Slashdot Mirror
Australian Government To Mandate Internet Filters
ratzmilk writes "The Australian government is mandating the creation of 'clean' internet feeds. To be optionally made available to schools and homes that request it, the feed would offer built-in filters of 'pornography and inappropriate content'. Said Senator Controy: 'Labor makes no apologies to those that argue that any regulation of the internet is like going down the Chinese road ... If people equate freedom of speech with watching child pornography, then the Rudd-Labor Government is going to disagree.'"
Stephen Conroy was on the TV talking about this tonight. It looks like they will make a list of sites which "promote violence and distribute child pornography and instruct ISP's to redirect http requests to them.
There is a lot of handwaving in this. Don't mention torrents or proxies. I would be very surprised if they try to block major porn sites which have a mix of content. Conroy has had his photo opportunity. Probably nothing more to see here.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Why is it that these days every time someone wants to censor or otherwise cripple something they bring up child pornography, racism, 911, etc?
I really don't understand it.
So is it to filter out child pornography, or to filter out anything the gov says is "inappropriate?" It seems even the people doing the "protecting" arent exactly sure about what they are supposed to be protecting people from, or whom they are supposed to be protecting.
We always heard you australians were supposed to be a tough lot. You look more like sheep from here.
Baaaaaaaahhhh... baaaaaaahhh...
"To be optionally made available to schools and homes that request it, the feed would offer built-in filters of 'pornography and inappropriate content'"
If they really stick to that deal, then maybe there won't be a problem.
However, if the "control" is optional, why is it called regulation? Last time I checked regulation was not optional. Furthermore, why even start in this first place. People can apply their own filters. It's called free will.
And you think they'd have learned by now.
It's beyond the control of any fine-toothed comb:
Slashdot: Teen Hacks $84 Million [Australian] Porn Filter in 30 Minutes
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/25/1258257
Schools already employ filters so either people should be outraged over that (I've yet to hear anyone outraged) or they shouldn't care. While ever its optional for home users, who cares? What next, angry at laws that require cars have a certain level of safety before they're allowed on the road in case the government goes one step further and says no car is safe on the road?
It should be clearly stated what is and what isn't to be censored before any bill is even presented. Any politician who says it's not intended to mean X but opposes clarifying the wording should be treated with more than the usual suspicion.
At the bottom of the
Right, because looking at ANY "inappropriate" material (and who decides what "inappropriate" is, anyway?) is the EXACT same as looking at child porn. No difference whatsoever.
Granted, you can opt out of this service, so I'm not 100% incensed that such a thing is being called for (but I'd be much happier if it were opt-in instead of opt-out). However, I am very pissed that people can make statements like the above and not get laughed out of office. When did false equivalency become acceptable? It makes my head asplode sometimes.
I can has sig?
How is it false? If your neighbor jacking off in his basement to pictures of 8 year olds really harms you, then so does him jacking off to pictures of women sucking off donkeys, right? But how is that not like him taking pleasure in shooting cops, or watching videos of people shooting cops? What about talking to people about how he likes jacking off to pics of 8 year olds? Or talking to people about how he likes shooting cops on the tv? Doesnt that just reinforce the behavior?
How you folks continue to justify one step down the slippery slope is beyond me. How about the idea "stay the fuck out of my home and I'll stay the fuck out of yours?"
Parent is lame MyMiniCity troll.
This is a good place to employ a whitelist. Allow a very limited number of sites. Everything else is blocked. Blocked sites can be unblocked on request.
Of course, the first blocks should go on lines servicing Government agencies. After all, they shouldn't be surfing pr0n at work.
I figure a week of virtually no internet would turn the heads of the lawmakers.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
At least I didn't mention ear wax.
If you think someone can "Mandate" something that even the summary acknowledges to be optional, then you simply don't know what "Mandate" means. What they've mandated is a choice, and choice is good.
Schools shouldn't be required to provide unmoderated internet access anymore than school libraries should be required to stock "Big Juggs" magazine in the name of "Free Speech".
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Now if only your days of leeching other peoples hard work would come to an end...
Way to go Labour.
Blah blah blah
All John Howard's fault
All the fault of George Bush and the Americans.
Blah blah blah.
Way to go Labour.
Every once in a while Labour needs to be voted in if only to remind everyone why they voted the Liberals in for so long.
Do not, I repeat DO NOT feed the trolls. FFS, you're acting like myevilcity is worse than lemonparty!
