Australian Government Censorship 'Worse Than Iran'

An anonymous reader writes "The Australian Government's plan to Censor the Internet is producing problems for ISPs, with filters causing speeds to drop by up to 86% and falsely blocking 10% of safe sites. The Government Minister in charge of the censorship plan, Conservative Stephen Conroy, has been accused of bullying ISP employees critical of his plan: 'If people equate freedom of speech with watching child pornography, then the Rudd Labor Government is going to disagree.'" Read on for more, including an interesting approach to demonstrating the inevitable collision of automated censorship with common sense. The same reader continues: "Conroy's plan involves censoring at the ISP level to product 'Child-safe' Internet feeds. Initially he said that adults would be able to opt out. He since reversed that position, saying instead they can only go onto an 'Adult-safe' feed censoring 'illegal material', which another senator warned could include 'euthanasia material, politically related material, material about anorexia.' Colin Jacobs of Electronic Frontiers Australia said 'I'm not exaggerating when I say that this model involves more technical interference in the internet infrastructure [note: forum membership required] than what is attempted in Iran, one of the most repressive and regressive censorship regimes in the world.'"

Another anonymous reader suggests this answer to the proposed clone of China's great firewall: "Some of the tested systems use md5 hashes to find illegal content. As proof of concept, how long will it take Slashdot users to create an image with the md5 hash of 5ff742a58529efa02ba00ec8fa2e89bf? This md5 was picked because it is the hash of the current picture of the Prime Minister on his party's web site. A couple of points: The created image should be a jpg. It must be safe for work. It needs the correct MD5. It shouldn't break modern browsers. Its copyright should be free." Any takers?

Comments

That settles it!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's time to pick up stakes and move to Iran, that fabled land of freedom and tolerance--a shining country upon a hill.

Here's my internet filter solution

[Dracophile]

1. Cup your hands. That's the filter.
2. Pour water into your cupped hands. That's the internet.
3. Drop some blue dye into the water. That's the naughty bits.
4. If any blue gets through your hands, you lose.
5. ???
6. Profit!

Re:A friendly warning from an American

[deniable]

We're talking about Australia here. You know, the country that rides along every time the Americans 'go it alone.' But not to worry, we're well ahead of you. We invaded ourselves a couple of years ago to save America the trouble.

Re:Come on already

[Xiroth]

An amusing quote from the relevent Wikipedia article:

Internet censorship in Australia is largely the province of the Federal Government and its laws on Internet censorship are, theoretically, amongst the most restrictive in the Western world. However, the restrictive nature of the laws has been combined with almost complete disinterest in enforcement from the agencies responsible for doing so.

Re:posting link to unrelated penny arcade comic

[Anonymous Coward]

Somehow, I don't think you've thought your cunning plan all the way through.

Re:A friendly warning from an American

[deniable]

Plus we illegally invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. The Americans need to punish us.

Re:Communist rises again

[Dunbal]

This is an absolute and complete fabrication. Nothing but pure slanderous bullshit.

      Bullshit? On the internet? Are you SURE? Wow. I'm shocked.

"WMD did exist. Talk about old rhetoric."

[Nicolas MONNET]

WMD did exist. Talk about old rhetoric.

You should tell W. before he leaves office. Last we checked, he was still looking for them under his desk.

Re:WMD did exist and it has been proven

[Atriqus]

As someone from Michigan, I can assure you that if a location exists that isn't Detroit, it's safe to assume it's safer than Detroit.