Slashdot Mirror
Australian Internet Filter Enters Trial Phase
blake writes "News.com.au reports "The Government's plan to have internet service providers filter pornography and other internet content deemed inappropriate for children is going full-steam ahead. [...] The trial will evaluate ISP-level internet content filters in a controlled environment while filtering content inappropriate for children." It all sounds in good taste, and we are told that you will be able to opt out at any time, but will putting this filter in place simply give the powers that be the ability to block access to content for their own agendas. Censorship may be necessary, but should it be overseen by Government."
Government is the -last- entity that should oversee any censorship--because it has the most to gain from having such control.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
Censorship is never necessary. Ever.
But fighting it always is.
May the Maths Be with you!
It's amazing what potentially very dangerous tech people will tolerate just so they can "protect their kids".
Never mind that there's a million porn sites, the possibility of encrypted traffic or that there's the possibility that someone might use this to filter government-unfriendly information from your data stream...no, don't mind all that, just think of the children. Everything is fine.
All kidding aside, this sounds like an incredibly stupid idea. I have four young kids, and I already have a nice filter installed. It's called me not letting them use the PC without my being within eyesight of the PC.
Proudly supporting the Libertarian Party.
makes it even worse. It should be opt-in. How many people will be too embarrassed, or too shy to call up and opt-out or not want their name recorded as a potential Pr0n lover..... If parents want the service, they should be able to call and opt-in, but don't make the default mode censorship.
Monstar L
Wow, I love Australia. But as an American, the two points made in that single sentence evoke knee-jerk revulsion in me!
Blue skies, Barthy Burgers, girls...
The leap from censoring pr0n to censoring unpopular beliefs and the opposition's political views is disturbingly short...
So you have to opt-out? Great, so once in place, the Austalian Governement will have a list of all people who want to watch porn.
I'm also curious if this could possibly die in the process or if the govt is 100% intent on implementing this to the bitter end.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
The remark in this article .."Censorship may be necessary, but should it be overseen by Government." should send shivers up every thinking citizen's spine (presupposing that he/she has one).
Government should never be allowed any form of censorship. It is only with the free flow of information that citizens remain aware of the actions of that government.
Sure, now it's optional and only in Australia. Soon it'll be in the UK, and then the US. After a while, they'll find some way to make it mandatory... I foresee something to the effect of "Kids could use your computer, and we must protect kids from the evil intertubes", and good luck to you if you speak up. "What, you want to hurt children? What kind of monster are you? Pervert!"
Hopefully I am overreacting, but I don't think I am.
Great Intellect...
Individuals should be provided with the tools they need to self-censor, of course. If someone doesn't want to stumble across pronography, then we should make this possible (e.g. Google's safe search). By extension, parents should be provided with the tools they need to limit their children's access to certain things.
But widespread presumptive censorship (opt-out instead of opt-in?) is both unnecessary and immoral.
It makes me wonder who pushes this stuff thinking it is some kind of real solution.
In addition to the normal mode of filtering out adult content, I hope the filters can be configured to only allow it as well. I recommend the filter modes be labeled "Suck" and "Blow" respectively.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
In those households where parents actually give a rat's posterior about raising their kids, protect them from being prosecuted for child abuse for spanking or whipping their kids with a belt for consuming pornography and such.
If parents can't punish their kids worse than yelling at them or taking away their computer for breaking the family rules on not watching porn, how can you expect parents to keep their kids under control?
When my wife was in high school, she did a study for a class. She went around and asked the girls she knew if they had been spanked or otherwise physically disciplined when they broke the rules growing up. Those who had, the majority of them were the well-adjusted, decent girls. The rest fit many negative stereotypes...
There was an ironic article about outlawing such discipline in California. The state representative said that she'd never support such discipline because she would never spank her cat because some ill-informed vet told her it would do no good. Heh. I grew up with cats, and can tell you that if you spank them when they break the rules, they tend to behave well like any other pet. The reason we have most of these parenting issues is because many families treat their kids the way that they would treat a cat based on common behavior toward cats.