At first I was going to write a post saying how this is a pretty decent solution and they're offering an opt-out option, but after thinking about it more:
Why does the government have to require this? If the consumer demand is for filtered access, there are tools already in place to help parents "protect" their children. Many of them are free. If the demand were high enough, an ISP could also offer their own filtered service (it would probably not cost them any extra since those users are less likely to use lots of bandwidth).
This will suck for people who want to access filtered material. They'll either have to call the ISP or register somehow, possibly in writing, which goes in the face of privacy.
The ISP will have a database of users with the "pervert" bit and who knows what might happen with that. Will that data be confidential? Or can the ISP sell the list to its "marketing partners" and send users direct mail offers for porn?
If subpoenaed, can that data be brought up in court? "Your honor, the only evidence we have that this man committed the crime is that he is - pause for effect - an unfiltered user. And you know what that means."
The filtering service needs to be opt-in, not required of the ISPs, and controlled via the market.
-David
"Telecommunications Minister Stephen Conroy says new measures are being put in place to provide greater protection to children from online pornography and violent websites."
:)
He calls this new technology.... "Parents".
"If people equate freedom of speech with watching child pornography, then the Rudd-Labor Government is going to disagree."
Straw Man argument at its best!
Now on to the truth....
This service is OPT OUT, so you have to call your ISP and let them know you don't want your internet connection filtered for CHILD PORN. Who is going to do that? My theory here is that this list will include child porn... and many other propaganda sites that their gov does not like. They will not release the list due to "security concerns".
Nope... not like China at all
Mod parent +1. Myminicity is harmless you fuckwits, anyone getting their knickers in a twist needs to join the internet police and ban goatse first
Sounds reasonable except that it should be opt-in rather than opt-out. If they're going to introduce an opt-out system why not apply it to organ donation? It's only in the drafting stages, hopefully it won't go into effect or if it does, opting out will be a simple process.
One, this needs the "misleadingtitle" tag. It doesn't mandate the filter, just makes it available upon request. Second, who in hell determines "inapropriate content" for this thing? So much potential abuse there.
For those who seek perfection there can be no rest on this side of the grave.
Apparently the new government is just as bad as the old government. Is it something in the Australian mentality that you have to be totalitarian to win an election?
Yeah, because thepiratebay.org is the only place on the entire internet where torrents are available. Please, point me to a single piece of content that you can download through thepiratebay - oh wait, they don't host any of the works do they? Double fail!
If something on the net breaks international criminal law, then they should go after the ones (through international channels) that produce it (or redesign the international law, depending on what the subject is and what the people want); if it ISN'T, then they should bloody well leave it alone.
The net is NOT NATIONAL, and NO ONE should be "protected" from SEEING or READING something, no matter WHAT it is.
If kids need "sheltering" from something then THAT should be up to the PARENTS.
There should be no fucking involvment from any state or centralized goverment on that.
Some problems with this scheme:
- who is going to determine what is acceptable and what isn't
- those not listed will probably sue
- if a site is not compliant and becomes compliant again, when will it be included?
- sites that allow content upload by users could be in trouble
- content scanning does not work, there are too many false negatives, and more importantly, way too many false positives
- how will opting in/out work, who is going to do the registration?
- ooh, the poor ISP infrastructure. Just saving DNS requests or URL's is something, but man, this will cost big bucks
- parent wants to view porn; now child can too, and vice versa
- certain to kill of small ISP's, and therefore any true innovation within the internet structure of the country
Anyway, the guy clearly shows that he's talking bullshit. I mean, how can a structure that allows opt-out work against child porn? This is a scheme to disallow children to watch porn, it won't do anything against child porn. In other words, this is semi-religious conservative populist BS from someone that does not understand a thing about the internet.
Now I'm off to buy McAfee stock - worst software on the planet, but it seems to strike a chord with idiots.
Does every story you post have to be about Australia?
The difference between spam and myminicity links is that I can filter spam. These jerks have sucked me into clicking their links a couple of times now. I suspect I'm not the only one.
Cogito, ergo sig.
As a child I've seen porno many times and I wouldn't say it affected me in any way... It just makes you wonder about things you haven't been thinking about before and you're not about to fully comprehend for a while. But I think that's pretty much one of the points of the childhood.
Now excuse me, because I gotta go to the park attack random women (just kidding :-)).
