Australian Government Ignoring Problems With Proposed Filters

halll7 writes with an update to the proposed Australian national firewall we discussed recently. According to the BBC, "The official watchdog, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), has been conducting laboratory tests of six filtering products, and the government plans a live trial soon. ... After its recent trials, ACMA reported significant improvements on earlier studies. The network degradation on one product was less than 2%, although two products were in excess of 75%." Now, Ars Technica reports that "an Australian newspaper has uncovered documents showing that the government minister responsible for the program has ignored performance and accuracy problems with the filters, then tried to suppress criticism of the plan by private citizens." The EFA has a great deal to say in opposition of these plans.

Comments

What is going on?

[Pig Hogger]

What is going on with anglo-saxon governments?

They used to be the vanguard of freedom and liberties! Now, they seem to be degrading into a spiral of power-hungry stupid obtuseness!!!

Is it something in the water, or the anglo-saxon culture has run it's course and is now totally decadent???

Re:What is going on?

[wjh31]

power hungry is about it, the governments have realised that they can do what they want, and even if everyone complains, no-one will ever actually get off thier arse and do anything about it like they used to, we are all content to be passive aggressive even though it achieves nothing and the big wigs can do what they want

Re:What is going on?

[electrictroy]

He shouldn't be marked "troll" or "flamebait". He's voiced EXACTLY what I was thinking. I just read an article about how the U.S.-FCC wants to gradually phasing-out free television and replacing it with subscription-only whitespace devices. Meanwhile Australia is trying to dumb-down the internet (via filtering) so it's harmless fluff even a 5-year-old could read.

Government is supposed to be "of, by, and for the People" and instead they seem to be working for Google, Microsoft, et cetera.

Of, by, and for the Corporations.

Re:What is going on?

[deniable]

I've said it before, "No representation without compensation," and big business can afford a lot of representation. In this case, I'm sure someone is looking to cash in but I think ideology is driving it. Either that or a politician is trying to look tough on the 'think of the children' issue of the week.

Re:What is going on?

[bconway]

No, analog television is already being phased out and replaced with equally free digital television. They're squabbling over what to do with the leftover frequency space.

Re:What is going on?

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

One and two.

Mods, be kind! He's been modded down already!

Re:What is going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know what the problem is. Maybe bin Ladin won and has successfully destroyed the Western culture he hates so much.

I've always rolled my eyes at those people who claim they're tired of the government and it's time to pack up and move. The theory was supposed to be that if we don't like our government, the constitution provides a way to overthrow it peacefully every election year. Either that has stopped working or these countries have become populated with Hitler's descendants (sorry Godwin).

Now I find myself reading over the immigration laws of certain Scandinavian countries and wondering how hard it is to learn Swedish.

Re:What is going on?

[A Pancake]

This is absolutely nothing more than the result of people buying into government as a paternal figure.

People have made it resoundingly clear that they want the government to protect them. Whether it's from alcohol, cigarettes, violent video games, firearms, drugs, sex or any number of other things which have been, or are curently threatened by, the nanny state.

This isn't bad in itself. The job of government is afterall to do the will of the people. If the majority wants smoking banned and it isn't unconstitutional who am I to say it's wrong?

The problem comes in when we the people fail to demand accountability for these measures. We blindly accept, out of ignorance or apathy, the measures the governments are proposing because 'it's from the government, it must be right' and never demand proof that legislation is effective or efficient.

A politician is not an expert on violent video games
A politician is not an expert on the effects of alcohol
A politician is not an expert on second hand smoke
A politician is not unbiased, is not benevolent, and does not know any better than you what is best for you.

The government is an employee of the people, not a father figure. It's damn time we start treating it that way.

1. We need salary caps that ensures politicians are earning no more than the average man they represent
2. Abolish appointed positions and establish term limits for elected positions
3. Build accountability into the constitution - this would be a multifaceted piece that must include civillian involvement, metrics to measure the effectiveness of new legislation, and the power to enact a sunset clause on legislation that is ineffective or detrimental
4. Legislate criminal penalties for violating the constituion and enforce them
5. Provide an easy path for citizens to challenge unjust laws that does not require being arrestsed to do it (see Canada)

Re:What is going on?

[electrictroy]

Post by Pig Hogger shouldn't be marked "troll" or "flamebait". He's voiced EXACTLY what I was thinking. I just read an article about how the U.S.-FCC wants to gradually phasing-out free television and replacing it with subscription-only whitespace devices.

Meanwhile Australia is trying to dumb-down the internet (via filtering) so it's harmless fluff even a 5-year-old could read. Government is supposed to be "of, by, and for the People" and instead they seem to be working for Google, Microsoft, et cetera. - Of, by, and for the Corporations.

Re:What is going on?

[electrictroy]

>>>If the majority wants smoking banned and it isn't unconstitutional who am I to say it's wrong?

You've framed the question wrong. It should be, "Is a smoking ban Constitutional?" I don't know about other countries, but in these United States the answer is "no". The Congress has not been granted the authority to ban smoking. That power lies with the 50 State governments, or the People.

Re:What is going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason why governments expand in power and revenue throughout their lifetimes is simple, although not many people can bring themselves to accept it:

Government attracts the kind of person who wants to control others through force -- tell them how to behave, how to spend their money, what to value and what not to value -- not the kind of person who just wants to mind their own business and live in peace.

It is only natural for the people in this business -- the business of controlling others through force -- to gradually expand their power and revenue over time, making it more lucrative for those in the business. Put it this way: if government was limited to simply protecting against coercion, rather than in the business of employing coercion, then what's in that for the people who make their fortunes in the business of controlling others?

To be sure, this isn't about "anglo-saxon" governments at all. No government in history, democracy or otherwise, has ever significantly, permanently, and willingly reduced its power or revenue. Sit down and reflect on that for a minute.

Re:What is going on?

[electrictroy]

There is NO leftover frequency space. Every channel from 2 to 51 already has a digital television station assigned to it. What whitespace devices are about is broadcasting *overtop* of the existing television channels, which is incredibly stupid, because they will block the picture.

Re:What is going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

Either that has stopped working or these countries have become populated with Hitler's descendants

I'd stupidly thought this was just a slightly silly film, not a documentary :-O

Those boys will probably be in their early forties by now and just approaching real power.... OMG!!!!!!11111 OBAMA IS A HITLER CLONE!!!!!!

Re:What is going on?

[electrictroy]

Well there is at least ONE positive thing to come out of Australia: Abby Winters dot-com ----- Of course if the Aussies "turn on" their filter Miss Winters will probably no longer be available. :-(

Re:What is going on?

[Free the Cowards]

Regarding your post and your signature, IMO what's incredibly stupid is reserving enormous blocks of the spectrum for something as worthless as broadcast television instead of freeing it up for more useful activities.

Re:What is going on?

[fugue]

Fuck the Constitution. It does not really include any explicit provision for managing commons, and this is the most important job of a government. The Founding Fathers were too absorbed in their own issues to deal with the larger picture.

Smoking doesn't really damage commons, but smoking upwind of me does: that was air that I wanted to breathe, and a government absolutely does have a place in telling people that they can't destroy a public resource.

That said, it's unconstitutional, as is all regulation of pollution, federally funded education, establishment of national parks, ...

Re:What is going on?

[c]

> What is going on with anglo-saxon governments?

Anglo-saxon voters.

Re:What is going on?

[electrictroy]

By that reasoning, the government could to confiscate your car, because your exhaust is FAR more polluting to my lungs, than a single cigarette. Fortunately for you, the Congress doesn't have the power to confiscate either cars or cigarettes. That power lies with the individual States of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Missouri, and so on.

>>>Fuck the Constitution.

I cannot. I swore an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the U.S. Constitution as the ultimate voice of the people. If you want to amend the constitution, that's fine, but ignoring the constitution is not and never will be an option. It's the SUPREME Law of the Land, and laws do not exist simply to be ignored.

Given your attitude towards the Constitution, you would have a hard time swearing an oath, since you so clearly disrespect the Will of the People as embodied by that document. That is truly sad, and I hope as you grow older your attitude will change, and you will come to realize how important both the U.S. Constitution and the 50 State Constitutions are.

Re:What is going on?

[legirons]

I don't know what the problem is. Maybe bin Ladin won and has successfully destroyed the Western culture he hates so much.

Appropriate caption, we haz it...

Re:What is going on?

[electrictroy]

Worthless. Really? Let's consider then: How would you watch Heroes HD without broadcast television? Could you watch it via NBC.com? No, not really. 30 million people watch that show on Monday night, and it streams at 15 megabit/second over the airwaves. That's approximately 500,000 gigabit of bandwidth in total. No way could NBC.com or any other website handle that load.

BROADcasting is still the most-efficient ways to distribute (versus single-casting). Using broadcasting, NBC can send-out just 200 copies of Heroes via 200 stations distributed over the continent, and reaching 99% of the U.S. population. That's far more efficient than sending out 30,000,000 copies of the show via internet.

One final thought:

Whitespace Devices won't just block over-the-air television. They will also block your Cable television, or at least severely degrade the image, as the WSD signals leak into the exposed jacks hanging off your walls or set-top boxes.

Re:What is going on?

[1u3hr]

What is going on with anglo-saxon governments?

Name a race (as that's what you're talking about) that isn't doing this now. The Slavs are going back to authoritarianism under Putin, China has never left it, can't think of any African or Arab countries that do either.

So, again, what's with the "anglo-saxon" tag? Are people of any ethnicity resisting this?

Re:What is going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

Decentralized, anonymous networks like Freenet (www.freenetproject.org) seem to be the only way to circumvent government-level intervention and censorship in near future, should developments like this keep going on. Freenet 0.7 already does pretty good job at that. This servers to prove that there's a dire need for networks like Freenet.

Now it's happening in Australia, and I fear it's only a matter of time before it'll happen in EU too.

Re:What is going on?

[Duncan Blackthorne]

I just read an article about how the U.S.-FCC wants to gradually phasing-out free television and replacing it with subscription-only whitespace devices.

Really? I live in the U.S. and read tech news all the time, would you please post links to articles backing that claim up?

Re:What is going on?

[fugue]

By that reasoning, the government could to confiscate your car, because your exhaust is FAR more polluting to my lungs, than a single cigarette.

Yup.

Fortunately for you, the Congress doesn't have the power to confiscate either cars or cigarettes.

Are you sure that that's fortunate for me? Do you really think that we'd be worse off if we had clean high-speed electric trains and buses and cars, and a truly bicycle-friendly civilisation, than we are now? No more global warming (depending on how we got the electricity, but clean energy is possible), no more traffic accidents (or at least many fewer), no more oil wars, no more urban sprawl, no more geriatrics' (and others') lives destroyed when they find out that they are no longer mobile because they can't drive anymore and have no alternatives, vastly decreased cancer, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, depression, ..... Sounds terrible!

I swore an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the U.S. Constitution as the ultimate voice of the people. If you want to amend the constitution, that's fine, but ignoring the constitution is not and never will be an option. It's the SUPREME Law of the Land, and laws do not exist simply to be ignored.

The Constitution would be a good start if politicians actually honoured it. I agree--I'd like to see it (1) amended to MANDATE, not just ALLOW, protection of nationally shared resources (and, for that matter, internationally shared resources; since we're going to play World Police (and apparently someone has to) we might as well be fighting the good fight), and (2) actually honoured (or at least memorised) by our politicians. Go take your oath and start fighting the warrantless wiretapping, and 100-miles-inside-the-border vehicle searches, NASA, the EPA, and all those other things that are unconstitutional.

Given your attitude towards the Constitution, you would have a hard time swearing an oath, since you so clearly disrespect the Will of the People as embodied by that document.

I can swear plenty of oaths (I already did; see my first sentence in my previous post ;) But I will uphold what I believe is right, not some obsolete and insufficient legal document that is by and large ignored anyway. If you really think the US Constitution is the "Will of the People", you should figure out how many People have actually read it, and whether it reflects what They actually Want.

I'm really, truly glad that you have read the document. We'd be far better off if there were more people like you. But as I said, the Constitution ignores something that was a non-issue when it was written, but which is the one really crucial and urgent issue now: protection of large-scale commons.

Re:What is going on?

[Original Replica]

They used to be the vanguard of freedom and liberties! Now, they seem to be degrading into a spiral of power-hungry stupid obtuseness!!!

It's been a long time since anglo-saxon people held leaders accountable. To the modern elites, having to make a public apology or receive an official censure is meaningless. Even if they are forced to leave the job where they betrayed the people trust, they get installed in a less public power position, like a corporate board of directors or high powered lobbyist position. If the betrayers of freedom and liberties were executed for treason, instead of slapped on the wrist, we would not have this problem. If white collar criminals did their time in the same cell blocks as the violent criminals, we would have never had the Enron problem. The powerful will always seek to extend and tweak their power, and there are very few who will stop willingly at the current limits of the law. Most will change the law, or find a loophole in the law, or just deny that the law applies to them. Only fear will be a primal enough motivator to counter-balance their desire for expanding power. Modern first world governments are of lawyers, by lawyers, and for lawyers. Legal action, or even actions that are legal will not be enough to instill a fear of the public in the government. Large angry mobs burning down houses are going to be the only way to reverse this trend. But the progress of riot control techniques is out pacing the build up toward a critical mass of public dissatisfaction. Without a significant portion of the population publicly participating in an action against the betrayal by their government, any such violent actions would just be terrorism and provide an excuse for further government power grabs. I don't think we will see a change in this power hungry trend until a first world western country erupts into civil war, igniting a call for direct action in other such countries.

Avoiding that downward spiral is the "Hope" that gives Obama such an attraction.

Re:What is going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are 6 states in Australia,
but thanks for playing.

Re:What is going on?

[electrictroy]

>>>we had clean high-speed electric trains and buses and cars

They're not clean. They output the same amount of pollution, just that it's located at a central coal-to-electric factory instead of at the car. I'm an Environmentalist myself, but I don't support lying about the truth. EVs still pollute.

Nor do I think trains are practical. If I had to rely on a train to get me to work, I'd be out of luck. There's no room to lay train rails in my area, furthermore it's doubtful that a train would run from my Lancaster suburb across the river to the York suburb where I live. A train can't serve every house the way that a car can.

Be environmentalist, like me, but don't be stupid about it. Cars are still the most-flexible solution since they are not "tied down" to a set route, or set time. Also the absolute cleanest cars in the world are the 70mpg Honda Insight and the Civic GX (and possibly the 88mpg VW Lupo 3L). Not an EV1 which is powered by 75% coal, 20% CNG, and 5% nuclear, and overall no cleaner than a Prius. Although it is better than an EV train; their frequent starts-and-stops means they only average 15mpg per person according to EPA.gov.

>>>no more traffic accidents (or at least many fewer),

No instead you'd have trains collide head-on because the lazy engineer was text-messaging instead of watching the road, and therefore lots of lots of innocent passengers got killed. (referece recent U.S. accident). I feel a LOT safer when I'm behind the wheel. I drive on split-highways (safest mode of travel) and with extreme caution.

I've worked a lot of different locations (Oklahoma, Michigan, Virginia, South Carolina, New York, New Jersey, and in only one of those places would a train have worked. In all the rest there was simply no room to support the required steel rails a train requires.

Re:What is going on?

[electrictroy]

>>>protection of large-scale commons.

What you're really talking about is a government monopoly over oil, coal, et cetera. That is no better than a Comcast monopoly. It has exactly the same flaws, with the additional flaw that government doesn't listen to the people (it just takes the money directly from your paycheck).

It makes a lot more sense to sub-divide those things across multiple owners, and have those owners compete for your business. That provides the People with the *most direct* method of control - the power of the purse. If you don't like company A's practices, withhold your money. Stop buying the product.

Or continue buying the product, but instead choose company B, C, D, ..., X, Y, or Z. THAT is true pro-choice and true power to the people.

Re:What is going on?

[Free the Cowards]

Wow, you beg the question in so many ways there. (In the old-school sense of assuming the conclusion, not in the new sense of "raise the question".) Let me count the ways:

1. You assume the worth of television. Is television worthwhile? Is Heroes worthwhile? Is Heroes HD worthwhile? My answer to all of these things is: no. Television is a blight on society and we'd all be better off without it, even if that spectrum remained off-limits. Eliminating broadcast TV and opening that spectrum for other things is a double bonus.
2. You assume that 30 million people watch the HD version. This I seriously doubt. HDTV uptake is still pretty slow. Most of those 30 million people are watching the SD version.
3. You assume that 30 million people watch the HD version on broadcast TV. Everybody I know who watches TV uses cable TV, not broadcast TV. No doubt some people are watching Heroes over the air. Some of them are even watching the HD version over the air. How many? Not 30 million! Probably not even 3 million.
4. You assume that whitespace devices will interfere with cable TV. Given that broadcast TV doesn't interfere with cable TV, this is complete, utter bullshit.

Your position may have some merit, but if it does, you certainly haven't demonstrated it. Please come up with some better arguments than this crap.

Re:What is going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is Australia, we don't have a constitutional Bill of Rights... bummer for us.

Re:What is going on?

[Kjella]

power hungry is about it, the governments have realised that they can do what they want, and even if everyone complains, no-one will ever actually get off thier arse and do anything about it like they used to, we are all content to be passive aggressive even though it achieves nothing and the big wigs can do what they want

I think that the last generation would get off their arse and protest and that is the big difference is almost as big a myth as that whatever music the young generation listens to is garbage. I think humans were lazy last century, are lazy this century and will be lazy next century. The difference is that the surveilance is so much more indirect, impersonal and maybe even as far as subtle. There's not the vast armies of STASI where one in fifty(!!!) citizens was an informer. You don't need the same sort of massive backroom to do basic data entry and compiling, nor of analysists. Today they simply latch on to existing systems for most of their data and computers do most of the basic data processing and profiling, in short the ratio of surveilance power to manpower and surveilance power to population has increased wildly beyond imagination. It's not the milkman or the janitor or the shopkeeper you should worry about these days, it's someone sitting far, far away groping in your privacy that you'll never see. It just doesn't get the same kind of personal reaction that it used to.

