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

Always remember:

[cosmocain]

Your local government knows best.

This bill was brought to you by your local censors.

Re:Always remember:

[bugeaterr]

best Internet content filters would incorrectly block about 10,000 Web pages from one million

Or 1% of web pages

Re:Always remember:

[Lachlan Hunt]

It's sad that this is happening. As an Australian, I'm appalled that this is happening. Although I'm glad for many reasons that we finally got rid of little Bush Jr. (John Howard) and replaced him Kevin Rudd, it's a disaster that they now want to impose this crap on everyone.

Personally, I think the whole idea of content filtering to protect the children, as they claim, is bogus. Regardless of whether the filtering is done by the parents on their own computer or by the ISPs on the whole internet, I think it's bullshit.

Kids don't need overly restrictive blocks in place to prevent them getting access to porn, bomb making instructions or whatever else is deem inappropriate; nor do they need any kind of punishment if they do get access. Rather, they need good parental guidence to let them know what they should and should not look at, and be taught to be responsible with whatever they do get access to.

Besides, if some 13 or 14 year old boy looks up some porn, good for him. I did when I was that age, as did almost everyone else I knew back then, and it did me no harm at all. (Also, letting kids get porn for free from the internet is better then letting them resort to stealing porno mags that they're not allowed to buy legally)

Re:Always remember:

[crispi]

> Your local government knows best.

Or the State Govt.
Or the Federal Govt.

Who said we had too much government?
Probably someone who's about to be disconnected, or placed on a blacklist. :-)

Re:Always remember:

[flitty]

[ed. Minitrue: This post did not conform to the community standards of Austrailia. Have a nice day.]

Re:Always remember:

[lysergic.acid]

yes, because free health care is exactly like government censorship. how dare the government take away one's right to be too poor to afford medical treatment.

let's do away with public education too. after all, the Nazi government killed millions of Jews. so how can we ever trust the government with anything?

let's just abandon all notions of a civil society because a single undemocratic decision to impose government censorship on the internet. that makes much more sense than exercising your moral prerogative as a member of a democratic society and protesting such violations of fundamental civil liberties. i mean, why participate in the democratic process when you can instead sit back and be a passive observer and simply blame everything on "the government" when things go bad? it's not like it's up to the people to make sure the government serves public interest.

Re:Always remember:

[elrous0]

I'm just glad there is finally an issue that the U.S. isn't taking the most heavy-handed puritanical stance on. Even the bible-thumpers and think-of-the-children nutballs in the U.S. don't have the brass balls to push something like THAT through.

Re:Always remember:

[MoonBuggy]

Actually what I'd say is even more worrying is that it won't annoy 'everyone' with the false positives. Sure, if a site like YouTube, or Gmail or even Slashdot were blocked there would be outcry, but what about all those little sites that might be blocked or might just be down? What about the single page on the whole internet with the obscure information you need that's been up on some university server since 1996?

I'd be much more inclined to believe that you'll just get a generic error bounced to your browser than an actual redirect explaining that the government required blocking is filtering out the page you want. How are you going to know what you're missing out on and what's really not there? That's perhaps an even greater worry - once they do have this in place it'd be very easy to make the whole system effectively invisible to the vast majority of users. Few people (at least nobody considered worth listening to, unfortunately) will complain about something they don't notice.

Re:Always remember:

[doc_doofus]

I wouldn't celebrate too soon, there is an election coming. Things could change soon after that.
/sarcasm?

Re:Always remember:

[vtcodger]

***Kids don't need overly restrictive blocks in place to prevent them getting access to porn, bomb making instructions***

The bomb making thing actually is kind of concerning. Many parents are fond of their kitchens and will miss them, not to mention the potential impact on neighbors in multiple unit buildings.

But there is another concern. Not only will legitimate web sites inevitably be accidentally blocked by false positives from the filters, but the kids will still find ways to access porn and other "undesirable"sites via false negatives. One might think that only the very clever or very bored will be able to master that. But in fact, kids talk to one another. The URL of any porn site that is not blocked will probably be known by 50% of the 13 year old males (and 20% of the 13 year old females) on your continent within 3.4 days of its discovery by any one of them.

Filters are a really dubious idea. They are expensive to buy, expensive to administer, and don't work very well. The concept probably is not fixable although the volume of available material could be cut substantially and cheaply by things like .xxx domains.

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?!

[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?!

[plankrwf]

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.

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?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why wouldn't you expect this from Labor? This is the party who made taking photos of the rehersal of the Commonwealth Games opening ceremony illegal (for the greater good of course).

No, sorry, the Labor party is not about individual freedoms, far from it. Maybe you should read policy and have a think about who you are voting for next time.

Re:WTF?!

