Australia's ISPs Speak Out Against Filtering

daria42 writes "The leaders of three of Australia's largest internet service providers — Telstra Media's Justin Milne, iiNet's Michael Malone and Internode's Simon Hackett — have, in video interviews with ZDNet.com.au over the past few months, detailed technical, legal and ethical reasons why ISP-level filtering won't work. Critics of the policy also say that users will have no way to know what's being filtered."

Comments

It will ruin the politians involved

[Anonymous Coward]

I take comfort in the fact that once typical people are aware their internet is being filtered and monitored they will start blaming every internet slow down and disconnection on it.

Re:It will ruin the politians involved

[lysergic.acid]

just like people blame their internet slow down and disconnections on ISPs overselling far beyond their hardware capacity and creating unnecessary network overhead through the use of traffic monitoring/filtering & packet shaping technology?

the general public will think what the media tells them to think. assuming that Australian society has developed a culture of complacency similar to that of the U.S., if the Australian media can spin this issue the same way the U.S. media was able to spin the war on Iraq, or simply keep the issue out of the mainstream media (TV & newspapers), then ordinary people will probably just go along with it quietly--especially if their society is accustomed to discounting social & political activists, as anyone who tries to speak out against this government censorship will just be dismissed off hand by the general public.

maybe i'm wrong, and Australians are more receptive to the voice of reason than Americans are. but then again, a rational society would not be facing this dilemma, since they wouldn't put anyone in power who'd even be considering this kind of nationwide internet censorship. i mean, the Chinese at least have an excuse since they don't really elect their government officials. but Australia?

i guess fascist policies are contagious: U.S.-->Britain-->Australia-->???

Re:It will ruin the politians involved

[BrokenHalo]

maybe i'm wrong, and Australians are more receptive to the voice of reason than Americans are. but then again, a rational society would not be facing this dilemma, since they wouldn't put anyone in power who'd even be considering this kind of nationwide internet censorship. i mean, the Chinese at least have an excuse since they don't really elect their government officials. but Australia?

Unfortunately, America doesn't have a total monopoly on stupidity. Australia didn't really have much choice at the last election. The incumbent Prime Minister was an outright fascist who was so in love with himself that he refused to accept the value of anyone else's point of view, and his replacement is an insufferable narrow-minded suburban prig with as much imagination as one might expect from the glorified parking attendant that he is.

Sure, the Prime Minister's office will no doubt spin this any way it likes, but when it comes down to it, the policy is still driven by the so-called "moral panic" imperative. We never voted for internet censorship (that idea wasn't mentioned in the run-up to the election) but that won't stop them trying to get it through.

The silver lining is that they have to sweet-talk a lot of MPs to get the policy through Parliament, so there's hope that they might still get the kick in the pants that they deserve.

Re:It will ruin the politians involved

[philspear]

just like people blame their internet slow down and disconnections on ISPs overselling far beyond their hardware capacity and creating unnecessary network overhead through the use of traffic monitoring/filtering & packet shaping technology?

Most people don't understand what that means. I've been lurking on YRO slashdot for a while and I'm not too clear on packet shaping (not asking, that's not my point). "Government is monitoring your internet and that's slowing it down" is a lot clearer.

Most important difference though: you can't vote against your ISP. You can switch, but they all kind of screw you over, right? At the very least, people generally seem to be concerned with price more than ethics of their ISP. You can, however, vote for the party that says "We're going to fix your internet and privacy rights at the same time!" And it won't cost you anything more than voting FOR internet censorship. ...at least, that's one theory on what might happen. I have no crystal ball. If it's not an issue with the average australian voter, then it's not going to be an issue.

Re:It will ruin the politians involved

[stavros-59]

As an Australian that values civil rights, including privacy and freedom of speech, I hope that those of us that don't agree with this level of moral panic can make a difference to this proposal.

Our press is so well educated, technically competent that they could print this one.

The poor woman has things flashing up all the time and can't leave the machine without supervision to check the stove. FFS.

Re:It will ruin the politians involved

[Lachlan Hunt]

maybe i'm wrong, and Australians are more receptive to the voice of reason than Americans are. but then again, a rational society would not be facing this dilemma, since they wouldn't put anyone in power who'd even be considering this kind of nationwide internet censorship. i mean, the Chinese at least have an excuse since they don't really elect their government officials. but Australia?

When it comes to elections, there are generally a lot more issues involved than just this one, which I personally knew nothing about until quite recently. In particular, we had to get rid of John Howard to abolosh his mistakes like "Work Choices" (the highly controversial workplace laws he forced on us), and the way he followed Bush to war, and countless other issues.

Yeah, it would nice to get a government that's completely perfect in every way, and wouldn't try to introduce such an appalling internet censorship system. But in reality, there are problems with all governments and in the grand scheme of things, this government is still better than what we had for more than a decade before.

Re:It will ruin the politians involved

[inflex]

Further to the fact that Mr Howard was pretty much doing his best to turn AU into another US state, I think that they would have tried to bring in exactly the same policy for internet filtering anyhow (I do seem to recall hearing about it raising its head in parliment more than once before).

The Howard government needed to be turned over for more than one reason, even if Rudd only stays in for a single term the cooling effect against the profound arrogance that was taking hold in the Howard camp will be worth it. A lot changed in the world over the previous decade, it would seem that the Liberals weren't able to shift their policies quickly enough to suit. What's also interesting how ever is to see that the state/local governments have also started to swap around, so we're fortunately heading back to having a fairly good mix of parties through the political strata.

Re:It will ruin the politians involved

[rohan972]

Further to the fact that Mr Howard was pretty much doing his best to turn AU into another US state

No, a US states citizens would be protected by the bill of rights. Howard would have done anything to stop that, you don't think he was a 2nd amendment fan do you?

Re:It will ruin the politians involved

[Elindor]

just like people blame their internet slow down and disconnections on ISPs overselling far beyond their hardware capacity and creating unnecessary network overhead through the use of traffic monitoring/filtering & packet shaping technology?

I'm fairly sure that's much less of a problem here in Australia than in America - off the top of my head, I can't think of any ISP in Australia offering plans without either
a) Shaping after a clearly defined quota
b) Excess Usage charges past a clearly defined quota

If there is, then I doubt it would last for long as everyone flocks to it.

maybe i'm wrong, and Australians are more receptive to the voice of reason than Americans are. but then again, a rational society would not be facing this dilemma, since they wouldn't put anyone in power who'd even be considering this kind of nationwide internet censorship.

It was more a choice of who did we want less - the ones who were bent of destroying the rights of workers, or the ones who were going to get rid of the legislation that was destroying those rights.

Hopefully, the senate will modify the law to be sane (that is, mandating that all ISPs have the ability to provide clean feeds service to those who want it, and let everyone else have their Internet as usual). Unfortunately, given the senate's track record since the changeover, I don't think it's likely without enormous public pressure.

Re:It will ruin the politians involved

[ozphx]

The silver lining is that they have to sweet-talk a lot of MPs to get the policy through Parliament...

That lining isn't so silver. The two votes that Labor need to ram their nanny state crap thru are from the "Family First" MP, and the "No Pokies" MP.

"Family First" is basically Paradise Community Church's rep - and he has gone on record saying he wants the mandatory filter extended to all forms of hardcore pornography.

"No Pokies" is down with it as well, and would like it to include mandatory blocking of gambling sites. (Antigua's on the phone... something about the WTO and our bunghole..)

So if this gets thru its likely to involve compromise in the further-rape-of-our-freedoms direction for these asshats. Labor - spending our tax money on whatever nanny-state crap and union requests and destroying our economy as usual.

Re:It will ruin the politians involved

[MrKaos]

No, a US states citizens would be protected by the bill of rights.

Exactly, something that seems lost on a lot of Australians when the Anti-Terrorism laws, and laws to remove liability from Australian Soldiers shooting Australian citizens in protests were passed. Australian law has decended to that of a sleazy dictatorship without the dictator. However, the stage is set...

Howard would have done anything to stop that, you don't think he was a 2nd amendment fan do you?

Or a 1st Amendment fan.

Re:It will ruin the politians involved

[electrictroy]

I think the previous two posters are correct. Here's how it will be reported by the television media:

>>> Australia's ISPs Speak Out Against Filtering

"Once again the mega-corporations are putting profit before morality, said Politician Joe Smith. Added his collegue Senator Sarah Jane: "What do they care if your children are exposed to pornography, or child molesters post their smut online? We need this filtering in order to protect our youngest citizens from corruption, and we can not allow corporate greed to derail us from out goal."

Our reporters than spoke to a few average people on the street, including a mother of two: "I don't know much about the internet, but I know I don't want that filth coming in my home! I'm glad our leaders are acting to stop it." And a businessman: "Clearly we can't allow open access; the government needs to regulate for the benefit of all." Later we spoke to a college student who felt the internet should not be censored: "Yo dude, don't be censoring my internet, that's bogus!"

-

You can't count on either politicians or the television media to do accurate reporting. They will twist the events in order to fit into their own preconceived notions. What Babylon 5's "The Illusion of Truth" for an example of this.

Re:It will ruin the politians involved

[Malekin]

The Liberals did try to bring in internet censorship under the same sort of system that is currently being rammed through. When their research showed it would slow down the internet and be ineffective anyway, they instead handed out free filtering software for anyone who wanted to install it on their own computer (see: http://www.netalert.gov.au/ ) Unsurprisingly, only a tiny fraction of the population actually wanted the filtering software at all, and after trying it only a fraction of those ever updated it, so the programme was a near complete waste of money.

Re:It will ruin the politians involved

[YttriumOxide]

No, a US states citizens would be protected by the bill of rights. Howard would have done anything to stop that, you don't think he was a 2nd amendment fan do you?

And you think US politicians aren't doing their best to chip away at these protections bit by bit themselves? AU is descending in the same direction as the US, just a bit quicker since there's no pesky bill of rights to get in the way (actually, there is an Australian constitution of course, but not much in the way of rights to the people outlined therein). Once the US politicians finally erode whatever is left of their constitution, the US will do the same freefall that AU is doing.

The second amendment specifically is now useless for the purposes of a civilian uprising against an oppressive government anyway. It's always a hotly argued one, but the main points of argument generally now centre around things like home defence and so on.

Re:It will ruin the politians involved

[rohan972]

The second amendment specifically is now useless for the purposes of a civilian uprising against an oppressive government anyway.

For that, sir, I refer you to another post of mine: http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1014967&cid=25593697
You may prefer to go straight to the parent for context: http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1014967&cid=25593027

Re:It will ruin the politians involved

[YttriumOxide]

I read the Wikipedia article you linked to, and I think it backs up my claims more than yours!

The people didn't stand up to the government with weapons - they stood up to the government by small acts of terrorism (that didn't require guns) such as doing nasty things to tax collectors, and people who complied with the tax. When the government showed up with a large military force to stop them, they were nowhere to be found.

Even the "Consequences" section of the article says:

The military suppression of the Whiskey Rebellion set a precedent that U.S. citizens who wished to change the law had to do so peacefully through constitutional means; otherwise, the government would meet any threats to disturb the status quo with force.

Yes, the tax was repealed, and the actions taken by the men who were against it probably helped a great deal (although, it also says it was largely unenforceable outside of Western Pennsylvania anyway), but it was definitely NOT a case of them using guns to do it. In fact, the ONLY mention of guns being used by them in the whole Wikipedia article is:

You might find a note posted on a tree outside your house, requiring you to publish in the Gazette your hatred of the whiskey tax and your commitment to the cause; otherwise, the note promised, your still would be mended. Tom had a wicked sense of humor and a literary bent: "mended" meant shot full of holes or burned.

Even without guns, they still could have done any number of nasty things to the people's stills.

Re:It will ruin the politians involved

[mabinogi]

They need the Greens too, and they're not interested.

Re:It will ruin the politians involved

[rohan972]

I read the Wikipedia article you linked to, and I think it backs up my claims more than yours!

I linked to two articles, did you read both? In any case you need to read it again, I'll quote you and the relevant part of the article:

The people didn't stand up to the government with weapons - they stood up to the government by small acts of terrorism (that didn't require guns)
and
...but it was definitely NOT a case of them using guns to do it. In fact, the ONLY mention of guns being used by them in the whole Wikipedia article is: [Then your reference to the destruction of stills]

But in the article itself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiskey_rebellion#The_insurrection "Finally, the civil protests became an armed rebellion. The first shots were fired at the Oliver Miller Homestead in present day South Park Township, Pennsylvania, about ten miles south of Pittsburgh. As word of the rebellion spread across the frontier, a whole series of loosely organized resistance measures were taken, including robbing the mail, stopping court proceedings, and the threat of an assault on Pittsburgh."[emphasis mine]

As for this: The military suppression of the Whiskey Rebellion set a precedent that U.S. citizens who wished to change the law had to do so peacefully through constitutional means; otherwise, the government would meet any threats to disturb the status quo with force. I don't see a problem with that, the soap box, the ballot box and the jury box should be used first. If the whiskey tax was so widely hated, it should have been relatively easy to get acquitted by a jury, so why resort to armed rebellion? I do think we should preserve the right and the ability to fight, but if you're going to have a viable country, the trigger happy need to be met with force.

Armed people rebelling and being overcome by the government was well within Thomas Jefferson's ideas of private firearms ownership preserving liberty. It was not intended to facilitate continual overthrow of governments, but as a reminder to governments that they derive "their just powers from the consent of the governed":
"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ... And what country can preserve its liberties, if it's rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."