Re:What is going on?

[shutdown -p now]

It makes a lot more sense to sub-divide those things across multiple owners, and have those owners compete for your business. That provides the People with the *most direct* method of control - the power of the purse. If you don't like company A's practices, withhold your money. Stop buying the product.

Who would do the division and redistribution, if not the government? And, once it is divided, who would ensure that they stay that way, and not merge into a cartel to increase profits for themselves?

Re:What is going on?

[Kjella]

Worthless. Really? Let's consider then: How would you watch Heroes HD without broadcast television? Could you watch it via NBC.com? No, not really. 30 million people watch that show on Monday night, and it streams at 15 megabit/second over the airwaves. That's approximately 500,000 gigabit of bandwidth in total. No way could NBC.com or any other website handle that load.

If you want to do stupid math, then my pathetic home switch got 5 gbps bandwidth alone. Even without multicasting, you could set up a simple tree algorithm where one master node pushed 15Mbit to 50 sub-nodes (50*15 = 750 mbps), that again would push it to 50 more nodes and so on before viewers would connect to the lowest set of nodes. A total of 612246 boxes should do the trick, each operating at under 1 gbps. That's not much compared to 30 mio reciever boxes and whatever infrastructure is already there today. Throw in a few caching boxes and there's no requirement that they have to watch it at exactly the same time either. With a little cooperation from clients that'll store it like a PVR, most of the timing issue could be avoided anyway. It's probably one of the least valuable things to use the bandwidth for, but I see no huge blockers why we can't do away with broadcast entirely.

Re:What is going on?

[typidemon]

1. We need salary caps that ensures politicians are earning no more than the average man they represent

Who in their right mind wants to get a job that pays no more than the average wage?

Re:What is going on?

[electrictroy]

(1) >>>My answer to all of these things is: no.

Then don't watch it. That's your right, but you do NOT have a right to take-away from those of us who happen to enjoy shows like Heroes, CSI, Lost, Twenty-Four, or Supernatural. You are just one, whereas there are ~90% of americans who enjoy television and don't want to lose it. That's not just a majority; or a mere supermajority. It's a constitutional majority (over three-fourths).

(2) >>>Most of those 30 million people are watching the SD version.

You're probably correct about that, but come February 18 *everybody* will be watching HDTV. It might be downgraded to fit their old analog sets, but the source signal will still be HD with a bandwidth of approximately 15 Mbit/s. HDTV is here. It's too late to turn-back the clock.

>>>Please come up with some better arguments than this crap

Okay. When WSDs happen and I can't watch my favorite WPHL-17 or WBAL-11 because your whitespace-enabled Ipod is interfering with these channels, I'm going to take a hammer and smash it to pieces. That's a VERY effective argument. Television was there first; we viewers have the "first claim" to that space... a claim that goes all the way back to the 1930s. It's a shame that internet users arrived ~80 years too late, but that's just too fucking bad. It doesn't give you the right to take OUR airwaves away from us.

Next I suppose you'll want to take my house and build a new "internet cafe" building using eminent domain. Well, they tried that in York PA... tried to take a family farm via eminent domain "for the benefit of the public". Fortunately the PA supreme court declared it to be "theft" and returned the farm to the family, along with a fine levied on the York government for abuse of power.

You can NOT steal other people's claims, just because you BELIEVE you have a better use for the land (or the spectrum).

Re:What is going on?

[Free the Cowards]

Thank you for confirming the essential worthlessness of your position. The only reason to keep this spectrum for TV is because TV was here first. Never mind that it's a limited public resource that could be put to better use. You got here first and that's all that matters!

You think that your free television trumps the myriad of useful applications that could be placed in that spectrum. That, in a word, is selfishness, pure and simple.

Re:What is going on?

[electrictroy]

I misspoke. It was actually a document from the Whitespace Coalition (google, microsoft, et cetera). Their goal is to first approve Whitespace Devices to operate "between channels", and then their next goal (2010) is to get approval to hand-out free Satellites to any OTA viewers who are still left so the WSDs can take-over the entire 2-to-51 spectrum without restriction.

I found this document on the avsforum.com but unfortunately it's down, so I can't give you the direct link.

Re:What is going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

We don't have any water you insensitive clod!

Re:What is going on?

[Starayo]

Well, I'm half portuguese, and I'm resisting it. My friend is half italian, and he's resisting it. Another is dutch by blood, she's resisting it...

All the anglo-saxons I know either don't know about the filter or don't care.

Re:What is going on?

[electrictroy]

http://www.tvtechnology.com/article/68654 ----- Some of the comments of white space proponents:

        * "in a few years a second phase of the DTV transition should get TV off the air."
        * "Take TV off the air in a few years."
        * "over-the-air broadcasts should be replaced entirely by cable, satellite and Internet viewing."

Re:What is going on?

[taucross]

That may be a part of the issue. However I think it's just a question of immaturity.

Australia is still a very young country, it has never had to deal with oppression or tyranny in any way, and we are unable to even identify it let alone stop it.

I think a few years of purgings and an inquisition or two will set us on the right track, harsh as that may seem.

Re:What is going on?

[electrictroy]

P.S. I just noticed this disturbing comment from the article:

Mark McHenry, CEO of Shared Spectrum Co., said, "The FCC is going to start conservatively, but we're going to wear them down. In a few years, we're going to be at 10 W all over the place." Of course, at these power levels, not only will free over-the-air TV reception be impossible in locations where WSDs are in use, but cable TV reception will be impaired as well. An article Tuesday, Skip the Cable TV and Go Straight to Broadband, at dailypress.com, questions the need for conventional TV, noting that people can watch their favorite shows over the Internet. "The bottom line is that mass availability of wireless broadband Internet could eventually make cable TV irrelevant; even obsolete."

=========

That guy's nuts. If the entire 2-51 spectrum was opened to internet devices, you'd have 1000 Megabit/s of space (per city). That might sound like a lot, but when you divide by 0.5 million residents in a local community, that's only 2 kbit/s. That's worse than phoneline internet! You can't stream video over a 2k connection.

Re:What is going on?

[maglor_83]

Is it something in the water

I doubt it. We don't have any in Australia.

Re:What is going on?

[ultranova]

How would you watch Heroes HD without broadcast television? Could you watch it via NBC.com? No, not really. 30 million people watch that show on Monday night, and it streams at 15 megabit/second over the airwaves. That's approximately 500,000 gigabit of bandwidth in total. No way could NBC.com or any other website handle that load.

Upload it to the Pirate Bay and let the Vikings worry about it :).

Besides, do all those 30 million people watch it simultaneously ? One would think that different timezones would create a natural levelling factor in the load.

Alternative, get multicasting and associated technologies - such as proxies - working properly. There's no reason why everyone watching the same show needs to have their own stream straight up to the website. Everyone watching Heroes on the same ISP should get a single stream up to the ISP's router/proxy, rather than having the same data sent over the same wires a thousand or million times over.

As an added bonus, this would let anyone to create their own broadcasts without tremendously costly broadcasting equipment and associated permissions or equally costly datacenters. But then again, that would lower the barriers of entry to the market, and that is the last thing broadcasting corporations want.

Re:What is going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do me a favor.. explain how broadcast transmission over the air will impact on cable reception. I want a technical explanation, something more complex than 'they both show pictures!!1!'.

Re:What is going on?

[fremean]

Hopefully someone that does it for the good of the people, not their own wallet.

Who knows, perhaps putting them on average wage will make them work harder to improve that...

Re:What is going on?

[fremean]

Unfortunately, a large percentage of the Aussie populous don't care if it doesn't get in the road of them enjoying a beer.

As far as this country has come in general internet growth, so many Aussies still aren't using or understanding the internet any better then your average American (and seemingly Australian) politician. Bring on the tubes eh?

Re:What is going on?

[FraterNLST]

Since we're going to play World Police, and apparently someone has to....

Gee, I wonder why the rest of the world has such a problem with America. It wouldn't be that they think they have some sort of god given mandate to stick their noses into other people's business would it?

Lets make this clear through the use of an example. If you spend some time over here in Australia, you'll find there are a few things in our past that tend to resonate in the cultural "guilt" consciousness. One of those things is what we call the "Stolen Generation". For those who don't know, this was a policy enacted by the Australian government that allowed them to take Aboriginal children away from their parents and place them in foster homes of white Australians. Not because they were abused, but because it was thought that doing this would aid to "integrate" the Aboriginal children into white Australian culture and life.

Seems pretty horrific, because it was, and the leftists jump up and down about how we can never make up for it and completely miss an important point - it was the leftists who -did- this thing. It was done with the best of intentions, had it worked it would have meant the Aboriginal people wouldn't suffer differently to the white Australians and we'd all be one big happy family - which is the supposed goal of leftist thought anyway, equality through legislation.

Where is this example going? Americans are doing the exact same thing to the -entire world-. It sounds good to say you are "bringing democracy" to people and performing "police actions" around the globe, but what you are really doing is preventing large groups of people from working out their own problems and creating an enormous class of people whose lives have been profoundly influenced for the worse by American Intervention. These people hate you.

I challenge the assertion that "somebody has to play world police". People have been oppressed in countries forever, including yours. Historically, these people have either fled the country (and founded a new one... like say.. America?) or risen up against their oppressors and been stronger for it (like say... -America-?). You think you're doing the right thing now, just as those men and women who took the babies from their loving mothers thought they were then. Even the Nazi scientists thought they were helping to bring about a better world, and i'm sure the idiotic Senator Conroy with his national filtering scheme thinks the same. All these people have that in common - an egotistical certainty that "they know best".

Perhaps we, as nations, need to stop and think about how history will judge our own misguided actions. From the outside, it rarely looks so noble.

Re:What is going on?

[shimmyshimpson]

"took the babies from their loving mothers.."/????/

What deluded bizarro parallel world do you inhabit ?

General consensus in Australia these days is that the so caled "Stolen Generation" is really the "Rescued Generation" and the whole thing is a political beatup designed to keep Aboriginal Incorporated on the government gravy train.

The babies were removed as they stood an extremely good chance of dying through abuse and neglect. The white Austrlians gave them health care, decent food, education, love and a future instead of leaving them to rot in filthy conditions in squalor.

Get the "one sixty-fourth Aboriginal and on the government nipple forever" propoganda out of your ears.

Re:What is going on?

[batwingTM]

Well, it began a bit more innocently than that. Over the last 5 years or so the Media in Australia has given a lot of airtime to child porn rings. The Federal Police have broken a few and when they do it s HEADLINE news across the whole country. As a result parents are getting worried that the lonesome guy next door is a pedophile (It is like a witchhunt, but this is my opinion, not the facts).

So the Howard Government (Liberal Party, Conservative) put forth all these ideas about "Protecting" the children. Tacked onto this was the issue that it is too easy to access porn on the internet, so the idea of putting up a filter to prevent children having access to these materials was floated. Now the Media has pushed forth these ideas that the Government must protect us from the big bad world and completely ignored the issues of parental interaction (again, this is filtered by my opinions)

Last year the Howard Government was defeated in the election and the Rudd Government (Labor Party, left leaning) came to power. they spent a lot of the campaign pushing for "Working Families" (Industrial relations, Tax benefits etc) and one of those platforms was keeping the kids away from "questionable" material. The government has put a lot of money into providing access to free filters for parents to access and police their children's use of the internet. Personally, I think that is a good think, the parents being involved with how their children access the internet is a good thing (Again, opinion, not facts)

Now, however, we have a problem. In it's goal to be the Family friendly government the men in power have decided that the internet needs to be filtered to keep "Questionable" material out. This is how we got to this point. and there are a few factors working towards this

1) The Family First Party
            There is a relatively new party representing voters in the senate in Australia and that is "Family First" a quasi religious party pushing "Family Values" the problem is that the one senator from this party effectivly holds the balance of power in the senate (Upper house) so that if the government wants his support, they have to appease him. I am sure that this internet plan plays into this (Opinion, not fact)

2) Terrorism
            Of course, Terrorists are out to get us all, and as a subset of this pedophiles are out to get our kids. this belief is a product of the media, for they are only interested in the next big shocking story, and child porn is shocking. but there are already a lot of ways to violate civil liberties in place because of the "War on Terrorism" and that has created an environment where this kind of censorship is acceptable to the public

3) The Stigma of Porn
            No-One wants to come out and oppose this. MP's do not want to come out as say "No, the Australian internet should not be censored" because the media will read that as "Mr Whomever supports Porn" and that would be political suicide.

So what can we do from here, it's a good question. I know that I personally and raising the issue with everyone I know, sending letters (yes, paper letters, they are harder to ignore than email) and what-not, but there seems to be no organisation in place to fight this. so if anyone knows of one, please forward me the details. travisDOTmatheson(atSymbol)gmail.com

Re:What is going on?

[1u3hr]

Not a matter of being "anglo-saxon", more of coming from recent immigrant heritage perhaps, ones with living memories of how fascism operates. Anglos haven't really seen this first hand. Anyway, I'm Anglo-Saxon and I'm certainly against it.

Re:What is going on?

[FraterNLST]

I think you need to re-evaluate your understanding of the term "general consensus". It does not mean "What I Think, Disregarding Commonly Held Opinions Of My Fellow Countrymen". It certainly isn't the general opinion of Australians that the Stolen Generation are now to be considered the Rescued Generation.

I personally do not agree with most of the attempts of the government to "make up" for mistakes of the past, nor am I a fan of the "gravy train" as you put it. Certainly a percentage of the children removed from their parents custody were safer, and perhaps the majority were better off financially if that is the only measure you wish to use, though they themselves would argue they are not emotionally better off.

The fact remains that the standards used to determine when it was appropriate to remove a child from its parents custody were laughably low for that entire segment of the population. Abuse is not a racial issue, the last government's disgusting attempts to play it out that way to the contrary. Children born to white parents in similar situations at the time were left in their mother's care to experience both the love and/or abuse that would come from the situation.

These children weren't taken because they were abused, but because of the situation they were in. Black and poor is what it boiled down to. White and poor were allowed to keep their children.

I don't suffer white guilt, and I don't believe that pampering the aboriginals and setting them aside as needing extra compensations is the right way to go - but blindly denying that there ever was a problem, that there ever was a racist policy, and asserting that the racist actions of the past were actually good ideas and product of a sound domestic policy.

In anycase, we're off topic now. This set of comments is about Senator Conroy's idiocy, not that of historical Australians.

Re:What is going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

yup, gotta love the commitment and fore-thought those founding fathers of australia had.. oh wait, you assume all countries have a constitution like yours?
think again.

Re:What is going on?

[Rocketship Underpant]

The Constitution leaves that to the states, as it should.

The real problem is that "regulation of pollution" is political code for giving companies permission to pollute up to politically-determined levels without repercussions. In an equitable system, there would be no "pollution allowance". Anyone whose person or property was damaged by pollution would have the right to demand damages from the culprit.

Re:What is going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well there is at least ONE positive thing to come out of Australia: Abby Winters dot-com ----- Of course if the Aussies "turn on" their filter Miss Winters will probably no longer be available. :-(

Ugh, dear God no. It's C-grade porn stars with C-grade vaginas. I was going to apply for a job there a while back (Sysadmin, not porn star) but watching their "tour" put me off it.

Re:What is going on?

[Rocketship Underpant]

Also the belief that more voting can change an enormously corrupt system that relies on voting for its legitimacy.

Re:What is going on?

[Dan541]

What can we do?

Complaining is the only thing that can be done, if the government chooses to ignore us there's nothing we can do about it. Soon we wont even be allowed to speak out against them.

Re:What is going on?

[fugue]

They're not clean. They output the same amount of pollution, just that it's located at a central coal-to-electric factory instead of at the car.

As I said, clean energy is possible. And given the premise of my argument I'm surprised you ignored this fact.

Also the absolute cleanest cars in the world are the 70mpg Honda Insight and the Civic GX (and possibly the 88mpg VW Lupo 3L). Not an EV1 which is powered by 75% coal, 20% CNG, and 5% nuclear, and overall no cleaner than a Prius. Although it is better than an EV train; their frequent starts-and-stops means they only average 15mpg per person according to EPA.gov

Check out the Aptera. And, as I said, the EV1 is pretty clean to operate if you come by your energy honestly, although fuel cells are somewhat a problem to produce (they're getting better, though). And as for trains, they are not great in this country and their efficiency depends on occupancy, but I'm surprised you haven't figured out that trains can in principle start/stop much less frequently than cars, can use regenerative braking, etc. (all without fuel cells), and would have rather better coverage if we didn't have so many cars. Do you really lack the insight to see that trains do in fact work very well in some places? Not often in the USA, but the rest of the world is almost like a whole other country. Of course trains won't get you everywhere, but a system combining trains, buses, taxis, bikes, and feet can be stunningly effective, and pretty damn clean, if a society has the will to build it.

No instead you'd have trains collide head-on because the lazy engineer was text-messaging instead of watching the road, and therefore lots of lots of innocent passengers got killed. (referece recent U.S. accident). I feel a LOT safer when I'm behind the wheel. I drive on split-highways (safest mode of travel) and with extreme caution.

Then you are an idiot. Look at actual accident rates. Probably about 120 people died today in the USA in traffic accidents, and that's not counting victims of secondary effects--pollution, war, obesity encouraged by a society that simply despises healthy transportation. You have some control in your car, but even in the unlikely event that you are infallible, your attention never lapses, your equipment never lets you down, etc., someone else can kill you in a trice. And now we come back to the main point, which is that you are harming everyone a little bit every time you drive.