[wrmrxxx]

It's a real plan alright. It was an election promise/threat made shortly before the federal election last year, but it got surprisingly little attention. At the time I figured it was just an empty attempt to look tougher than the Liberal party (with their taxpayer funded filters for everyone's PC) program, and I hoped it would go the way of most election promises. Here's an EFF article about this from the beginning of the year, including links to Stephen Conroy's media releases: http://www.efa.org.au/2008/01/02/media-release-efa-attacks-clean-feed-proposal/ .

My understanding is that this has progressed as far as some technology demonstrations. I'm still hoping that technical infeasibility and resistance from ISPs will win out, but it's a worry that it has gone this far.

Re:WTF?!

[theaveng]

Tell your legislator that you are watching them very closely on this issue, and if they vote in favor of it, they won't be your legislator for much longer, because you will organize a campaign to de-elect them in two, four, or however many years it takes. Add that you won't allow your right to free speech to be trampled. That written speech should NEVER be censored no matter what it might be, and that anybody who supports censorship of webpages deserves the label "book burner" and include a picture like so: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2b/1933-may-10-berlin-book-burning.JPG/250px-1933-may-10-berlin-book-burning.JPG

Here in the States there are certain persons who want to block internet downloads of "Huckleberry Finn" because they think it's racist. Well, anybody who's actually read the book knows it is the exact opposite of racist, and in fact teaches a lesson about how blacks are no different than whites. Fortunately for us, our government agrees and does not censor Mark Twain's greatest novel.

Unfortunately for Aussies, your government doesn't have the common sense God granted a jackass. They are the 2000-era equivalent of book burners.

Re:WTF?!

[theaveng]

>>>Tell your legislator

Actually don't write just yours. Write ALL of them. With actual letters if you can afford the postage.

Re:WTF?!

[davros-too]

I don't know if its true but crikey ran with this earlier today: http://www.crikey.com.au/Media-Arts-and-Sports/20081017-And-the-Wankley-Award-goes-to-Conroys-net-filtering-scheme.html

Re:WTF?!

[Jaysyn]

Uh, start voting out every incumbent till you get ones you like.

Re:WTF?!

[AlanNew]

I might expect this from Liberals - but from Labor?

Remember that it was Kim Beasley that first came up with this a few years ago

Re:WTF?!

[QuoteMstr]

So what if Huckleberry Finn were a racist book? That wouldn't be a reason to censor it either. Nothing should be censored, ever.

Re:WTF?!

[Whiteox]

There are other political parties out there that will fix the issues: Try the LDP:
http://www.ldp.org.au/federal/policies/index.html

I'm sure I can get a policy statement from them if I try hard enough...

Re:WTF?!

[vikstar]

Hmmm, I can't get to that link. It just says "Blocked by EFA".

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

Re:WTF?!

[grcumb]

Also, with a superquick Google not turning up anything obvious, does anyone have links to good case studies where other governments have attempted something like this with disastrous results?

You're looking for the wrong kind of evidence. What you want is proof that it works....

... And works too well.

Everybody has something to hide, something they'd rather not share with their neighbours, their colleagues, even their chums. Make it clear that all of this will be visible to their government. Government censorship necessarily means that they can monitor everything.

Then work the problem from the bottom up. This is how Canada's anti-DMCA movement has done it: With loud, credible voices like Michael Geist backed by legions of well informed and activist people. It's no accident that the Canadian bill has died on the order table at least 3 times so far.

It's hard to imagine how a measure like this would be possible without enabling legislation. Get people organised, inform them about the exposure this creates for them as individuals, then target those few senators that you need to keep this from ever seeing the light of day.

Re:WTF?!

[g0es]

Americans, what's the best way forward to make my voice heard?!

1.) Form a political party
2.) Take lots of money from special interest groups.
3.) Sell soul
4.) Profit!
5.) Rule the country with all the money you have made. Profit even more by making sure the special interest groups feel special.

But really your best chance is to form a group and get your message out, write your politicians and cross your fingers.

Re:WTF?!

[omeomi]

Its interesting how so called free countries are rushing towards censorship, control and out right Big Brother, faster than so called bad countries.

Well, 9-11 9-11 9-11. 9-11 9-11 9-11, 9-11. "9-11". Fear, 9-11. Uncertainty, 9-11. Doubt, 9-11.

Re:WTF?!

[digitalchinky]

I've seen a lot of posts from you, I guess it's your sig that I remember. Anyway, you're pretty hard line, I'd consider you as someone at the extremities on most topics. Don't be offended though, it's just an observation gleaned from a few hundred lines of text and subject to stereotype and various inaccuracies.