"Government is the -last- entity that should oversee any censorship--because it has the most to gain from having such control."
No, the government is exactly the entity that should oversee censorship, because it's the only organization that's accountable to the voters. No corporation should ever have the power to censor anything.
Of course, I don't think even the government should have that power, but voters have always been clueless.
My Sig: SEGV
What can be done. Will people ever realize censorship is unnecessary. And when will they learn to use question marks.
But it has already started, the last time I saw this it was going to be opt-in, now it's opt-out, how much further? That's the question.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
I can imagine standing in front of the man having to explain why i needed unfiltered access.
It will become something lawyers use to slur people. They will make allusions that the people that need dirtynet access must be looking at something criminal, and suggest maybe these people are terrorists or child molesters. The luddite judge will eat that shit up. That's the way it works these days.
Remember, it takes 42 muscles to frown and only 4 to pull the trigger of a sniper rifle.
Good luck getting an https connection to a blocked website.
It's fairly obvious at this point that "The West" is heading towards a model not too different than what PRC uses.
1. Corporations given way too much power
2. Consumers encouraged to spend beyond their means
3. Media and Information controlled and manipulated by a "protective force"
The UK, Australia and the US are all going down this path, each in their own way.
Small freedoms removed at first, not obvious to the "average citizen".
We are heading towards what twenty years ago would be called a Police State.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Questions may be needed, but must they be followed by question marks.
It seems like there will be a lot of people wanting to opt out, considering that Australia's per-capital porn revenue is twice that of the US. Or, if the option to opt out is difficult, it will be interesting (and disappointing) to see if the reduction in rape caused by Internet porn is reversed.
I know it's our nature to question any sentence that includes both the words "government" and "censorship", but if the users are free to opt out at any point, how exactly is this terrible? Would you prefer this run by an organization or company that would be even more susceptable to bribes and/or collusion? Or perhaps you'd rather that every ISP establish it's own standards of censorship? People want options, and if this helps parents feel better about their kids surfing habits, why should it not be offered?
I know folks stand behind the argument of, "I monitor my kids internet, I know what they're doing." Wrong. No matter how hard you try, you can't 100% monitor their access unless you're with them 24/7. The time spent surfing the web at home isn't the time you need to worry about, it's the time they spend at they're friends house who's parent don't give two shits about internet monitoring, or the free WAP's they can access from every other streeet corner with a coffee shop, or the....you get the idea. A universal protection with an opt-out option gives parents at least *some* peace of mind, even if it is somewhat misguided.
"And my less-than-esteemed opponent has OPTED OUT from decency filtering on his Internet connection. And he has TEENAGED CHILDREN in his house. Would you really want to ELECT SUCH A MAN to replace good old reliable me?"
You can bet on it.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Don't you mean, "when it gets leaked".
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
The belief that porn is good is unpopular (among certain people). The belief that freedom of speech is more important then stopping kids from seeing boobies is UNPOPULAR!
There is NO leap to make. Censoring porn IS the leap.
Why do you think REAL freedom advocates leapt to the defence of Larry Flint when attempts were made to censor him and his works? Because they want Hustler? No, because the fight for freedom is lost if you allow censorship ANYWHERE.
If you believe in free speech then you MUST defend my desire to watch smut. If you care about freedom you will defend my right to fap and "think of the childeren" rethoric should be discarded as the obvious tool of dictators.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I don't want censored but am aware that it happens already. ISPs decide for themselves what they will allow through.
At the moment, I have some democratic rights that theoretically affect my government. I have a lot less control over what billion dollar companies do. Governments are swayed by ideas - some good and some not so. Companies are affected by money. They are not, and probably should not be, affected by what makes me happy. Their job is to make the best money for their shareholders.