And remember: if we had fewer cars there would be much more room for not just trains but literally anything else you can possibly imagine. Or, as an interim measure, you could remember things like subways or overhead rail systems.

Re:What is going on?

[fugue]

No. Consumers tend usually to choose the cheapest option for now, not the most responsible--I encourage you to examine spending trends. Producers tend to provide this by exploiting and permanently destroying common property, because if you can get 80 (or 5, usually) years of profit out of something before it is gone forever, mortals tend to choose that rather than a sustainable exploitation rate. Find me some examples where this is not the case--I dare you.

"Makes a lot more sense" how?? Resources can (maybe) be extracted faster, and when this is possible it often happens. As I said, corporations tend to work on about a 5- or 10-year timescale. They also tend to pollute and destroy common resources, precisely because consumers would usually rather have a "cheap" product than actually find out the ethics of all corporations in the supply chain of the one from whom they're buying.

Re:What is going on?

[Bonobo_Unknown]

Censorship has always existed, you don't have the right in Australia to buy any movie that you might like, so it is thought that the standards of censorship should be applicable over all media, not just the traditional ones.
Yes, you and I know there is no workable solution to filtering the internet. But others aren't so sure. The thing that makes me cringe is the millions of dollars that are going to be wasted on this that could have gone to something useful.

Re:What is going on?

[draco664]

These children weren't taken because they were abused, but because of the situation they were in. Black and poor is what it boiled down to. White and poor were allowed to keep their children.

Whereas now, aboriginal children are left in abusive environments simply because removing them is seen as racist. About a year ago there was a story of a little girl who had been removed from her family for her own safety (having been raped, and contracting syphilis), and was thriving in her new, safe environment. The social workers removed her from the safe family, and put her back with her own family (where she was subsequently pack raped by locals, who beat the charge on account of the fact that the 10 year old girl *consented*), simply because her foster family was white.

So, the result of the current interpretation of the 'Stolen Generation' is a new generation of children who are abused and neglected, because taking them from their families is racist.

Re:What is going on?

[fugue]

"Other people's business": you just aren't getting it, are you? There is only one atmosphere. If you dump shit into it, you're not dumping shit into your little piece of atmosphere. You are dumping shit into the atmosphere. That is very much my business. There are oceanic dead zones that are caused by people dumping trash into the ocean all over the world, and they affect us all. Rain forests cut down and burned in Brazil exacerbates global warming, in which even the name explicitly spells out that it is, um, global. Fertiliser runoff from one country affects another country. CFCs released in China cause skin cancer in Canada. I wish Americans would mind our own business too, but you have not yet grasped that when someone destroys a part of the planet that America and the world needs left intact in order to survive, that is America's business.

Re:What is going on?

[fugue]

The Constitution leaves that to the states, as it should.

That makes sense when pollution from one state only hurts that state. But we're too powerful: many of our activities have repercussions far beyond little political boundaries.

In an equitable system, there would be no "pollution allowance". Anyone whose person or property was damaged by pollution would have the right to demand damages from the culprit.

That'd be wonderful. Of course, it assumes that every piece of anything of value in the world is owned by someone. Who sues on behalf of the ocean floor in international waters, etc? For what value?

Re:What is going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

Scandinavian?

Not really considered an ethnicity, but certainly isn't included in any of the mentioned groups.

Re:What is going on?

[theaveng]

Quoted for Truth:

>>>>>>
What you're really talking about is a government monopoly.... that is no better than a Corporate monopoly. It has exactly the same flaws, with the additional flaw that government doesn't listen to the people (it just takes the money directly from your paycheck).

It makes a lot more sense to sub-divide those things across multiple owners, and have those owners compete for your business. That provides the People with the *most direct* method of control - the power of the purse. If you don't like company A's practices, withhold your money. Stop buying the product. Or continue buying the product, but instead choose company B, C, D, ..., X, Y, or Z.

THAT is true pro-choice and true power to the people.

Re:What is going on?

[theaveng]

Cartels are illegal in the United States. That's why the record companies were recently-forced to mail out $500 million dollars to their customers. They treid to price-fix CDs, and they were caught, and the over 20 States sued them in court for forming an illegal cartel.

So you do need government to police and enforce competition, and block mega-mergers, but otherwise the government should let Pro-Choice reign - let the people have multiple suppliers, and let the People decide where they want to spend their money. Put the "power of the purse" in the hands of the People, not some bureaucrat in washington.

Re:What is going on?

[theaveng]

>>>That is very much my business.

That's how Putin justified the invasion of Georgia. "You are effecting Russian citizens; that makes it my business even though they are technically in another country." And thus the tanks rolled-in and Putin violated the private territory of a foreign nation.

There was another guy who used the same argument to invade Austria in the 1930s. What was his name? Napoleon? No that wasn't it. I think it started with an A. Or maybe an H. (shrug)

Re:What is going on?

[WillKemp]

Australia is still a very young country, it has never had to deal with oppression or tyranny in any way

That's so totally not true. Australia was founded on tyranny and oppression. It started out as a prison camp where the inmates and the guards alike were subjected to the most appalling oppression and tyranny. It's from those roots that Australia's strong culture of disrespect for authority has come.

Australians fought back against landlords and evictions during harder times and, in general, they don't take shit.

But they are pretty apathetic. In most of the densely populated parts of Australia it's always much easier to go to the beach and ignore it than it is to fight back. There is a limit to what Australians will take though.

Re:What is going on?

[taucross]

Yea, fair call.

But you're still talking about a country that started at a tyrannical baseline and has moved away from it. Now we're moving back, it's a new challenge and much stronger than anything we've faced before.

Apathy is definitely right. I for one am a proponent of the "she'll be right" philosophy. But these fucking politicians are really starting to piss me off.

It's not time for different politicians. It's time for a complete change. Ideas, anyone?

Re:What is going on?

[mpe]

I think that the last generation would get off their arse and protest and that is the big difference is almost as big a myth as that whatever music the young generation listens to is garbage. I think humans were lazy last century, are lazy this century and will be lazy next century.

The other factor is that most people "have lives". You have to be either rich, obsessive or both in order to be in the 24/7 lobbying game.

Re:What is going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ugh, dear God no. It's C-grade porn stars with C-grade vaginas.

Well, it's "real" women, with "real" bodies, and no airbrushing.

Personally, I find the real looking hotties far more interesting than the generic, plastic looking chicks you see elsewhere. You might actually stand a chance of dating someone who looks like the girls on AW.

See, they're not "porn stars", they're actual women.

If porn has so messed up your idea of what women look like to the extent that you can only accept picture perfect women with overly idealized bodies ... well, then you are going to be in trouble in real life unless you're a male model who is a millionaire.

Me, I prefer my women in porn to look like actual women I might encounter. It keeps my expectations much more grounded.

Cheers

Re:What is going on?

[mpe]

People have made it resoundingly clear that they want the government to protect them. Whether it's from alcohol, cigarettes, violent video games, firearms, drugs, sex or any number of other things which have been, or are curently threatened by, the nanny state.

Part of this is also insisting that this "protection" also be imposed on people who either feel perfectly capable of defending themselves against the "threat" or don't even consider it to be much of a "threat" in the first place.

Re:What is going on?

[ockegheim]

Sounds like your kids might need "rescuing".

Re:What is going on?

[fugue]

Have you just not noticed that air and water don't have much respect for human political boundaries? Your analogies are lovely and all, but irrelevant. I suggest more thoughtful reading of the post you're replying to.

Re:What is going on?

[JesseMcDonald]

Voluntary cartels are inherently unstable; the reward for defecting is simply too high to resist. No cartel or artificial monopoly has ever survived for any significant length of time without involuntary (i.e., government) support.

Division of resources across multiple owners is a naturally-occurring phenomenon in any unencumbered market. It does not require any deliberate, coercive act of centralized power.

Re:What is going on?

[mpe]

The government is an employee of the people, not a father figure. It's damn time we start treating it that way.
1. We need salary caps that ensures politicians are earning no more than the average man they represent
2. Abolish appointed positions and establish term limits for elected positions

There is a problem with elected positions. In that even if you have completely free and fair elections the people you will get will certainly not be representative of the general public. Consider also the situation in the UK, where the "unelected" House of Lords can be the only thing standing in the way of completely daft legislation.

3. Build accountability into the constitution - this would be a multifaceted piece that must include civillian involvement, metrics to measure the effectiveness of new legislation, and the power to enact a sunset clause on legislation that is ineffective or detrimental

Maybe better to have all legislation require renewal every 5 years, possibly up it to every 10 years after 5 renewals.

4. Legislate criminal penalties for violating the constituion and enforce them 5. Provide an easy path for citizens to challenge unjust laws that does not require being arrestsed to do it (see Canada)

A better place to look might be ancient Athens. Each piece of proposed legislation being placed before a randomly selected jury of citizens. No easy way for a dedicated political class to come into existance.

Re:What is going on?

[WillKemp]

[......] talking about a country that started at a tyrannical baseline and has moved away from it.

Yeah, probably about as far away from it as any country has ever moved in the history of the world.

But that move was only brought about by a long period of concerted fighting - mainly by the trade unions, but also by organizations like tenants unions etc. The problem nowadays is that half the population has grown up taking the easy life for granted and have no conception of how much (real) bloodshed and struggling went into getting there - and therefore have no idea that you have to fight to keep that lifestyle. It doesn't require as much effort to keep it as it took to get it in the first place - or as much as it will take to get it back again when it's gone - but it still takes an effort.

Education is the key. If you don't understand your history, you can't understand the present. Or, in the words of Jamaican activist, Marcus Garvey:

"A people without a knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots."

Re:What is going on?

[FraterNLST]

I suggest you climb down off your horse for a minute and explain exactly how your pet theory explains the invasion of Afghanistan? Or Iraq? I don't remember the reasons given at the time to be "because they're poisoning our air and water". I remember something about terrorists and weapons of mass destruction. Weapons that didn't exist.

I'm not sure where you've gotten the idea that America is some sort of world Eco-police; in fact, nothing could be further from the truth. America is interested in protecting its corporate interests overseas, not its environmental. If the environment is your worry, I'd suggest cleaning up your own borders before you even think about looking at other peoples.

Glass houses, big stones.

Re:What is going on?

[FraterNLST]

Quite true, it is terrible - and the ultimate tragedy of our current political environment - that political correctness has gone so far that children will be endangered because the government and its employees are scared to "appear" racist, even if there is good cause for an action to be taken. In the end, the children suffer for that as well.

But that is a completely separate issue and the problem is, once again, those people who think they know best for other people. The same sort of people who once said "it will be beneficial to integrate these children into white families" are exactly the same as those saying "well you can't move their children, it'd be racist!". They were wrong both times and both times the children are hurting because of it.

Simply because fear-of-being-racist is causing almost as many problems now as the actual racism did then does not mean that the racism that happened then -was not racist!-. It would have been better to move that child to a foster home where she would have been safe, regardless of the colour of her foster parents, but that in itself does not justify the stolen generation.

You are trying to use here a single example of a child left to suffer to justify a policy that had nothing to do with child safety. One child that -needs- to be taken from its parents does not justify the thousands that didn't and were, and does not justify the fact that the criteria for the policy was not potential for abuse at the time, but colour and socio-economic status - which I might point out, at the time, were generally the same thing.

There is a standard in our society for taking children from their parents if the parents are a danger to them. It should be applied to everyone regardless of race. It wasn't then as white abusers kept their kids whilst perfectly good aboriginal ones lost theirs, and it isn't now as that family obviously shouldn't be caring for their child. Both of these situations are perversions of the established community laws and norms by people who think they "know better", which was the entire point of this useless digression in the first place. This thread is supposed to be about our freedoms of speech being taken away, not the shocking way we've treated aboriginies - first killing them, now killing them with kindness.

Re:What is going on?

[fugue]

Again, I suggest re-reading my post. I never mentioned Afghanistan or Iraq. I never even hinted that America was currently playing the role of eco-police. I said something about what needed to be done and claimed that we should be doing that, if anything.

I was just listening to a great talk in which the speaker was discussing how we tend to take our preconceived notions and find justifications for them. I can only assume that you are angry about the wars the USA is engaged in. Good! But a more careful reading of what you thought you were responding to might have been wise.

Re:What is going on?

[FraterNLST]

As the posts before yours were direct criticisms of current American practice, it should really come as no surprise to you that multiple people so far have read your post as defending these practices. Your words are not so gold as to attract reading in a vacuum, without regard for the context in which it is written - but I digress.

Your main point still fails to hold water. What you are writing here is basically a defense of the practice of invading another country's sovereign territory simply because you do not like their environmental policy. Unfortunately, in order for such a policy to hold weight in an ethical sense, you must be able to prove your core assertion - that their environmental policies have a detrimental impact on the entire world, including your own country - and that is a burden of proof you cannot meet, though I am sure you feel you can.

The problem is simply this. Regardless of what large ecological concern groups publish and speak as 'fact', we have no concrete proof of either the widespread effects of particular types of activities or the global effect of these activities. Climate change is the poster-child in this case, there are plenty of well written peer-reviewed journal articles supporting the idea that our activities are seriously harming the environment, and just as many citing proof that this is not the case. To this point, neither side of the debate has proving conclusively, to the satisfaction of the entire (or even a majority) of the scientific community.

There are some cases for which this is not true - river water is a big example. There have been many problems in the past with pollution in a river that crosses countries have deleterious effects on other countries and indeed, wars have been fought over such matters. In this case, you would be correct, and such an action may well be justified.

But your central argument is too broad and far too lenient towards your own countries actions or potential future actions. The idea that a war in a country half-way across the world away because they're burning coal into air that "does not respect human boundaries" is patently ridiculous - and I would suggest that any country seeking to use that as an excuse is simply blowing smoke of their own to cover deeper, less "noble" motivations.

But then, we've seen that before haven't we.

Re:What is going on?

[fugue]

multiple people so far have read your post as defending these practices.

I am not surprised when I remember to look at how effective the American school system is at teaching kids how to read.

What you are writing here is basically a defense of the practice of invading another country's sovereign territory simply because you do not like their environmental policy. Unfortunately, in order for such a policy to hold weight in an ethical sense, you must be able to prove your core assertion

What nonsense! Apparently your school taught you no more about science than about reading comprehension. There is really no way ever to prove cause and effect beyond any doubt (outside of artificial systems like pure math). You can bound the probability of your assertion, and you can be more sure that you're right than you are that the sun will rise tomorrow, but you can't be absolutely, positively sure ever. When I am pretty sure that you are harming me, I will act. When I have a pretty strong suspicion that you are harming me and a pretty strong suspicion that if I do nothing everyone will die, then I will act. That is reasonable.

If you are standing in your back yard, shooting a gun off vaguely in my direction, should I wait for you to hit me before I start shooting back? When I feel a bullet pass through my leg, should I believe that it was from the gun that I saw you shooting a split second earlier, or should I question even that, and not act until I can do projectile forensics? Even then the bullet could be a plant, made to look like it came from your gun by chance or an unknown third party. There is no proof--only evidence. And it is completely reasonable to act on good evidence, and indeed pretty fucking stupid not to.

Climate change is the poster-child in this case, there are plenty of well written peer-reviewed journal articles supporting the idea that our activities are seriously harming the environment, and just as many citing proof that this is not the case.

Find me a couple, could you? They are pretty scarce, especially recently as evidence pours in that many current observations are actually significantly worse than the "cautious" models predicted. Actually, the vast majority of the scientific community is pretty scared, and I'd love to know where you got the idea that that is not the case.

The idea that a war in a country half-way across the world away because they're burning coal into air that "does not respect human boundaries" is patently ridiculous

Why?

What is your obsession with political boundaries? You ought to know that they are completely arbitrary, created by humans for their own ends. No country anywhere has borders based on laws of nature, and few were established in the first place without bloodshed, without displacing some other people against any idea of justice. They are capricious and arbitrary. Furthermore, borders can change without much affecting the environment. The converse is not true, however: global warming could easily bring down many of the political systems and boundaries that we have now (see http://securityandclimate.cna.org/report/ for one analysis), is quite likely to lead to famine and war on a scale never seen before, and has absolutely no concept of only punishing those who deserve it.

The longer we go without acting, the more devastating the solution will be, and the less likely to work. We will never have absolute proof of cause, and we will not have absolute proof of result until it is too late. However, as of now, we are pretty damn sure that we have a very good idea of what's going on.

It's pretty disgusting to watch us fuck ourselves over so thoroughly, knowing that we're doing it and how to make things better, and yet doing nothing.

Re:What is going on?

[FraterNLST]

It's probably time to call an end to this particular discussion, as I've slipped into personal insults and you've started clipping my quotes to support your witticisms in an attempt to imitate fox news. Really, that kind of thing is beneath both of us.

We've identified the point where our world views diverge and it seems irreconcilable from that point onwards. I, like your founding fathers, am a strong believer in liberty and freedom from tyranny in all its forms, including militarily enforced environmental policy. Perhaps the founding fathers would have been less libertarian given the current environmental situation, but I'm not and never will be. I think it is the utmost height of arrogance to think that political boundaries are mere suggestions and your own countries will should be enforceable across them. A large part of this is likely that I don't believe the hype surrounding climate change, and don't believe the problem is as serious as it is made out to be. I am a minority in that view and my particular government is doing more and more to fix this "problem". This is a -good thing-, because it is the power of democracy that the majority should rule in a country - note, that this does not mean the majority in a completely separate country who happen to have bigger guns than you.

I also think borders are far more important than you seem to because without borders there is nowhere for dissidents to flee to. Early Americans would have understood that I imagine, as they understood tyranny and oppression all to well. I believe that any time your will is imposed via force of arms rather than compromise, treaty and rhetoric you are a dictator and a tyranny.