So if I choose to opt-out of these filters, it will be noted as such? If so, there will be lists of Internet users who are opted out and looking at 'dirty' content. Could we this see this group of people targeted by enforcement agencies? I'm weary of anything where government gets more information and/or control over my life where I'm not breaking the law.
-Slashdot Senator Conroy says anyone wanting uncensored access to the internet will have to opt out of the service.
-http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/12/31/2129471.htm So I have to request this service so I can then opt-out of it to get an uncensored internet? While I have no problems with a filtered internet being avalible, I don't want to see it as an opt-out service. What if my ISP is too lazy to respond to my opt-out request?
Utterly ridiculous... First of all, if parents are that worried about it they should use on of the many filtering options available. Schools should be made to use it, but make sure it's DECENT. I remeber the filtering at school was ridiculous I tried looking at the news (yes, seriously) and it filtered it out for gambling and hate speech. And if content filtering is to be made mandatory, should be OPT IN not OPT OUT. Like was said before, the ISPs are going to have lists of which accounts have opted out of filtering, which weak though it may be can and probably will be used against you. The REAL problem though, is who gets to decide what "inappropriate content" means? And where is the line drawn? It starts with porn and then what... Contraception? Abortion advice? Maybe websites for young men and women trying to find a way to deal with their homosexuality? Dissent? Atheism? Islam, Hinduism, or any other faith not practised by the majority? Flying Spaghetti Monster? At what point does content become considered violent? You can have your neopets battle each other.... Will that be filtered due to violent content? The news often has violent stories, wikipedia contains all kinds of material... And then after all that, maybe they just go and decide that opting out of filtering is all well and good, but they still don't want you looking at pornography, or criticism of the Government, or anything not politically correct. And don't bother saying it won't go that far, because it so easily could.
Free information is dangerous to governments, it allows them to be voted out.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
Clearly, the act of creating it is counter to our current collective sociatial morality
No, the act of creating child pornography is wrong. It is bad. It should be punished. The only "collective societal" differences that come into play are the amount of evidence needed to convict and the punishment. In the old days, if someone in the tribe was even suspected of child pornography, the elders dispatched a couple of the bigger warriors to visit his cave while he was sleeping, drop a large rock on his head, and throw his body in the bog. Nowadays, there is due process, appeals, a jury system, and merely imprisonment.
But make no mistake: It was wrong then, wrong now, and will be wrong in the future.
There are countless other ways to obtain inappropriate material (p2p, torrent, etc). How are they going to stop that?
While I don't condone the intentions of the Australian government, I'm sick of the overused "censorship" tag on slashdot. The term "optional" and phrase "for those who request it" mean people have a choice. True censorship leaves no choice.
Of course that's how it works. Nobody is born homosexual or French; they have to be groomed into it.
Depicting things as good in the media is how the entire corporate system works. Advertising works, otherwise, there would be no slashdot. There's already studies that show violence in art begets violence in society. But seriously, though, if something you read on the internet or see on TV can influence everything you do, from buying a car or accepting violence, then, why couldn't someone be lead down the path to homosexuality and then pedophilia?
This is my sig.
I'm not going to debate the effectiveness of filtering, but isn't this a bit much to get alarmed about--at least at this point? They're not MANDATING the USE of the filtered content, only that the ISP has to make it available. This sounds no more like censorship than setting up a V-chip so your tykes can't access adult content videos.
Now you can argue that this could be a slippery slope and I would certainly rather parents be proactive in monitoring what their kids are doing than trusting any current filterning program. But even in the best of cases, it gives parents a passive substitute for when the kids are home alone. The problem becomes that, unlike the v-chip, there are no centralized ratings to rate the content and so you're back to effectiveness issues.
But this is certainly not comparable to China--the Chinese are much more concerned about censoring out political debate or news unfavorable to the regime. That is true censorship.
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
And yet again, the Australian government proves how much they never understood the internet or technology in the first place.
Sadly, conroy is the next in a series of ministers in charge of "technology" who just dont get it - they are sadly idiots. Dont get me wrong, i dont have much respect for politicians in the first place. But theres a level of stupidity you always assume when it comes to sections of government and the people that oversee them. And when it comes to tech and comms, the ministers in charge have fallen so far below par (compared to the rest of the rabble) that its really quite sad.