One day, we might actually get a responsive government. Why should a corporation do the right or popular thing if there is more money in something else?
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
It sounds to me like both "suck" and "blow" modes are porn-only modes.
Forgive me for piggy backing on a troll's frist psot, but, who the FUCK said the internet was meant for children? Why does it have to be kid friendly? Protective parents don't let their kids hangout and befriend strangers (adults or otherwise) unsupervised. Why should exploring the internet be any different? Just because a company attempts to target or exploit a demographic through some medium doesn't mean the medium needs to be sanitized for that demographic.
Ahh.. internet censorship, hell, censorship in general... such a pet peeve of mine.
Skiffy is Spiffy, but Ort is tort.
Are you afraid of kids going blind or what?
The Internet is an important world resource. we should do whatever we need to do to prevent ABUSE such as SPAM, DoS attacks, hacking, pirating, and such.
content filtering is another level
It occurs to me that the FCC kept smutt and sleaze -- bad language, lewd pictures and such -- off the air for quite some time. it certainly would not hurt to continue that basic policy
at the same time we do not want any two-bit tin-horn dictators arresting their political opposition and closing their sites down.
Yes, I was wondering how they are going to do that. If it's by IP, just go via something like openDNS or if they are looking at each packet use https. Sounds like just another waste of govenerment / public money.
Has anyone ever actually demonstrated that looking at porn is harmful to children/teens? Everyone seems to be taking it as a forgone conclusion, but I've never seen any scientific evidence in a psychology journal. If looking at porn is really as dangerous as many people like to believe, it should be very easy to demonstrate the harm - but so far as I know, nobody has ever done that.
And no, I don't consider "It gives people unrealistic ideas about sex" to be actual harm. Romance movies probably do vastly more harm to developing adolescents by giving them unrealistic expectations of what real romantic relationships are like. Having a grossly distorted "Hollywood" view of romance is probably going to be substantially more problematic to a teenager/young adult than being disappointed that your girlfriend doesn't want to do something kinky that you saw in a porn movie.
It seems like the government should have to produce some evidence that it's actual dangerous before they ban/censor it.
My Significant other and I have discussed it, I think I'm going to go get myself fixed. I hate children. I didn't like being a child, children are nothing but trouble, and children are destroying my Internet, and I will not, I repeat, NOT have kids.
Good luck blocking a tor hidden service
Goddamn you, fucking George Bush. See what you've caused? Now Australia is censoring their internet. With your stupid looking smirk, running around eating babies and censoring internets and torturing hard-working innocent illegal immigrants. Fuck you.
The article states that they want to filter pornography AND . . .
"OTHER INTERNET CONTENT DEEMED INAPPROPRIATE FOR CHILDREN"
It's never really about pornography, it's always about that "other bad stuff", like dissident political opinions.
So, who's in charge of deciding what is and is not appropriate for children? Think of ALL the content that certain people and organizations have wanted to ban at various times and you'll get the idea of why censorship is fundamentally incompatible with freedom. Think of Christians wanting to protect the children from Charles Darwin and "political correctness" extremists wanting to ban Mark Twain.
You beat your cat. Well sure it will behave "better" from then on, the cat is too scared to do anything lest it gets noticed and gets another trashing. You are not raising a well adjusted normal cat, you are raising a scaredy cat who "behaves" in order to avoid punishment.
Same with people, I lived in places where discipline in the family was enforced and yes those kids on the surface seemed well behaved, but they grow up NOT as mature responsible adults but as people who are deadly afraid to be found out. But oh my god their behaviour when they think they are "safe" from being found out.
Check where the highest levels of sexual child abuse take place. In communities that seem oh so well behaved, until they are behind closed doors. I grew up among kids like that, all squaky clean on the surface until they thought the adults were no longer watching. My first porn mag did NOT come from my own liberal school, it came from a friend from a strongly christian family who obediently attended bible classes.
