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

WTF?!

[Bifurcati]

Okay, seriously, can anyone with sources verify if this is real? I mean, I might expect this from Liberals - but from Labor? Who decides on the black list? What sort of appeals process is there going to be? Is there 24/7 tech support?

I want answers, damnit! I'm Aussie, and not used to fighting these sort of things - Americans, what's the best way forward to make my voice heard?!

Re:WTF?!

[james.mcarthur]

You been living under a rock since the last election? It was a Rudd policy for ages. Now they're in power they're going to implement their scheme.

Have a look at http://www.efa.org.au/ for some more background.

Re:WTF?!

[theaveng]

It should all be allowed, except for the shouting (U.S. Constitution says *peaceably* assemble) or the revealing of a person's private data (essentially theft of property).

We allow the Ku Klux Klan to print and demonstrate with signs the most racist garbage you can imagine, precisely because you CAN stuff earplugs into your ears and choose not to listen. People should not be censored simply because their ideas are unpopular or disgusting. Change the channel or walk away if you don't like that person's viewpoints.

Re:WTF?!

[Dorkmaster Flek]

It also helped that we have a minority government who wouldn't want to piss off too many people and ended up making copyright law into an issue in several ridings. As a Canadian, I'm genuinely proud of how we derailed that piece of crap. One of the heads of the CRIA, the Canadian arm of the RIAA (they don't actually represent any Canadian labels anymore) was actually ranting in an interview about how Facebook derailed their precious copyright law, which made my day, let me tell you. Our minority government however has already announced their intention to move in the same direction with future copyright bills, so we'll see how long our victory lasts...

Hypocrisy anyone?

[redscare2k4]

And let me guess, the Australian guys in the government that want this, are the sames that scream "dictatorship!!" any time Venezuela, Cuba, or China is mentioned. Hypocrisy

1% false positive?

[NoNeeeed]

I'm actually surprised that it is that low.

What I particularly object to (in addition to the whole concept) is the capricious nature of many blocks. BoingBoing has been blocked by a number of blocklist companies, not because of anything rude or illegal, but because they had articles about filtering companies

At the end of the day, you have a human organisation making decisions, and even in the best of worlds that will be open to abuse.

As a brit, I welcome our Aussie friends to the panopticon of fear.

Follow orders: bend over & spread 'em

[AliasMarlowe]

This bill was brought to you by your local censors.

So Aussies can look forward to a rabid reaming by prurient hypocrites, and the undoubted pleasure of being billed for it, too. The details of the public reaming will also be off-limits, of course (for the public good: can't have people witnessing such lurid acts).

Due to the shotgun nature of blocking filters, there will be many pages wrongfully blocked. Based on the blocking policies enforced at some workplaces, entire domains may be blocked on account of just a single objectionable page in a single user's subdomain. Whole domains may also be blocked wrongly, through ambivalent ignorance or a mere typo.

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 doubt if anyone involved in the decision to block the group actually looked at the images being posted there - I never saw an inappropriate image in several years of regularly reading that group.

Presumably, all anonymizing services will promptly find themselves on the blacklist, lest anyone use them to bypass the filters and look at unapproved pages. Expect also, that anyone acting as a freenet node will be dealt with appropriately (ISP cutoff, or legal action).