Re:It will ruin the politians involved

[Firethorn]

I firmly believe that the final box, the one containing ammunition, is much more useful as a threat than in use.

You see, it makes the other side wonder 'is this the final straw that will cause them to erupt in violence?'. The ammo box is expensive - to both sides.

Otherwise you get the situation you see here - where the government just keeps on growing.

Re:It will ruin the politians involved

[computational super]

I'm not too clear on packet shaping

Don't feel bad, neither are the ISPs.

Re:It will ruin the politians involved

[Dracophile]

We never voted for internet censorship (that idea wasn't mentioned in the run-up to the election)

That's not entirely true. The ALP had internet filtering on their platform before the election. It was going to be an opt-out thing back then, but you can't get away with saying you didn't know they had this in mind. It's why I put their candidate in 4th place on my ballot paper, in spite of the then-leader of the Liberal Party and most of his cabinet being a bunch of irredeemable fucktards worthy of just about anything being done to remove them. Now if they'd just make it optional preferential voting like we have in NSW, I could cast a formal vote for a federal candidate that doesn't in any way assist either the ALP of the Libs.

Re:It will ruin the politians involved

[Anonymous Coward]

isn't it funny how this seemingly hidden agenda seems to get put through no matter who is in power. No gst tax = gst tax, don't want censorship? Here it is anyway. No surveillance but it's so promoted in the papers - saves lives you know - but never mind how many lives could be saved by abolishing illegal third debt. They are a buch of weak minded hapless liars.

Re:It will ruin the politians involved

[Anonymous Coward]

you can rave on about this, but America is the twisted messed up place where if you want to provide cheap health care and medicine your some kind of crazy communist. If you want to make rich people pay tax your some kind of crazy communist...anything that isnt reaganomics is crazy communist crap...AUSTRALIA AND SWEDEN ARE NOT SOCIALIST / COMMUNIST COUNTRIES YOU CRAZY REPUBLICANS. We are democratic, capitalist countries that provide necessary services to our people at affordable prices... good health, cheap medicine, welfare and education...the rest we pay for AS PER NORMAL...3 days and your reaganomics is over...cry all your eyes out, its time for the liberals to rise...back to actual topic- our gov will back down from this crap...they just trying to score some points on ill informed parents...it is impossible to do and the general public doesnt know it yet. At crunch time they will know as the media will talk about it non stop...they barley talk about it now. Then when it actually becomes unpopular the gov will drop it real fast.

Re:It will ruin the politians involved

[evanspw]

Exactly. This kite ain't gonna fly. The Gov just wants to be seen to be tough on this bullshit to wedge their even more conservative opposition.

It's just politics. You can all stop panicking.

Re:It will ruin the politians involved

[afxgrin]

"Once again the mega-corporations are putting profit before morality, said Politician Joe Smith. Added his collegue Senator Sarah Jane: "What do they care if your children are exposed to pornography, or child molesters post their smut online? We need this filtering in order to protect our youngest citizens from corruption, and we can not allow corporate greed to derail us from out goal."

LOL corporate greed. These people are hilarious. This isn't like TV, where you go to a channel and you get content delivered to you. The Internet basically gives you what you want - information - and if you go looking for corruption, you will likely find it. Instead, this Aussie government wants to piss away tax dollars trying to control the multi-tentacled information beast.

Oh no, parents needing to be with their children when they use a computer, having to make sure they aren't looking at pornography! Oh no, people needing to take at least minimal care of their children.

Holy shit, I think I get it now ... the Australian government should spend BILLIONS trying to regulate the Internet, so that parents can simply plop their children infront of a computer, and not have to interact with them any longer. So that their children will never be exposed to the interaction of the body parts that basically provided their means of existence!

The child molester issue is worth fighting, but trying to censor content is a giant waste of time and money. No one likes the idea of adults trying to lure children.

Maybe someone can find some dirt on Mr. Joe Smith, see what mega-corporations he's ok with making a profit. Such as ... the recording and movie industry, who already want content control ...

And if you want to make sure your kids aren't lured in by random internet creepies, don't let them use public chat rooms, exchange private email with strangers, don't let them talk using in-game VoIP ... the level of censorship required to provide 99.98% protection against internet based sexual predators would be far too high (bankrupting any company implementing it), because they would need censors/monitors in every public chatroom, on every teamspeak session, in every online video game ... good luck with that.

How long must we wait before most politicians are reasonably competent about these issues?

Re:It will ruin the politians involved

[badkarmadayaccount]

This so right, but so wrong... You deserve a new moderation to be invented in your honor - +1 Reality. I salute you.

Re:It will ruin the politians involved

[Philip Shaw]

The whole thing was largely Senator Fielding's idea, before the election. He is the FFP's senator.

Re:It will ruin the politians involved

[phaic tan]

This is all about Senator Fielding. The government needs his vote in the senate. If they can show Fielding that they are "serious" about taking up arms against Satan then he might vote with them on some dumb taxaxtion issue. The Australian Labor Party doesn't like it but they can't get what they want without the vote of a single ignorant, right-wing fundamentalist god botherer. Let us all be subject to the fevers of the bone-stick-stone stupid. (thank you Harlan Ellison for the imagery)

Re:It will ruin the politians involved

[Philip Shaw]

THe best we can hope is that someone with a clue can persuade Rudd to get the authors of the Howard Government's report to do another one, spending even more money on it so it looks impressive enough to keep the FFP happy, and then say "Oh look, it seems to be impossible. Oh well." Hopefully, they can waste enough time to last until the 2010 election, at which point hopefully either the Libs/Nats or Labour/Green will control the Senate without the nutjobs. Hell, even getting the Democrats back would be an improvement on the FFP.

Re:It will ruin the politians involved

[Philip Shaw]

Thankfully, the Oz/s tech news section is less in favour of the filter, although the business section is in favour of it. Hopefully the good sense will spread to other parts of the Murdoch press as journalists ask the tech writers to explain things to them.

Re:It will ruin the politians involved

[Philip Shaw]

FFS Zimbabwe has a bill of Rights, and look how well that is working. If a government is going to abandon all pretence of caring about human rights, it can and will.

Anyway, and of more concern to Australia, look at the terrible effects of the Canadian equivalent, especially on free speech.

Re:It will ruin the politians involved

[Philip Shaw]

No, a US states citizens would be protected by the bill of rights.

Exactly, something that seems lost on a lot of Australians when the Anti-Terrorism laws, and laws to remove liability from Australian Soldiers shooting Australian citizens in protests were passed. Australian law has decended to that of a sleazy dictatorship without the dictator. However, the stage is set...

I think that Turnbull is our best bet to soften the Anti-Terror laws. He is rather more libertarian than I am, but nonetheless, I don't think that anyone with any real following in the parliamentary Liberal Party is likely to repeal them, because they were all (at least in public) in favour of them in the first place. I don't think Labor will do anything about it because they have always favoured more state control and nanny-stateism.

Re:It will ruin the politians involved

[Narpak]

When I was about twelve (or there about) we, the boys at my age at school, found pornography in an old bunker from WW2 (the pornography was current). It got passed around until it disappeared under someone's bed (or so I guess). What's my point? Reality filter now!

We need people going around checking out abandoned buildings and sites to ensure that there is no questioned material hidden away somewhere. I suggest we start by tearing down the scantily clad lads and lasses decorating almost every billboard from north to south (in more or less every industrialized country).

I understand parents wanting to guard their kids from exposure to some of the material on the internet, but jumping on whatever bandwagon is rolling into town does not solve the problem in any constructive way.

Agonizing over issues like material available on the internet is ludicrous; finding such material on the web requires active searching from by the user (or at the very least rolling your head on the keyboard). Ads, commercials and programming directed at children only requires them to sit still and open their eyes and ears. Every time they take the bus to school the roadside is littered with signs and posters of, as I said, scantily clad people with photoshopped bodies that look "better" than anyone (even if they have the genetic combination) can look. Perverting the reality perceived by children by exposing them over and over and over again without society or parents making much of an effort to tell them that Ads are not reality; simply an illusion created to sell.

If parents truly want to protect the minds of their children they should try to understand and reflect upon ALL aspect of the society they live in; not just whatever talking points politicians or the media are pushing at the moment.

Re:It will ruin the politians involved

[Gandalf_Greyhame]

we had a similar situation a few years ago. doesn't anyone remember Senator Brian Harradine, from the lovely inbred state of Tasmania?

Well, maybe we know...

[SEWilco]

Zero comments. Maybe this post is being filtered in Australia.

Re:Well, maybe we know...

[Anonymous Coward]

That can't be true - I'm posting from Austr

Re:Well, maybe we know...

[jamesh]

I don't think Slashdot will be filtered... according to the summary:

"The leaders of three of Australia's largest internet service providers -- Telstra Media's Justin Milne, iiNet's Michael Malone and Internode's Simon Hackett -- have, in video interviews with ZDNet.com.au over the past few months, detailed technical, legal and ethical reasons why excellent and much looked forward to ISP-level filtering will work exactly as designed. Critics of the policy have now come to their senses and have also put forward their full support."

So as you can see we have nothing to worry about.

Re:Well, maybe we know...

[master5o1]

So posting from Australia is like saying candlejack. You either die or don't comple

Re:Well, maybe we know...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't tell me you said his name, you know Candleja-

Re:Well, maybe we know...

[Maguscrowley]

I'm going to need more rope ...

Re:Well, maybe we know...

[Jesus_666]

I'm posting from Australia as well and the situation here is PERFECTLY FINE. Internet access in Australia is FAST AND CHEAP as it is, but now they're filtering all kinds of SITES NORMAL PEOPLE DON'T WANT TO VISIT ANYWAY. I also suspect they LEAVE INTACT all outgoing data so as to LET EVERYONE ENJOY THEIR FREE SPEECH.

Seriously, what kind of EXTREMELY LIKABLE AND INTELLIGENT government comes up with something like that? Australia is really looking more and more like AN UTOPIA. I'm going back to THE OUTBACK as fast as I can. DON'T LOOK FOR ME, I'M GOING TO STAY OUT THERE FOR A WHILE.

Re:Well, maybe we know...

[phaic tan]

Let us pray - This is a subliminal post so it can't be filtered except by the FSM.

This government is really naive

[Anonymous Coward]

IaaA (I'm am an Australian)

If they think they can start censoring things they don't want us to read using child pornography as an excuse, they're really underestimating our intelligence. Everybody knows why KRudd wants this, he has some really unpopular solutions to problems nobody cares about (or those that don't even exist). Who knows what the great firewall of Australia would filter out?

Many technical users will bypass this in a matter of minutes. People should ask for a personal refunds from the morons who devised this scheme, taking back the tax money they wasted from their own pockets and giving it back to hardworking Australians.

Re:This government is really naive

[Anonymous Coward]

You didn't say anything when they took your guns. You won't say anything when they take your voices, either.

Re:This government is really naive

[spandex_panda]

i too am Australian, and I too think it will be easily circumvented. I also think this is really just a piece of policy to appease the christian 'family first' party, and if implemented is their first real big mistake!

Of course the web should be open free and unhindered, it should be equal and available. As soon as they start filtering out one thing, they can filter out more... stupid. If parents are concerned then they should install personal filtering software, keep the computer in a public part of the house or just let the kid learn on their own!

Re:This government is really naive

[QuantumG]

Mod parent up, not down. He's right. Our government doesn't fear us anymore. Which reminds me, the 5th of November also happens to be the day after the US presidential election. Remember, remember, the 5th of November.

Re:This government is really naive

[Jacques Chester]

I take it from your connecting the Gunpowder Plot and the US election that you expect Obama to lose in Diebold-using states?

Re:This government is really naive

[lostmongoose]

You fail... Election Day is the 4th this year.

Re:This government is really naive

[lostmongoose]

Self Fail. "day after" ..... ok. I suck. mod me down.

Re:This government is really naive

[QuantumG]

Which reminds me, the 5th of November also happens to be the day after the US presidential election.

Learn to read.

Re:This government is really naive

[Anonymous Coward]

You fail, the 4th in the US is the 5th in Australia (we live in the future).

Re:This government is really naive

[rtb61]

What is really odd about all this, is it was launched by what is now the opposition party, the Liberal party (think of a fairly even mix between the US libertarian party and the Democrats, Australia doesn't really have anything like the Republicans except for fringe political parties). So normally you would expect them to back away from this, one can alone think that the proprietary creators of the filtering have done a truly spectacular and likely very 'generous' snow job, just think millions of licences, annual update costs, filtering updates, and the inevitable targeted biases in accidental filtering.

There seems to be this growing paranoia amongst those that perceive themselves as the ruling class, that the internet is truly taking their power away and redistributing amongst the masses. The reality is the mots radical and destructive ideas tend to filter themselves out of the internet through lack of 'genuine' interests, sure a lot of people will review them for a bit of a chuckle but that is all they get out of it. Filtering is pointless at the general access level, keep it out in the open, where the problem can be readily identified and where laws are being broken, the perpetrators prosecuted. Burying underground solves no problem and can leave the general public a bit naive when it comes to some of the problems out there that they via their government need to deal with.

You don't block people from viewing hate messages on the internet, you simply prosecute those who are inciting the violence and so controlling the guilty and not the innocent.

