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."

Comments

Re:WTF?!

[srjh]

This is very real, and very scary.

http://nocleanfeed.com/

I'm not sure why you think we're immune from this stupidity in Australia, or why Labor would be any better in this regard. Australia's censorship laws are some of the worst in the Western world.

Re:WTF?!

[MindKata]

"Coherent arguments against filtering also greatly welcome."

I would start with Article 12 from this... http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html
i.e. "Article 12 : No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks."

As for governments trying this sort, the UK is probably in the lead :( ...
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/10/15/2222209

Its interesting how so called free countries are rushing towards censorship, control and out right Big Brother, faster than so called bad countries. The power seekers in each country seem to be treating technology as their dream come true. They can use it to fight for powers previous generations of power seeking leaders couldn't have dreamed possible.

We all need to speak out against this sort of thing before its to late...
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=997305&cid=25397001