Perhaps to be fair i should "lack of knowledge" rather than "level of stupidity", but conroy is just a moron im surprised he's not blue in most photo's because he's forgotten to breath again. The prior governments plan was more intelligent, and thats a sad state of affairs in itself.
But once the technology is mature, tomorrow it will be mandatory.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
That might be a concern, although they'd have pretty much the same data whether it's a opt-out or just a 'do you want "hot coffee" with your internet or not' when you sign up. But I suspect they're going to find they have a lot more so-called "perverts" out there than not which will make it impossible for govenment to effectively track for child porn. There are a lot of husbands and fathers who aren't going to want their porn turned completely off even for the "sake of the kiddies." And depending on the ineffectiveness in discrimination filtration, a lot of women and mothers aren't going to like a sign telling them they're blocked when searching for a site on breast cancer or other medical site.
On the most part and from what I know having Oz acquaintances, they're not just going to roll over. They take their freedoms seriously. I suspect this legislation will be changed to an opt-in or go through other metamorphoses so this does not become a government "naughty" list.
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
Studies have shown that viewing violence has a certain affect on the brain. I'm sure porn does to. My personal belief is that violence is far worse than porn, but that neither are that bad. The fact that an individual can become addicted to porn, and that that affects their ability to have a real relationship with someone, and ultimatly their happiness, is proof that porn *can* be problematic.
Like all things, one can only trust in ones own ability to discern what is healthy. Compulsion and other problems can be cured by never forgetting what you want, and the support of family, friends and professionals.
I'm saying that the debate is wrong. We should me more concerned with how we can find individual happiness by living our one-shot lives better, than worrying about other people seeing violence or porn on the internet.
Perhaps we should be more concerned about teaching our children to live in the *real* world, and live well. We can only teach children that by living well ourselves.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
When they came for Australia's porn, I said nothing. I was not Australian...
There's a very simple way that Australia, the US, etc can handle this:
.kids.au (/.kids.us) domain. Heck, the US might even be able to get away with a .kids TLD. .kids.au/.kids.us domains.
.teens.us as well, for info available to those 13 and older, much like PG-13 movies.
Step 1: Create
Step 2: Legislate exactly what is and isn't allowed on the domain, and what the penalties are.
Step 3: Lock down kids machines to only reach
Step 4: Leave the rest of the Internet to grown-ups.
Look, we don't let kids on tricycles drive on highways. Filtering everyone is like trying to make the (information-)highway kid friendly. Build a bike-path instead! If you want to get ambitious, build a
Saying this idea isn't commercially viable is like saying no-one would advertise during children's TV programming. Advertisers love have markets pre-sorted for them.
The thing I find weird is that I don't see how myminicity is attractive to these morons. WTF is it anyway, and how does me clicking one link help them? Can't be much in the way of advertising revenue, since the returns on advertising these days are minimal in the extreme...
Ah well
ash
..."inappropriate" behavior will be limited to what most consider sexual deviancy and violence against law enforcement. The point of the person you were replying to was very clear... Who decides what is inappropriate, AND, are all cases of inappropriate material equivalent? If it was just the cases you claim, I would largely be inclined to agree it should be blocked. BUT, WILL IT BE AND WHO DECIDES?
That's where logic took the breather in that statement the OP took issue with. History rhymes and I suspect that in a few years, we will be on here discussing some outrageous politically motivated additions to the filter. Officially, when it comes to light, it will all be a reasonable clerical error or the site operator will be under investigation for terrorism or some other nonsense that will quell the concerns of shallow thinkers. Will it quell yours when it happens?
While they may not be forcing Australian citizens to use the internet filter, they're doing the next worst thing because you have to take an affirmative step in order to get it removed. The ISPs/government will have a handy list of all the "perverts" who want access to the unfiltered internet.
Agreed. It seems to me that taking the step of removing yourself from the filter is a risky thing to do if ever want to run for political office. What politician could resist not exposing the fact that their rival removed the "filter" from their Internet access. After all, we all know that only "perverts" would do such a thing.
I think you missed the part where I mocked the _people_ who had elected these leaders. Thus, it seems most of your commentary is rather moot.
/.)
Oh, here's that part again - the part that got me modded "troll" (again - love
Baaaaaaahhhh...
Olsen twins movies; Britney Spears (pre-16) videos; Online child modeling; Cosmopolitan magazine...
No, you cannot tell the top from the bottom - because there isn't a top or bottom. You can always go higher, and you can always sink lower.