You are opposed to this view primarily because you think the environmental issue is powerful and important enough to call for the abandoning of sovereignty and the imposition of your own government and people's wishes on other countries. I can understand that view and if I shared your belief in the problem, might even share it. It is certainly true that you should defend yourself when attacked in any way, however this will-to-defend when combined with the current American belief in its own infallibility is always a concern to me. At this point we disagree, and we are both obviously acquainted with the issues so this disagreement is not due to a misunderstanding of the issue but rather a difference in personal values, so there is no point to further discussion.

I apologise if my comments earlier were rude in any way, I suspect they probably were.

Re:What is going on?

[fugue]

Very gracious, and the irony of you apologising to me for being rude is not lost on me. But it was all in good fun, I think. Maybe.

You have hit the nail on the head: my best understanding of the current research is that we are likely in very deep and very urgent trouble, and yours is different. Putting that (largely) aside for a moment, I will just beg one favour: go and watch a quick video addressing not so much whether global climate change is real, but what happens if you mix the possibility that something might be going on with a little basic risk management: How It All Ends.

For the record, I really hope you're right. Good luck to us all.

Re:What is going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can swear plenty of oaths (I already did; see my first sentence in my previous post ;) But I will uphold what I believe is right, not some obsolete and insufficient legal document that is by and large ignored anyway.

Do you support the idea that your government can have your entire family executed without trial? Once you abandon the notion of strictly limited government, you allow that such a thing is within its rightful power. Your only defense then is to win elections, until elections are abolished. You would do better to advocate adhering to the Constitution -- which currently means that much of what our government has been doing for decades is illegal -- and if you believe environmental controls are necessary, amending it to grant such authority.

Re:What is going on?

[Admiral_Bob2000]

While the content AW produce used to be really good a few years back (when they stiil had Vid Dude, who was a creative force behind a lot of the shoot ideas), they're on a gradual downhill slump now, heading towards mainstream and becoming just like the other sites out there, because the guy* in charge of the business is a power-hungry sleazy megalomaniac who won't listen to anyone else's advice.

*That's right - a guy, Garion Hall. Just so you know, there never ever was an Abby Winters, it's a fictional identity assumed by him for marketing appeal, just to get an edge over genuinely female-run sites.

I know all this because I used to work for them (in a software development role for their CMS). Best to save your time and effort and don't apply for any IT or non-production positions at that company - you'll just get screwed over with lousy pay and no raises in the long run - that's his management tactic for all staff. Any sense of it being a joyous place to work for is just an illusion.

Re:What is going on?

[jonesdog]

LOL.. aint that the truth

Re:What is going on?

[Philip Shaw]

The EFA (Australia EFF) are. see: http://nocleanfeed.com/learn.html
http://www.efa.org.au/censorship/mandatory-isp-blocking/

Re:What is going on?

[owndao]

I have wondered the same thing myself. Is it fear that is causing the U.S., U.K., and other "free" countries to self destruct? It is not as if these were societies without a history of self-examination. Artists, philosophers, and such are honored by monuments to remind us of the very freedoms and thinkers that helped establish those ideals. I'm afraid, not that some incomprehensible "bad people" are out to do me harm, but that the general population's response to random threats both real and imagined will destroy these countries and ideals that truly are worth fighting for, to the death if necessary, in order that they might be around to serve our children rather than control them. The government exists as a means of serving us by protecting us from foreign forces and smoothing conflict between internal entities -- not for us to serve the government. "Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country?" Bullshit, I say! Never make the mistake that "your country" is the same as "We, the People." When you find yourself existing in order to serve the best interests of an instance of a government rather than the general population then it may already be too late to convert the pro-government minions away from the perversity they now maintain and mindlessly defend (and don't try and twist this into an insult to our troops. I'm not talking about our soldiers here, Okay!?}.

Is this late mid-life crisis or am I close to the truth? Vote, but more importantly, think. Maybe it can still change things for the better.

They're not actually ignoring the problems...

[AliasMarlowe]

They are welcoming them. The next step is to block any content which discusses these problems.

Re:They're not actually ignoring the problems...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well of course. Doing otherwise would be anti-democratic. In fact, just by admitting you are aware of any short comings could be considered as sedition or even treason.

Most amusing part is that the previous paragraph may as well come to be true and any usage of tor or freenet or similar ships you to a guantanamo bay equivalent without legal recourse. Australia has certainly been removed from my country "shopping list" but I do understand that if this comes to pass it'll eventually land in UK and Europe.

Re:They're not actually ignoring the problems...

[kirbysuperstar]

+1 Sad Truth?

Re:They're not actually ignoring the problems...

[deniable]

Bloody hell. This guy makes Richard Alston look competent.

Re:They're not actually ignoring the problems...

[Tuoqui]

Sure you can filter the internet and not let people get to the websites set up about the problems... This doesnt stop someone from printing out fliers and handing them out to people or putting them up on signposts or what not...

Re:They're not actually ignoring the problems...

[Gwala]

I know, scary isn't it? We thought the worlds biggest luddite was the worst of possible Communications ministers.

Well, Labour did come into power under the guise of doing things better...

Re:They're not actually ignoring the problems...

[stonedcat]

Try it in China and see what happens buddy.

Re:They're not actually ignoring the problems...

[LVSlushdat]

In the early 70s I made several trips to Australia for work, and was blown away by the size of the country, and the wonderful people. For a while, I seriously considered emigrating there... It pains me to see how authoritarian it has become.. And of course, my native USA is right on its heels.. I'm terrified about what's gonna happen to America if (oh hell, its when) Comrade Obama and his neo-communist (was US Democrat party) get in power.. And as the parent poster said, the "shopping list" of alternate countries is getting ever shorter.... I suspect the last 20 or so years of my life (am 58 now) will be in an ever increasing copy of what the old Soviet Union was like..... I cry..

Re:They're not actually ignoring the problems...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure you can filter the internet and not let people get to the websites set up about the problems... This doesnt stop someone from printing out fliers and handing them out to people or putting them up on signposts or what not...

Yeah, but their belief is that police with tasers stop this.

Re:They're not actually ignoring the problems...

[Malekin]

Bloody hell. This guy makes Richard Alston look competent.

I wish that were the case, as it would mean this whole filtering bullshit would fall flat on its arse. The problem is that Conroy has a shred of competence to him, and an extreme socially conservative ideology pushing him forward.

I'd have voted to bring Alston back rather than put Conroy in.

Re:They're not actually ignoring the problems...

[Starayo]

The people aren't all that wonderful. I lived in Japan for a while, now there are some nice people. When I came back I was literally terrified of some of the people over here in Australia. XD

The majority of the people are essentially redneck hicks and so don't care about the internet. You can't even use the "They're taking away your porn!" line because they're stupid enough to pay big wads of money for porn, on their mobile phones no less!

Re:They're not actually ignoring the problems...

[HappyEngineer]

So which do you think is worse, neo-con or neo-com?

Re:They're not actually ignoring the problems...

[Anonymous Coward]

wait, you're going to flee 'comrade' obama's ussa to a country where obama is slightly to the right of the previous right-wing government? did you ever pause to consider that the reason our country is so wonderful is BECAUSE we have had the things obama the 'commie' wants to give you for DECADES? it appears you might not be too clear on the whole 'fleeing' part of fleeing communism.

Why...

[kidde_valind]

Why does this surprise anybody? The government has it's mind set on implementing these filters, and all democracy aside, nothing will stop them when their minds are made up.

Re:Why...

[Anonymous Coward]

So move that government aside and build real democracy, made up of our minds.

Universal Internet filter plans detailed

[David Gerard]

"We have buttiduously canvbutted the industry, buttessed what is available and buttembled the finest selection of private 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."

(Inspired by Daily WTF.)

Re:Universal Internet filter plans detailed

[electrictroy]

Is this an excerpt from 1984? It seems to have the same nonsense speak that redefines words away from their true meaning (obfucation).

Re:Universal Internet filter plans detailed

[mentaldingo]

No, it's just word filtered...

Re:Universal Internet filter plans detailed

[David Gerard]

See the Daily WTF link and do a Google on "medireview" and "loveual harbuttment".

Re:Universal Internet filter plans detailed

[Nazlfrag]

My personal favourite is United States Consbreastution

Re:Universal Internet filter plans detailed

[jonaskoelker]

What a bunch of poppydong! I've heard wangroaches speak better dickney in a schlongpit.

But "glButt tty" makes you think about fantbutttic graphics capabilities ;)

(http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/G/glass-tty.html)

Re:Universal Internet filter plans detailed

[Eythian]

clbuttic!

Re:Universal Internet filter plans detailed

[aproposofwhat]

(obfucation).

That's obdamnation to you, Mr Pottymouth!

Re:Universal Internet filter plans detailed

[kvezach]

I prefer this one:

Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of s***ch, or the right of the people peaceably to ***emble, and to pe***ion the government for a redress of grievances.

This government a horrible disappointment

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't think much of the last government and couldn't wait for them to go. Traditionally I vote labour (which is what this government is) but lately I've been finding it harder and harder to reconcile their values with the values the purport to be in favour of. I find myself wishing these jokers would just get out of office already.

Re:This government a horrible disappointment

[Starayo]

Both the major parties support this, and Labor is so far the lesser of two evils.

Network degradation the primary concern?

[cjfs]

This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector. - Plato

Re:Network degradation the primary concern?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

And Plato would know. His Republic is one of the creepiest works in the genre of political thought experiments.

So the govt. is actually AGAINST net filtering?

[petes_PoV]

Let's see if I've got this right.

The Autrailian government is considering implementing a web filtering system - but they don't want people to know that it doesn't work.

Given that they state (in the cited article) that it will block "all illegal material", then by definition anything it allows through must therefore be legal, The only conclusion I can logically draw from this is that their government is against filtering, blocking or generally censoring the internet - but that they don't want their people to know this. Strange!

Re:So the govt. is actually AGAINST net filtering?

[jnnnnn]

The answer is possibly that Conroy is only continuing to push the filter because he wants to keep Senator Fielding (single representative of a Christian minority party, holds part of balance of power) happy for several difficult votes ahead.

I can't imagine that Australian citizens will be too impressed if they find their 'net being censored. Actually implementing something that worked badly would be political suicide.

Re:So the govt. is actually AGAINST net filtering?

[Anonymous Coward]

ATTENTION ATTENTION ATTENTION

It would seem you are attempting to use Reason. Please drop it on the floor and step back slowly.

Re:So the govt. is actually AGAINST net filtering?

[CaptainDefragged]

Mod this guy up. At last someone besides me gets it! This is exactly the reason why Labor is pushing ahead blindly with it. A quick peruse of Senator Fielding's website (www.stevefielding.com.au) finds a number of media releases explaining that he has been lobbying for mandatory filters for over two years.

Re:So the govt. is actually AGAINST net filtering?

[ZorbaTHut]

Nope, it's simple.

The government doesn't care about illegal material in the slightest. They just want more power over what people can see and experience. This gives them more power, and they're using "illegal filtering" as the way to get it past people who might otherwise be critical.

They're certainly not against filtering illegal stuff - they simply don't care about it.

Re:So the govt. is actually AGAINST net filtering?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, The filters have been shown to block a large volume of legitimate content, and slow speeds by upto 75%.

Now if the filter was opt-out 'no questions asked' this would be fine. But the filter is only opt-out to ANOTHER filter, which will still block content - and from what we've heard - you will be required to submit personal (Identifiable..) details to be moved to this 'lesser censor'

Re:So the govt. is actually AGAINST net filtering?

[Philip Shaw]

The Howard Government commissioned a report on a national filter, which showed that one wouldn't work. It did introduce a gratis filtering package available to all Australians, butt he take-up is quite low (mostly because people don't want it).

I suspect that they were tying to keep Senator Fielding happy until after the election, and were hoping that after the election, they would be able to point to the report and abandon the idea.

Of course, now that Labor has won, the Libs can get them coming and going. If Labor do introduce the filter, when it doesn't work the Libs can point to the report and say "told you so", and if they don't, Senator Fielding will give them a lot of grief. If by some miracle,it worked, the Libs can claim it as their idea all along, and take the credit.

Child Porn Out of Control

[cervo]

Now this is way out of control. I mean I thought the whole thing about a backlash at Child Porn was to protect the children. By censoring the websites you are stopping the consumption of child porn. But how are you protecting the exploited children?

Instead of censoring the whole internet (which must be for some other agenda using Child Porn as an excuse to push censoring) why not focus more resources on finding and arresting the people who create child porn.

I don't mean the people who view it. Because honestly I have had child porn come up on the internet while searching for other things. I immediately close the site, but if you look at the logs I accessed the site. Also in some newsgroups there are tons of child porn pictures. If you say download all messages, even though you open a child porn and are like no and close it right away, it still says you downloaded it. Or even browsing, sometimes a message will have one title but in the end it shows someone young that maybe is 18 but maybe is not you just don't know. So anyway I close that message but I still accessed it. Should I be arrested? Probably not because I am not interested in child porn at all and I certainly don't want to go out and do anything with a child (as far as the difference between 17 and 364 days and 18 that is tougher call if you were looking at women in a bar, but if I knew they were 17 and 364 days I would wait the one day not to worry about some FBI raid :)).

What would be better would be if there is a way for me to report these things to the government authorities easily. In the end I'm sure a lot of people come across Child Porn searching for completely unrelated things, or even searching for adult porn. It seems a waste to not have a way to report these things for investigation. The problem with that is if they just look at every ip in the logs that accessed the site and go arrest everyone, they will arrest a lot of people who came to the website by mistake or who downloaded a newsgroup message by mistake. But if there was a way to report it and they closed down the makers that would be great. At some point there would be so little child porn that people would stop coming across it by accident (mostly). Because the makers of it would take steps to make it harder to find. And the good thing is that people actively looking for it would have a harder time as well....

Also from the way this guy seems so child porn phobic you would thing he was looking at child porn and because he feels guilty he decided he should help filter the internet so he doesn't have the temptation anymore. Usually the most vocal opponents against something actually do it. I remember quite a few Republicans who were very anti Clinton for his affair who ended up having affairs of their own.....And I don't even need to mention the various ministers in the church. Maybe someone needs to investigate this government minster. He sounds awfully anti-child porn, as if he is overly familiar with the problem.

Re:Child Porn Out of Control

[electrictroy]

Child porn is not illegal, unless it involves actual children. If child porn involved adults who look like children, or computer-generated images (ala the vixens in DOA Volleyball), then child porn is perfectly legal in the USA.

I don't know how it is in Australia, but it should be the same. The crime is the victimization of children, NOT the faked photograph.

Re:Child Porn Out of Control

[deniable]

Child porn may just be the cover story. It's possible that some of these people are really looking to stop child porn. It's also possible that they are being paid to consult with a vendor who has a solution in search of a problem. It's also possible that they hate all porn and want to use child porn to get a foot in the door.

Re:Child Porn Out of Control

[electrictroy]

>>>I'm sure a lot of people come across Child Porn searching for completely unrelated things, or even searching for adult porn. It seems a waste to not have a way to report these things
>>>

They do? I've never seen any child pornography. Never. I've seen lots of Nudist websites displaying Mom, dad, and child naked at the beach, but that is NOT porn. The human body was created by God, and what Gods creates is not sinful. A naked human is not porn.

If you want to see child porn (read: sex), you have to go into dark corners of the internet. It is well hidden. You can't just stumble upon it "by accident".

Re:Child Porn Out of Control

[thetoadwarrior]

What would be better would be if there is a way for me to report these things to the government authorities easily.

http://www.iwf.org.uk/

That is quite a good resource for reporting child porn. It's not Australian but the internet is international so it doesn't matter who shuts them down.

Re:Child Porn Out of Control

[Anonymous Coward]

Australia's zero-tolerance laws regarding child pornography include fictional and drawn images.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolicon#Australia

Re:Child Porn Out of Control

[cervo]

I was thinking the same thing and also something else.

1. He's gonna pay a vendor a fortune to implement the filtering. And that is the motivation.

2. Child porn is phase 1, music and movies are phase 2...you can see where that is going....warez and microsoft windows phase 3......

Re:Child Porn Out of Control

[cervo]

I think child porn read naked picture without sex is shady enough that I would not want to have even that. Plus if there is any question as to if someone is 16 or 18 I would not want to have that either. There are 16 year olds who look 20. Just like there are 25 year olds who look 15. And quite frankly unless you can prove that 25 year old is really 25 I would not want to be caught with any of it. Not even nudist pictures at the beach. Not with the US government anyway (I think nude pictures of people under 18 are illegal. I seem to remember a case of a high school guy being arrested because his girlfriend sent him naked pictures on his cell phone).

Also in the mid and late 1990's it was a lot easier to websearch for one thing and come up with all sorts of nasty things. I remember in high school that if you ended up with a porn website you had to call the computer lab guys who would come to the computer and inspect and see what you were searching for. Otherwise it would hit their legs and when they found out they would lock you out (I'm not sure how they found out all, obviously some websites have obvious domain names but others do not. www.thisnormalwebsite.com/images/1.jpg is not super obvious.

Re:Child Porn Out of Control

[cervo]

By the way here is the link http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/08/teen_charged_for_cell_phone_pics/ it seems that a naked human body under 18 IS child porn. At least in the US. So I guess that makes you guilty of looking at child porn if you look at those images. When I say I came across child porn by mistake I mean those images. I don't think I have ever come across children having sex (or if I have maybe they were close enough to 18 that they looked 18). But I don't think they need to be having sex for it to be child porn.

Re:Child Porn Out of Control

[deniable]

No, you're not thinking like a politician. He's gonna get the ISPs to pay a vendor and we know where that cost will go.

Re:Child Porn Out of Control

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of censoring the whole internet (which must be for some other agenda using Child Porn as an excuse to push censoring) why not focus more resources on finding and arresting the people who create child porn.

That would require them to get of their arses and actually do some work. There's also a good chance that the great and the good of [insert name of your country here] consume this kind of thing, and would get caught.