I'm happy you are all for censorship (which is really to say that I don't care either way), and I'll defend your right to do whatever you please so long as it doesn't affect me. If you want to censor my own inane disgruntled rantings as a former secret 3 letter agency worker drone, then I'll be more than happy to censor your.... (insert whatever it is you hold most dearly)

If you want to protect me from the ogrish of the world, don't bother. I don't need it. I'm big enough to handle my own affairs and sane enough to give my baby girl a happy and balanced childhood filled with pony's, daffodils, geek, and a sense of place and purpose within society. I can do this without the help of the government, so thanks anyway, but censorship is not for me.

Re:WTF?!

[Ngarrang]

Money. The American way is to donate appropriate amounts of cash to the campaign funds of the particular people you are trying to sway.

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?!

[edmicman]

I can stand at the corner shouting kill all muslims, but if the authorities do nothing, then the muslims think that the authorities agree and that causes trouble for everybody.

Yes, you can, and no, it doesn't. You can rightfully say anything you want, peaceably, and the government has NO authority otherwise. Sure, you have to pay the consequences from the person punching you in the face for being a racist bigot (and they, in turn face consequences for punching you in the face). But the government CANNOT keep you from expressing your opinion. Same for the newspaper - it's not censorship if the editor chooses not to publish goatse - that is their right and responsibility as a private entity.

Re:WTF?!

[theaveng]

>>>So you're ok with child porn then ?

No because involuntary sex is wrong (it's rape), but I don't have any objections to Nudist sites which feature family photos. God created the human body; there's no reason to censor his artistry.

Re:WTF?!

[Pharmboy]

If this passed, it would be time for pitchforks and torches. Now you see why so many people are pro 2nd amendment (right to own guns) in the USA. To protect us from our own government.

Re:WTF?!

[theaveng]

That's not censorship (blocking the source).

It's filtering (blocking access at the destination).

I have no objections to the latter, but STRONG objections to the former. I don't mind if you don't want to hear my ideas, but I do mind if you gag my mouth.

Re:WTF?!

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're ok with child porn then ?

The images themselves? Fine, as long as I don't have to look at them. Keep them where they will only be found by those actually looking for them.

As for the production of said images - that's a completely different matter, not related to censorship at all.

You might disagree on it being a different matter, but look at other crimes. Hitting people with baseball bats are a crime. Showing footage of someone hitting people with baseball bats on the news is not. Outlawing that would be considered
censorship by most people.

Photographic evidence of a crime is not the same as the crime.

Or your bank details appearing on the web ?

No, because they are my business only. But if you wanted your bank details to appear on the web, they should not be censored for you. See the difference?

Now, there is a relation between those two questions other than the censorship. The person in those pictures might not want them out there. However, them being out there does not harm said person (as opposed to abusing the bank details), only the knowledge of them being out there. However, censorship does not solve this point. The pictures are still out there, the knowledge that they exist are just the same. If you know or think that pictures were taken, you know someone somewhere is jacking off to them. If you are not aware that pictures were taken, you don't go looking for them.

Re:WTF?!

[master_p]

And that's a reason many people believe that 9-11 was not orchestrated by Muslims, but by the secret services of western countries.

Re:WTF?!

[mdwh2]

Because there's never been any reduction of people's freedoms in the US lately...

Re:WTF?!

[jandersen]

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."

Please note the little word "arbitrary". Is it arbitrary when it happens systematically? Such philosophical questions aside, what this article really says is that these must not occur except as allowed by law. This is just like when the polica can't arrest you on a whim, "just because" - that would be "arbitrary" - but they can still arrest you if they suspect you of committing a crime, because there is a law that says so.

In the same way, if the legislators decide to make a law that decides which web-sites you are allowed to visit, it is no longer arbitrary, and the only way to get around it, as far as I can see, is by either proving that it is unconstitutional or by getting somebody elected that are willing to repeal this law.

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...

Re:WTF?!

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

So you're ok with child porn then ? Or your bank details appearing on the web ?

At this point, Unequivocally, I say that; Yes I am willing to accept an internet, and a wider world, with child porn, Bank details, terrorists videos or what have you. Let me repeat my point. I would put up with any amount of child porn and pedophiles, any amount, before I would put up with taking one more step down the road that society is taking.

People need to make a stand on this issue. People have to take away the ability for authoritarians and enemies of free society to use certain words, concepts and arguments as unassailable and irrefutable weapons. The Taboo of countering these arguments must end.

It's better that a thousand children be molested than one website blocked. You think this idea is shocking? I think this image is more shocking. And make no mistake, this image is exactly where our society is headed if we allow our honest protests to be silenced with no more than a single word.

If you think I'm being too radical, I'll leave you with a Frederick Douglas quote to chew on: "Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground."

Re:WTF?!