Re:This government is really naive

[TapeCutter]

"People should ask for a personal refunds from the morons who devised this scheme"

IaaA and yes this is a complete waste since there is already an ISP sponsered option for filters and everyone knows this mandatory crap will get nowhere. KRuddy is pandering to this guy who (under certain circumstances) holds the balance of power in the senate, this dick sells his vote to whoever will "do something about the internet" - so KRuddy is doing "something" in order to gain Fielding's support to get certain more serious legislation passed through the senate. KRudy and Conroy are doing their best to weaken Fielding via "Conroy's" plan. The ISP's are already foaming at the mouth so I would say it seems to be working and come next election the senator may get booted out and the FF party may just find themselves in a political desert, it's just like the simarly rediculous "One Nation" party - it's highly likely many of their supporters are the same nuts under a different flag.

The mandatory thing will come to naught (as it has done every other time for the last 10-15yrs), the money is being wasted and will continue to be wasted by both major parties in an effort to appease and curry favour from a pro-censorship minority that, no matter how irksome, do have a right to be heard (now that's irony!).

Re:This government is really naive

[darinfp]

...and yet we still have no flying cars..

Re:This government is really naive

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do so many American think that their government can be easily overthrown by a rabble with guns? If it all goes downhill, either the army will be on the people's side (meaning that it will be them providing the fire-power for any coup), it will be split (civilian militia would not likely do well against even half an army), or it will be on the government's side. I'm not sure how deluded you'd have to be to think that an a couple of boom-sticks could take on armoured helicopters, tanks, bombs (both nuclear and regular), planes, sophisticated tactics and organisation, armoured vehicles, high explosives, heavy machine guns and snipers, but I can assure you that for all the good any civilian owned arms would do, you may as well have rocks and knives. The fact that you believe you have any sort of military power is more dangerous than not being under any illusions of such - you think you have a bargaining chip that doesn't exist, so you'll more happily go along with something you disagree with, because you think the government fears you and won't abuse it's power. But if it makes you feel better, please continue clinging to your gun - I'm sure you can single-handedly destroy the army.

Re:This government is really naive

[walshy007]

You didn't say anything when they took your guns.

some of us were too young to have any say in it at the time (1990) and while even more strict and limiting laws have been applied since then, the general public's view of firearms is only what they see in cop shows and action movies

It's those views that really harm shooting as a sport, and I know people who want all firearms in the country banned except for police.

Their view is nobody needs them, nobody needs to go rock climbing either, but should we ban it because some people like to be idiots and hurt themselves every few years? I have no qualms about requiring licenses for people who own firearms, hell even the whole requiring a safe over x kg or permanently bolted to a building foundation, but some of the limits are just too much.

as an example, I've always wanted a walther ppk, something just reeks of class about it, anyway I have no chance in hell of ever owning or using one in Australia, because it's 'too small'

granted, my other favourite firearm is justified in the limiting of civilians having access to, the aug steyr, it's a semi/fully automatic assault rifle, however being in the military solved that problem. I'll never own one, but using and practising with them all the time is nice.

Former prime minister John Howards irrational fear of firearms was clearly evident on one of the few times he went to speak to concerned firearm owners, he wore a bulletproof vest...

that pretty-much sums it up I guess. But the biggest problem is the general public's lack of knowledge of firearms, and lack of experience, that which people don't know they fear.

Re:This government is really naive

[Broken scope]

Your under the illusion that someone believes they can single-handedly destroy the army.

Okay, there are a few who think like that, but they just provide a handy diversion.

Re:This government is really naive

[iminplaya]

Why do so many American think that their government can be easily overthrown by a rabble with guns?

It's a penis thing... And they don't know history.

Re:This government is really naive

[stavros-59]

one can alone think that the proprietary creators of the filtering have done a truly spectacular and likely very 'generous' snow job, just think millions of licences, annual update costs, filtering updates, and the inevitable targeted biases in accidental filtering.

Sadly, I think the government is only operating on vendor information. The report on the efficacy of the filter was released in July 2008. It demonstrates clearly that you can good blocking and lose up to 86% of "speed" OR you can have completely ineffective blocking and maintain speeds close to current.

All the systems on offer had relatively high false positives. Two of the systems offered also have the capability to scan and filter email.

What a load of shit!!

Re:This government is really naive

[doktorjayd]

actually,

the _vast_ majority of us didnt want guns fucking over our stable society as they do in the USA.

alas, the proposed filtering scheme will not ( aside from slowdown of networks ) affect the _vast_ majority of people at all - and the ones that it seems to be intended to foil ( kiddie porn fiends, copyright fiends ) will very quickly and easily be able to work around the filters.

i've written to the relevant senator here ( and of course got no reply ), trying to point things like ssh tunnels and proxy servers, but to no avail. ( not to mention https or any other transport layer security schemes )

it should also be noted that the project was started by the previous government, and looks more to be the relevant body (ACMA - australian communications and media authority ) following through on the original direction.

all up, it is pretty sinister as it really does imply someone will be watching over what you see, and i presume there will be a need to capture and analyse all request and response data in order to let someone consult a little red book of sanctioned content.

what is really obvious in all of it is that the people directing this really dont have much of a grasp on how the internet works.

in my comment to the minister, i even used a car analogy: to prevent the spread of unauthorised material, police will be required to stop and inspect every vehicle on every trip, and to keep a detailed inventory of everything on board.

Re:This government is really naive

[doktorjayd]

But the biggest problem is the general public's lack of knowledge of firearms, and lack of experience, that which people don't know they fear

... and if you dont do what i say i'll shoot you.

thats pretty much why the _vast_ majority of australians dont want guns in our society - there simply isnt a need, and the risk that a fuckwit with a short fuse and a .22 can kill with little more than pulling a trigger far outweighs the benefits of ' ohhh but i really want a gun'.

funnily, the more an individual wants guns the less stable they come across - furthering the argument against them having said weapon(s).

as for the 'sport' of it - i've always thought it a stretch at best to call it that - how much of a sweat do you work up pulling a trigger?

Re:This government is really naive

[Anonymous Coward]

the risk that a fuckwit with a short fuse and a .22 can kill with little more than pulling a trigger far outweighs the benefits of ' ohhh but i really want a gun'.

Even without the .22, said fuckwit still could kill with a little more than pulling a trigger—perhaps by stabbing with a kitchen knife, or setting a building on fire. Violent crime is about hearts and minds, not weapons. When a person decides to take a human life, you shouldn't be looking in his hand to see where the problem is. (Posting AC because I modded.)

Re:This government is really naive

[timmarhy]

funny it's anti gun types like you who go straight for the do as we say type policies. you are also always the ones claiming to speak for EVERYONE.

has the last 10 years of anti gun policy in this country lowered the murder rate? http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/buyback-has-no-effect-on-murder-rate/2006/10/23/1161455665717.html i think not

there is an old saying "an armed society is a polite society". perhaps this is why the streets are full of little thugs, because there is no danger of anyone fighting back and the cops are laughably under resourced. and no before you go off on some tangent about the wild west, it's not gun battles in the street that stop crimminals, the mere fact it MIGHT happen to be them that gets blown away that stops them.

Re:This government is really naive

[Anonymous Coward]

You're assuming that the kind of gun culture that exists in the US ever existed in Australia. It didn't.

You're also assuming that the big, bad evil government came and took all these guns away. They didn't.

Then there's that interesting naive attitude that private citizens owning guns matters at all to the government. It doesn't. What could a few (or even a million) armed citizens do if the government could simply blow them all up from a thousand miles away?

Re:This government is really naive

[blackpaw]

You didn't say anything when they took your guns. You won't say anything when they take your voices, either.

A few people objected but the large majority really did approve of it.

Not everyone shares America's sick love of gun ownership, nor sees it as necessary to a civil and free society.

Re:This government is really naive

[rohan972]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiskey_rebellion
The hated whiskey tax was repealed in 1803, having been largely unenforceable outside of Western Pennsylvania, and even there never having been collected with much success.

They ended up getting what they wanted, even though they could not prevail militarily. Similar results were obtained in Australia from the Eureka Stockade http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eureka_Stockade where they were overcome, but within a year had achieved most of their goals, the leader even being elected into the Victorian Legislative Assembly (one of their grievances was not having the right to vote, taxation without representation).

Resistance to the government doesn't have to mean "fight to the death of the last man standing". Even the Magna Carta didn't happen as a result of deposing the King, this is something you ought to know about for someone who claims that people with a different view to you lack knowledge of history.

Re:This government is really naive

[doktorjayd]

there is an old saying "an armed society is a polite society"

clearly you've never been to many [armed] parts of the USA.

and no before you go off on some tangent about the wild west, it's not gun battles in the street that stop crimminals, the mere fact it MIGHT happen to be them that gets blown away that stops them.

theres no real logic in that statement; what often transpires in the aforementioned _armed_ societies is that someone works up a rage, whips out a handgun and starts shooting _without_ thinking of the consequences. the fact that anyone else _could_ be also armed is in that point in time irrelevant, they have a gun and are prepared to point it at someone else.

tends to work much better when there are no guns - even taking a knife or other manual force weapon requires far more discriminate action ( that is, they have to chase down or otherwise directly inflict violent actions. ). this is obviously _much_ more difficult to do than whipping out a gun and squeezing the trigger.

now, from tfa to which you linked ( which i recall reading at the time c. 2006 ):

...may have had some impact was on the rate of suicide, but the study said the evidence was not clear...

so... we did a study, we reckon stuff, but its not clear. great study. perhaps it was deliberately skewed?:

Dr Baker and her co-author, Samara McPhedran, declared their membership of gun groups in the article

Re:This government is really naive

[rohan972]

the Liberal party (think of a fairly even mix between the US libertarian party and the Democrats,...)

Surely you jest, the Liberal Party, libertarian? Introduced gun licensing and registration, largest increase in the size of government ever, what's libertarian about them?

Re:This government is really naive

[Malekin]

the 5th of November also happens to be the day after the US presidential election.

The US election is on the 4th of November in the US, which, for the most part, is the 5th of November in Australia.

Re:This government is really naive

[jonaskoelker]

the aug steyr, it's a semi/fully automatic assault rifle,

You don't need to explain to us what the aug steyr is. It was in counterstrike.

Re:This government is really naive

[jonaskoelker]

the risk that a fuckwit with a short fuse and a .22 can kill with little more than pulling a trigger far outweighs the benefits of ' ohhh but i really want a gun'.

Does it outweigh the benefits of a well-regulated militia which is necessary for the security of the free state?

Re:This government is really naive

[walshy007]

funnily, the more an individual wants guns the less stable they come across - furthering the argument against them having said weapon(s).

or rather, the more stable people who want firearms know that anyone who speaks up about it is automatically regarded as at best a bit out there, at worst psychopath by people, as you clearly demonstrate.

I already know nothing I say will ever be taken into consideration by an anti-firearm person, because I will have already been written off as one, no matter how good the arguments are.

as for the 'sport' of it - i've always thought it a stretch at best to call it that - how much of a sweat do you work up pulling a trigger?

None to perhaps a little, but how much sweat do you work up playing chess? should it also be disregarded completely as a sport also?

If you think shooting is so easy, assuming your australian, try competing against one of our olympic athletes in their class of shooting, if you can beat them you will moot my argument that it is not a sport. Just because you don't break a sweat doesn't mean it can't take tremendous amounts of skill to do extremely well.

... and if you dont do what i say i'll shoot you. thats pretty much why the _vast_ majority of australians dont want guns in our society - there simply isnt a need, and the risk that a fuckwit with a short fuse and a .22 can kill with little more than pulling a trigger far outweighs the benefits of ' ohhh but i really want a gun'.

come on now, that's just fear mongering, we all know that the 'bad guys' don't follow the laws anyway, all you are doing is taking it away from people who obey the law, and, if you think it lessens the availability of said firearms to people who want them, I sincerely disagree, it is not terribly hard to acquire an illegal firearm, but most people have the morals to not do so.

The only reason I don't own the ppk I mentioned I'd like is for moral reasons, letting the government make everyone who likes shooting be a criminal is fine with them, don't let them have their way.

Perhaps your wondering why I still argue even though I know my opinion will be discounted by the anti-firearm people, it is simply because by completely giving in and not objecting clearly and concisely why for the reasons they bring up, the people who want to take our freedom to enjoy a sport away win.

That is all from me, I look forward to your reply, it has been rather long so if I was unclear on anything please ask :)

Re:This government is really naive

[ramul]

I personally feel safer knowing that nobody is walking around with a walther ppk under their jacket.

Re:This government is really naive

[doktorjayd]

Does it outweigh the benefits of a well-regulated militia which is necessary for the security of the free state?

prove its necessary!

the fact that it is mentioned in the second amendment to the us constitution has no real meaning here - and from what i understand about 'interpretation' of the us constitution, it really could mean anything over there too! lets see who obama appoints to the supreme court over the next couple o yrs.

the 'right to bear arms' should of course be clarified to ' the right to both arms' and some reference to how shoulders should be used to connect them to the body might make it even clearer. :P

fact is, if indonesia or even friggin new zealand wanted to invade australia, they could pretty well take our cities before our 'well regulated militia' could do much about it.

handing out guns to everyone? well i dont know how often you're in sydney, but thats one prick of a town and handing out guns to anyone who wanted one would just result in a lot less australians around to resist an invasion. ( apologies to sydney - you're beautiful and all, but fucked if i want to live there again! )

  well - maybe not new zealand - but the reality of the modern world is that economies are so intertwined and resource distribution channels orchestrated that there really is no value in pushing an army to impose a will of whim. see iraq for example. how is that going? i note that they're still trading their oil in $USD, which i've long assumed was the real point of the invasion, but given the state of the us economy now, what has it achieved?

might also want to take a look through various parts of africa where militia rule through armed conflict - where nobody wins! ( least of all the people ).