Re:Child Porn Out of Control

[electrictroy]

I used to think of Australia as one of the freest nations in the world (in some respects, even more free than the U.S. itself). What the hell happened???

Re:Child Porn Out of Control

[electrictroy]

>>>I think child-naked picture without sex is shady enough that I would not want to have even that.

Okay. Here's a challenge for you. Go here and tell me how this is morally wrong? http://www.purenudism.com/free-nudist-pictures.html ----- I don't see a single image there that depicts sex. These are3 just family photos!

And as I said before, a human body is God's creation. To label God's artistry as "obscene" is an insult to the Creator.

Re:Child Porn Out of Control

[Anonymous Coward]

You've never seen any, but yet you know that it's well-hidden in dark corners of the internet?

I'll grant it was off of some shady TGP sites, but I've hit the stuff in under six clicks from a non-bizarre google image search.

Re:Child Porn Out of Control

[Anonymous Coward]

Women got the vote.

Re:Child Porn Out of Control

[cervo]

NO, you're not thinking like a politician. If the government pays it is still taxpayer money. And if he pays a big ISP then the isp can contribute to his political platforms. For the little guys yeah the government could care less....but for the big guys it is advantageous to posture to them and get them on your side.

Re:Child Porn Out of Control

[St. Alfonzo]

That might be relevant if we were discussing morality. However we are discussing legality. If you want to change the law go out and do something constructive with your time.

Re:Child Porn Out of Control

[Anonymous Coward]

You must of not been on Usenet lately in the binary groups
Nor have ever visited 4chan or its clones

Consider yourself lucky

Re:Child Porn Out of Control

[syousef]

If you want to see child porn (read: sex), you have to go into dark corners of the internet. It is well hidden. You can't just stumble upon it "by accident".

Yes, but if you define porn as sex, and the authorities define porn as nudity, guess by which definition you'll get judged when you get taken to court and thrown in jail?

Re:Child Porn Out of Control

[electrictroy]

Yes but these laws ARE about morality. In this case, it's about some Christian wackos trying to impose their morality that "nudity is wrong" upon the rest of us. Separation of church & state should forbid this from happening. The church should not be able to use the state to impose it's morals on non-church members.

To quote Thomas Jefferson: "Whether my neighbor worships one god, or many gods, matters not to me. It does not harm my property, my person, nor my rights. It matters not to me how my neighbor chooses to worship." Similarly if my neighbor decides to go visit a nudist beach, and take photos of his children and wife, that's fine. I will allow him the freedom to do so, because that act does not harm me, my property, or my rights. It matters not to me, nor should it matter to the government. Leave the poor guy alone; don't arrest him.

The only time it matters if the guy forces a child to have sex. Only then has a right been violated (because it's can cause physical harm).

Re:Child Porn Out of Control

[WeirdJohn]

John Winston Howard happened. It'll take a while for sanity to prevail.

Re:Child Porn Out of Control

[Anonymous Coward]

Well that depends on your definition of child porn. It seems that these days any nudity of an underaged kid is CP even if it's just a photo of a kid in a bath taken by a parent.

Re:Child Porn Out of Control

[Hatta]

If it doesn't contain actual children, it's not actual child porn.

Re:Child Porn Out of Control

[FreakWent]

In Shakespearian terms, this is:

"Methinks thou dost protest too much".

Re:Child Porn Out of Control

[CaptainDefragged]

The agenda is this... Sitting ALP government needs Senator Fielding's vote in the senate to get legislation through. Senator Fielding's Family First Party (religious right -neo con types) holds the balance of power in the senate. Fielding wants a mandatory block on all porn in case some child stumbles onto it. The ALP see this as an easy win to get this guy on board. It's nothing to do with porn, illegal content or anything else. It is totally about securing this guys senate vote. You can read about his lobbying activities at www.stevefielding.com.au. This article [pdf 27k] pretty much covers it.
With choice quotes such as this

"FAMILY FIRST has campaigned for the past two years for mandatory filtering at the ISP level, which a government report found was 'feasible' and which is the only way we can use filtering to help protect all children from pornography. "Mandatory filtering offers some protection to all children, even if their parents do not opt to take up a particular filtering scheme. The danger with the current proposals is that not all parents will take up the option and children will continue to be exposed to Internet pornography."

it would be very funny if not so serious.

Re:Child Porn Out of Control

[taucross]

/b/ != "dark corners of the internet".

It says so in the New York Times.

Re:Child Porn Out of Control

[electrictroy]

If the "court" is the Supreme Court of the United States, then I'll be freed, because the justices have already affirmed (several times) that nudity is not pornography, regardless if the person in the photo is an adult, a teen, or a child. That is why nudist websites are perfectly legal within the U.S.

Re:Child Porn Out of Control

[BlackusDiamondus]

John Winston Howard happened. It'll take a while for sanity to prevail.

Are you completely out of your skull? This entire initiative of filtering the internet is a LABOR initiative and has had nothing to do with the Libs. In fact, there has been more censoring, bullying and downright jack-booting going on since the Labor party won the election than throughout the entire 12 years that the Libs were in office.

Re:Child Porn Out of Control

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just patently untrue. While, yes, you're not likely to run into child porn while surfing links on google news, if you surf porn with any regularity (fine if you do, fine if you don't) then you are perfectly likely to run into child porn from time to time. Let's say you hop on any of the hundreds of thousands of adult thumbnail gallery posts on the internets. These are collections of links to adult content, where each link is a thumbnail of a girl (or guy) that the visitor can click. At the same time, however, many of these links will simply link to a different TGP a certain percentage of the time (traffic sharing being a major part of the TGP webmaster's business model). So, you click a link, then end up at another collection of links. You click a link there, and then once again end up at another collection of links, etc., etc. Every once in a while, however, you'll be surprised to find yourself in a new window, voila, at a TGP totally unrelated to what you went looking for in the first place. Usually, its something totally legal but maybe a bit odd. Sometimes, however, you end up, low and behold, looking at child porn, despite not having actually gone looking for anything other than regular old pictures of boobies. So while no, you're not going to run into much child porn while browsing ebay, once you hop onto the other half of the internet, its really quite easy to run into child porn from time to time, totally by accident. This can be very scary at times, considering that a single cached image is often enough for a conviction, regardless of the true tastes of the individual involved.

Re:Child Porn Out of Control

[deniable]

Yup, I forgot that one. It's Brian Harradine (sp?) all over again. Just another part of the FF/AOG/Hillsong fun and games. I wish they'd go back to rigging Australian Idol and leave Canberra alone.

Re:Child Porn Out of Control

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a very rational argument that I agree with. There is nothing wrong with naked people. A 400lb naked person might not be something I want to see but there is still nothing wrong with it.

The problem is that child porn has been broadly defined as anything that can even be mistaken for a child AND it doesn't have to actually be porn either. I'm not even sure it has to have nudity in it anymore.

Child porn just like terrorism has become just another tool to scare people into giving up their freedoms and privacy. It disgusts me that instead of going after actual child molesters and the people taking the pictures they just put on a front, make no real impact and the average person doesn't even question it.

Re:Child Porn Out of Control

[WeirdJohn]

To quote the person I replied to:

"I used to think of Australia as one of the freest nations in the world (in some respects, even more free than the U.S. itself). What the hell happened???"

Who took away our firearms? Who set up concentration camps in the desert?

And as I recall Internet filtering was raised by Senator Alston to get Senator Harradine onside when he controlled the balance of power. Harradine wanted porn and online gambling filtered. This was back in the mid 90s when JWH was in his 1st term as PM.

Re:Child Porn Out of Control

[kocsonya]

"I've seen lots of Nudist websites displaying Mom, dad, and child naked at the beach, but that is NOT porn."

In Australia, it definitely is kiddieporn. They are working on tightening the law in New South Wales so that photo artists can't take nude photos of underage persons "under the cover of artistic freedom" (recently a photo of a naked teen was taken from an art galery by a SWAT team). Chances are that soon in Australia it will be illegal to photograph your own child naked.

Unfortunately our former and present governments and oppositions are full of righteous, deep-Christian politicians who will deliver us from evil, whether we want it or not. After all, Australian parliament starts with the Lord's Prayer every day.

The sad thing is that the Australian population is swallowing it hook, line and sinker, praise the Lord and our moral saviour, the Government! Mind you, blessed are the meek...

Re:Child Porn Out of Control

[Anonymous Coward]

http://img.4chan.org/b/imgboard.html

Everything here is an accident, and every once in a while Child porn finds its way here, the best you can do if you enjoy the people and culture is to not save the child porn, and stop reading threads were it happens.

Re:Child Porn Out of Control

[BlackusDiamondus]

To quote the person I replied to:

"I used to think of Australia as one of the freest nations in the world (in some respects, even more free than the U.S. itself). What the hell happened???"

Who took away our firearms? Who set up concentration camps in the desert?

And as I recall Internet filtering was raised by Senator Alston to get Senator Harradine onside when he controlled the balance of power. Harradine wanted porn and online gambling filtered. This was back in the mid 90s when JWH was in his 1st term as PM.

Whilst I agree that there was an over-reaction to firearm control by the previous government, the rest of your points are not quite as clear headed.

You can call them concentration camps, but how about we call them detention camps for illegal immigrants. What would you have the Australian government do with these people? Ship them back or just let them out into the general populace. Interestingly with the hard line approach the Liberal government took, there were far fewer illegal immigrants arriving on Australian shores than ever before. And please, don't try to call them refugees, we all know that the vast majority of the people arriving in Australia illegally are simply illegal immigrants trying to jump queues or get into the country in any way they can, including paying someone a bucket load of money to smuggle them in on a leaky fishing boat.

As for the previous government raising internet filtering to gain the support of a certain senator...was it implemented? No? Wow...but this government actually is planning on implementing it and silencing any dissenting voices amongst the general populace in the process.

Re:Child Porn Out of Control

[Anonymous Coward]

Child porn that doesn't involve children isn't child porn. How hard is this?

Re:Child Porn Out of Control

[Anonymous Coward]

>If you want to see child porn (read: sex), you have to go into dark corners of the internet. It is well hidden. You can't just stumble upon it "by accident".

Someone's never been to 4chan.

Re:Child Porn Out of Control

[Brain Damaged Bogan]

"the difference between 17 and 364 days and 18"
leap years are such a bitch when picking up ripe 17 yo and 364 days chicks.

Re:Child Porn Out of Control

[Jayjay2]

That the US Supreme Court has made that distinction is quite interesting, and somewhat pertinent to the OP topic.

Here in Australia, a prominent photographer by the name of Bill Henson recently had a skirmish with the law over some photographs he took of a 13 year old girl. As far as I can tell, they were not depicting any sexual acts and were simply a series of nude photos. However, he was largely condemned by many members of the public and our own Prime Minister.

Whether this would have occurred if we had something like the Supreme Courts affirmations I can't be sure, but it was interesting to note that everyone was rather vague as to whether a law was broken. Had there been a clear-cut precedent ruling in place, maybe we would have all dismissed it straight away. As it is, the spectre of child-porn is still hovering over us and may have resulted in the Government reviving this filtering issue from the dead.

Re:Child Porn Out of Control

[idlemachine]

So you don't recall the Liberal Govt's threats to ban all X-rated material, which they used to make the reclassification to NVE (Non-Violent Erotica) more palatable to the public? A lot of what had been previously acceptable was lost in the translation and very little of it had to do with violence.

The Libs actually determined how many cumshots were allowable in a porn film before it would be classed as "fetish" material, such material being forbidden under the then-new NVE classification.

The fact that the number was considerably higher in most gay porn than straight had, I'm sure, nothing to do with the decision (which was made by a group that included members of John Howard's church, if I recall correctly...nothing like churchgoers to tell you what's acceptable in your sexual fantasies).

Try going back to the 1995/96 entries here if you think the Libs weren't censorship happy: http://libertus.net/censor/debate/articles08.html

Re:Child Porn Out of Control

[Anonymous Coward]

"but if I knew they were 17 and 364 days I would wait the one day"

But 24 hours is long enough for her to sober up :(

Re:Child Porn Out of Control

[Anonymous Coward]

The human body was created by GOD? What in hell have you been reading?! ...oh right...the Bible.

Re:Child Porn Out of Control

[theaveng]

>>>Bill Henson recently had a skirmish with the law over some photographs he took of a 13 year old girl.

He should move to either the U.S. or the E.U. Such things are perfectly legal. Images of the human body are not considered obscene. There are lots of "photobooks" of this exact-same type of photography on amazon.com - it's considered art. Same as Michaelangelo's depiction of David in the nude.

Re:Child Porn Out of Control

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I just went back to the link you posted, and the only mention of banning porn was by the NSW State LABOR government, not the Liberal Government. If you have an actual link that proves your accusation, then please post it - otherwise please stop talking trash.

Re:Child Porn Out of Control

[Anonymous Coward]

If it doesn't contain actual children, it's not actual child porn.

It doesn't matter if you consider it child porn or not, what matters is the law, which requires neither children or porn for something to be "child porn" and send you to jail (true for both Australia and the US).

The rapid spread of another dangerous ideology ...

[NotBornYesterday]

The countries of the world seem to be catching a bad case of censorphilia. I can't think of a single reason important enough to warrant censorship in peacetime. Where the hell does this all stop?

OK, here's SP1

[Anonymous Coward]

Please replace all occurrences of "s/ass/butt/" with "s/\Wass\W/butt/". Thanks for cooperating.

Re:OK, here's SP1

[David Gerard]

That'll be three months and another $500,000 contractor's fees. God I love private consultancy!

Is this the same Internet I know?

[mangu]

Because honestly I have had child porn come up on the internet while searching for other things. I immediately close the site, but if you look at the logs I accessed the site. Also in some newsgroups there are tons of child porn pictures.

That's weird, in the 15 years or so that I've been using the Web, I have never, ever, seen one single photograph that could be classified as "child porn".

I have seen some pictures of nude children in nudist camps and beaches, there are many beaches in Europe where whole families go totally nude. There are many so-called "teen" sites, which show nude women with small breasts and shaved pubic region, who could be of any age between 15 and 30.

But I never found one single picture of a child engaged in sex. This must be some different "internets" we are talking about. That, or people have extended the meaning of "child porn" to "any image I don't like".

Re:Is this the same Internet I know?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is the definition of child porn. I was discussing this the other day with someone who works in one internet company that gets a lot of user uploaded content. A lot of the removed content isn't child porn as you describe (sex involving minors), but pictures of minors in poses/situations intended to excite a pedophile.

For example, for normal males (and some females) a picture of Angelina Jolie in a sexy outfit in a very tempting pose would certainly have an exciting result. For pedophiles, the same pose and outfit, but with a 10 year old, would be just as exciting if not more.

Now, the problem is where you draw the line of what non-hardcore pictures are child porn and what are not. The same guy I was talking with mentioned that one of the big problems is that sometimes they are faced with a picture that can be child porn, but ends up being from a famous photographer... What do you do in such situations? The history of the picture clearly proves it wasn't made with intent to excite, but it can have that effect on a pedophile....

Re:Is this the same Internet I know?

[cervo]

As far as I know if they are under 18 in the photo it is illegal. And in newsgroups it is a bigger issue. At least I think. I have been using the internet for about 15 years as well. And especially in the mid to late 1990s it was much easier to find unintended things on searches about completely unrelated things.

Enough that my high school had a policy where if you found such things you had to call a computer lab aid over who would check out what you were searching for. And then clear it. Otherwise you would be locked out if they found it by reading the logs.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/08/teen_charged_for_cell_phone_pics/ there is no mention of sex there. So I guess naked pictures are illegal at least in the US. So like I said, I would not want to be caught with any women under 18. I guess this also means under the laws you are illegally watching child porn.

Re:Is this the same Internet I know?

[Red Alastor]

So what if it excites a pedophile? Was the child harmed by the photograph taking? Does he or she even knows that someone wanked to that picture?

As long as no one is harmed by the taking of the picture, no censorship should be done, doing otherwise is punishing thoughtcrimes.

Re:Is this the same Internet I know?

[electrictroy]

Stupid Christian. Where do you get off imposing your morals on me??? Butt out bastard.

Re:Is this the same Internet I know?

[Barny]

Actually, by Australian law, even if they are hand drawn pictures (yeah, no one hurt by those) it is still illegal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolicon#Australia

So I guess browsing 4chan will be hard once this is in.

Re:Is this the same Internet I know?

[cervo]

I'm not imposing morality just the laws. I don't want to go to jail :) Whether I agree with the laws or not is another issue. But as long as the laws are the law I have to be in compliance with them as much as possible unless I want to go to jail. The same applies to Marijuana/etc... In reality alcohol is probably more dangeorus than marijuana but unfortunately alcohol is legal and marijuana isn't. It doesn't matter what I agree with. If I am caught with marijuana I will go to jail.

Re:Is this the same Internet I know?

[electrictroy]

That's fine, but it also helps if you actually READ the law. The U.S. Supreme Court has affirmed time-and-time again that photos of naked children are not illegal. They are protected by free speech, and that's why nudist sites exist. It's why some child actors like Brooke Shields ran-around naked in their movies. It's not illegal to be without clothes.

They only time a naked child becomes illegal is if an adult forces the child to have sex, because a minor (17 or less) can not give consent. But nudity is a natural state. It's how we're born, and not obscene.

Re:Is this the same Internet I know?

[electrictroy]

>>>unless I want to go to jail.

Henry David Thoreau is famous for his "Walden Pond" work, but he also wrote treatises on civil disobedience. A true citizen should be willing to spend time in prison in order to fight immoral laws. As happened with Ghandi and Martin Luther King.

In addition a law that is unConstitutional is no law at all. (According to the U.S. Supreme Court.) It is null-and-void.

Re:Is this the same Internet I know?