[Sperbels]

What protects us is that the army is made up of citizens who (we hope) believe in freedom, democracy, and (hopefully) take their oath to uphold the Constitution [1] seriously. The army would mutiny if it were ordered to occupy, say, New York City and enforce blatantly anti-Constitutional laws. That is what protects freedom in America. Not my guns, not the promises of politicians, but the simple fact that our army is made up of us

Ask yourself this...if there is a large group of people united in a just cause...and the government is willing to use force to pacify them...the military is just going to pop some tear gas in there and the problem is taken care. When the people are armed it's not so easy. You have to escalate matters to a whole new level. The military will be willing to pacify these unarmed people on a whim (just as the police do now). But if the people are armed, it requires deadly force to pacify them. The politicians giving the orders, and military personel doing the violent pacifying suddenly need a damn good reason to do it. If things ever got so bad that large portions of the population were willing to take up arms against the US government, a population carrying pitchforks could easily be dismissed. An armed population could not. Lastly, it's NOT futile for a bunch of people armed with hunting rifles to take on a modern military. It's called guerrilla warfare and small bands of people employ it against large technologically advanced armies all the time and having been doing it for centuries... with varying degrees of success.

During Saddam Hussein's dictatorial regime an Iraqi could walk into a gun shop and buy an AK-47 with the full auto function enabled. By your argument, therefore, Iraq under Saddam should have been a very free place, but you'll note that it wasn't

You're making the assumption that Saddam was so bad that the people were willing to risk their lives to overthrow him. Maybe the majority of people were willing to live with things as they were...especially considering Saddam's history of gassing whole towns to quell an uprising.

Re:WTF?!

[elrous0]

Back when the 2nd amendment was created, that was EXACTLY its intent (even though it ws not publicly acknowledged as such). In order to establish a stronger federal government than had been allowed under the Articles of Confederation and get the new Constitution ratified, the Federalists had to give the public and states some assurance that the new government would not set itself up as a new quasi-monarchy. One of those assurances was that the government could not divest states and citizenry of the weapons they had used to overthrow British control a few years earlier (an implied right to rebel if the new government proved as heavy-handed as the British government).

Now practically, it's true that it would be a lot more difficult to rebel today than in the late 18th century with mere firearms. But if there are enough people equipped with small arms in a guerrilla insurgency, they can hopelessly mire down any government attempting to control them (just look at what simple insurgents were able to do in Vietnam and Iraq with just rifles and simple explosives). Tanks, large bombs, and airpower are overpowering in conventional warfare, but not nearly as useful against a massive citizen-based insurgency.

Re:WTF?!

[shutdown -p now]

I've seen a lot of posts from you, I guess it's your sig that I remember. Anyway, you're pretty hard line, I'd consider you as someone at the extremities on most topics. Don't be offended though, it's just an observation gleaned from a few hundred lines of text and subject to stereotype and various inaccuracies.

If you check GP's posting history - he is a fundamentalist Muslim. So don't be surprised.

Re:WTF?!

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Puritanism in the general sense -- "the desperate fear that someone, somewhere, is having a good time" -- seems to be a trait that pops up in just about every type of authoritarian system. Authoritarians of the right, authoritarians of the left, and authoritarians with no discernable political philosophy other than maintaining their own power all seem to put an inordinate amount of effort into "protecting the morals" of the societies they control. A good measure of a government's attitude toward freedom in general is its attitude toward sex and other pleasures of the body.

Honestly, I think it's a bit of a stretch to blame American small-p puritanism on those grim old pilgrims. The Mayflower landed almost four hundred years ago; a lot has changed since then, and the descendents of the Puritans are now held up as models of licentiousness and decadence by the descendants of Cavaliers ... Australia has a history almost as long and just as tangled. Whatever a country's origins, the people who live there now constitute their own society, and history informs but in no way determines how that society works.

Re:WTF?!

[wifiwaves]

It is south of the equator...everything is reversed.

Re:WTF?!

[mibus]

1% is wishful thinking.

http://www.minister.dbcde.gov.au/media/media_releases/2008/060

"# Overblocking (the proportion of content that was blocked that should not have been blocked) was between 1% and 6%, with most falling under 3%. The median overblocking rate was significantly improved from the previous trial."

Read the other dot-points at the end - performance hit was between 2% and over 75%... All to block "between 88% and 97%" of "bad" content.

Somehow, the tradeoffs don't seem worth it to me.

(Disclaimer: personal opinion; I work at an Australian ISP; ...)

10,0000?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this some new scheme to confuse use by putting commas in the wrong place?

Re:10,0000?