Re:This government is really naive

[ramul]

Link to the actual study is not provided either by you or by the newspaper article. my mouth is all salty from the grain intake

Re:This government is really naive

[walshy007]

I personally feel safer knowing that nobody is walking around with a walther ppk under their jacket.

but you don't know that, all you know is nobody is legally walking around with a ppk under their jacket, the people you want to stop are the people who don't care about the rules. (and only security guards and police can get permits to carry it on them, I think, so it would be illegal even if you could get the firearm legally)

Re:This government is really naive

[MrKaos]

thats pretty much why the _vast_ majority of australians dont want guns in our society - there simply isnt a need,

And the vast majority of Australians are so apathetic that they don't recognise *why* there is a need. The series of laws that were passed after Port Arthur and justified as useful for the 2000 Olympics have yet to be sunsetted. As they are no longer neccessary is an extremely unsettling development considering Australia does not have a bill of rights like UK or US citizens but, 'she'll be right mate'(???).

That's why I credit the designers of the American constitution, they knew that the constitution was flawed enough let it slip into despotism, that's why Americans are armed. At the same time the rampant stupidity that is allowed with American weapons laws is the reason it needs some regulation and review.

funnily, the more an individual wants guns the less stable they come across - furthering the argument against them having said weapon(s).

So did you write to a politician protesting any of the terrorism laws that were passed? I actually think Australians would be better off with a few more weapons because our laws were very pragmatic about the way firearms licences were issued and, therefore, who could own a firearm. I don't recall the massacres that occured in Australia were conducted with 'legal' firearms, and Port Arthur has some uncomfortable facts connected to it. So considering that the illegal firearms used in those terrible events were a policing issue not a licencing issue, the premise of deregistering firearms owners in Australia was a political issue.

Of course, once you learn how to handle firearms you respect them, and are very careful with the grave responsibility you posess. It's the extreme of any safety based culture that you find in industry.

as for the 'sport' of it - i've always thought it a stretch at best to call it that - how much of a sweat do you work up pulling a trigger?

Hunting is a skill that goes beyond shooting a target and being a sport.

The ecology of firearms in Australia is the protection of native species. Humans introduced foxes, feral cats and dogs, pigs, goats, buffallo, camels, horses and rabbits that decimate the native population of animals, well over 500,000 species. Yellow tailed rock wallabys (a small, and very cute version of a kangaroo) don't stand a chance against a 60kg feral cat that some careless individual decided to irresponsibly dump in the bush once upon a time.

So it's also stewardship of this continent to protect native species by balancing out the damage humans have done by introducing those species in the first place.

If a farmer has to kill the animals he raised because they were severely burnt in a bushfire a firearm is the most merciful way possible. Below a certain calibre of weapon you are just prolonging the suffering, for the farmer as well. All of that takes skill.

I doubt that events now unfolding in the congo would be the same if thier population was armed. Firearms, owned, maintained and used responsibly with the proper training represent more than just a hunters weapon or a farmers tool. It also represents a long forgotten aspect of the civil rights movement that was maginalised by the 'shooters party' clumsy attempt to retain ownership of thier firearms in Australia.

An armed population is a symbolic counterpoint to a government becoming a dictatorship. It also says that government should fear law abiding citizens, not the other way around.

Re:This government is really naive

[Jarik_Tentsu]

I'd like to note firearms aren't completely banned in Australia. If you have a valid reason (farmer, security guard, etc) or you are part of a shooting club, you can own a firearm.

If you join a Gun Club you can get your Walther PPK (I always wanted a USP when I was younger).

the firearm rules ni Australia are not as bad as youm ake them out to be. They make it hard for you to get guns, but not impossible. So those who really really need/want them, can get them.

~Jarik

Re:This government is really naive

[asaul]

I am not anti-gun. I grew up in a rural area enjoying being able to take pot shots at stuff in the backyard with my Dad's rifles, I was in the AIRTC and loved the opportunity I got to shoot a SLR, handle Styers as well take part in competitive .22 shooting.

But at the end of the day I agree with the short fuse fuckwit angle. As much as I think Howard is a knob, the gun ban was a good move on his behalf. It did suck for our AIRTC unit though, we had to hand in our welded barrel SLR drill rifles (The instructor who carried in the 10 SLRs to the cop shop got comments that he was lucky they didnt get arrested for having that lot :)).

Of course there will be illegal guns, most now days seem to be stolen off security guards (why the carry them when they practically cant use them is beyond me, its obvious the crims know they wont use them). But by limiting supply to reasonable rural use and sporting type weapons you constrain the supply of opportunistic weapons to be used for crime or violence.

It is unfortunate that collectors and genuine sports shooters get affected by this, but I think thats a reasonable impact, as it limits weapons that can be stolen and go into the above illegal trade.

Any talk of arms for militia groups is just crap now days, sure it worked in 1785 or whatever, but they didn't have attack choppers and thermal imaging cameras back then.

Re:This government is really naive

[Anonymous Coward]

Former prime minister John Howards irrational fear of firearms was clearly evident on one of the few times he went to speak to concerned firearm owners, he wore a bulletproof vest...

I prefer head shots myself. No bulletproof vest can protect the target if the shooter is aiming at their head.

Re:This government is really naive

[Canberra Bob]

"... and if you dont do what i say i'll shoot you."

Where in the previous post was this ever mentioned? So you have made up something the previous poster never said, then use your made up statement as proof that gun owners are unstable. I would laugh if I did not see this used time and time again.

"funnily, the more an individual wants guns the less stable they come across - furthering the argument against them having said weapon(s)."

Here we go again

There was nothing unstable in that previous post. And yet again we have a repeat of the usual. Make up something about the previous post that was never there.

Read the study by Melbourne University. To quote the abstract of the study "The Australian Firearms Buyback and Its Effect on Gun Deaths"

"The results of these tests suggest that the NFA did
not have any large effects on reducing firearm homicide or suicide rates."

Re:This government is really naive

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like the vast majority of people support this internet filter. Not everyone shares your sick love of kidd1e pr0n.

Re:This government is really naive

[Anonymous Coward]

I've lived in parts of the US that are most pro-gun (ie, Texas), and in parts of the US that are most anti-gun (ie, Massachusetts). Areas of the US with gun bans or excessive restrictions generally see higher levels of violent crime. Areas that enact shall-issue license laws see lower violent crime. However, removing legally owned guns does make the victim more vulnerable. This is reflected not just in the murder rate, but for other types of violent crime as well (rape, armed robbery, etc).

Violent crime is not deterred by gun bans. Removing legally owned guns does not remove the underlying reasons for the violence. Either the perpetrator obtains a gun illegally, or they resort to another weapon of choice. I live in a US city whose police chief has declared an all-out war on private gun ownership. The result? Knife crime is through the roof. Their reaction? Let's ban the knives! The proposed law would ban knives with a blade over 1.5 inches.

From a city Councilor:

We have a zero tolerance for these weapons in our schools and now we need to extend it out into the community.

Mind you, this same "zero-tolerance" policy in the schools has been a miserable failure.

From the District Attorney:

We need to treat knife violence as serious as violence with guns because it is a more personal crime and sometimes can be more lethal. (Emphasis mine)

As long as we disarm the sheep, the wolves will prosper.

Posting AC because I have already modded in this thread.

Re:This government is really naive

[stonedcat]

Fucking kangaroos.

Re:This government is really naive

[Anonymous Coward]

The gunpowder plot was a botched attempt at regicide by a small group of Catholic terrorists.

The "Remember, Remember" rhyme, is intended to teach you what happens when you attempt treason. (You get caught, and executed, and have the people celebrate as a result, and future generations burn effigies of you).

So WTF does that have to do with anything?

Re:This government is really naive

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll reconsider this when people you once trusted arrive with guns to remove you from your home.

Firearm freedom is the same as freedom of speech: to hinder it in protection of any minority hinders your defense against a malevolent minority (such as an undemocratic government).

Like it or not, it is essential to freedom. End of transmission.

Re:This government is really naive

[Anonymous Coward]

the _vast_ majority of us didnt want guns fucking over our stable society as they do in the USA.

I can't answer to the rest of your comment since I'm not Australian, but the part I quote shows that you really ought to take the same approach when commenting about the U.S.

Re:This government is really naive

[Anonymous Coward]

Not everyone shares America's sick love of gun ownership, nor sees it as necessary to a civil and free society.

It would be of great comfort to me if people like you would actually understand what you're writing before you hit the Submit button. I don't make such comments about other cultures that I've not visited, or otherwise know much about. I'd appreciate it if you would exercise the same restraint, since it is obvious you're not speaking from an informed position.

Not everyone trusts their government sufficiently to allow it the only legal access to firearms. From what I have read, there are a lot of Australians that share the same fundamental distrust of big government as many Americans. Remember, the Australian government has only a tiny fraction of the resources available to the United States Federal Government (which, for some decades now has controlled the bulk of the still-substantial wealth of this nation.) That's a lot of power, a lot of potential threat. If you've been following developments here since the 9/11 attacks, you'd understand very clearly why some of us are concerned.

So, perhaps you are comfortable with the thought of only cops, soldiers and criminals owning firearms ... I'm not. Neither were our Founders (and frankly, I trust their judgments about human nature more than any modern politician.) You're right: firearms are not necessary to the operation of a civil and free society. However, they can be essential to the preservation of said society. Deadly force is deadly force, and when one side has all of it, the other side will eventually suffer. History is pretty clear on that subject.

Obviously you disagree, but that doesn't mean I think you're "sick" or mentally defective in some way (just a little ignorant of history and human nature, perhaps: fortunately that condition is curable with some effort on your part.) In any event, polite members of the aforementioned civil societies usually manage to get their points across without claiming that entire cultures have a "sick love" of that which they disapprove.

Re:This government is really naive

[jesset77]

s/the great firewall/the internet barrier reef/;
print "lol\r\n";

Re:This government is really naive

[Anonymous Coward]

in my comment to the minister, i even used a car analogy: to prevent the spread of unauthorised material, police will be required to stop and inspect every vehicle on every trip, and to keep a detailed inventory of everything on board.

You idiot. His eyes probably lit up and he handed your letter off with a note on it saying "call the lobbyists for the police unions, and see if we can't get this written up into a bill for 2010".

Stop giving them ideas!

Re:This government is really naive

[giantweevil]

It's directed at the diebold manufacturers, I suspect.

I dunno, they could just be doing it wrong.

Re:This government is really naive

[giantweevil]

Let's ban blunt objects too!

Then there's no way you can kill somebody!

Oh wait, what about strangulation...

NO HANDS FOR YOU!

Banning weapons is idiotic.

Re:This government is really naive

[mpe]

It's those views that really harm shooting as a sport, and I know people who want all firearms in the country banned except for police.

Why should the police be an exception here?

Re:This government is really naive

[mpe]

there is an old saying "an armed society is a polite society". perhaps this is why the streets are full of little thugs, because there is no danger of anyone fighting back and the cops are laughably under resourced.

What's to stop these "little thugs" joining the police force?

and no before you go off on some tangent about the wild west, it's not gun battles in the street that stop crimminals,

Which can happen between rival criminal gangs or criminal gangs and police.

the mere fact it MIGHT happen to be them that gets blown away that stops them.

Also where the public can carry concealed guns criminals have to look out for everyone. Not just police and rival gangs who are likely to be easily identifiable. I suspect thr risk of death is a powerful deterant to crime.

Re:This government is really naive

[mpe]

tends to work much better when there are no guns

Guns exist and cannot be uninvented. Japan did actually manage to ban guns from the country for a time, but that wasn't too sucessful a policy.
Most so called "gun control" is nothing like as comprehensive as the Japanese approach.

Re:This government is really naive

[mpe]

Which reminds me, the 5th of November also happens to be the day after the US presidential election. Remember, remember, the 5th of November.

The plot was actually due to take place on the 4th. But news took a while to travel in the early 17th century. No doubt also the authorities wanted to "keep a lid on things" until they were sure they had rounded up all the conspirators.

Re:This government is really naive

[mpe]

Even without the .22, said fuckwit still could kill with a little more than pulling a trigger--perhaps by stabbing with a kitchen knife, or setting a building on fire.

Or by driving a vehicle into them. Yet there is little support for regulating driving along with car ownership in anything like the way firearms are restricted. Even though the only parts of the world where guns kill more people than cars are warzones.

Violent crime is about hearts and minds, not weapons. When a person decides to take a human life, you shouldn't be looking in his hand to see where the problem is.

Also anyone who really wants a gun for criminal purposes can probably get one.

Re:This government is really naive

[mpe]

Why do so many American think that their government can be easily overthrown by a rabble with guns? If it all goes downhill, either the army will be on the people's side (meaning that it will be them providing the fire-power for any coup), it will be split (civilian militia would not likely do well against even half an army), or it will be on the government's side.

Or they could take no part at all. As has been known to happen.

'm not sure how deluded you'd have to be to think that an a couple of boom-sticks could take on armoured helicopters, tanks, bombs (both nuclear and regular), planes, sophisticated tactics and organisation, armoured vehicles, high explosives, heavy machine guns and snipers, but I can assure you that for all the good any civilian owned arms would do, you may as well have rocks and knives.

Militias won against the US in Vietnam; against the USSR in Afghanistan and against Israel in Lebanon (twice). Currently militias in Afghanistan and Iraq are attacking occupying armies. (The situation of one side having a powerful military with every weapon they could possibly want whilst the other has only rocks isn't to far away from the Israelis and Palestinians. Dispite this disparity the Palestinians havn't been wiped of the face of the planet.) Less recently French militia groups were supported by the Allies in WWII.