[electrictroy]

Stupid. Bunch of cowards afraid to see the human body. What about Michaelangelo's "David"? He's an underage "child" of about 15.

Will his image be censored from Australian internet too? Probably. This is the modern-day equivalent of burning books or burning "degenerate" arts.

Re:Is this the same Internet I know?

[Artifakt]

This is a problem with adult porn too. Ted Bundy was excited by a lot of Sears style catalogs showing models in bras or nightgowns, and particularly by some catalogs of cheerleading supplies. To him, they counted as porn. There's something really strange about the whole idea of asking people who are, at least statistically, deviant, to define what is and isn't normal.

Re:Is this the same Internet I know?

[electrictroy]

Who hasn't been intrigued by the Bra section or the Bikini section in a Sears (or especially Victoria's Secret) catalog? The women in those pages are gorgeous, and no I'm not ashamed to say that. There is no shame in acknowledging the beauty of the human body. And it's certainly not deviant. What Shakespeare said with irony, I say with conviction:

"What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable. In action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god!"

The human body is a work of art, and there is reason to censor it off the internet, regardless if it's 5 years, 25 years, or 50 years old.

Re:Is this the same Internet I know?

[Malekin]

I'm not sure how the decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court have bearing on a discussion of the great firewall of Australia, even if we do joke the country is the 52nd state.

Re:Is this the same Internet I know?

[electrictroy]

Australia's Supreme Court, if it was doing its job, would also recognize that nudity is nor pornography. The E.U. Court of First Instance has already agreed with the SCOTUS that nudity is not illegal, regardless of age. Why Australia's Supremes are out-of-step makes no sense to me.

Re:Is this the same Internet I know?

[theaveng]

I think you meant: "there is [no] reason to censor the human body"

Re:The rapid spread of another dangerous ideology

[Aerynvala]

Revolution? Presumably at some point enough people will be sufficiently annoyed to get off their asses and do something. Until then...

Re:The rapid spread of another dangerous ideology

[Tuoqui]

That's because we've never been at peace, we've always been in THE WAR ON TERROR!!!!!111111oneoneoneone!

Clever nickname needed

[Anonymous Coward]

This needs a clever nickname. I'm not clever enough to come up with one, but it seems fitting that it be based on the dog fence:
http://www.pomgonewalkabout.com/Page4.htm

-Lee

Re:Clever nickname needed

[HAKdragon]

What does Wil Wheaton have to do with this?

If anyone thinks this is about child porn...

[squarooticus]

If anyone thinks this is about child porn, they are simply fooling themselves. This is about control. The governments of the world want the serfs to know who their masters are and what their place in society is. The easiest way to do that---as China has found out---is to limit the information coming into the country to that which is approved by the government.

This is nothing new: Australia is simply following an ages-old script. The difference between then and now is that you think you have control because you live in a democracy. Let me assure you that democracy and liberty are two entirely different things, and often are at odds. Please see Hoppe's Democracy: The God that Failed and Hayek's The Road to Serfdom for more detail.

The best reaction you can have to this is to encourage yourself and others (especially your own children) to differentiate respect for others' rights from respect for artificial "law", and to show the latter none while deferring to it only enough to keep from attracting too much attention. Defy all rules that have nothing to do with protecting the rights of others, and you are a free man; obey them, and you are a slave.

Re:If anyone thinks this is about child porn...

[plasmacutter]

Democracy, the god that failed advocates anarcho-capitalism, or a hyper-randian society. The middle ages were exactly this type of society, and they were a nightmare of tyranny.

I'm sorry, but libertarians love to ignore those considerably long and painful times when the market truly was free, and corporations wielded market power with an iron fist against individual liberty and well being, and even posed a threat to governments.

Democracy is the worst form of government, except all the others.

I have some actual new ideas rather than swapping one old oppressive regime for another old oppressive regime. I'll try to expand upon them and publish a book.

Re:If anyone thinks this is about child porn...

[electrictroy]

I guess it's a good thing the United States is NOT a democracy. It's a Republic of laws, and those laws affirm the rights of the individual to run his own life with minimal interference. As one of the Founders Thomas Jefferson stated so eloquently, "We would have no government if it were possible. It is only to protect our rights that we resort to government."

Or as James Madison said: "If men were angels, we would not need government." But of course men are not angels, which is why government is needed to protect our right of life (against murder), our right to property (against theft), and our right to liberty (against enslavement).

We are not a Democracy. We are a Republic that embraces the ideal of individual liberty and sovereignty & use Law to protect them.

Re:If anyone thinks this is about child porn...

[jyx]

If you can, watch a few episodes of a great Aussie tv show called "The Hollow Men" which I think sums up our workings of government perfectly.

Our government(s) aren't so much as evil plotting overlords as much as they are self interested career minded politicians with an eye to winning the next election at what ever cost. If the nerd vote was larger than the combined footy mum and religious votes then they would be beating their chests about how they are standing up to censorship, free speech and the right of privacy.

The saddest thing is, just like the U.S., both our political parties are pretty much exactly the same. Our ex chief minister summed it up perfectly "Oppositions don't win elections, Governments loose elections" - We don't vote for who we want in, we vote for who we least 'do not want'.

Re:If anyone thinks this is about child porn...

[ekhben]

Why invent a conspiracy? The Australian government, like most other governments around the world, can't find their arse with their hands, let alone run a conspiracy.

Australian politics is not as black and white as American politics. We have two major parties, but our independents frequently get representation in parliament. Currently the Labor party (not related to labouring) is in power, but the Liberal party (conservatives, not liberal at all, remember we're upside down here) will generally work to block their motions to make the Labor party look bad. This means Labor depends on the independents to vote their way, which in turn means...

This legislation is being pushed to buy future votes from the Family First (rabid "for the children" Christian nutjobs) independent who got into parliament in the last elections. That is the sum of it. No-one cares whether it works, not even the nutjob Family First independent, so long as it's seen to be attempted by the people who will vote for Family First so they don't have to make sure their son isn't jacking off in his room to Internet porn.

Remember: the job of a politician is to get re-elected. Everything they do can be explained by that goal, without turning to conspiracy theories, the second resort of the ignorant.

Re:If anyone thinks this is about child porn...

[plasmacutter]

It's true, the US is a "representative" republic, though the representation the people receive by the puppets in the legislature is laughable.

So far as laws which affirm the rights of the individual to run his own life with minimal interference, I point to the drug laws, copyright law, the DMCA section 1201, "free speech zones", the virtually unlimited power of law enforcement to harass you and seize property at will, and the list goes on and on.

I concede this is better than most nations on earth, but many western nations now have a better track record on this than we do, and we have a long way to go.

Thomas Jefferson also warned about the danger of consolidated corporate interests hijacking and warping our legislatures against the public will. He was right.

We are a Republic that embraces the ideal of individual liberty and sovereignty & use Law to protect them.

I do hope this actually comes to pass one day, but as of right now we are merely a republic.

Re:If anyone thinks this is about child porn...

[squarooticus]

If you think the middle ages were anarcho-capitalism, you obviously have not read Hoppe.

Central to Hoppe's thesis was that monarchy was less destructive of private property and individual liberties than democracy because the ruler had an incentive to maintain the capital value of his country, whereas democratically-elected caretakers have the opposite incentive, i.e. to plunder the capital value of the country while in office.

With all apologies to Hobbes, the reason why life was nasty, brutish, and short in the pre-modern era was the lack of modern technology---medical care, efficient markets in essentials like food, and materials to make housing and luxuries cheap. There may be a connection to the existence of ubiquitous government surveillance and control, but the direction of causality is clearly not that government made life easy.

Actually *read* Hoppe, and then tell me what you think.

Terrible

[Bender Unit 22]

At work, one of our filters even blocked microsoft for a day or so.
I get 3-4 blocked sites everyday just by looking at some links from Digg, Slashdot and a links from some newspapers. And this filter is only claiming to block dangerous sites.
I am sure that they have blocked a lot of sites that had infected banner ads at some point but then have left them blacklisted to inflate the hit counter of blocked sites.

Re:Terrible

[rohan972]

At work, one of our filters even blocked microsoft for a day or so.

You're right, if it's only going to be for a day or so, it's just not worth it!

Re:Terrible

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like it's doing its job then if it's blocking Microsoft ;)

But jokes aside, I was present in the bidding process where one state-owned company was going to buy a filter solution. The biggest metric that all vendors talked about was the number of blocked sites. They didn't talk about number of false positives or the time it takes for a false positive to be removed from the list, only the number of blocked sites..

I should have had left the company, built a fake company and took part in the bidding process.. I would win easily.. Just download all blacklists for squid available in the net, then for each entry, duplicate it and append common words like 'album' , 'members', 'join' , 'tour' , and quite a few more (just using those as those are what I remember from pr0n sites). Nothing that a bunch of lines of shell scripts can't do to get the biggest list of blocked sites on the face of the planet...

Re:Terrible

[plasmacutter]

At work, one of our filters even blocked microsoft for a day or so.

WOW! It actually worked at filtering out harmful material!

Send a letter to the oz government recommending their solution.

Re:Terrible

[srjh]

It's potentially worse than this - one of the state health departments in Australia (Queensland health) recently had to modify it's filters because anatomical and gynecological material could not be accessed by medical students or doctors.

We know there is going to be an enormous problem with overblocking (between 2% and 8% from government tests), but exactly what will end up as collateral damage remains to be seen. It's reasonable to assume that the average person will have access to medical advice impeded, at the very least.

The suppressed letter

[The Solitaire]

For those wanting to read the contents of the letter they tried to suppress, you can find the original here. (PDF)

Re:Child Porn - Reporting It

[six025]

There are easy ways to report underage or kiddie porn to the authorities. The following site contains a number of useful links, it was the first site listed after a quick Google search:

http://www.kidsread.net/Report_to_FBI.htm

Could have hit "I'm feeling lucky" but with a search term like "reporting underage porn" you never know ...

http://www.google.com.au/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=1G1GGLQ_ENUK257&q=reporting+underage+porn&btnG=Google+Search&meta=

Peace,
Andy.

It's the LAW!

[mangu]

Please consider that people who support censorship are, usually, God-fearing Christians. And God-fearing Christians always respect the Law. As our good Lord Jesus Christ Himself obeyed the Law:

Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the
prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.

For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pBUTT,
one jot or one BREASTtle shall in no wise pBUTT from the law, till
all be fulfilled.

(Matthew 5:17, 5:18)

Re:It's the LAW!

[David Gerard]

Google "jot or breastle"

Re:It's the LAW!

[jonaskoelker]

Matthew 26:74

Then began he to curse and to swear, saying, I know not the man. And immediately the PENIS crew.

I want to be on the penis crew...

And the bash.org favorite, Genesis 22:3

And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his BUTT

Guy puts a saddle on his behind? He shoulda put it on his back if he wanted his kids to ride him.

Because it's a sham

[moxley]

They ignore anything that may set them back because those within these western governments pushing this garbage really don't give a fuck about child porn, protecting the people, or anything. It is all politics; window dressing for censorship and control, a conduit to get an agenda they've wanted for a very long time rammmed through whatever sort of consitutional or other protetctions (including mass opinion) the people supposedly have against these sorts of abuses.

Another interestingly disgusting point when to comes to child porn (and other sexual behaviors that are not criminal but just as denounced by these guys) is that there have been many occasions where politicians, community leaders, priests, leaders of socially conservative movements, etc who are vocal and fervent denoucers and crusaders against such things are caught with this material or, worse, even involved in producing and distributing it.. the nebraska Franklin scandal that the Reagan/Bush whitehouse was caught up in comes to mind....

As a political issue child porn is like terrorism - it's an awful thing, but is also one of those political trump cards - and these slick bastards know it and use it as such.

Whats the solution ?

[Eth1csGrad1ent]

Serious question. What IS the solution ??

I'm torn on this. The filtering plan is bullshit obviously and I'm also sure that someone
will post the funny "Please god.. won't someone think of the children!?" but heres the rub...

They're my children. MY kids. Not someone theoretical child somewhere that needs saving.
And after 15 years on the net, I know exactly how bad and sadistic some of the content is
out there.

My kids are of the age where they're becoming independent. I've educated them. I've
implemented my own rules of engagement when it comes to my kids accessing the internet at home.

But I can't guide them 100% of the time. They know whats ok, and whats not, but
they're still kids.

I'm lucky in that I was in Uni when the Internet went mainstream in early 90s. I could make
decisions for myself, but for kids these days, the Internet has always been ON.

Its time we stopped bagging the HOW and started thinking about the WHY.

WHY is the (insert your government here) trying to censor the internet ?

The main reason is simple - people are worried about their kids and the ease
with which they can end up in touch with seriously maladjusted, sick and sadistic
motherf**ers online.

Most parents learn that while the world can be wonderful - it can also be a nasty,
mind numbingly horrendous place at times. The internet is representation of that.
All things wonderful, all things horrible, all at the same time. You can't critisize
parents for wanting to come between their kids and the nastier elements.

This is Slashdot - one of the biggest collection of people with the talent and ideas
to find a solution to this problem in the world. SO WHAT IS IT ???
2 internets ? registered and unregistered ? make it an over 18 network ?

How do we use a technical solution to enforce a line in the sand that noone can agree
on anyway ? If the geeks can't find a solution to this dilemma, then ultimately the
politicians will - and we won't like the bonus pack I'm sure.

So, to pose the question: Dont put your head in the sand. The predators are there.
They're real. They exist. Given this, how do we protect OUR kids online ?

Re:Whats the solution ?

[dhasenan]

You want to protect your kids online. Fine. Who is going to rape your kids via the Internet?

Be careful about who your kids see in person, if you're worried. But they're going to run in to everything from Tubgirl to 4chan to scientology on the internet; you can't filter it out. Make sure they're well grounded in reality, and they should be able to handle it.

Re:Whats the solution ?

[Davemania]

How do you protect your kids in real life ? Predators are there and they're real. Do you lock them away and shield them from the real world ? Like the so called "war on terror", it is not a military solution alone, its a combination of economical, social and military etc etc approach. I don't see a technological solution to a social problem. These problems has been around way before the tubes have been laid. My parents have taught me be cautious or avoid strangers etc etc and I am still alive, commonsense and being actively involved with your kids goes a very very long way.

Re:Whats the solution ?

[schmidty-au]

Slightly off-topic, but statistics show that "stranger danger" is a myth. Telling kids to avoid strangers might make parents feel like they're achieving something, but will not, generally, make much difference to whether or not kids will be sexually abused. The vast majority (76% of reported cases in Victoria, for example) of child sexual abuse is perpetrated by an adult male that the child knows (fathers and step-fathers making up the majority of those perpetrators). And there's no particular profile for the child abuser. The only characteristic of significance is that about 90% of abusers are men. Doesn't say much for my gender. I don't have the citations for this info at hand, but I've verified the numbers from my lecture notes. I've got a family law exam on Wednesday, so I have this info at hand. While I don't have the original citation, the lecturer for this unit is a practising family law barrister who has published books on family violence and child abuse, so I am inclined to accept this information as fact. I would expect that the information (and reference to the source) can be found in her latest book: http://www.amazon.com/Child-Abuse-Family-Understanding-professionals/dp/1865087319

Re:Whats the solution ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of the time, I am a kid in my soul, love to play, love to hack everything that catch my every senses and I would say 'yes' to some kinds of protection that could save my soul.

But do I really need some Filters from the Government?

If I am living in an open or freedom society, I think there is no need to filter or censor anything because the system of Democracy will do its job efficiently. And with the term 'open society' I mean the society that open every thought in their mind which some may think this is so crazy reality! But please give it a second thought that since there is no closed mind so why we still need the filter?

The last answer of mine is 'NO' to the Internet filtering.

My soul may be only safe in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Re:Whats the solution ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Try and give them a functional brain. Play "Spot the f*ckwit" to sharpen their skills. Works a treat.

Re:Whats the solution ?

[Alsee]

So, to pose the question: Dont put your head in the sand. The predators are there.
They're real. They exist. Given this, how do we protect OUR kids online ?

No, the real worry is how do you protect your kids when they are OFFLINE.

Your kids are vastly more likely to be molested by the baby sitter, the gym teacher, your priest, or your brother/brother-in-law, than by some stranger on the internet. If you want to keep your kids safe keep them ON the internet all the time, don't let them go to church, don't let them go to school, don't let them join the boyscouts/girlscouts, and most importantly never let any relatives into your home. Police figures show those are the REAL predator threats.

Be smart, keep your kids on the internet as much as possible. It's about the safest place for them short of padlocking them inside the fridge.

-

Re:Whats the solution ?

[I'm_Original]

I'm not a parent, but I think I understand the concern here.

I'm also not a programmer or web developer (I'm studying physics and math), so I'm not sure if the idea I'm about to explain is feasible or possible, but I think it would work.

Would it be difficult for parents to take this censorship problem into their own hands, and remove the necessity for government control completely? If someone could create a "child-safe whitelist" of the internet, and then make a browser plugin that only allows those sites, it seems to me like this problem would be solved. How could one do this? Start a website and try and form a community, like digg or slashdot or whatever, but instead of people submitting stories and voting on them, parents submit websites and vote on them for inclusion on the whitelist.

I know, it would take a long time to get going, to get the list long enough to be useable, but after that I think it would be pretty good. And there has got to be enough concerned parents out there for something like this to get off the ground. And if you could manage to create a confirmed, child-safe subset of the internet, then I think the "protect the children" problem would dissapear.

I can imagine some problems with the implemenation here, but also some possible solutions. For example, how would you gaurantee that the sites on the whitlist are actually ok? what if a peadophile starts submitting sites? Well, this is why a healthy parent community would be important: I hope the number of concerned parents out there is larger than the number of paedophiles. With a good enough community, bad content would get voted down. Obviously it's not going to be perfect, but it should work well enough and it would be a hell of alot better then government censorship.