Let the government mandate that those WHO WANT filtered internet MUST install filtering software.
Very funny and true political comic regarding this topic.
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I also have to wonder just how many people will actually want to get the "dirty" feed from their ISP. It seems that the governments position on this is that if don't want your internet feed filtered then you must be into child porn.
How many want to bet that they will make the list of people getting the unfiltered net available so "..the public can be aware of the potential pedophiles living in their neighborhood"? And you can also be guaranteed that those who opt out of the filtered feed will be put on some kind of watch list as potential trouble makers.
Control of the flow of information and its content is the first step in securing power and creating a police state.
see my sig.
Except that the V-chip is opt in and the proposed law is opt out and requires a central list of opt'd out members.
How about, instead of mandating that every ISP create a clean stream - which the market shows isn't wanted, the govt creates a proxy wherein they create their filtered content and people who desire to have a clean stream can use their proxy. See, no opt out, no central lists, no enforcement costs.
Oh wait, that requires that people opt in for a clean stream just like they do now when they have to install a filter on their computer.
If there was a serious market for whitelisted/washed internet streams, there would be ISPs or at least proxy services providing them. The lack of said ISPs/proxies tells me that there isn't a market. Mandating the filtered streams is only going to crash an existing market for the sake of creating a non-existing/undesired market - which is a recipe for failure in any economics book.
Look at your costs, you are going to shift the costs of filtering streams from the few consumers who want them ($12/month for some), to the ISPs. While some things work with an economy of scale - wholesale filtering doesn't without a demand. Even if an ISP can get a license for filtering software for less, they have to have redundant hardware onhand to filter at their maximum bandwidth for anything more exotic than white/blacklists at the DNS server. On top of that, they have to have that hardware running 24/7 even if the load isn't there. On top of that they need people to maintain that hardware. On top of that they have to have people to maintain the opt out lists. All of this, in order to provide a level of protection that people have already decided isn't worth it - in effect a technologically incompetent, but vocal group, is going to shift their minimal cost to everyone in the country.
All hail our new breast cancer free internet!
Yes, ideas have power, but only as much as you give them.
We live in a free society. (You have "Texas" in your name, so I'm assuming you live in the US.) We have freedom of speech as an essential right, both because we believe it to be a self-evident right, and because we have faith that good ideas will win over bad ones.
This has been tested, time and time again, with people like you warning that certain people using free speech to spread certain ideas would result in the collapse of civilization, or a bunch of pedophiles, or something. It's happened right here, in the US, at least once before -- we were terrified that certain ideas would be so powerful as to result in the downfall of our capitalist society.
And we discovered that any way to prevent the spread of these ideas was more damaging to us -- to our freedoms, to who we are as a society -- than the ideas themselves.
Can you guess what I'm talking about? It should be obvious by now, if you know your history: Communism. The very idea of communism was so frightening that we were willing to tolerate a witch hunt, which we now call McCarthyism.
But since you believe ideas are so powerful, let me leave you with one parting thought: If an idea (child pornography) can make someone into something they're not (a pedophile), couldn't an idea undo the damage? Show them the broken families, show them those same children as adults, trying to cope...
Certainly, in some cases, a person will become a pedophile when they otherwise wouldn't have. And in other cases, a person who would have otherwise been a pedophile will become a sane, functional member of society. And many more people are perfectly capable of making their own decisions, and short of brainwashing, no amount of making information available will change their minds.
But if you believe that the free flow of information, on average, makes matters worse, then we're screwed, because information will flow freely, and there's nothing we can do about it.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
The point is that you either get them to admit that they would be sexually aroused by boy-dog sodomy, or you reduce them to a stuttering mess as they try to wrap their brains around the concept.
And this should be pretty obvious to a third-party, watching this exchange on TV. Especially if you follow up with a statement like, "I don't know about you, but I would be thoroughly disgusted by that."
Because presumably, the point here is not to convince these idiots that you're right -- if they could actually believe such BS in the first place, what chance do we have? No, the point is to convince the voting population that you're right, by using these guys as such an easy ad-hominim target.