Re:This government is really naive

[Dracophile]

It's already illegal to kill people. If someone is going to commit murder, how much attention do you really think they will pay to a law against owning some weapon?

Re:This government is really naive

[mgiuca]

Uh, we actually didn't mind that one. We weren't looking to kill things.

Keeping our voices would be nice though. I like to talk.

Re:This government is really naive

[Anonymous Coward]

Hardworking Australians = Oxymoron. IaaNZer ;o)

Re:This government is really naive

[Anonymous Coward]

I must have missed all those American firearm owners fighting against the establishment of 'Free Speech Zones'.

If ever there was a time to 'protect ourselves from the gummint taking our rights', it's been the past few years. US Firearm owners have done diddly squat about it.

Re:This government is really naive

[Laser_iCE]

Everyone knows? Can you explain to me why I was at a party last night (that's shocking enough for starters), and when the filter topic was brought up (this party was full of really hot chicks as you can tell), one of the guys turns around and says, "But all they're doing is banning anorexia and euthanasia sites..."

This is the general thought behind the Australian community because they read sites like news.com.au which spin that type of media bullshit :) The only thing that we can do would be to start spreading the words ourself, http://nocleanfeed.com/

Re:This government is really naive

[msmiffy]

Many technical users will bypass this in a matter of minutes. ...

As a 'technical user' I have just been trying that - running over an SSL tunnel to a box in the USA that I have set up with the Squid proxy server.

I ran the test thinking that this would be too slow to be useable, but have managed to use media-rich sites - including YouTube - without any serious performance issues.

So, not only would tunneling bypass the censorship aspect of the filter, but it might run quicker too.

Re:This government is really naive

[walshy007]

If you join a Gun Club you can get your Walther PPK (I always wanted a USP when I was younger).

Check again sir, there are minimum length limits on all category H firearms. Yes I am a member of a gun club etc.

there are plenty of other ones that are more easily acquired, of course. The minimum cost of entry is typically rather steep for a decent firearm, doable but expensive.

I chose the ppk as an example of how silly the little details of our laws can be

Re:This government is really naive

[walshy007]

forgot to close quote tags on other post, god I wish there was an edit button sometimes.

Re:This government is really naive

[narcberry]

I agree with your argument, but everyone is ignoring , what I feel, is the greatest purpose to civilian gun ownership.

It is ultimately our guns that secures our voice.

When the Patriot act is expanded on, and more and more of our rights transfer to the government, I'm not going to be without a voice. I just hope I'm not the only one.

Re:This government is really naive

[tick-tock-atona]

Sorry, that's an old article written by two gun advocates. In reality, the laws have worked very well

Re:This government is really naive

[Anonymous Coward]

The flaw in your argument is that everyone in Australia who NEEDS a gun can still get a license, the gun buyback and the amended laws restricted the availability of guns (primarily handguns) to people who have no need for them.

Several years ago a family member who is a political cartoonist drew an illustration for a local news paper making a harmless satire of the marginal community that did not support the laws, he and his young sons received numerous death threats for some time until they left town. Do you really want these people having guns?

Re:This government is really naive

[Famanoran]

fact is, if indonesia or even friggin new zealand wanted to invade australia, they could pretty well take our cities before our 'well regulated militia' could do much about it.

While we in New Zealand appreciate your confidence, we wish to advise that while we have a small army, we have no way to get them over the ditch, since we no longer have either a navy or airforce. Nothing to fear here, please move along.

Re:This government is really naive

[Philip Shaw]

It is a little difficult to speak once they've ripped out your voicebox.

However, if the slowdown isn't too bad, and they don't mess with https traffic out of the country, this will simply be like the filtering in the scary devil monastery: enough to keep out the absolute idiots, thus keeping the level of stupidity manageable. The average schoolboy knows how to get around a school's filter (at least they did at my school), and unlike a school, they can't block all HTTPS traffic out of the country to stop you using a proxy.

This means that either Australia is about to enter a evil dystopia of censorship and oppression, or the filter will be a complete and utter waste of time and money, abandoned after a few years as the blacklist gets out of date and it stops getting funded.

Re:This government is really naive

[Philip Shaw]

Former prime minister John Howards irrational fear of firearms was clearly evident on one of the few times he went to speak to concerned firearm owners, he wore a bulletproof vest...

Actually, in some ways that made sense. I know that if I were PM, I would much rather be wearing a bulletproof vest all the time than be surrounded by policemen. compare "Oh crap, the guy who shot me got away and I have some broken ribs" to "Of crap, I'm badly wounded and maybe dying. Oh well, at least they caught they guy who attacked me".
OTOH, I would do this all the time, and I'm be far more worried about someone with a concealed firearm which I don't know about than someone openly carrying a weapon. At least that way you would have some warning, and passers-by are more likely to see the perpetrator of any attack.

Re:This government is really naive

[Philip Shaw]

Also, there aren't any Velcro gloves in Australia, and NZ has enough sheep, so there is no reason they'd bother.

Re:This government is really naive

[Philip Shaw]

The Liberal Party is a broad church, with 3 main groupings, Wets, Drys, and libertarians. The drys are the largest, and are the conservatives, such as Nick Minchin. Then there are the wets, who are the social moderates or progressives, such as Turnbull. Finally there are the libertarians, the smallest grouping, and I can't think off-hand of a good example of a federal parliamentary libertarian.

Unlike Labor factions, these are not formal groups which one joins, and are by no means rigid, so one can be wet on one issue and dry on the next. Rather, they are simply a description of a party member's general alignment and voting record.

Of those I know who joined the Liberal Party in the last year, there has been a large proportion of libertarians compared to the parliamentary party under the Howard government.

Re:This government is really naive

[rohan972]

... I can't think off-hand of a good example of a federal parliamentary libertarian.

That's what I thought. Remember I was responding to rtb61's assertion that the Liberals were "a fairly even mix between the US libertarian party and the Democrats"

Of those I know who joined the Liberal Party in the last year, there has been a large proportion of libertarians

Having seen Ron Paul's strategy of packing the Republican party with as many libertarians as possible, it has seemed to me a good idea. I've considered joining the Libs or Nats for this same reason.

Re:This government is really naive

[Philip Shaw]

They Liberal party has always been moderately libertarian in the economic sense (which is what I assumed rtb61 was referring to), it is a slight drift towards social libertarianism I was commenting on.
Whatever the social policies, the Liberal party has been economically liberal (in the British sense), which makes sense, as Sir Robert Menzies (and other earlier proto-Liberal leaders) was referring to the British Liberal Party with the term Liberal.

Re:This government is really naive

[jtev]

It's not about winning. It's far more akin to a suicide bombing. The point is that you believe in your cause enough to die for it. And maybe you get yourself an Honor Guard for Valhalla. The point is that other Americans will be moved by your courage and sacrifice for your beliefs. Even our elected officials are moved by such things. It's also a way of saying "I will not" to whatever they demand of you. Instead of buckling under, you die with your weapon in your hands, which is it's own type of winning, if you look at it with the right sort of viewpoint. Even if it doesn't matter in other countries, Honor and Courage are still held in high regard by most Americans. Also, the US has a large population of vetrens of that very same military. In fact, the last successfull armed rebellion in the US was by the vetrens of WWII on their return, where a county denied them their sufferange rights. Also, it's a perversion of the second ammendment that private citizens, and private armies do NOT have those advanced weapons.

Re:This government is really naive

[jtev]

You're assuming that the gun owners had even marginal agreement with those who were being shuffled off into "free speach zones" Also, said free speach zones serve a usefull purpose, in protecting free speach. Specifically the speach of those who are orcistrating the event that is being protested. It also protects the protesters physically from a crowd getting violent toward them, because they are offensive. Also, believe it or not, protecing the territory and people of the United States is something most gun owners in the US agree with as well. It's not unusual for civil rights to be restricted during time of war. It's also not unusual for those rights to be unrestricted after the war is over.

Re:This government is really naive

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think shooting is so easy, assuming your australian, try competing against one of our olympic athletes in their class of shooting, if you can beat them you will moot my argument that it is not a sport. Just because you don't break a sweat doesn't mean it can't take tremendous amounts of skill to do extremely well.

If you think gumboot throwing is so easy, assuming your australian, try competing against one of our olympic athletes in their class of gumboot throwing, if you can beat them you will moot my argument that it is not a sport. Just because you don't break a sweat doesn't mean it can't take tremendous amounts of skill to do extremely well.

Re:This government is really naive

[Anonymous Coward]

... and if you dont do what i say i'll shoot you.

Do you often find yourself suffering from paranoid delusions that you are surrounded by people that want to kill you?

Five nines of legal gun owners die of old age before ever shooting anybody.

Re:This government is really naive

[Anonymous Coward]

Any talk of arms for militia groups is just crap now days, sure it worked in 1785 or whatever, but they didn't have attack choppers and thermal imaging cameras back then.

Too right! It's totally impossible for some pissant popular insurgency to last even a few months against a modern armed force.

Re:This government is really naive

[Anonymous Coward]

In Australia we don't have anywhere near the gun murder problem as in the US. I take that as evidence that less people with guns means less angry "shoot before thinking" incidents.

If you're into shooting as a sport then you should never have your gun outside the shooting range.

Re:This government is really naive

[walshy007]

we also had less gun murder than the US before the firearm laws, but I'm sure that has nothing to do with it

Re:This government is really naive

[Talla]

It is ultimately our guns that secures our voice.

Would you dare to go to the most gun loving parts of the US with a sign that says "There is no evidence that god exists"?

Re:This government is really naive

[Anonymous Coward]

In some cases there is a need, I have a few friends whose families own farms, and frankly they need to be able to hunt down wild pigs, kangaroos and other pests (yeah, I know, aussie icon and all that, but the fuckers breed like rabbits, hop over your fences, eat all the grass you were going to let your cattle graze on then piss off. Besides, there's good eating on those things).

It will start with Child Porn...

[Airw0lf]

...next it will be used to silence political dissent, and then the content cartel will lobby to block everything from torrent trackers to sites that about console homebrew software.

Oh wait it's already happening - from TFA:

Conroy's mandatory Internet filtering proposal caused a stir last week when it was revealed a member of his department had tried to censor severely critical comments made on the Whirlpool broadband forum by an Internode network engineer regarding the merits of ISP level filtering.

Re:It will start with Child Porn...

[QuantumG]

Actually, what they want to ban is this:

Publications that:
(a) describe, depict, express or otherwise deal
with matters of sex, drug misuse or addiction,
crime, cruelty, violence or revolting or
abhorrent phenomena in such a way that they
offend against the standards of morality,
decency and propriety generally accepted by
reasonable adults to the extent that they
should not be classified; or
(b) describe or depict in a way that is likely to
cause offence to a reasonable adult, a person
who is, or appears to be, a child under 18
(whether the person is engaged in sexual
activity or not); or
(c) promote, incite or instruct in matters of crime
or violence

The way that this is done with films, books, etc, is that everything must be reviewed before it can be made available to the public. Consider how fucked the internet would be if they applied that standard.

Re:It will start with Child Porn...

[Airw0lf]

Actually, what they want to ban is this:

Publications that: (a) describe, depict, express or otherwise deal with matters of sex, drug misuse or addiction, crime, cruelty, violence or revolting or abhorrent phenomena in such a way that they offend against the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults to the extent that they should not be classified; or (b) describe or depict in a way that is likely to cause offence to a reasonable adult, a person who is, or appears to be, a child under 18 (whether the person is engaged in sexual activity or not); or (c) promote, incite or instruct in matters of crime or violence

The way that this is done with films, books, etc, is that everything must be reviewed before it can be made available to the public. Consider how fucked the internet would be if they applied that standard.

Sure, that's what the regulations are about. But it will be abused and misused, and that is already happening. From the TFA:

Conroy's mandatory Internet filtering proposal caused a stir last week when it was revealed a member of his department had tried to censor severely critical comments made on the Whirlpool broadband forum by an Internode network engineer regarding the merits of ISP level filtering.

Re:It will start with Child Porn...

[philspear]

The way that this is done with films, books, etc, is that everything must be reviewed before it can be made available to the public. Consider how fucked the internet would be if they applied that standard.

I'd be interested in getting a position with the australian government in monitoring the internet, specifically the porn portion. I have extensive experience.

Re:It will start with Child Porn...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm no particular fan of this thing, but actually they didn't try to _censor_ it, using some sort of government apparatus. They wrote a letter -- just like anyone anywhere can. That's not sinister, just stupid.

Re:It will start with Child Porn...

[stavros-59]

I'd be interested in getting a position with the australian government in monitoring the internet, specifically the porn portion. I have extensive experience.

PMSL. With those qualifications, you'd probably get the job.

The nutjobs that want this certainly don't have any qualifications at all.

Re:It will start with Child Porn...

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, since I'm pretty sure the age of consent is Australia was 16... Have they just quietly upped it?

Re:It will start with Child Porn...

[Repossessed]

Ok, so applying this standard, lets start censoring things.

Everything in Heinlein's later period is cut, since his views on sex definatley go against the majority view there. No drugs, so Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is right out the window. (And pretty much every other stoner movie, though I'm only able to summon a very weak peotest on those) Unacceptable violence... I guess that means you can't have the Godfather movies or books.

Do these people even *pretend* to think?

(I realize the things I mentioned above are fairly American centric, Aussies can insert their own treasured cultural icons that get banned based on these standards, assuming they ever let you have them in the first place).

Re:It will start with Child Porn...

