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Nation-Wide Internet Censorship Proposed For Australia
sparky1240 writes "While Americans are currently fighting the net-neutrality wars, spare a thought for the poor Australians — The Australian government wants to implement a nation-wide 'filtering' scheme to keep everyone safe from the nasties on the internet, with no way of opting out: 'Under the government's $125.8 million Plan for Cyber-Safety, users can switch between two blacklists which block content inappropriate for children, and a separate list which blocks illegal material. ... According to preliminary trials, the best Internet content filters would incorrectly block about 10,000 Web pages from one million."
Your local government knows best.
This bill was brought to you by your local censors.
Is this some new scheme to confuse use by putting commas in the wrong place?
We are sorry, no appeal is possible. You see, in order to verify that your website - cnn.com - is actually 'safe', we would have to visit it. However, as the black list is of the 'no opting out' type, we are unable to do so, as temporarely removing it from the black list is not an option: think of the children! Kind regards, your government.
"Whole communities might find themselves wrongfully off-limits, as happened a few years ago, when the alt.binaries.pictures.astronomy usenet group was blacklisted by a large US ISP. The ISP did not block all alt.binaries.pictures groups, but chose to lump the astrophotography group in with the porn groups. That's what misinterpretation of phrases such as "heavenly body", "images from last night", "multiple exposure", "open truss", "polar mount", "white dwarf", "full moon" and the like can cause."
I don't want to know
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.