The "can't be moral without religion" idiots can actually be dealt with in a much simpler way -- by demonstrating that you absolutely do not believe in any religion, and are absolutely a moral person, at least when it comes to the major things that we all agree on. (You know the ones -- murder, rape, theft...) In fact, I think the reason I often play devil's advocate Atheist on Slashdot, and pick fights about religion, is because I so enjoy that debate.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
If it's not forced on me i don't care. frankly I don't trust the government with an internet filter i can't turn off. i'm sure there are lots of people with kids who would like this, so it has a valid use.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
At least you can opt out (or not opt in). The previous Government of this fair land thought it wise that USENET groups should be subject to involuntary blocking (through the Australian Communications and Media Authority, http://www.acma.gov.au/WEB/STANDARD/pc=INT_IND_CONTENT_ABOUT). Of course contractual secrecy has been used to avoid any knowledge of the groups blocked and (hopefully) criticism thereof. See, for example, http://www.internode.on.net/content/usenet-news/#What_groups_does_the_Australian .
Patent litigation: A doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction... in which everyone seems willing to push the button
The one thing I don't recall seeing in either the TFA or all the pages of comments here, is the contents of this content restriction list.
Yes, you have to make a conscious choice to opt-out of the filtering (censoring). Yes, there will be some type of redirection that's involved when you try to access a "naughty" page. So who decides what that content is? Who decides if something is mis-categorized? How about adding pages to the list of naughtiness? Is this list of banned sites available for anyone to see?
OK, so let's say this is put into place, and the ISPs all lock down traffic. Let's say I think that those people who do 'opt-out' of this filtering will make a special list of people to monitor. But how is anyone to know if the sites that the government says are bad really are? Do you have to 'opt-out' just to see for yourself if it really is something you (or your kids) shouldn't be seeing?
I think the process of 'filtering' would be best served if the general population had some type of controls over it's contents. If this is just something that the government is doing on it's own with no real oversight, it is then censorship, and is only one step removed from copying China's horrid system of mis-information management.
--- "To ignore race and sex is racist and sexist!" -- Jesse Jackson
http://myminicity.com/* fits into Adblock just like every other site ;)
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
This move has been motivated by the tragedy occurring in remote Indigenous Communities. where a combination of alcohol, drugs, pornography, STDs and sexual violence is threatening to complete the genocide begun 220 years ago. Six year old boys and girls are being gang raped by teens and adults and this is considered 'normal' because the parents are out of their brains on drugs, and because their are very few who have managed to maintain ties to original cultural moral values. In some communities over 90% of children are violently raped (or are raped whilst they're off their heads on drugs) before they are 10 years old. Some communities haves rates of sexually transmitted disease in excess of 76% in the sub-8 year old age groups.
Aboriginal cultures were so intolerant of inappropriate sexual behavior that male and female cousins would be taught different languages so they couldn't even ask each other to 'go for a walk behind the wirrigagery bush'. A teenage boy who even looked in the direction of a girl he was not betrothed to was liable to be speared (yes, there's a huge complicated set of laws revolving around property and fear of women's magic involved as well, but let's not confuse our cousins from America with the complexity and richness of pre-genocide Murri culture!).
The previous Government's solution was a huge police action involving the Army, which also dismantled the Permit System and created a new black market in intoxicants. The current Government wants to know if controlling Internet Porn will give the Earth's oldest culture a chance at a future 50 years from now. I'm willing to wait and see if it can make a difference. It cannot work in isolation unless disease and substance abuse are tackled at the same time though, and unless the few remaining effective Elders don't help to regulate the rebirth of Indigenous culture.
It is clear that the idea is to make the DEFAULT internet environment more benign and "Kid Safe" there is no indication that adults will be restricted in what they can access. In particular they have the choice of using http://www.torproject.org/ to ensure their private access to anything they wish.
Filtering the content access of naive adults is also a good idea, it could significantly reduce the harm done to some people by online criminals.
Close the door, just don't lock it and make me sign for the key if I choose, as a worldly and competent adult, to walk through it.
To get a full understanding of why this is something to be concerned about, you need to remember that the Restricted Access System Declaration 2007, content rules targeted at the internet, comes into force in 20 days. Among other things, this:
This, in and of itself, is pretty much unenforceable, as it just means our major content providers will move offshore or, at most, stop providing content that's aimed at teens altogether. But if a) X18+ and RC content is illegal for all Australians to view b) the government requires filtering at an ISP level and c) the ISPs will likely not be allowed to tell us what they filter out, one must ask: how 'dirty' is the unfiltered feed going to be? Really? Because our content laws are very restrictive - the X18+ and RC ratings cover a very, very broad swathe of material indeed, a lot of which is perfectly legal in places like the US, UK and western Europe. They only reason we don't feel the sting of our censorship laws more often is because our law enforcement agencies see enforcing the ones that don't deal with child pornography to be an utter waste of time and money.