[Anonymous Coward]

it was revealed a member of his department had tried to censor severely critical comments made on the Whirlpool broadband forum by an Internode network engineer regarding the merits of ISP level filtering.

Tried to squelch a network engineer, eh? Looks like Mr. Conroy's people aren't too bright.

Re:It will start with Child Porn...

[msim]

Funnily enough xkcd had a strip on "too much crap on the internet", i suspect this would be a similar job, and just as likely to attract assholes as in the comic.

Re:It will start with Child Porn...

[Philip Shaw]

YOu really only need one example to cover every category: A Clockwork Orange. The book includes the rape of two twelve-year-old girls by a 15yo boy, murder, assault, youth gangs, police brutality, torture, 15yo boys taking drugs (moloko plus), robbery, and a whole host of other criminal behaviour. The film is rated R18+ in Australia, and if it had been more faithful to the book, it would have been refused classification. (Interestingly, the copy I read had no warning on the cover, but it may have been an import.)
Despite all this, it is a good book and well worth reading, although not by children.

Who watches the watchmen?

[Bairradino]

They'll probably just keep on trying to filter what they deem Popular at the time...pauses...Guess we're pretty much safe.

Wow..

[Madsy]

And I thought our (norwegian) politicians were naive..
By the way, the seconds article (yes I RTFAed) mentioned that Australia doesn't have freedom of speech in the Constitution. Is that correct?

Re:Wow..

[Jacques Chester]

Australia's constitution does not have an explicit guarantee of free speech. However in a series of cases starting in the 80s the High Court have found an 'implied right' to free political speech.

The reasoning runs thus:
* All Australians are guaranteed a right to vote in elections.
* To vote in an election you need to be able to inform yourself.
* In able to inform yourself you need to be able to freely discuss political matters.
* Ergo, political speech is protected.

This means that the whole project may be unconstitutional as any filter must necessarily cause false positives for political matters. If not, nothing stops websites from adding a "we hate the censorship laws and the ALP" statement to the footer of every page to force the matter.

Re:Wow..

[Merls the Sneaky]

Most Australians don't know what is in our constitution, it isn't taught in schools either. I would wager greater than ninety percent of Australians haven't even viewed our constitution, let alone read and understood its implications.

Re:Wow..

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, I've never seen such correct insight into Australian Constitution Law. It's refreshing when someone actually knows about how something actually works and makes an intelligent comment, especially on Slashdot.

Will you have my babies? :P

Re:Wow..

[markerr]

re: free speech. I sent a Notice to Conroy via mail the other day protesting his filter. In it, I mentioned: "Consequences of an internet filter go against Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as delivered by the United Nations, of which Australia is a member." I could be wrong, but I would have thought as an Australian I do have the right to free speech, as inherited through the United Nations. The UN of course didn't go us the Right, they merely acknowledged what we already (should have) had.

Re:Wow..

[Sqityl]

That's because the Australian constitution is pretty terrible. It doesn't seem to have been proofread either. In one paragraph, it lists New Zealand as a state. See here. On page 8.
The whole thing was just a compromise between the states, it wasn't drawn up with new ideas by idealistic revolutionaries.

Re:Wow..

[YttriumOxide]

The problem is that that reasoning can easily be overturned by anyone with a silver-tongue (hell, a bronze tongue would do it)

"All Australians are guaranteed a right to vote in elections". This is true. However, the second point is where things come undone - "To vote in an election you need to be able to inform yourself". This SHOULD be true, but technically isn't. There's no requirement outlined anywhere that says Australians must make an informed choice in their elections, only that they have the right to vote (and by a stupid law, also are "required" to vote).

So, break down the second point, and the next two go tumbling down. Now, I don't agree with this - I strongly believe of course that in any democracy, everyone should have the right to an informed decision about their vote, but as it stands, no such requirement exists.

Re:Wow..

[Repossessed]

Since when does *any* country pay attention to UN resolutions they don't like?

Re:Wow..

[mabinogi]

That's all a constitution is supposed to be. It's a dry legal document that sets down the framework for how the government is to be run.

A constitution is not the place for laws, it just describes how they're created. It's meta-law.

Also, it doesn't list New Zealand as a state, it lists it as a colony that may be referred to as one of "the states", if at the time in which the document is read, it happens to be a state of the Commonwealth of Australia.
New Zealand was in on the original Federation talks, but backed out.

Re:Wow..

[John Hasler]

> I could be wrong, but I would have thought as an Australian I do have the right to free
> speech, as inherited through the United Nations.

The UN is (fortunately) not a world government: it is just a voluntary association of sovereign national governments. Unless your constitution includes a clause automatically incorporating UN resolutions or the Declaration has otherwise been incorporated into your local law it has nothing to do with you. Do you really think that any politician would support such a thing were it actually binding?

Re:Wow..

[Anonymous Coward]

reasoning can easily be overturned by anyone with a silver-tongue

Just wait until you see what a President Obama will do to the USA. I expect a bunch of dissappointed whinning from all of the fools, blinded by their Bush hatred, who have bought into this message of "Change." Just wait.

Re:Wow..

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh, you should see the internet filters at my school.

"Politics"
"Opinion"
"General News"
"Art/Heritage"

No shit, these are what I deal with every day.

Re:Wow..

[Philip Shaw]

In fact, the AEC publishes a list of legitimate excuses for not voting in an election. One of these refers to a case in the ACT courts, regarding a territorial election. The defendant had recently moved from interstate, and had not been able to get sufficient knowledge of local affairs to make an informed vote, and could therefore not express his preference. Furthermore, you are not required to vote, only to attend the polling booth. You may spoil you ballot papers once you have them. Finally, some (maybe all) states do not require you to vote, provided you have never enrolled to vote in the state. These all invalidate the first point, and my first point overturns the entire arguments and could in theory disenfranchise the person making the claim.

Re:Wow..

[TehPepper]

It costs us if we don't vote.

Attention, Senator Conroy

[Jacques Chester]

You have managed to make Telstra into one of the good guys. This is an unnatural state of affairs. Reality will snap back to normal, and as the man defying it, you may be in for some serious harm.

Re:Attention, Senator Conroy

[NoobixCube]

This may well be the first time in Australian history when Telstra has sided with the rights of it's customers. If anything, their business interest lies in going along with the filtering so they can charge more to maintain it. Of course, in the event it becomes voluntary for ISPs, Telstra don't want to get the wrong end of the public shift to non-filtering ISPs.

Re:Attention, Senator Conroy

[azrebb]

I'm not sure what's worse... The fact you've been modded insightful or... no, I'm confused. Still talking about Telstra? Carry on...

Re:Attention, Senator Conroy

[Barny]

Its got me too, Hackett agreeing with telstra... ... Uh, I think Mr Death and his brothers are over, their here about "the reaping"?

NACK / Do or die

[Anonymous Coward]

Interestingly none of my letters to Conroy or Rudd on this issue have even been acknowledged. It smells like Conroy is going for "do or die" on this one.

Everyone needs to get letters into Rudd on this one. He is a poll driven control freak. If he smells electoral damage (or better still carnage), Rudd will have no hesitation in rolling his communications minister on the issue.

Re:NACK / Do or die

[NoobixCube]

Some say a politician flip-flopping on issues because of public opinion is a bad thing, I say it's democracy at it's most efficient (barely working, and solely at the whim of elected officials who are interested in saving their own arses).

Technical arguments are counter-productive

[QuantumG]

The purpose of this filtering is not to keep child porn away from pedophiles. It's not to keep hard-core porn away from people who wanna whack off. The purpose is to stop Mum and Dad and the kids from stumbling upon this stuff. Sure, if they can stop people who want this stuff from getting it, they'll do that too, but they're happy that they've put some effort into stopping it. Having Customs officers review the contents of video tapes does not stop people from getting this material through the mail, but it does stop some of this material from getting through the mail.. and the slowdown caused by Customs officers is considered acceptable.

Filtering websites with this material is easy. You just force the ISPs to blacklist certain addresses from their DNS, and hire some puritans to maintain the blacklist. No, it isn't perfect, but neither are Customs officers. And it won't even result in much of a slow down.

These technical arguments are being raised by people who are against filtering in principle. They are against censorship and, frankly, so am I! The technical arguments are being raised because these people don't want to enter into a censorship debate. Why? Because they perceive that this ship has already sailed. We've had censorship in Australia for decades, and arguing now that censorship is wrong and the government shouldn't be doing it, is considered by many to be futile.

I disagree. I believe we should be speaking out against censorship. I believe we should be ignoring censorship laws and fighting to have them overturned.

NC = censorship. End censorship now!

Re:Technical arguments are counter-productive

[Jacques Chester]

The technical arguments are not counter-productive. If filtering is technically unviable and the government tries to proceed anyway, then it exposes with great clarity that the motives are not about filtering per se.

Re:Technical arguments are counter-productive

[QuantumG]

But it is viable. I just told you how to do it and anyone with a vague idea of how a DNS server works can see how trivial it is.

Screaming about how "impossible" it is just makes it a challenge.

Re:Technical arguments are counter-productive

[tftp]

The purpose is to stop Mum and Dad and the kids from stumbling upon this stuff.

It's not easy, considering that "this stuff" is at arm's length. That's how people learned "the stuff" before Internet - and apparently it worked just fine.

Re:Technical arguments are counter-productive

[Jacques Chester]

I don't believe that a DNS blacklist is the proposal. More a blacklist + on-the-fly content analysis. That's why the initial tests show massive slowdowns.

The slowdowns and false positives are the technical argument. I think it's still valid to raise for the reason I raised above.

Re:Technical arguments are counter-productive

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, preliminary tests have shown either a massive slowdown (75%) for more accurate scans with less false positives, or a large number of false positives with much less slowdown (2%). This is the filtering type that Conroy wants to put into place.

Re:Technical arguments are counter-productive

[QuantumG]

And distracting people from the real issue - censorship is wrong - is just going to encourage them to solve the technical issues. I'd rather have a broken solution that will get thrown out in the first few months of use than an efficient solution that will actually succeed. If you think censorship is wrong, shut the fuck up about how bad the implementation is. Jesus.

Re:Technical arguments are counter-productive

[QuantumG]

And what I'm saying is that it is trivial to do it well. I think the reason why it is so shit right now is that the only engineers they can find to do anything are mercenaries who don't care about the issue. Everyone who is any good at network engineering is against censorship.

Re:Technical arguments are counter-productive

[Zerth]

DNS blacklists are pointless. I've already memorized the IP addresses of all my favorite sites after a DNS filter was implemented at work.

Re:Technical arguments are counter-productive

[QuantumG]

And that, in no way, makes them pointless.

Re:Technical arguments are counter-productive

[jaa101]

Precisely wrong. The purpose of this filtering _is_ to block kiddie-porn, XXX ... all `illegal to possess' content. We wouldn't care if there was an optional porn filter for the kids but what's come out recently is that there will also be a mandatory filter. Government studies agree that this filtering has false positives, false negatives and a performance impact. They think it's good enough but slashdot types can well imagine that it will be inadequate, ineffective, expensive and slow down and/or break the web for everyone in oz. Our ISPs are against it because they can well imagine how their customers, help desks and ultimately their bottom lines will suffer.

Re:Technical arguments are counter-productive

[Anonymous Coward]

The purpose is to stop Mum and Dad and the kids from stumbling upon this stuff.

If this were true it'd be opt-in only. As it is, it's opt-out and there are parts of it from which one can't opt out.

Anonymous due to mod points

Re:Technical arguments are counter-productive

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.opendns.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDNS

Re:Technical arguments are counter-productive

[deniable]

Actually, the purpose is to make Steve Fielding, the Family (Fascist) First senator, happy enough to vote for Labour's economic agenda. His constituents want to protect the children.

Re:Technical arguments are counter-productive

[baileydau]

Whilst I agree that the whole concept of the government secretly censoring what we access on line is abhorrent, the technical issues regarding performance and accuracy are also real issues to be considered.

Filtering websites with this material is easy. You just force the ISPs to blacklist certain addresses from their DNS, and hire some puritans to maintain the blacklist. No, it isn't perfect, but neither are Customs officers. And it won't even result in much of a slow down.

So to circumvent that system, you could just run your own DNS server.

Also, if the blocking were to be that coarse it would most certainly block many legitimate web sites, just because one section of them was considered undesirable. eg, if one of the 'puritans' took a dislike to a particular video on youtube, we'd loose the entire site. Some may say that's no great loss ...

Re:Technical arguments are counter-productive

[iminplaya]

If you think censorship is wrong, shut the fuck up...

:-) Sorry, just having a bit of fun.

Shut up and start talking .

Re:Technical arguments are counter-productive

[Psychotria]

Hi Quantum, What makes you so sure that a bad solution will be "thrown out in the first few months of use"? The real issue is not that "censorship is wrong" (using your words). The real issue is that a serious attempt is being made to provide a "clean" internet feed--despite the overwhelming technical issues that implies. A blacklist is one thing (and, yes, trivial to implement). This isn't what the government is proposing though. They are proposing some kind of algorithm that will detect dodgy content on the fly. That means that every bit and byte and packet passing through Australin ISPs will get routed through the censoring algorithm. It has nothing to do with DNS.

Re:Technical arguments are counter-productive

[Anonymous Coward]

A DNS blacklist is quite pointless. Just find another server that doesn't use the blacklist, or roll your own.

If anyone starts to block DNS queries based on deep packet inspection, just shove it into an encrypted tunnel.

Re:Technical arguments are counter-productive

[stavros-59]

I don't believe that a DNS blacklist is the proposal. More a blacklist + on-the-fly content analysis. That's why the initial tests show massive slowdowns.