If you want to raise a cat properly the only thing that works is to be there when it is learning the 'rules' of its new home and discipline it at ONCE. No need to beat it, a spray of water or a loud stamp is enough. It will then hopefully learn that the punishement was for what it was doing (don't be to sure about this) and refrain from doing it again. It is fairly easy, but I easily train cats to use their scratching post without ever having to resort to violence. If it is scatching somewhere just pick it up and put it at the post and puts its claws on the post. Also make sure to PLAY with it at the post from time to time especially when it is scratching it on its own so that it learns that this is a fun place to sharpen the nails.
Beating it when you come home and find the wallpaper scatched just gives you a nervous cat afraid of you. Sure it "behaves", but who would want a cat like that. Or a person who is constantly afraid to get noticed because they might get punished?
What does such a person do when they think they are safe from being punished? My first was a good catholic girl and I sure as hell wasn't her first. I suggest that next time your wife looks a little deeper. What goes on when thse well-adjusted decent girls don't have an adult near that could tell on them so they get another beating?
Offcourse there are limits, but the right path is somewhere in between total neglect and beatings. That is why parenting is so bloody difficult, there is no hard and fast rule. Sometimes yes, a spanking or a slap can be in order, as direct punishment for an activity that must stop now. Childeren go through phases where you sometimes need to be able to make it BLOODY clear that the line has been crossed.
That is the other problem with regular beatings, they loose their power. A child that gets a single smack when it gets out of line will see that as far thougher discipline then a child who gets the belt for being late for dinner.
Sadly there is no simple guidebook to follow and state regulation often has to find a way to curb the extremes, anti-child abuse laws like this are created by people that seen the worsed and sadly in their fevour to stop real child abuse introduce laws that go a bit to far. But frankly I seen one rather disturbing case that suggests to me that those who complain have something to hide. It was a co-worker who complained about social services becoming involved after she disciplined her child physically by spanking her. So how come social services ever knew about such a harmless thing? Well the school informed them, because the child could not sit still from the pain of the broken skins from this "spanking". Sure, you could possibly link to a story where a childinformed on his/her parents after the mildest of touches BUT that is life. Every law will fail to stop some things it is meant to stop and catch some that it didn't.
Raising things is hard especially if you want to raise a free thinker, not somebody constantly cowering in your presence.
Don't confuse liberal parenting with neglect.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I mean, spam could potentially be advertising viagra or porn. They're going to hop right on that and filter out spam, right?
Censorship may be necessary,
Censorship is necessary only in totalitarian regimes.
but should it be overseen by Government.
That's how a totalitarian regime operates, actually.
There you are, staring at me again.
How dare you one up us here in the United States on inflicting government on your own citizenry?
I've about had it with these uppity countries like Britain with their spycams outdoing us on the George Orwell front.
Well I'm telling.
I'm calling Ed Meese.
Here we go with the next phase of the plan. The sad thing is they don't even realize "operation nanny state" is actually a cover for (queue ep iii palpatine voice) ABSOLUTE POWER!!!!
I was not going to reply because the general gist of such discussions tends to be: if you support censorship, then you're a moron, and if you don't then you're the enlightened person.
This comment however summarised what this whole debate (on Slashdot) has degenerated to - a farce by most respondents.
I'll address this post first; How many ISP do you think will hire more staff to "take the calls"? Or do you think the dude in the video shop looking at the X rated movies will be embarrassed?
A few others are addressing the various bypass technologies, filtering is not to outsmart people like that. Filtering is for people who want one less thing to worry about.
I have a netgear router that has keyword filtering. It's a pain to keep the keywords up to date. I can bypass it if I need to; same thing for the filter, but it's further upstream. I love it and look forward to it being available to me.