[plankrwf]

No, this is a clever test.
It is aimed at a certain type of slashdot readers:
the readers in the following groups:
- Americans. Or at least: they who are used to using a "." as a seperator. I.e.: "1/2=0.5"
Beware: there are those who would write the above as "1/2=0,5"!
- Non Americans, of the 'not enough geek' type.
They wouldn't fall for the '0,5' thing, but would balk at a sentence 'about 10,0000 in one million'.
Beware: those in the stock market (non US) would say that 10,0000 in one million is not very precise: better is of course 10,00000 in one million. I mean: 10,0000 is really between 9,9999 and 10,0001 which is not really precise.
- Those who think that the world is NOT directed by mathematics. Indeed, these people would disbelieve a number of 10,0000 in one million (but would believe something like 12,9078).

All-in-all, as I read my own thoughts: it cannot be but a lure to try to trap those slashdotreaders who are in the stock-exchange outside of the USA, and who ARE of the opinion that all riscs in the stock exchange can be put in a mathematical formulae.

This off course in the best slashdot tradition:
1. Identify a specific group of slashdot readers
2. ...
3. ...
4. Profit!
(They just haven't yet come to steps 2 and 3)

Re:10,0000?

[bundaegi]

If you are Korean, this makes perfect sense as they have a numeral system based around 10^4. "man" stands for 10000 (10^4). 10,0000 would be "sib man". By the way, listen to a Korean convert a big number (say a house price) from a 10^4 based system to a 10^3 one and hilarity ensues...

Re:10,0000?

[JonathanR]

It's just Shatner's version of one million dollars.

We already have this in Britain

[Xest]

www.iwf.org.uk

Whilst to be fair as far as I understand it does a good job in that it focuses entirely on child porn and hasn't as I'm aware stepped out of this remit I am a little concerned that it came into play without anyone ever really noticing or anyone ever really being told.

Can we be sure this organisation does only do what it says it does? Can we be sure it doesn't ever abuse it's powers? Would we ever know if it did?

It is not run by the government and is an independent organisation, so not having a connection to the government increases my confidence in it a million fold at least however.

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

Re:Hypocrisy anyone?

[kaos07]

100% right. It was most noticeable during the Olympics.

During the Olympics, the Australian media were in uproar about the "Great Firewall of China". Being a Slashdot reader, I knew all about it but for most people the fact that there's mandatory internet censorship in China was a completey new and abhorrent idea. What they apparently didn't know was that our government was actually testing how to do the exact same thing whilst they were banging on about how bad China is.

I wrote many letters to all the papers on that very topic but alas, they were all ignored.

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.

Re:1% false positive?

[kaos07]

100,000 / 1 million is 10%, not 1%.

So its 100000 of one milion

[Dreen]

What dos it exactly mean?

Is it: It blocks 100000 websites per every 1m (10% of the internet?)
or: It simply blocks 100k (what does 1m mean then?)
or: It blocks 100k of the 1m and this 1m is all you can get in australia anyway
or: It blocks 100k attempts to access a blacklisted site per 1m of such attempts (that would be very inefficient wouldnt it)
or: It blocks 100k illegal/harmful websites of 1m known. But if they know 10 times more why include only 10%

Help me Im lost

Re:So its 100000 of one milion

[Terrasque]

It could also mean, that for every 1 mill blocked, 100.000 of them shouldn't get blocked..

Starting to get a bit confused myself when I start thinking of it.

Of 1 million requests, it blocks X of them, where 100.000 of those shouldn't get blocked? Who knows..

What could possibly go wrong?

[David Gerard]

"We have buttiduously canvbutted the industry, buttessed what is available and buttembled the finest selection of PFI contractors for this buttignment. The filters will buttociatively clbuttify all communications and filter then, I can butture you, rebuttemble them with surpbutting exacbreastude in any quanbreasty. Consbreastuents can be rebuttured that a mulbreastude of industry compebreastors will butture quality and keep our clbuttrooms safe. EDS Capita Goatse will not embarbutt us."

The plans have attracted wide criticism. "It will only give supersbreastious rebutturance to medireview thinkers. Automated systems won't solve human problems like loveual harbuttment. Mbuttacring the written word into a Picbutto painting is not the anbreastank missile of Internet safety."

Unions also butterted that such close buttessment of staff in the workplace would hamper efficiency and could verge on workplace harbuttment. "Watermeloning cranberries."

The government was unfazed. "Butterting free speech is one thing, but a triparbreaste committee considers that that does not justify mere pbuttive breastillation at the expense of others."

The first filtering offices will be set up in Arsenal, Penistone and Scunthorpe.

Freenet?

[femto]

What's people's real world experience of Freenet? Does it work and is it usable? Is it truly secure from government intervention and monitoring? If this proposal goes ahead it will be the thing that prompts me to install Freenet and badger all my friends into joining too.

Re:Freenet?

[nyctopterus]

I've played around with freenet. I don't know how secure it is, but in any case that was irrelevant, because it was unusably slow (on my 2mb up/20mb down ADSL2 connection). And we're not talking 56k slow here, we're talking 5-10 minutes for a page of text with a couple of little pictures. It's meant to get faster the longer you leave it on. It didn't in the four days I had it running.