The report indicates that all proposals involve using DPI. So the intentions are much more sinister than the current newsgroup blacklist.

Said blacklist is not published and is exempt from Freedom of Information legislation.

Re:Technical arguments are counter-productive

[blackpaw]

You just force the ISPs to blacklist certain addresses from their DNS

Read the articles - they aren't talking about dns blocking, they're talking about *packet filters* driven by a unknown black list. They will have false positives and they will slow the internet drastically.

Re:Technical arguments are counter-productive

[Barny]

So, we are going to spend over 40M taxpayer dollars + whatever our ISPs are going to charge on top, to make private companies do the job of law enforcement and education?

The big "think of the children" argument falls over quite suddenly, when you ask "what fuckwit thought the internet could ever be safe for children to view unsupervised?"

Yeah yeah, rhetorical question, Mr Conroy of course :P

Re:Technical arguments are counter-productive

[mpe]

The purpose of this filtering is not to keep child porn away from pedophiles. It's not to keep hard-core porn away from people who wanna whack off. The purpose is to stop Mum and Dad and the kids from stumbling upon this stuff.

I very much doubt it is possible to "stumble upon" child porn. As for regular porn this is far more likely to be an issue with email spam. AFAIK this idea is about http(s) however.

Filtering websites with this material is easy. You just force the ISPs to blacklist certain addresses from their DNS, and hire some puritans to maintain the blacklist.

This will probably give you a blacklist suitable for other puritans. It probably won't be right for other people of a prudish nature, even other Christian groups. Different people have different ideas about what is and isn't offensive. At least part of the issue here is that the Australian government may be going for the union rather than the intersection of what various lobby groups (who may not be that representative of the Australian public in the first place).

Re:Technical arguments are counter-productive

[mpe]

And distracting people from the real issue - censorship is wrong - is just going to encourage them to solve the technical issues. I'd rather have a broken solution that will get thrown out in the first few months of use than an efficient solution that will actually succeed.

An effective solution isn't really possible. However even a badly broken system is unlikely to get thrown out in so short a time period. Political backing would tend to turn it into the kind of financial black hole which suck up money in the name of "fixing it".

Re:Technical arguments are counter-productive

[mpe]

The real issue is that a serious attempt is being made to provide a "clean" internet feed--despite the overwhelming technical issues that implies. A blacklist is one thing (and, yes, trivial to implement). This isn't what the government is proposing though. They are proposing some kind of algorithm that will detect dodgy content on the fly. That means that every bit and byte and packet passing through Australin ISPs will get routed through the censoring algorithm.

Thing is that this isn't a "serious attempt" in the real world. There's also the fundermental issue that anyone who could create an AI capable of doing this would have better things to do with their time. As would the AI itself...

Re:Technical arguments are counter-productive

[mpe]

I don't believe that a DNS blacklist is the proposal. More a blacklist + on-the-fly content analysis.

Analysis by machines which are not that smart in the first place...

The slowdowns and false positives are the technical argument.

There are also likely to be all sorts of false negatives. Especially once people find out how to deliberatly trigger them.

Re:Technical arguments are counter-productive

[Dracophile]

The purpose of this filtering is not to keep child porn away from pedophiles. It's not to keep hard-core porn away from people who wanna whack off. The purpose is to stop Mum and Dad and the kids from stumbling upon this stuff.

No, filtering software that is freely available and can be installed on individual computers is designed to do that. Mandatory and secret ISP-level filtering solves an altogether different "problem".

Re:Technical arguments are counter-productive

[zuperduperman]

This is sadly my conclusion as well. If you look at the timeline of when the "optional" filter suddenly changed to "mandatory" you will see that it happened about a week after Fielding had a sudden change of heart and supported most of the government's budget bills such as the changes to the medicare surcharge threshold. The only explanation he gave at the time was that the financial crisis meant people needed an extra tax cut - which made no sense because his whole argument previously was that cutting the threshold would raise health care costs (!). So - my conclusion is that a back room deal happened where Fielding exchanged mandatory filtering (and who knows what else) for letting large swathes of the Rudd agenda through parliament.

This probably means we are screwed in trying to oppose this - they will have to go ahead no matter how bad the trials go.

Re:Technical arguments are counter-productive

[zuperduperman]

> Filtering websites with this material is easy. You just force the ISPs to blacklist certain addresses from their DNS, and hire some puritans to maintain the blacklist. No, it isn't perfect, but neither are Customs officers. And it won't even result in much of a slow down.

No, you can't filter based on IP address. Many (even most) web sites are operated on shared hosting where hundreds of sites live at the same ip address. You have to dip into the protocol layer to at least look at the URLs (that means fully decoding and buffering packets and joining them in a stateful way). I'm not sure how it's even possible when the connection is SSL, but it wouldn't surprise me if they have some horrific way to attempt to do that as well.

Re:Technical arguments are counter-productive

[QuantumG]

I said filtering on DNS. That means blocking slashdot.org, not 216.34.181.48.

The purpose isn't to make it "impossible" or whatever. It's not even to make it "hard". It's to give the general public a filter to shield them from what the government believes the general public wants to be shielded from. If you're in Australia, turn on talk radio. All the stations have had plenty of people call in saying they support the filter. The idiots want censorship. Obviously I'm not one of them, but the point isn't to stop people who want NC material from getting NC material..

Think of it this way.. it's a net nanny filter for adults. The purpose of a net nanny filter isn't to stop kids from getting porn.. they don't even know what it is.. the purpose is to stop them from stumbling upon it. Why would you want a net nanny filter for adults? Beats the hell out of me. Some people think they'll turn into monsters if they accidentally stumble over NC material.

But hey, it's not just stupid Australians who have delusions of internet danger. All the time I hear otherwise intelligent people on this site claiming that people stumble onto child porn. Even though it has never happened to them. It's never happened to me. That said, what has happened to me is stumbling onto hard-core porn. I don't mind, I'm a big boy, but some people think I should be offended, and the law happens to agree with them.

And this is the reason why I'm against the principle here, and think we're barking up the wrong tree talking about technical things. Technical measures to protect people from being offended by the agreed upon standards of "decency" are pretty easy to implement, and arguing about it just diverts people from the real issue.

Re:Technical arguments are counter-productive

[Anonymous Coward]

With services like OpenDNS taking off, the idea of DNS blacklisting will not work.

But then again, nor will what they propose. Considering their OWN REPORT shows it's unworkable and then they try and hide this fact so that they can push it through none-the-less.

This filter is only being pushed to make the government "seem" like it's doing something for Australians. Anything with "blocking child-porn" in the description will get a vote from people regardless of what it actually does.

Sad, sad state of affairs really. Hello China! We are your new best friend!

Re:Technical arguments are counter-productive

[zuperduperman]

Sorry, I did misread you re: DNS vs ip. However, even DNS is still tremendously problematic, especially in the age of Web 2.0 - would you take down all of youtube.com because an illegal video appeared there?

> The purpose isn't to make it "impossible" or whatever. It's not even to make it "hard". It's to give the general public a filter to shield them from what the government believes the general public wants to be shielded from.

No. Here you are wrong and in a very important way. For the purpose of shielding people an optional, opt-out filter would be fine. The core issue here is that they are introducing a "non-optional" filter to cover so-called "illegal" content (I'm not sure what "illegal" is meant to mean here - if it's hosted overseas then it is clearly not "illegal" under Australian law for the content to exist). So this is not about shielding anybody from anything. The only rational argument for the compulsory filter is that it is intended to stop people who want to see content from seeing it. I think the optional filter is stupid but I can live with it. The compulsory filter is a dangerous violation of basic principles of free speech.

Re:Technical arguments are counter-productive

[QuantumG]

The reason you don't understand why their policy is because you're not an idiot. You have to put aside your understanding of free speech to understand where they are coming from. In Australia we have a classification board. It's actually random people, chosen from the community, who are supposed to represent the "reasonable" and general moral decency. These people classify material into advisory and restrictive categories. In the advisory category you material that is considered suitable for everyone. In the restrictive category you have material that is considered only suitable for adults. In addition to this, you have material that is considered not to be suitable for anyone. This material is called "Not Classified" or "NC". People who are saying "illegal material" are referring to NC material.. they're just being non-technical about it. Now, it is assumed that if you don't agree that NC material should be refused classification, then you are an unreasonable person. There is no opt-out for an NC filter because the government does not feel the need to accommodate the wishes of unreasonable people. The argument is: no reasonable person should want to see this material, so there's no need to give an opt-out option. If you want to complain that something has been misclassified, and in-fact should receive a classification, then there's avenues to do that.. but if you want to complain that refusal of classification is, inherently, wrong, then sorry, you're being unreasonable.

I hope you can see, there's no arguing with these people. We need to attack the root concept here, that people have a right to not be offended.. or, to put it another way, that people don't have the right to cause offense.

Re:Technical arguments are counter-productive

[badkarmadayaccount]

My triple-proxy-routed UUCP-enabled custom shell script browser respectfully disagrees with you.

Re:Technical arguments are counter-productive

[Philip Shaw]

You use UUCP for surfing porn! Someone's phone company must love you!

Proxy versus proxy hunter arms race

[mlts]

Just like DRM, all this filtering will do is cause trouble with the honest users.

The real criminals will just use a VPN, perhaps a VPN over port 80 so it can't be distinguished from SSL traffic without deep packet inspection.

Does the Aussie government want to try to play this arms race? There is little to be gained, assuming they want to remain an open society.

Re:Proxy versus proxy hunter arms race

[zappepcs]

That is exactly what I was thinking. This arms race can escalate pretty damned fast, and at little cost to the user's fighting the filtering. Every time the Australian government has to rebuild or reinforce their great firewall/filter it will cost them money.

Judging from what they decided to implement, it's painfully clear that they won't have the savvy to keep up with the arms race. In effect they have created a great money pit. Some wise Australians should watch to see where the contract money goes and how much is sunk into this steaming pit.

I'm sure some enterprising tech savvy Australian already has set up a tunnel to some other country and is slowly spidering the Internet to see what is being filtered. Hopefully this/these person(s) will find a lot of false positives with which to complain vociferously about the problem.

There are likely to be quite a few sites willing to host the comparison results from such activity including caches of pages that are filtered, which should in turn make many of them viewable again inside Australia's filter system. OOoooops, guess that might be illegal? hmmmmmm Wonder if anyone will do it?

Re:Proxy versus proxy hunter arms race

[freedom_india]

Time to put up a few spycams in EVERY MP's bedroom and car plus spycams in the dingo house called parliment and to broadcast it 24x7 on the 'net.
After all if i have nothing to hide why worry is their argument, so apply it to them!
Once a few MPs are SPitzer'ed then the law will be gone.
Until then the law stays.
Which aussie wants to volunteer?

Re:Proxy versus proxy hunter arms race

[Zontar The Mindless]

Doesn't the ABC broadcast the proceedings of Parliament? They seemed to be doing that all the time when I lived there. (Usually when there was supposed to be something on that I actually wanted to watch.)

Re:Proxy versus proxy hunter arms race

[Anonymous Coward]

http SSL traffic is on port 443 by default not 80.

but true, free proxies like ultravpn use 80 and 443, along with 22 and 21 for their vpn tunnels.

That's what we have been using in dubai for a couple of years now.
And you don't need to be a criminal to use a VPN, just a regular Skype or SIP user, or have a hi5.com account, which are all blocked with the UAE and most other gulf countries.

Re:Proxy versus proxy hunter arms race

[mpe]

Time to put up a few spycams in EVERY MP's bedroom and car

Please don't stop with Aussie MPs :)

plus spycams in the dingo house called parliment

I hope there are no dingos (or domestic dogs) with lawyers. They are going to be highly insulted being compared with MPs.

and to broadcast it 24x7 on the 'net.

As well as scope for some "reality shows".

After all if i have nothing to hide why worry is their argument, so apply it to them!
Once a few MPs are SPitzer'ed then the law will be gone.

Unless Australian MPs are very well behaved it probably wouldn't last a month.

Re:Proxy versus proxy hunter arms race

[freedom_india]

Month??? You are highly optimistic.
Most of these MTF visit the legal whore houses daily to spend OUR money.
All of them should be outed out, and thrown out of their repossessed houses with no money.

Re:Proxy versus proxy hunter arms race

[Anonymous Coward]

You probably mean port 443, "https"...

Re:Proxy versus proxy hunter arms race

[zobier]

Neither VPN or SSL traffic can be DPIed.

Re:Proxy versus proxy hunter arms race

[mlts]

True. However, if a SSL connection is persistent over a long time (hours) to a known or suspected proxy site, to a watcher/censor that is watching the connection, it can mean that its just a PPTP connection over port 443, and perhaps can be throttled or killed and the name/IP/port blocked.

Generally, Web traffic over SSL consists of setups and teardowns unless the the client and the web server support persistent connections. Even then, the connections will be brief to grab a home page or two, and usually not more than a minute unless the connection is slow, or someone is uploading/downloading a large file. If the connection stays up for a long time like days, and there is a bunch of traffic, its likely a VPN, perhaps a VPN carrying bulk traffic.

Wont last long

[speeDDemon (nw)]

The funny thing is, it will only take one "story" on a "current affairs" program showing how hardcore porn and such is still easily accessible for the whole policy to come crashing down around the Rudd governments head.

Re:Wont last long

[QuantumG]

Current affairs programs in Australia are a joke. Literally, respected journalists make jokes about them. No-one cares what the fucktards at Today Tonight have to say.