Shutting down a hidden Tor service is actually pretty easy.
option 1:
outlaw Tor and enforce it at the (transit-)ISP level
option 2:
DOS the service and/or Tor - considering that one or more government licensed/aproved/whatever ISP is involved the potential flooding bandwidth is practically unlimited
option 3:
good old "follow the money" strategy
Option 3 hasn't been used - at least not extensively - thus the whole "think of the children" argument is bogus.
I'll address this post first; How many ISP do you think will hire more staff to "take the calls"? Or do you think the dude in the video shop looking at the X rated movies will be embarrassed?
The dude in the X-rated video store doesn't have to give his name to get the x-rated video, he doesn't have to have it recorded, and furthermore, the clerk working at the X-rated video store is hardly in a position to get judgmental. People don't like even the idea of being judged, and by forcing them to come out and have the feeling of being judged or get the feeling that they are doing something wrong, even if that isn't really the case. You are forcing people into a potentially awkward situation, and furthermore one that could set them up for blackmail. What if one member in a relationship wants to get the filter lifted, even for non-pornographic reasons, and the other partner finds out? The insinuation is that they are using it for nefarious purposes or else why else would they need to bypass the filter? Maybe the information should be shared in the relationship, but that isn't mine, yours, or especially the governments call and the government shouldn't force ISPs and whatnot to keep, and potentially share, that kind of information.
On the other hand, if someone WANTS filtering they can always do it on the client side, and if they insist, they can contact the ISP to filter their account. Yeah, you are still keeping information, but on a lot less people and I would doubt that anyone would assume someone implemented filtering for "unwholesome" reasons.
I'm not against filtering, I'm against government MANDATED filtering. If you want to filter on your end, go right ahead. If you want an ISP to filter content for you, as long as you don't expect everyone else to do so and you don't expect everyone else to pay for your filtered ISP. However, making filtering the default gives the government a lot of leverage and can only lead to them wanting more and more information on you and will end up in them blocking information that they do not find flattering(see Pakistan)
Monstar L
I heard that in Soviet Russia... (scratches head), wait... how exactly would it work in Soviet Russia?
"They said I probly shouldn't fly with just one eye," "I am Bender. Please insert girder."
Heard this story covered on Canada's CBC radio show Searchengine.
Youngster cracks 1st version, then updated version of the filter in less than an hour each.
Household internet access computers belong in the livingroom or other public area until the kids have homes of their own.
here's the link:
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22304224-2,00.html
And just how the fsck is an ISP http filter going to prevent any of that?
This effort on the part of the Aussies makes about as much sense as current legislative efforts by the Utah State government, and will most likely fall on it's face even harder. Big waste of Australian taxpayer money.
Almost nobody wanted the downloadable filter which the Howard government spent so much to make available for free.
If you don't want to run a free filter program on your computer, what makes the Government think you want the ISP to filter for you?
Er, excuse me... while everyone seems to be commenting on the second half of this sentence, I'm concerned about the premise stated in the first clause before the conjunction: "Censorship may be necessary."
Why? What possible legitimate purpose could censorship possibly serve? People will find ways to work around information embargoes, and frankly, I'm hard pressed to find any legitimate reason to censor anything, no matter how offensive the material might be to me personally. Maybe if the blurb's author had qualified that statement a bit further, I wouldn't be reacting to it so strongly -- e.g., "Censorship of child pornography may be necessary." But no such qualifications were made!
What is this guy smoking? Censorship is NEVER necessary.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I have a netgear router that has keyword filtering... I love it and look forward to it being available to me.
And it is an appalling strawman for you to imagine or imply that comment is reasonable or relevant here.
I would be frankly astounded if you could find ANYONE on here that does not explicitly or implicitly fully support your private freedom to do that. Go right ahead, do whatever you want with your router. No government imposition of anything on anyone, your personal property, your private home, your personal choice what you do and do not wish to spend your own time reading or looking at.
It is also a negligible-to-nonexistent strawman that there is any issue here about you being able to get some sort of privately-defined-filter-selection service voluntarily offered by some private ISP service competing to serve any such market demand. (Under the presumption of course of a genuinely competitive market for ISP service.)