Schools already have compulsory filters. The filters are crap. Not just - a 16 year old took 30 mins to completely break it crap... [ http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22304224-2,00.html ] But, even if you don't touch it and leave it to work as it is supposed to, crap. I've witnessed the filters let pop ups for gambling through, but the Australian, department of education, was blocked. Nice. Most of the teachers I know hate the filter with a passion, will probably hate the new one, can't check their own email, but have to stop kids from trolling wikipedia and are frustrated with having increasing expectations, but no funding to actually maintain the computers their supposed to teach and no training to learn all the fiddly things kids come up with and how to deal with it. I do think that this is supposed to stay within schools and am less worried about political restrictions, great wall of china, et all but I think it's more of the same old same old out to get the news lines but ultimately just plain crap ways the government in Australia has towards computing in general. Even if it is a "new" government.
bah.
by viewing it?
Sorry but that was never a logical argument. You don't create demand for something by viewing it, you create demand for something by interacting with others. And since its still not illegal to talk about what you like with others, there is ultimately nothing that can be done about that "creating demand" part unless you make it illegal to even discuss the topic.
I'm not worried too much about government abusing internet censoring in free countries. I am much more worried about how this kind of filtering would change the internet.
As I see it ISP's main franchise (in countries where they are regulated) is to provide customers with IP protocol access to the internet. The customer's client software contacts content providers directly through channels supplied by the ISP. Now what these kind of "mandated filtering" laws do is tell the ISPs that they must check the contents of the customers communication with content providers. If they don't they might face criminal charges. So in effect it seems that the direct communications model is broken. The model becomes one where the customer only communicates with the ISP and the ISP communicates with content providers and sometimes fetches content and delivers to the customer and sometimes doesn't. Many people who do not understand the technology believe that this is exactly what ISPs do: they provide web content from various sources, just like cable TV operators provide content they obtain from many different content providers. I remember on a radio program here in Israel on "Internet Safety Day" a couple of years ago a woman that said "the basic bundle in cable TV doesn't include porn. It should be the same with the basic internet bundle. people should not ask for porn to be filtered out but those who want it have to purchase an extra porn deal like they do on cable TV". This was in response to explanations about optional available filtering from ISPs or as PC based software. My main point here is not that people want filtering to be the default but that people view their ISP as the supplier of the content, and ISPs are very happy with this. It ties customers in because the customer believe that changing ISP might change the mix of content they are getting. Mandated filtering laws escalate this by encoding into the law the requirement that ISPs act as content providers. It establishes their role as content brokers. They are no longer just providing of channels that connect computers to the network. They are mediators that go out and get content and then deliver content to customers that paid for it.
I am not Australian but the Australian legislation worries me. I am Israeli and Israel has similar laws in process. Israeli legislators are looking at the Australian example, and Australia is considered a free country, unlike some other countries that employ Internet filtering. What happens in Australia here has the potential to affect what happens in other countries, because if it is successful legislators in other countries could use it as an example and as proof that "it works". And as almost all people don't really mind the internet becoming anther kind of "Cable TV" where service providers provide a mix of content that they choose it will certainly "work" to the satisfaction of most people. Only a minority really utilize the openness of internet communications. The result might be that there would be no way to get direct IP protocol access to the internet except by getting an expensive commercial deal with the ISP, because consumer deals would only be ones where the ISP sends gets the data and delivers it to the customer (i.e., consumer "unfiltered" deal might mean that the ISP goes out and fetches whatever web content you ask for and delivers it, but you don't get any direct connection to the internet. Only http proxying by the ISP. The rest of it is not "for consumers" and if you want it you have to be a business).
So what I see happenning here is "net neutrality" going out the back door. ISPs would be able to block content because they are liable unless they do it, and they have to do it because otherwise they might allow content in that the law forbids them to. So they would have a legal excuse to block whatever content they want to, as long as they provide a way to dispute their decisions. Now try to access your independent email provider, or your webhost, or your independent DNS provider's control panel when the
What's the difference between "give us the list of people who opted out" and "give us the list of people who didn't opt in", given that the union of both sets equals the entire registered user base of any given ISP, and that there is no intersection between the two sets?
Athy, athier, athiest.