was proud to be one before September 11 hysteria)
This was the legal basis for the old USSR to criminalize Bible smugglers. It is often helpful to remind Christians of this when debating ill conceived government censorship programs. I am a Christian, and I despise pornography. It destroys the viewers sex life, and in cases of violent addiction those of many others around him (it is usually a male). I have read heart wrenching letters from women, one of them I know personally, who have no sex life because their husband would rather do himself in front of a picture. Nevertheless, what words or images act as pornography varies with the culture and individual.
Machines might be able to recognize images containing bare skin, but bare skin is not pornography. It might be possible to create a bayesian like filter that could be trained to block text and images offensive to an individual. Or an individual can hire a service that shares his/her values to do the filtering. The government (US or AU) does *not* share my values.
For my own family, I check authentication and do bayesian content filtering using pymilter for email. I use squid with a "safesites" list for kids and a "bannedsites" list (obtained from the browsing habits of porn addicted employees of my clients who couldn't stop on their own during working hours) for adults. I use pine to screen my personal email (no images) and lynx to screen websites before adding to safesites.
Some of the students in a beginning programming class I teach were unable to browse web pages on group theory, klein bottles, and other topics which I really doubt acted as porn for anyone alive now or throughout history. They were blocked by a porn filter installed by the parents. I guess those 3D projections of 4 dimensional surfaces do have a rather sensuous look to them. Third party filters are very frustrating. I sympathize with those advocate them in their desire to fight porn. However, they simply do not understand computer technology (and those I know personally invariably run Windows on their PC).
Maybe the Slashdot crowd thinks that just because Hillary Clinton crusades for enforcing her moral code with legislation despite the constitutional restraints on such a course, that it represents the policy or desire of all Democrats to do so. That is definitely not the case. Party members on both sides of the aisle are prone to moralistic crusading, especially when it suits them, but it seems that Republicans are more likely to do so because they are driven by their religious fervor or that of their constituents.
It destroys the viewers sex life
Huh?
I teach were unable to browse web pages on group theory, klein bottles, and other topics which I really doubt acted as porn for anyone alive now or throughout history.
Don't knock it until you've tried it. Once you go Klein bottle, you never go back!
And you've got to be kidding... Group theory not being related to pr0n?
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
"because their husband would rather do himself in front of a picture."
The problem is the guy, not the entertainment. If he'd choose that over making love with his wife, he has other, more pressing mental issues.
I think any slashdotter wouldn't hesitate to to mate with someone 1/10 the attractiveness of a pornstar if given the chance.
I don't get it.
So, therefore, you see nothing wrong in shoving your views down every one else's throats. Just because you were too stupid to find naked pictures in order to facilitate your masturbation sessions as a kid doesn't mean that you should make life harder on those people who don't...
For a change, let me shove my views down your throat. I believe that your addiction of bullshit stories (the bible) is very bad for society, because it promotes superstition, it let people be bullshitted by control-freaks so they lose their self-control of their lifes.
So, you are not allowed to show a bible to children, and teach them religion, as this can adversely affect their minds, and render them into helpless psychologically-dependent people who cannot run their own life.
Has it occured to you that, perhaps, the bitch is a bit stuck-up, is a religious hag, or is a dog and is unable to sexually satisfy her husband who cannot therefore be blamed for using pornography to masturbate???
Yeah, so you're perfectly free to despise pr0n, but just make sure you keep your social dictates off my face. Otherwise, it will be a pleasure for me to shove that fucking bible in your asshole page by page, without vaseline.
How about keeping an open mind (of course, this is impossible for a religious type, because religion is first and foremost about closing minds)???
So, just because you're afraid of seeing the bodies of fellow human beings, you deprive yourself of technology... How about learning morse code? Your technological whereabouts would be even more painful this way... With smoke signals, you can also have tear in your eyes, and, if you're careful enough, burn your fingers for more pain.
Tell me, by inflicting all that pain on yourself and on others, what is your ultimate goal? Do you seriously expect that there will be a "great suffering reckoning" some day which will bring you goodies just because you sufferred and made other people suffer?
If so, this is the greatest testimonial to the terminally assinine stupidity of religious people (I lump together christians, jews and muslims, but feel free to include other assholes in there).
Christian women are NOT good at sex.