What about disagreements on the content? There are bound to be flame wars on which content gets included; for example, I would say that www.economist.com is ok for kids, theres no kiddie porn content. Others might say it's too complicated for kids, to which I would reply that the point of the whitelist is to find child-safe stuff, not necessarily child-understandable. These sorts of disagreements would have to be worked out some how.

Also, you'd have to fiddle with the voting system so that you got a good range of content and no porn.

But the biggest problem that I can think of is parents trusting the government filters instead of themselves or their own involvement in this "whitelist community", trusting politicians more their desire to be active in raising their children.

Do you think it would work?

Re:Whats the solution ?

[shutdown -p now]

So, to pose the question: Dont put your head in the sand. The predators are there. They're real. They exist. Given this, how do we protect OUR kids online ?

I would highly recommend that you, as a parent, spend time practicing safe driving and ensuring your car is safe for your kids to travel in instead. It is much more likely for them to die or be maimed in a car crash than it is for them to be molested, whether it will invole Internet or not.

Re:Whats the solution ?

[Anonymous Coward]

look here you imbred fuck. lets have a word about your overuse of the enter key

you use this key to denote the end of a PARAGRAPH. for some reason, you have gotten the idea into you're thick fucking head that it should be used to force everyone to have their browser set to the same width as yours, which is just fucking arrogant. 2 real examples. I looked at this post on my mobile device, and because of your retarded use of the enter key it was a mess of 1.5 line sentences followed by a break. I then went to my desktop computer to bitchslap you (aka this post). my desktop has a 1920x1200 screen, on which you post takes about 1/3rd the width of the screen.

HTML is designed to be viewed on a multitude of platforms and IT IS NOT UP TO YOU TO DECIDE WHERE MY LINES SHOULD END.

dont even get me started on how retarded your post is. being a responsible parent protects your kids online. install your own fucking filter on your own pc, put it in a public area, etc. these arent new ideas, they've been around for nearly as long as the internet was common place. morons like yourself that seem to think the government should parent their kids for them deserve to be rounded up and gassed. nazi germany style, except this time it wouldnt be motivated by race, but instead it would be about cleansing us of stupidity.

Re:Whats the solution ?

[daver00]

The answer is simple: you cannot protect your kids from everything, moreover you can barely protect your kids from anything. Try as you might, some random event might come hurtling through your life and wreck it up something shocking. Or it might not, but you have no say in it.

What you *can* do is teach your kids to look out for themselves, be smart, be discerning, be wise and be safe. There is nothing else you can do, in all seriousness, try what you want it wont work. I know you are talking about the internet here but I make the analogy that when you lock your children indoors they merely climb out a window.

Oh and my suggestion, and I say this for any parent: Limit your child's access to the internet, as in how many hours they are online. No kid, or adult for that matter, needs all that much time in front of the internets in all reality.

Re:Whats the solution ?

[electrictroy]

>>>make it an over 18 network ?

There's nothing on the internet that I censor from my kids. (1) A naked human body is not obscene; it's beautiful and should never be censored (imho). (2) Sex produces one of God's greatest creations: my kids and babies in general, so why hide it? It would be contradictory for me to act as if sex is bad, and yet say "it's a wonderful thing that made you my child". Besides I have to teach them about sex someday, and now is as good a time as any. ----- (3) Animal sex like "goatse" I personally find disgusting, but again, I don't see any reason to block it from my children. It's better for them to deal with that stuff NOW, while I'm there to answer questions, then to have my kids see that website when they're alone in their college dorm and have nobody to turn-to.

Basically I see no reason to hide anything. It's my job not just to teach my kids the good stuff, but also how to deal with the bad things they encounter. It's better to do it now, rather than to procrastinate until it's too late, and I'm not there to provide support.

Re:Whats the solution ?

[Eth1csGrad1ent]

Most of those responding have missed my point. Having a go at me, or my parenting abilities is pointless. I'm not the one you need to convince. I am a concerned parent when it comes to what my kids have access to online. I'm also a 20+ year software developer. There are many, many more people like me with concerns about the of the content available and dangers on the net, with far less a grasp on the technology or understanding of the pros and cons than I have. IF we can't find an IT solution to this problem (note: whether YOU think its a problem is irrelevant) then the politicians will. There are simply too many votes to be had.

Re:Whats the solution ?

[zuperduperman]

Nobody minds about you protecting your kids. As a software developer you should be aware that the ability to do so is far more in your hands than it is in the government's. A government supplied clean feed simply cannot accurately keep out all "bad" content without *massively* slowing down the connection. They would have to read the live stream and do a semantic analysis on the content - just about impossible. On the other hand, you, the responsible parent can do a lot:

a) put your computer in a public area of the house and keep an eye on what your child is browsing, and carefully explain to them when they accidentally (or intentionally) reach dangerous turf. Believe it or not, allowing your kids to stumble on bad things and then help them to handle it is tremendously helpful in keeping them safe - it's how they learn themselves to become responsible adults.

b) install as draconian a filter as you like on your own computer. Whitelist it if you want, so that your children can only reach sites you explicitly approve. It'll suck, for them, but you can reflect exactly your own level of concern in the filter you set up.

There is no answer that involves centralized interception and monitoring / control of connections. It won't work, can't work and even if it did, will never satisfy basic democratic principles of freedom of speech.

Re:Whats the solution ?

[rhinokitty]

Solution for protecting children who are using a computer: Don't worry about it. They are sitting at a screen, safe in your home. Whatever they see online won't kill them. It is a safer place to explore how bizarre than if they were cruising around town drunk with friends, or other typical stupid kid behavior.

Solution for protecting children from being in child porn: The same as keeping them safe in general, don't talk to strangers etc.. Once again, I think molesters, rapists etc are more likely to be people that the child knows, unfortunately. There are many statistics to back this.

They won't meet them online, so if you are going to shelter the kid, at least let them use the Internet.

Re:Whats the solution ?

[Anonymous Coward]

(3) Animal sex like "goatse" I personally find disgusting

i take it you've never actually been to goatse? I'm not saying it's not disgusting, nor would I really recommend you change that you've never been there, but there's no animal sex on goatse

Re:Whats the solution ?

[Anonymous Coward]

And the government filtering the internet is the answer? The government will not stop at filtering porn, they will filter anything they don't want you to see. ANYTHING.

Also - to keep your kids from seeing things you don't want them to see - try getting a parental filter, install that on their machines, and watch the logs of what they do. I don't have kids, I don't need my internet filtered for me. I KNOW what to look at and what not to.

People have lost the simple solution:

Personal Responsibility.

The government should not have to hold your hands for everything. Get over it, grow up, and take responsibility for what happens in your house.

Re:Whats the solution ?

[suricatta]

Teach your kid to self-filter. Seriously.

If you raise your children with good morals, principles, and instill some pretty basic common sense, then there is no need to censor the internet, because the kids will have the smarts to avoid any dodgy material anyway. Sure they might check everything out once or twice out of curiousity, but that is a part of the process. Once they've satisfied that curiousity, then the appeal is gone and they'll just avoid it completely because they want to.

On the other hand, if you create a barrier, and tell the kids they're not allowed to access this content, what do you think is the first thing they are going to try and do?

The solution is not a technical one. Let them learn to think for themselves. That is how they truly become independant. If you try to prescribe a set of rules to control their actions, then they'll never truly grow up, because they'll always depend on someone else to think for them.

Having these types of first hand learn-the-hard-way experiences is actually a part of the joy of growing up, and if you think back, I'm sure you'll agree that some of your most significant memories in life were those where you had to learn the hard way. And you also might find that you wouldn't have these experiences exchanged for anything, as these have made you who you are today.

There's an old saying that the best way to learn something is the hard way. Who are we to take that away from anyone?

Re:Whats the solution ?

[Eth1csGrad1ent]

Apart from the response from ImOriginal, I'll thank the rest of you for making my point.

I DO teach my kids to self-censor.
I DO stick the computer in the lounge room.
I DO educate my kids about what the dangers are and why.
I AM internet savvy, and I'll endeavour to make sure my kids are too.

But its not about me. The point is, the General Public (tm) will DEMAND a technical
solution, whether its possible, practical or not... and if we cant alleviate their
perceived problems, the politicians will do it for us..even if its only smoke and mirrors.

And while the actual "save our kids" part might be smoke and mirrors, the politicians will
use it as an opportunity to include their necessary enhancements (you know, the stuff they
missed because they didnt understand the Internet the first time around) to "protect us",
and they'll have the full backing of Joe Public.

The public perceives that there is serious danger and none of you, or me, are going to convince
them otherwise.

So its simple - argue with me about the pros and cons all you want - question my parenting
skills too if it makes you feel better - but if WE dont address the issues and clean it up,
  Big Brother will do it for us.

Re:Whats the solution ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I AM internet savvy, and I'll endeavour to make sure my kids are too.

says the moron who keeps manually line-breaking his text. congratulations! you broke html! do us all a favour and dont teach your kids to do that

Re:Whats the solution ?

[Eth1csGrad1ent]

says the moron who keeps manually line-breaking his text. congratulations! you broke html! do us all a favour and dont teach your kids to do that and yes, I'll teach my kids to avoid AC fuck tards too.. IF MY MANUAL LINE BREAKS ARE BREAKING YOUR HTML, THEN YOUR HTML IS BROKEN. PERHAPS YOU SHOULD BUY A NEW ONE, OR STOP READING SLASHDOT ON YOUR FUCKING IPHONE. > > > > > > > 'scuse me for shouting..

Re:Whats the solution ?

[houghi]

First it was "MY children" and in the end it became "OUR children". You are on /., so I assume you understand what it means to not solve a social problem with a technical solution.

There is no way to completely protect your children and if that would be possible, the harm done would be much greater. You are a parent. It is not your job to just protect them. It is your job to raise them. This means preparing them to become adults.

So sit down with them. If they are too young in your eyes, sit next to them when they are on the net. When they get older, explain them what is good and what is bad. I was thought NEVER to take candy of anybody. I did not even take candy from the kindergarten teacher.

As of the difference between MY and OUR, please let it be no misunderstanding that our values are probably completely different, so things I disagree with, you will agree and the other way around. Because of that reason alone there is no general solution possible. I, the parent need to step up and decide on how to deal with this, not a group or let alone a government.

Re:Whats the solution ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't even think you need a padlock anymore. Indie survived a NUCLEAR EXPLOSION(!!) in one so your child should be fine (just make sure its lead lined).

LOL @ Capthca: helping

Re:Whats the solution ?

[Eth1csGrad1ent]

Yes, and I will be doing my best to educate and raise MY kids to look after themselves.

But, again, the point is - Joe Public will not.
Joe Public will demand a technical solution from their government (UK, Australia, US.. it doesn't matter) for OUR kids irrespective of whether a technical solution is practical or appropriate.

They want "this filth" off their computers FULL STOP.

The government will first look to the industry to provide a solution to the perceived problem, and failing that, they will then mandate a solution of their own (not something we want to see) to appease the people.

As we can see from this story and others, its already happening.

We can choose to ignore the issue, in which case we lose any say we might have had in addressing it, or, whether we believe the issue is real or not, we can attempt to do something about it.

Thats the point. Joe Public perceives this as an issue and, as a result, "something" will be done about by the powers that be - its up to us to decide how much we influence the end result.

Re:Whats the solution ?

[Anonymous Coward]

24" monitor != iphone

I have no idea why you're being such a dick about it. not inserting your superfluous line-break is LESS WORK for you. It's not as though I'm asking you to jump through hoops before you make your posts, just ease off with the fucking line-breaks where they dont belong. respect accessibility and everyone will be happy

Re:Child Porn - Reporting It

[six025]

BTW - let's assume you are jacking off to some hot, cute blonde on YouPorn ... and you have a fleeting thought: "hmm, she does look underage" ...

Are YOU gonna stop what you are doing to report it? Or maybe this time it aint so important 'cause you nearly "made it"?

It's easy to talk ... easy to type comments on Slashdot ... it's not always so easy (or "convenient") to act ...

Just sayin' is all ...

Peace,
Andy.

Why not just contract the whole thing to China?

[John Hasler]

n/t

Re:Why not just contract the whole thing to China?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most likely because the Chinese system isn't restrictive enough.

Re:Why not just contract the whole thing to China?

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed, I'm an Aussie living in China, and it reads like the proposed system IS more restrictive than Chinas (before and now after the games).

Re:Why not just contract the whole thing to China?

[JonDorian88]

They initially did, but China told them that they have their hands full with manufacturing London's opening ceremony for the next Olympics.

Re:Why not just contract the whole thing to China?

[mjwx]

Because it would be a recursive contract. The censorship filters of China was designed by a Perth (Western Australia) based company.

Here is why

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called 'social democracy'.

People are taught/led to either explode or collapse with emotion at the sight or thought of suffering. Instil regret, a bad conscience and the 'humane reflex' from the age of three onwards.

Therefore, they relatively speaking become blind to all other things. Who cares about clause 4.7.4a of the tax laws? If it could help a single child, then burn every tax law!

The individual therefore only has relevance to society if the individual either 1) suffers or 2) is oblivious to suffering. People who neither suffer nor are oblivious to it are not interesting. The only relevant unit of measurement is the group, which is relevant for the purpose of detecting the number of sufferes or the number of oblivious-to-sufferers in it so that either can be "corrected".

Here a human element kicks in, namely that it is far more appropriate to introduce a new protective law than remove an old one. Introducing a law helps protect sufferers or correct oblivious-to-sufferers, it will get you political momentum, and the theme of the discussion will be "how much good can I do?". The doers of good are saints, and everyone wants to be a saint. It is easy to identify at least a number of cases, at least up to several dozen in a 40-million-people country, where the law would have helped. And a SINGLE SUFFERER is as we know too much.

Removing a law is much tougher - because you are dealing with unknowns rather than knowns. You can't know for sure how many will START TO suffer as a result of removing a law. If a filter is in place to protect against accessing child porn, you can't know how much you contribute to child porn by removing it. Therefore, the quest to protect against suffering will virtually always result in the implementation of new laws and regulations, rather than removing old ones. Removing a law will never make you a saint.

This may seem like a joke, but is actually true, and the mechanism of suffering works this way. As 'the group' which is shepherded should not have access to child porn, that means YOU YOURSELF should not have access to child porn.

Re:Here is why

[electrictroy]

I'm suffering under a $35,000 a year tax burden. And that's just income tax; it doesn't include the dozens of other taxes.

Where are the people desiring to relieve my suffering?

Re:Here is why

[jlarocco]

Here.

Re:Here is why

[Enki X]

That's more than I make in a year and a half. Get over it.

Re:Here is why

[electrictroy]

>>>$35,000 is more than I make in a year and a half. Get over it.

You earn just over $20,000 a year? What is your job? Professional panhandler??? Or maybe you're the guy who stands on the corner and washes people's windows even though the window is already perfectly clean.

Get thee to a better job.

Re:Here is why

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, get off welfare?

Re:Here is why

[Anonymous Coward]

Spoilt brat, I doubt you have a full time job let alone pay $35K in tax, my guess is you bludge of your parents and spend most days watching mind numbing crap on TV.

Re:Here is why

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Where does the suffering of low paid migrant workers, or single parents, or disabled people, or people without health care, or old age pensioners fit into your grand idea of social democracy being sensitive to sufferers?

No. All we are seeing here is the use of certain topics as excuses to censor and oppress. The biggest problems here are apathy and the taboo of criticizing the cult of the child. People do not really care(a lot) about the suffering of any particular group-x. But they are too afraid to say that frankly.

Report

[Dersaidin]

http://www.acma.gov.au/webwr/_assets/main/lib310554/isp-level_internet_content_filtering_trial-report.pdf

Re:The rapid spread of another dangerous ideology

[Anonymous Coward]

The countries of the world seem to be catching a bad case of censorphilia. I can't think of a single reason important enough to warrant censorship in peacetime. Where the hell does this all stop?

Sorry, it won't. The problem is usually after putting something in place people forget about it. Let's hope that people in Australia oppose it enough to make politicians care about whether they will still have a job in the next election.

By the way, I couldn't help but notice that this same issue is featured on Daily Rotten, on the same day with a story about a mother who forced her child to eat his own flesh and a labrador who got drunk on cask wine. Good work Australia, on this high honor.

Source of filters

[ebonum]

Disclosure: I am American.

Now that we have that out of the way, I really don't feel the American government should be telling Australian government how to rule their own country ( This statement does not apply to things such as are killing political dissidents ). However, I would have no problem if the US government made it illegal for US government agencies to purchase equipment from any company who supplied a foreign country with this kind of filtering technology. The ban could be extended to any organization who receives any form of government support ( most of the collages in the US and for the next few years the entire US financial system ). Then, companies like Cisco would have to decide if they are going with China and Australia or the US.

There are ways to get what you want ( or this case, to do the right thing ) without directly going to another country, getting in their face, acting like arrogant Americans and telling them that they don't know what is best for their own country.

Conservative = public enemy

[unity100]

we are not in thatcher days anymore. even thatcher's time was much more free and liberal than today.

in last 15 years, conservatives around the world have become real public enemies, damagers of the modern civilization. from usa to europe to australia the damage conservatives did to the modern values are beyond reproach. from civil liberties to privacy, there isnt a single field that they have harmed by their increasing levels of bigotry and zealotry.

troll ? not at all. i was a conservative once, long time ago. conservative doesnt mean protecting existing beneficial moral values and ethics anymore, it has become a political viewpoint that tries to suppress and mold people to its own whim.

dont vote conservative. follow my example. we cant afford to risk going back on the eve of 21st century.

Re:Conservative = public enemy

[aronschatz]

You must be confusing conservatism with Republicanism.

I'm a conservative. Usually Republicans are conservative... until GW Bush was the President. Now we have neocons instead.