Re:Freenet?

[svallarian]

Tor is your friend. Much, much faster than freenet ever was.

http://www.torproject.org/

As a parent...

[PinkyDead]

I would not be in favour of this at all.

The system we have in our home is simple, the computer is in the kitchen where everyone else is. To my mind that is the only sensible way to keep your children safe on the Internet. If they come across something that is unsuitable then we talk about it. That means they know what's dangerous and how to deal with it, and we know what they're getting involved in.

Blocking access is just wrapping your kids in cotton wool - and when you can't do that any more, they suddenly become very vulnerable.

Why is censorship bad?

[Antony-Kyre]

Why is censorship of illegal material bad? If the material is illegal, why shouldn't it be censored?

Can anyone make this argument? Because if the material is illegal in the first place, meaning you would normally get in trouble for accessing it, period, then a preemptive measure shouldn't harm you, logically.

Cast aside the argument that it will make the Internet sluggish, because that argument will be nullified if technology and such improve enormously. Also cast aside the argument that it will be expensive to do, because what if we make it incredibly efficient?

Also cast aside the false positives occurring, because what if they get it so refined that a false positive is a one in a million occurance. In such a way that the system works exactly as proposed, with no drawbacks (concerning false positives, network lag, etc.) whatsoever.

I'm not defending censorship. I want someone to make a good argument.

Re:Why is censorship bad?

[richie2000]

Can you, assuming we are living in a modern democracy which purports to champion freedom of speech, tell me exactly what kind of material that should get someone in trouble for simply reading or watching it? Who would be trusted with deciding where to draw this line?

/ The Gestapo thought Anne Frank was a terrorist, producing illegal material.

Re:Why is censorship bad?

[B5_geek]

Simple. Illegal information = Thought Crimes = A very bad thing!

There is nothing wrong with information, it is what you do with that information that is crucial. Just because somebody get stabbed with a knife, you don't bad all steak knives do you? A screwdriver can be used to steal a car or build a house, it is a TOOL; just like information.

Then that brings us to to the fact that no filtering software works 100% so you get:

(A) legit websites get blocked too
(B) "Bad Stuff" still gets through

When this happens, what is the point of filtering it anyway?

Another issue with all laws: People and opinions change, so what is illegal today, might be perfectly acceptable in 40 years. We don't think twice about letting women vote, or mixed-colour couples getting married, or even in some places same-sex marriages. Public opinion changes, but only with information.

Re:Why is censorship bad?

[thermian]

Its not what they want to censor now, its just that such laws and methods tend to get misapplied later. For example, sites which criticize the current administration in a not too nice way could be added to the list, or sites which recall 'uncomfortable truths' about a countries past. All they have to do is justify it to themselves.

Laws and government policies which cover such wide topics often get misapplied. Here in the UK, laws passed to fight terrorism just got used to impound money from failing Icelandic banks. Didn't take long to justify using them out of their intended area, nor will it take long to misuse these blacklists.

Re:Why is censorship bad?

[B5_geek]

Age of consent varies from one country to another. Who's rule is right?

Re:Why is censorship bad?

[sakdoctor]

Are you ignorant or just playing devils advocate?
All the reasons you "cast aside" can't just be ignored. There will always be false positives, and it will always cost the tax payer money.

First off, what is so sacred about legality? The law is not set in stone, it's constantly being updated, and varies wildly from location to location. I believe all knowledge to be ultimately good, and censorship will necessarily trample on that. It's digital book burning plain and simple.

Information about illegal Drug, bomb construction, racism all blurs into legitimate subjects because there are no real boundaries. That's why the law making process is difficult, and why censorship will always have side effects and is never acceptable.

Re:Why is censorship bad?

[HungryHobo]

"Where one burns books, one will soon burn people." --Heinrich Heine

1:Censorship of any kind is the same as book burning, it serves to prevent people from accessing information which precludes any reasonable consideration of the topic.
Want to bet whether forums where people discuss whether whatever material you name as evil should be blocked will suddenly become inaccessiable?

2:Once you've got a computer sitting listening in on everyones connections and blocking illegal content it's very very tempting to listen for other things. Express an unpopular political opinion with someone listening in on your line and you might very well get your door/head kicked in.

3:Parallels with groups which used to be treated similarly. Go back a few decades and groups seen as perverts were subjected to the same treatment, books protraying gays as anything other than evil were burned/censored.Hell, gays were burned along with the books in some countries.

4: It's very very tempting to add sites which you don't like to the list. If you give *government figure* the keys to the database of blocked sites then *government figure* might very well add *site critical of government figure* to the database as one of the -statisticly insignificant- false positives. Sites critical of some of the major blacklist publishers are often themselves blacklisted.

