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.'"

Comments

What?

[guardian653]

Just who defines "violent" or "pornographic" material? What is "violent" or "pornographic" material? Frankly, people who are smart will eventually get around it anyway...

Re:What?

[troll -1]

Just who defines "violent" or "pornographic" material?

Wise people in government. We would never understand, we're not smart enough.

Re:What?

[tha_mink]

People who are smart will of course get around it, but this is not for smart people. It's for the masses and so it'll work just fine. It's also pretty cheap and easy to implement site-specific filtering and most any ISP can do if if they know what a route is and how to make squid work.

Actually, I couldn't disagree more. It's the content PROVIDERS that will get around the filters. It's too large a job for any body or company to find EVERY site or page with questionable material and filter it. How do you know what a jpeg of a naked person is made of? You don't! There is no way to block porn at the ISP level. It's harder than blocking spam and we know they can't do that.

Let's not forget, the internet is for porn. Simple supply and demand. All you can do by trying to filter it is make yourself look like a zealot and/or a fascist. Lots have tried, all have failed.

Re:What?

[SoloFlyer2]

Im an australian and i am Outraged... I dont want to have to try and get around filters like this, i dont want to have to apply for filters to be removed from my internet connection This is australia THIS IS NOT FUCKING CHINA!

"almost two-thirds of parents don't have internet filters on their family computers," Mr Beazley said. did he stop to think that maybe two-thirds decided that they didnt want their internet access restricted or were already filtering their connection using a method which wasnt included in their "statistics".

The current opt-in system works well and should be LEFT ALONE!

"research suggests that the exposure of children and others in the community to this sickening content can lead to aggression towards women and child abuse."

In fact a quick google returns many opposing views eg

"Research by Goldstein et al. shows that sex offenders generally had less contact with erotica in their formative years than did non-offenders and typically had a sexually repressed childhood and sexually repressive parents"

Anyway, Im very upset to even read this and [Insert insults and offensive comment directed at Kim Beazley Here].

under suspicion

[joe545]

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?

[Ice Wewe]

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!

Filtering software is too hard to install?

[Tim C]

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.

Re:Filtering software is too hard to install?

[DrSkwid]

If I want a babysitter I have to pay $

If I want an internet filter I could, you know, pay someone to provide me with one.

Still, it is a land where the PM can get web sites closed down if he doesn't like them :

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/03/20/oz_satire_ site/

It's about time!

[3.5 stripes]

Without something like this, parents would have to do things like be responsible, or supervise their children!!!

It won't happen

[GrahamCox]

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.

In other news...

[SysKoll]

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.

Fine.

[Osirius]

I'll go set up my own ISP. With blackjack. And hookers. In fact, forget the ISP and the blackjack.

Australia seems to be more repressive than US

[sgant]

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?

Re:Australia seems to be more repressive than US

[fabs64]

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.

Re:Australia seems to be more repressive than US

[troll -1]

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.

Re:Australia seems to be more repressive than US

[spirality]

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.

Porn defined

[x2A]

Porn is anything you lose interest in after you cum

Re:Porn defined

[Anonymous Coward]

That's no way to talk about my wife

Re:Porn defined

[toad3k]

Porn is anything you lose interest in after you cum

I don't think the isp has enough employees to implement that kind of filter.

Reminds Me Of A Quote

[Goo.cc]

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.

Re:Wanted: more babysitters

[voice_of_all_reason]

"protecting" their kids from everything short of bottled water.

You trust that shit? It could be zebra cum -- you just don't know!

And again...

[OverflowingBitBucket]

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.

The problem is "opt out."

[Kadin2048]

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.

Meanwhile, in Italy...

[grand_it]

..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.