This is about the government is defining what does and does not go on the filter list and focibly legislating what ISPs have to do, and that it is a disaster.
I was not going to reply because the general gist of such discussions tends to be: if you support censorship, then you're a moron, and if you don't then you're the enlightened person.
Ok, yeah, at times does get phrased that way. However I still say that you are strawmanning the position. Attempting to define the position in a sentence, I would try something like:
"The government has no business telling people what speech/images they shouldn't see, and it is harmful and intolerable to permit Censorship Crusaders to hijack the force of government to do so."
You totally missed that the argument solely revolves around GOVERNMENT and you totally strawmanned the conflict and even if we skip the real issue of why this Australia initiative is absolutely intolerably bad even with "opt out", even on the pathetically minimal "opt-in vs opt-out" thing - the ONE point that you chose to quote and reply to - a please-chop-off-left-hand-not-my-right-hand-because-I'm-righthanded point, even on the abysmal point you failed to come up a single argument to the contrary.
I mean seriously, is there ANY justification whatsoever to legislate opt-out? Is there ANY justification to legislate that over legislating opt-in or even merely not imposing any particular opt-direction?
As for why it is an intolerable disaster even with the possibility of opt-out, I'm sure someone somewhere must have written a good explanation. Or *maybe* I'll feel like getting into that tomorrow or something.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
The great firewall of China doesn't even effectively filter content, and the Chinese can back up their filter with guns, how on earth does Rudd think this is going to work here?
when Dear Mr J Howard is brought before a criminal case for his lack of duty of care in placing Australian soldiers in a position of defending another nation's political ideology. When he and his colleagues are successfully sued for introducing a industrial relations that left some/many Australian citizens worse off in a period of time when corporations were experiencing a economic boom.
The only thing he was truly held accountable for is claiming that Australian citizens had never been better off.
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
If they took all the porn off the internet, there'd only be one site left - "Bring Back the Porn".
Personally I don't care if they put my name on a list - in fact I welcome it. I'm going to opt-out of this as a matter of principle, like we all should and why we care if some bureaucrat thinks we're watching porn all day?
It's an egotistical government that presumes it's acceptable to limit that which I, or my family can view over _my_ internet connection. I'm the master of my domain thank you very much, if I want to filter my connection I will, but the simple fact is that I don't need to, nor do I want to.
Please dear fellow Australians, let's decry the nanny state of Australia and go back to the conservatives. JWH is gone, it's safe to return.
There's a pretty in-depth discussion up on Whirlpool about this issue. Whirlpool is an Australian forum based around the idea of helping out internet consumers and discussing problems and concerns with the industry. Link is here: http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=910501/
Governments generally respond to the demands of the people, I'd like to know who wants Labor to be carrying this out. The non-IT geeks of this country I presume think this is a good idea and tax dollars well spent. And by non-IT geeks I mean people with an IQ of around 100 or below and 2.3 children.
My main concern is whether will speeds across the country be slowed down like with China, and what sites will be blocked at public terminals now that "net nanny" filtering will be the new default.
You've got to love majority rule.
Hello http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=910501 Unfortunately, our rights are not protected in the constitution. However, having said that our laws are followed by our government to the best of our knowledge! I hope to raise awareness of this if any of you could call +61 02 6277 7480 and +61 03 9650 1188. Preferably using VOIP with no number sending and tell senator Conroy that mandatory isp filtering is not the way to go or blah - depends on your point of view. Please contribute do not feel pressured by international bounds. In addition, please email senator.conroy@aph.gov.au . It is ironic because Kevin Rudd had some fun ad "scores" in new york a while back. No filters were used then ;)
Lets CONTRIBUTE http://petitions.takingitglobal.org/oznetcensorship?view=signatures&viewall=true
.
WEB 2.0 FIGHTS BACK.