5: How do you know if you're being fed bullshit? China built it's firewall to "protect" people from the "harmful" content on the internet. What's to stop them from adding more and more and more to the list of things which make up "illegal content" which is of course perfectly OK to block. Until everything your local minister wouldn't like is on the list. The blocking system is there, everyone with a pet peeve will want to get their *thing they hate* added to the list.

6:Ultimatly it can all be defeated by technical means, the illegal content just sinks deeper, it doesn't disappear.

7: Comparison to physical situation, imagine being forced by law to wear a headset which blacks out your vision whenever it thinks you are looking at something which the makers of the device considered you shouldn't be looking at. Imagine such a device getting introduced as a measure to stop peeping toms and creepy old men in parks who stare at children. Never mind the tiny proportion of the population who get unlucky as it blacks out their vision while they're doing something totally blameless like driving.
Does this seem reasonable?
Stealing is illegal, should someone invent an implant which makes it physicly impossible for you to steal how happy would you be about wearing it? It's for your own good! it would just stop you from accidentally stealing things which would help you! Does this seem reasonable?

Peeping on people showering without their consent is illegal just like looking at child porn or stealing is illegal and if you get caught you're in trouble, this doesn't mean we have to blindfold/hobble everyone. The responsibility- the choice, to break the law or not is an individuals.

Re:Why is censorship bad?

[1u3hr]

Also cast aside the false positives occurring

No, you CANNOT do that. It is IMPOSSIBLE to not have false positives.

They can't do it now when they're testing it. If it goes online and suddenly thousands of people are trying to circumvent it, would it magically get better?

How on earth could the billions of webpages online at any money be classified correctly?

How will you stop malicious people planting "illegal" content on a site (eg, attaching to a forum post), the reporting the site to have it blocked for an indefinite period?

You can't just assume it will be sorted out and go ahead. It will not. It hasn't in any country that has tried to do this.

Those really trading in real "illegal" content will route around it. Some will certainly do so by hijacking legit sites, using them till they're blocked, and them moving on to another.

The question is, what GOOD will it do? Bad guys will be mildly inconvenienced. The rest will have their connections slowed down and occasionally randomly blocked.

Phew

[Daimanta]

Thank God I live in good old England where this surely won't happen.

Re:General encryption

[nyctopterus]

Err... freenet?

Time to move to china I think........

[fester2001]

Time to move to china I think........

Two lists

[ark1]

"users can switch between two blacklists which block content inappropriate for children, and a separate list which blocks illegal material" Does this mean illegal material is appropriate for children?

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).

Re:Follow orders: bend over & spread 'em

[Daimanta]

"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

Re:Follow orders: bend over & spread 'em

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

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

Well, I for one am intrigued by these topics and wish to learn more.

Re:Follow orders: bend over & spread 'em

[Talla]

> Wow, a couple of networks may at some point be wrongly blocked by mistake for a short period of time till the mistake is identified.

You REALLY believe these mistakes will happen seldom and be fixed quickly? You must be new here.

Re:Follow orders: bend over & spread 'em

[philspear]

In a society that values freedom of speech, any page blocked is done so wrongfully.

Except goatse and 2 chicks. Those are the two good uses of censorship.

Mudoch countries

[Presto Vivace]

I don't think it is an accident that these things are going forward in the English speaking countries where Murdoch has the most influence, US, UK, & Australia. So far as I can make out, Canada and NZ are sticking with freedom.

Re:Mudoch countries

[ubercam]

All the time! In Canada we have a healthy immigration system that heavily rewards business/education/financial success and refugees & their family members.

Some individual provinces even have their own vetting system for immigrants wishing to establish themselves in that particular province. Manitoba's Provincial Nominee Program is the largest and most successful program in the country (and the only one I know anything about). It doesn't guarantee you a visa, but they do their homework, background checks etc, and also a labour market study to determine whether your skills are needed here, or whether you'd be stealing a job from a Manitoban. If they feel you're needed, they issue a recommendation to the Federal dept of immigration, which usually rubber stamps you, unless of course they find something which rejects you, like a criminal record or an unticked box on one of the thousands of forms.

I have been helping my friend get his application together for the last couple months and he should have it sent in by Christmas. It will take 6-9 months to get a response though. Don't expect to apply and move in the next 2 weeks, more like 1-2 years.

A Provincial Nominee Program isn't the only route, you can apply directly to the feds as well, but I know nothing about that route. The Feds announced recently that they were going to increase the immigration quota, so better chances.