Don't worry, this election will be four years of doing nothing and after we'll have a proper conservative back for President.

Filters? Great, now I don't have to worry...?

[cliffiecee]

So, if Australia's filtering, that means I NEVER have to worry about getting in trouble for using the internet! Right?

A while ago, a place I used to work at implemented filtering. I was actually kinda happy about it! I no longer had to worry about going to an inappropriate site, because the filters would stop me from getting there. Great!

Except that, a few weeks later, the CEO sent an email to everyone stating how annoyed he was that people were trying to access the filtered sites. It didn't matter that the sites were blocked. It didn't matter that people never saw the blocked content! The mere fact that we were still adjusting to the new filters caused our CEO to chastise us about our internet usage.

And that's the ultimate insult with filtering- It doesn't matter if it works 100% perfectly. You will be expected to filter your brain as well. If the filter admins see that you're trying to access things that you cannot even access because of the filter, you WILL get in trouble.

nay

[unity100]

im talking in general. talking about recent governments of countries including australia, usa, germany, turkey and so on.

It is all about Australian domestic politics

[papafox_too]

The Australian governments' proposed ISP filter system has little to do with censorship or child porn - it is all driven by Australian domestic politics.

The government requires control of the Senate to get its legislative program through. The Senate consists of 76 members, with the Government (ALP) holding 32 seats, the Opposition 37 seats, the Greens 3 seats, Family First 1 seat and one Independent senator.

The goverement requires the support of all non-Opposition memebers to get legislation passed - with Senator Steve Fielding, the Familiy First senator a vital supporter.

The Family First party is a socially conservative political party. Senator Fielding recieved 56,000 primary votes out of a 3.3M votes cast. However, through preference distributions he gained a quota and was elected.

Senator Fielding has demanded that the government implement porn filters, with ISP filtering being his method of choice.

So, the Australian government is implementing ISP filters, no because they work for filtering porn, but because they work at meeting their political needs. Complaining about the effects of ISP filters on freedom of speech or internet performance will fall on deaf ears - the filters will be implemented because they are critical to the governments tenuous control of the Senate.

Re:It is all about Australian domestic politics

[St. Alfonzo]

And it's things like this that screw representative Democracies up. It's the 21st Century Earth! We have the technology to implement a real direct Democracy. So what are we waiting for?

Re:It is all about Australian domestic politics

[fabs64]

The Australian senate is not a "representative" democracy and is not intended to be.

It is, in general a useful and important check on the system, it's just unfortunate that the major parties screwed up by letting that nitwit Fielding in. Essentially each trying to hurt the other and they just hurt themselves.

Re:It is all about Australian domestic politics

[The Famous Brett Wat]

Huh. As I recall, the same kind of horse-trading went on with the passage of the GST many years back under the Howard Govt. They needed the support of Senator Brian Harradine to get GST through, and they traded off some Net Censorship thing which ultimately had no discernible impact on anything as far as I can tell (but it wasn't a mandatory filtering technology, obviously). Wikipedia seems to contradict me on the ultimate need for Harradine's support for GST, but I do distinctly remember him looking smug about some Internet-related thing in a TV news report at the time. A bit of digging makes me believe that the specific legislation in question is the "Broadcasting Services Amendment (Online Services) Act 1999", which amended the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 to cover Internet content. Consequently, a lot of things are illegal to host online in Australia. There's no corresponding obligation for anyone to filter out illegal stuff hosted outside Australia, however.

Re:It is all about Australian domestic politics

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure you've got the right idea, but those numbers don't seem to add up...

32 + 37 + 3 + 1 + 1 = 74 not 76

also 76/2 = 37 which is the opposition, meaning the gov't can never get a majority with those numbers...

I'm guessing you left out some independents or democrats or something, or maybe the party of pedants :P

Re:It is all about Australian domestic politics

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the Senate is precisely why the proposed filtering regime probably won't make it into law. As it stands, the Liberals have expressed opposition to the plans, and the Nationals will most likely follow them. The Greens would never support this plan, and at least one Greens senator has already expressed hostility. Family First will definitely support it, and Xenophon (the independent senator) is also quite likely to. Taking into account that there are in fact 5 Greens senators, not 3, that totals to 34 for and 42 against (32 Labor + 1 Family First + Xenophon; 32 Liberal + 5 National + 5 Greens). Unless the Liberals change their stance, the Nationals vote contrary to the Liberals or the Greens act out of character, it doesn't look like any Internet censorship legislation is likely to make it through the Senate.

Re:It is all about Australian domestic politics

[phaic tan]

This is true that it is all about domestic politics. The political scene in Australian Federal politics revolves around a dense core of deep fundamentalist evangelical Christian hardliners. They need to be pacified so that entire rafts of legislation can be rubber stamped through the Senate. However the costs in terms of basic rights are far out weighing the expedience of legislative throughput. The fact that those who oppose such controls are condemned as supporters of all things evil pops up as a red flag highlighting their almost Inquisitionist agenda.

Re:Child Porn - Reporting It

[AntiNazi]

2. Adult Porn: If you have received an invitation to an adult porn website visit ObscenityCrimes.org and report the address on their report form. Do not visit the porn web site. You can save the report form as a Favorite site to save time when reporting future invites. It is important to report these websites since they violate federal and state laws. If it is from a foreign country it violates U.S. air waves. Some terrorists utilize porn websites to earn money for Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. Many adult sites also include child porn and underage porn, and all involve unwilling porn subjects. Porn models are forced into this crime either at gunpoint, through drugs, or because of economic necessity. Those who consent to it can't wait until its over, are glad to retire, and regret it for the rest of their lives, and many of them cannot bear a man's touch for the rest of their lives.

That place seems like just one more site using "think of the children" to push their own agenda.

Re:Child Porn - Reporting It

[cervo]

True but you had to search for it. And there are all these different sites. And what are the chances of government agencies taking action based on reports on some or all of the sites? How do you know which ones the law enforcement will use and which they don't?

Why isn't there one site to report all child porn for the world (then you can have all the statistics in one place) and why isn't it advertised as much as the various laws relating to child porn? I mean why did you have to go searching? Why aren't there TV ads with one of these site addresses saying what to do if you stop it and to help stomp it out?

Do you were a helmet. Every second?

[SmallFurryCreature]

Well, do you? Do you force your kids to wear a helmet. Every second. There are hard surfaces out there and people die EVERY day from falling even if they are not doing anything dangerous.

I am willing to bet that if I do a safety study on your house and daily routine I can find dozens if not hundreds of things you could do to make your life and the life of your childeren more secure. Yet you won't because you will say that your freedom to life a normal life is worth the added risk.

Yet, when it comes to the internet, suddenly, we must protect our kids. You are the modern over protective parent who can't just accept that a percentage of kids will die or get hurt. It happens, 100 kids ride their bicycle and 1 will break their neck. Sure, you can make those 100 kids ride with sidewheels, in protected areas, with helment and body protectors. You can and you might save that 1 childs life.

For that matter. YOUR CAR KILLS CHILDEREN. If the hood was padded with soft foam it would be safer. If its speed was restricted to 10mph, it would be safer still. Hundreds of kids are killed by YOUR CAR. Do you change your car? Or do you say, me driving a 1 ton piece of metal at high speed through city streets is worth the HUNDREDS of DEATH KIDS?

That is really the point. We don't protect our kids in real life because doing so would hurt our lifestyle. But online, they must be protected, despite the far smaller risks. Because you don't see freedom on the internet as important as driving your 1 ton piece of metal at high speeds past kids on bicycles.

As harsh as it may sound. We as a society must constantly balance the freedom of all vs the protection of all. Worrying about online predators is just plain silly if you ignore all the other threaths to your childerens safety. When I see you demanding strict speed controls, mandatory protection on cars for pedestratrians, severe criminal punishement of those who endanger the lives of kids through their actions on the road etc etc, then I would be a LOT more willing to presume that your insistence on online protection is not just a kneejerk reaction to pretend you care when you really don't.

The biggest predator case in history was of course Detreux in Belgium. He didn't use the internet. He used cars. Ergo, cars should be banned. Think of the childeren. Only pedo's drive cars.

And lets add a little Jefferson to that

[symbolset]

I have sworn on the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. - Thomas Jefferson

Metagovernment

[Twinbee]

Even if you're okay about the intrusion of privacy, slowing down the internet by that much is horrible...

It's policies like these which really make me think an open source style government would be the answer. Although it's not perfect, what's particularly interesting about the linked site is how people's opinions are weighted. People who are voted by other people as having a good understanding in an area will have a higher chance of enforcing laws and making decisions. Those people themselves are voted by yet other people. It's a bit like Google's PageRank, but for people instead.

(I am in no way affiliated with that site, but stumbled upon it I think from an old slashdot post, and happen to think it's a good idea)

Don't they read the news over in Australia?

[Duncan Blackthorne]

The Australian government is apparently a bunch of myopic half-wits much like the government here in the U.S. has been for at least the last 8 years, and I hope it comes back to smack them in the face with a vengeance just like what is happening here right now.

Re:Don't they read the news over in Australia?

[Anonymous Coward]

The government that is trying to implement this is the recently elected, left wing government that swept in to power over the right wing, Bush supporting, government we've had for many years.

Basically we have had what you are going through happen already, and the guys who replaced them were just as bad.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

I did find child pornography

[aepervius]

Sometimes in simple forum, for example I remember 12eat12, sure it could have been blonde girl looking very very young, but maybe not. Same on a public FTP with a man fucking a girl. Sure she could have been a flat chested 18+ year old women looking very very young. Or it could have been a 10 year old girl fucking a 40 year old man as the photo was titled. *shrug* nowadays I would probably phone the BKA or local police station...

Silence!

[noz]

If Stephen Conroy wants an internet filter, and attempts to block speech, for what then will the filter really be used?

Re:Silence!

[kramulous]

It certainly speaks for itself, doesn't it.

I wonder which of our pasts will be the first to be 'eradicated'? The whole stolen generation seems to cost the government. That can go. Those debates showing Howard with his anger twitch? That can go ... as well as his attempt at bowling.

Parents(In General) Are stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hopefuly the logout button worked this time, so i can post as an anonymous coward to protect my government job here in Australia.

Here's the issue as I see it.

I have parents who come up to me all the time(I work in education) telling me what software to use to stop the baddies from getting to their kids.

I ask them a simple question in return:-

"Do they have a computer in their room?"

Out of the ~150 that have asked me over the last 2 or 3 years now - 90% say yes(and half of said schools are primary!)

When i tell them to move their computer out into the lounge room and not let them onto the internet unsupervised- They usually :

1) Say "But thats too much effort!"

2) Give me a blank stare, as if i just accused them of being murderers.

Either way, my response to that is always:

"When you took your kids to the playground, you did not piss off down to the shops while they were there did you?"

Understanding the Political Reality

[Anonymous Coward]

The minister responsible, Senator Connroy know that the legislation will be blocked in the Senate because the Government party does not have the majority there.

The greens will vote against the filters and the Liberals have also stated they will not support the legislation.

So the approach is simple, ignore and play down criticism of the filters while labeling those opposing them as irresponsible friends of the child molestors & child pornography advocates.

This is all aimed at the other minor parties in the senate and the great unwashed in the general community, if push comes to shove it could be a double dissolution issue & you want all the political ammunition you can if that happens.

Mud will will a political argument against technical details every time saddly.

Regards
A disillusioned Aussie
   

Contact details for Sen. Conroy

[srjh]

Senator the Hon. Stephen Conroy
Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy
Suite 1B, 494 High Street
Epping Vic 3076

I'm not normally one to write to politicians on issues, but I did so for the first time regarding the filter because of the grave privacy and censorship implications. I encourage everyone else in Australia to do the same.

Re:Contact details for Sen. Conroy

[Techman83]

I wrote to Senator Conroy, and the reply from Belinda Dennett was less than satisfactory. But that will actually help me, I will be writing letters to all the MPs in Western Australia with my Original Email and the response, plus all the new information, urging them to consider how they feel about the issue.

Re:The rapid spread of another dangerous ideology

[alpha713]

Its not peacetime its the enduring war on terror. Can't have people thinking for themselves during a war, or worse compromising national security.

Anyone interested should read 'Bruce Sterling -Islands in the Net', it has some really interesting perspectives on censorship (Among other things).

If this gets in then Australia is no longer the place for me, not because I look at anything illegal but because I would rather not have someone telling me what I can look at. I'm technically capable of avoiding the filters, but why should I have to.

Family First extend filter to harcore pornography

[CuteSteveJobs]

"Family First Senator Steve Fielding wants hardcore pornography and fetish material blocked under the Government's plans to filter the internet, sparking renewed fears the censorship could be expanded well beyond "illegal material"."
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/technology/family-first-sparks-net-filter-fears/2008/10/27/1224955922160.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

Family First are a "Family Values" party that control the senate. They only got 56,000 votes last election, but due to a preferences deal with Labor (the same people doing the filter) he got a senate spot and controls the balance of power. If Labor want their other laws passed, they have to make a deal with him. Since Conroy and Rudd are both good Christian "Family Values" types, I bet they're willing to go along with this.

How about SSL proxies?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am thinking that SSL proxies will become very popular in Australia if this goes through.

It's a residual of the larger Aussie cultural...

[Anonymous Coward]

Compare SlashDot.org to, say, Whirlpool.net.au

Last time I checked, SlashDot won't remove users' comments unless/until ordered by a Court.

Last time I read 3 user-forum threads at Whirlpool, there were an -average- of 5 remains of Whirlpool- moderators' work, ie, of removal of user comments from -each- thread.

Users have been -permanently- banned from posting on Whirlpool.net.au (eg, for about reminding people that French ISP plans offer unlimited downloads, include local & long-distance (within France) calls, plus some cable TV channels... all for about Au$45, at the time.)

Australian aren't really in favor of free speech, any more than recent (eg, Japanese) textbook re-writers are.

The world is looking, and Whirlpool, the gov't run ABC all "reserve the right to" remove posts that the owners don't like, long before courts are asked for a more objective opinion on the appropriateness.

AUSTRALIA: Slow, expensive Internet, soon to be filtered & even slower. Past is prologue.

Folks, we've had a documented "brain-drain" here, eg, in the previous reported year, and it's not over yet.

Low on the "fights corruption effectively" scale, Australian online institutions (like Whirlpool) can be "bought" and - when they are - freedome of speech is just a dream.

"How to make a small fortune in Australia? Bring a large one with you."

PS Whirlpool reportedly derives support from ISP contributions (not openly detailed by its owner(s), AFAIK), and - naturally - Telstra Big Pond is listed as "Big Pond" so as to raise its visibility in Whirlpool's alphabetized ISP listing... or was recently.

For a long time, its flow of Internet news front page was slower than molasses; of course, new news stayed queued until -one- person (the owner) decided to publish it, and it's not much better now...

Wrong name

[halcyon1234]

The official watchdog, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA)

I dunno. Given that they're working with ONLINE communications and media-- and given the quality of their product-- shouldn't they be the Australian Communications and Media E-authority(ACME)?

Re:Family First extend filter to harcore pornograp

[schmidty-au]

Steven Fielding is the biggest nut job we've had in Parliament for a long time. I'd go as far as to say he's a bigger nut than Pauline Hanson. Absolute fruit loop. And his electorate office is about 10 minutes' drive from my house. Interestingly, his signage is always covered in graffiti. They tend to be removed regularly, but reappear just as quickly. Hmmm... yes... that preference deal is not one of the ALP's proudest moments. Makes us left-leaning ALP members cringe every time Fielding/Family First is mentioned. I've never quite understood why my party (supposedly a social democratic party) would stoop to dealing with the crazy right to avoid dealing with the Greens. And now this nut holds the balance of power in the Senate, and votes with the Liberal Party**. ** In case this hasn't come up, the Liberal Party is Australia's mainstream conservative party. The "Liberal" name comes from neo-liberalism. They're not "liberal" in the way that term is used in American politics (where for some reason it seems to be a dirty word now). But then, in American politics you get called a communist for suggesting the state should provide basic health care. But that's a debate for another day.

Is that partly selective reporting

[Anonymous Coward]

Since a young lad will socially be thought of as bragging of bagging an older woman. If he complains, society wonders "what are you? gay???".

And, like Queen Vic, "women don't do that sort of thing". Uh, they do.

Physical coercion is a male trait. Mental coercion is a female one. Both are coercion, it's just harder to prove mental coercion.

As an Australian I must say

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget to pay your $AU1,117 licensing fee you cock smoking twitter!

Censorship *always* fails.

[Anton Styles]

When I was living with my father (at age seventeen) there was a program installed on the home computer called Cybersitter - a ridiculously conservative censorship program that in theory filters out text deemed "sinful" or "offensive". The strange thing is, it was *supposedly* Christian. What it did was replace bad [sic] words with several blank spaces, but it was far too heavy-handed - even the world "girl" was deemed inappropriate. I'm Christian, which is something this program claims to promote, but if I tried to post the ten commandments somewhere the result would be many confused people staring at "thou shalt not " (murder is a bad word), "thou shalt not commit " (adultery is a bad word) etc etc The last thing I did before I moved out was delete system file for the administrator accounts password (cant recall the filename) so I could purge the system of the bullshit. History has shown time and time again that censorship only works if your objective is to piss people off and/or keep people ignorant. Of course, the governments of the world go for the latter; unfortunately the people that would rather bury their heads in the sand are a large majority.
/rant

Re:Family First extend filter to harcore pornograp

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. The Labor Preference deal, putting Fielding ahead of the centrist-to-left Australian Democrats and the Greens was just sheer stupidity. Family First is a right-wing party that thrusts its extremist Christianity down people's throats. It's a shameful moment and given most people would have trusted the preferences, an anti-Democratic one. Shame on Labor for doing this, but from the Rudd's censorship crusade and his Howard inspired cash giveaways, they've become just another Liberal party.