That said, Aussies are very welcome here. I hear Aussie accents all the time here in Winnipeg. If you're SERIOUS about it, do it. You won't regret it. Canada is seriously poised to take a huge leap upward in international power rankings... that is if the gov't manages this crisis properly and we keep our heads above water while everyone else is drowning. We're a net exporter of valuable resources (wood, oil, food, minerals), so we're better off than other countries who are net importers. We've also currently got the best banking system in the world. Cost of living is low... lots of really good reasons to move here. Best place to live right now and for a long time to come.

If you're worried about the net neutrality issue, I'm positive that's gonna be on the back burner for the foreseeable future while parliament sorts through this much more important "economy" business.

A neat bonus is that you'd finally get snow on Christmas!

Cleanfeed

[mdwh2]

On the (slightly) positive side, although my ISP (Virgin Media) apparently uses it, I've never seen any evidence of its presence. Also, I've never heard of anyone having problems or false positives (which obviously doesn't mean this doesn't occur).

Note that you wouldn't actually know if you had reached a page that was blocked under the system. From http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3797563.stm :

if you are a BT broadband customer and you follow a link to a website that is suspected of hosting images of child sexual abuse - what is often sloppily called "child porn" - then you will get a "page not found" error.

(Compared with places like Saudi Arabia, which inform you why the page isn't available, and even allow you submit a form if you think it's been incorrectly blocked.)

Note that although theoretically this only covers "illegal content" like child pr0n, from January the Government will start criminalising possession of some adult material, vastly increasing the range of sites which could fall under such blocking.

Also it was the IWF (who run Cleanfeed) who recently reported someone for prosecution for writing a fictional story (although as it happens, the story in question still seems to be available and doesn't seem to be blocked - instead they're going after the author, who may face up to five years in prison).

Walled gardens?

[OmniChamp]

So people have touched upon censorship, but in the big picture, is this a future trend? China's current implementation of the Great Firewall and now this? This may have a larger impact than most people think and I'm not big on fear mongering. Reduction of the access and free exchange of information breaks down the fundamental usefulness of the internet and if greater organizations (I say organizations because even if a country doesn't do it, but ISP monopolies worldwide do, the results are similar) continue down this path the internet will devolve into something resembling television: a passive experience with controlled and filtered inputs and outputs.

Last tin-foil hat thought: The reason I'm concerned about this is that I've been confident that these attempts to censor or filter the internet in the past were futile because, like water confronting a rock in its path, the information will flow around the damage. But if things go the way of "1984", the general public just won't know of any better if they are brought up in a filtered environment and what they're missing. I'm straining my memory, but I believe in Orwell's book, they removed terms to describe dissent or hatefulness so that people would be unable to express their dissatisfaction. AOL users thought that their world WAS, in fact, the internet until they changed ISPs.

Alright I'm digressing. If I lived in Australia, I would fight tooth and nail against this. To redirect the "Think of the Children" play, even if they are not subject to illegal or lewd material early on, it's still out there. A more reasonable action would be educating in school safe surfing of the web, how to determine reliable and unreliable sources and proper teaching of ethics in a more subjective and technologically advanced world. My last example is this: Would you rather have teach someone walking down the street why its important not to break into someone's house or line the doors and windows with spikes and barbwire? Think of the children!!!!

/rant over. I'm getting some coffee.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions

[Cinnaman]

Strangely the discussion is more civilised here than at Ars Technica, hopefully this revelation will be the beginning of the end of the net filtering idea.
When I first heard of it, it sounded like a valid way to make it easier for people with children to filter their internet, and there was an opt-out option (I really disliked the idea of opt-out rather than opt-in though).
Now it sounds like it will turn us into a second great firewall of China, so I think the further this goes the more consternation will increase.

China

[Godji]

And this is different from the Great Firewall of Chine how?

Not that being similar to the GFC makes it any more acceptable of course.

Re:Sich Heil!

[ubercam]

I believe you meant to say:

Sieg Heil zum neuen Fuehrer...

/GermanGrammarNazi

Finland

[weicco]

Welcome to Finland! We already have secret filter lists that saves us from all the kiddie porn in the internet.

Hey, wait! It doesn't! It just blocks DNS queries to kiddie porn websites. I'm sure no-one will never ever figure out how to set up DNS server of their own or use P2P networks...

Funny thing about this law is that it is written so that it can only concern foreign websites containing illegal child porn material but actually it is used to block gayporn websites and domestic websites criticizing the law. And because filter lists are kept secret we really don't know what else is blocked. About those two we at least have some evidence. Well, they also managed to block japanese music shop in the process ;)

Oh. And did I mention that they are trying to broaden this filterings stuff to concern copyrighted (other than kiddie porn) material also?

So let me tell you again! Welcome to Finland - where Orwell lives and is well!

4chan and friends

[Sibko]

So, how much do you want to bet that website like 4chan, 7chan, 99chan, 420chan, anonib, etc. etc. are all blocked as 'illegal' websites?