Re:Wont last long

[jamesh]

No-one cares what the fucktards at Today Tonight have to say.

Don't get me started on that show. I hate it. When I watch it (eg when it happens to be on when i'm in the room), I get really really angry about stuff, until I very quickly realize I've been sucked in, and then I get angry about that. And then I get angry about the people who will be watching and maybe haven't yet realized they've been sucked in. Then only time I actually enjoy watching it is when their reporters get attacked (eg physically punched) for getting in someone's face, and then act all innocent about it. I prefer to turn the tv off at that time of night, but i'm not the only one in the house...

Anyway, you don't care what they say on that show, and I don't care, but if nobody was watching it then the advertising dollars would go away and the show would soon follow, so unfortunately a great many someones somewhere are watching it.

Now if there was a medium that needed more censorship, tv is it. I quite happy seeing boobs and other stuff on TV, but for fscks sake please apply a stupidity filter to our current affairs shows!!!

Re:Wont last long

[Nazlfrag]

Things are much better over at ACA though.

Re:Wont last long

[azrebb]

As sad as the situation is, he is correct. The internet (which they want to filter) is the last/only place for independent news...

Re:Wont last long

[aaron alderman]

Coming up on Today Tonight:

Lebanese dole bludging Muslim terrorists with fat children who trash their rented homes are getting Chinese breast implants infected with lead from a dodgy unlicensed doctor.

Re:Wont last long

[John Hasler]

Wouldn't that just result in calls for "renewed enforcement" and "better tools" (i.e. more legislation)?

Re:Wont last long

[mpe]

Current affairs programs in Australia are a joke. Literally, respected journalists make jokes about them. No-one cares what the fucktards at Today Tonight have to say.

Except the "respected journalists", so they can make fun of it and presumably the production crew, otherwise they wouldn't bother/reclassify it as comedy.

Re:Wont last long

[Anonymous Coward]

Correction - The "Current Affairs" programs on the commercial networks are a joke.

The 7.30 Report and 4 Corners (both on ABC) are still respectable programs.

Re:Wont last long

[eniacfoa]

tonight on TODAY TONIGHT - The shonky builder, drink driver, road rager and pervert who just keeps getting away with it...The police havent done anything, but today tonight's crew decided to inform you about this low life..... OMG we have the crappiest media...Especially in political debate...

Re:Wont last long

[mjwx]

Current affairs programs in Australia are a joke. Literally, respected journalists make jokes about them.

Working with several respected Australian journalists, that's true. Also any journo with an ounce of self respect left has gone to work in the Corporate Communications/Marketing arena as its become far more honest than working for any of Australia's news agencies.

No-one cares what the fucktards at Today Tonight have to say.

Unfortunately that's not true. Today Tonight and their ilk pander to the dumbest members of Australian society (Puritans, the Big Brother audience, ETC...), and they tend to lap up whatever crap they're fed.

We have nothing to worry about then

[GFree678]

If there are "detailed technical, legal and ethical reasons why ISP-level filtering won't work", well then it can't be implemented can it.

The Government can't force ISPs to do the impossible without taking control over the Australian Internet infrastructure itself.

Re:We have nothing to worry about then

[Chandon Seldon]

If there are "detailed technical, legal and ethical reasons why ISP-level filtering won't work", well then it can't be implemented can it.

ISP-level filtering won't work. That in no way implies that the government can't mandate some sort of horrible kludge that breaks everything (without successfully filtering).

ISP's, how interesting

[digitalchinky]

Michael Malone personally banned me from iinet after I said I didn't want his spam sent to my iinet email address any longer. According to him I was the only one out of his entire customer base who complained about the advertising. He even drove up country to come visit me at my home because, in his words, I was 'causing them a lot of costly problems' (In the form of a simple 'opt-in' switch to continue receiving their corporate propaganda)

Meh, I call bullshit to this little pony show video anyway. The ISP's will cry a river saying it'll never work, the government will say 'ok, we'll pay for it then you frigging cry babies.'

The end result will be the federal government shoving in a few Sun boxes at public expense in various little choke points across the country, the ISP's keep their mouths shut about it all, and ASIO suddenly has a lot less need for their employees to be chained to federal crime authority as they run around swinging warrants and subpoenas - DSD will then recall all their worker drones from the ASIO basement, and life goes on. New overlord laws are set in motion never to be repealed, government gets to spy on its populous and live happily ever after.

I no longer live in Australia.

Re:ISP's, how interesting

[QuantumG]

All ISP traffic used to go through the University of Queensland's Prentice Hall. The ASIO office there was the biggest in the state. They're mandated to monitor all communications in and out of the country. Only naive people think they don't.

Re:ISP's, how interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

I call bullshit. That sounds like typical sandstone propaganda to me. Let me guess, you were an 18 year old newbie and some lecturer/tutor was trying to impress you guys. I wouldn't be too upset, the school of medicine used to try and feed us similar bullshit.

And \.'ers want Gov' Regulation of the Net

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet Slashdoters are screaming for government regulation of the Internet, via the Net Neutrality.
The problem with that is Net Neutrality is the spoonful of sugar to make the regulation go down.

Government regulation for net neutrality will allow government regulation of what you can do or watch/read/write.
It will allow regulation of political opinion, much like the Fairness Doctrine.

Censorship, and you're screaming for it.

Re:And \.'ers want Gov' Regulation of the Net

[toriver]

The two are not comparable. Net Neutrality is the opposite since it aims to prevent "censorship" in the form of extorting money from content providers, or for that matter "lock" the customer to the ISP's own content.

It's sort of like the government regulation that ensures the radio you bought actually works when you get home because all the power outlets are compatible with it regarding physical and electrical properties, and the government regulation that ensures that you can use a washing machine without getting interference on the TV.

Hardball?

[maz2331]

If they REALLY hate it that much, just turn off the routers until the .gov relents.

Re:Hardball?

[azrebb]

Never fear, we have the man power and the resources to make this new policy a nightmare. We all just want to avoid that situation...

I mentioned this a few days ago.

[kaos07]

http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1012207&cid=25565869

"Regarding the Australian filter, it doesn't look like it's going to happen.

The Green party and the Liberal party are both going to block the legislation in the Upper House. Their numbers combined are enough to stop the bill from passing.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2008/10/30/1224956188036.html

The Greens don't get much of their other policies talked about very much, besides the environment, but they have the most pro-Slashdot internet platform out of any political party. By that I mean they support open standards, net-neutrality and internet freedom (no censorship). They also want the government to embrace open source and all government documents to saved in an open document standard."

Re:I mentioned this a few days ago.

[Xiroth]

Yeah, it looks like the Greens are morphing into a genuine leftist party rather than the few-issue party they used to be. With any luck, they'll pick up more power in the Senate - and maybe even some House of Reps seats - before too long. While I personally wouldn't want them in power, having the option of a centre-left, centre, or centre-right party come election time would definitely be a good thing for political choice in this country.

Re:I mentioned this a few days ago.

[dbIII]

The Liberal Party wanted this previously and will unfortunately only vote against it if they want to create mischief. They have a deliberately misleading name - remember this is that party that the infamous racist Pauline Hanson was in - they are really the Australian decendants of the UK Tory party with a few unfortunate local twists. Also it can be argued that their current leader bought his way into a safe seat and his current position, that's the sort of people they are. As the last decade showed their only real goals are incumbancy and selling off government assets to the advantage of themselvews and their freinds (eg. the AWB selloff resulted in a lot of senior members of the former government owning a part of it which created major conflicts of interest when AWB then bribed Saddam). Most of them can not be relied upon to do anything in the best interest of the country or of their electorate.

Re:I mentioned this a few days ago.

[deniable]

The Greens look to be turning into what the Democrats used to be before they imploded. They'll pick up steam until they get a leader who gets into bed with the government (Kernot/Evans) or start making deals (Lees) or starts looking like a nut-job (Stott-Despoja.)

Re:I mentioned this a few days ago.

[srjh]

There's a fairly good chance that this will be scrapped, but I wouldn't be too comfortable.

On whirlpool (www.whirlpool.net.au, a broadband discussion forum in Australia), people have been posting the canned responses they've been receiving from politicians after writing to them.

The Greens seem to have a lukewarm opposition to the plan (I received a letter from Bob Brown's office implying that they would go for it if a full opt-out was available... better than what they have now, but still an idiotic plan), and the Liberals are taking a "wait and see" approach, i.e. if it is technically possible, they'll go for it. Remember, it was the Liberals that tried to get filters in first, they just dropped the idea when they realised it wouldn't work. Although everyone in the industry, and I assume almost everyone here on slashdot, knows it will fail, if Labor can spin any of the trials as a victory, there's a remote chance it will stick if we don't make our opposition known.

It's a touchy issue for Labor, and I wouldn't be surprised if they're looking for an excuse to drop it. For those who aren't intimately aware of Australian politics, our current government is in a minority position in the Senate - to pass legislation, they need the support of the main opposition party (the Liberal/National coalition), or ALL of the minor party senators. This includes the Greens, but more importantly "Family First", a fundamentalist Christian party who have been the strongest advocates for a filter, and who want to use the filter to ban pornography outright. So to get legislation through the Senate, the government needs to bribe Family First, and they're doing that with this filter. If it doesn't look like Labor is trying to ban pornography, they'll be blocked in the Senate for the next three years.

Re:I mentioned this a few days ago.

[Anonymous Coward]

Once upon a time they were liberal, but not anymore. I used to think they were the conservative party, though it seems that Labor has equal claim to that label now.

Re:I mentioned this a few days ago.

[srjh]

We're getting a bit off-topic here, but the Greens have had a social conscience for quite some time. Part of the reason the Democrats imploded was because they tried to pass themselves off as a left-wing clone of the Greens instead of the watchdog party they were traditionally known as. Of course, after getting into bed with the government (as you say), their role as a watchdog wasn't taken too seriously to begin with.

Re:I mentioned this a few days ago.

[SQL Error]

The Liberal Party wanted this previously and will unfortunately only vote against it if they want to create mischief.

The Liberals had already reached the conclusion that it was untenable and dropped it. It took a while, but they did come to their senses.

They have a deliberately misleading name

What, since 1944?

remember this is that party that the infamous racist Pauline Hanson was in

No, I don't remember that. Pauline Hanson was kicked out of the Liberal party before even standing for her first election as an MP.

None of which is in any way relevant, because this legislation is being introduced by Labor and has been very publically opposed by the Liberals. You can take your counterfactual grudges elsewhere.

Re:I mentioned this a few days ago.

[baileydau]

No, I don't remember that. Pauline Hanson was kicked out of the Liberal party before even standing for her first election as an MP.

That's sort of correct, but not completely. She was nominated as a Liberal and was still noted as such on the ballot paper as she was only disendorsed just before the election.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauline_Hanson

Just prior to the election, Hanson made comments to The Queensland Times - a daily newspaper in Ipswich - advocating the abolition of special government assistance for Aborigines above what was available for other Australians. These comments led to her disendorsement by the Liberal Party during the campaign. However, ballot papers had already been printed listing Hanson as the Liberal candidate, and the Australian Electoral Commission had closed nominations for the seat. As a result, Hanson was still listed as the Liberal candidate when votes were cast.

Hanson subsequently won the election easily, with 54 percent of preferences going to the coalition.[2]

Re:I mentioned this a few days ago.

[jnnnnn]

Well, I guess I'll be voting for the Greens then.

It'll be nice to vote for someone with a chance of winning; previously it's always had to be independents.

Re:I mentioned this a few days ago.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Liberal" and "Conservative" don't actually mean what American politics tries to force the rest of the world to think they mean.

Re:I mentioned this a few days ago.

[Anonymous Coward]

We do have quite a history of independents being elected, mostly to the Senate such as Nick Xenophon at the moment. No need to stop voting for them straight away. The greens might be a little too far left for you, you really should investigate their policies more broadly before commiting to them. They are more red than green.

Sol is OK

[barv]

Telstra's boss has the unenviable job of trying to pay dividends to all those shareholders that Howard foisted Australia's teleco onto. So although I think Telstra's prices are too high, I recognize that Sol provides technical ability with a quality product.

As Sol says, censorship is presently too hard. Also, my concern is it is dangerous to democracy. China probably manages it's censorship by blocking everything, then having about 10,000 Chinese censors reading & approving webpages, and if they pass a page as OK, then that URL/IP is unblocked. (well maybe that's a bit of hyperbole, but you get the idear.)

The problem is, sooner or later intelligent censorship software will reach the public domain (I assume NSA already has something that would do the job, like it had the RSA algorithm for a decade before it reached the public domain). If intelligent software were doing the censorship, then the censor could effortlessly block whatever thoughts they prescribed from network communications.

It's necessary to have this fight asap. If we lose now, we may well have lost the war.

Critics of the policy

[iminplaya]

"also say that users will have no way to know what's being filtered."

Well jeeze! Isn't that the intention? Why would the government want anybody "watching the watchman"? Supreme authority is the preferred idea here, no? "Turn off that camera!"

Non-story

[Anonymous Coward]

Look, I've said this last 20 times this came up on Slashdot: this is not an issue.

Sure, we need to raise awareness of how stupid the idea is, but it's not actually going to pass through parliament because the Australian Greens hold enough senate seats to block it, and are extremely critical of the bill (considering net neutrality is one of their main policies).

Stop hyping this up, Slashdot. We're not Britain.

Re:Non-story

[Anonymous Coward]

Until the govt actually come out and say they've not going to do it anymore, it's best to keep it in the spotlight as much as possible.

And in related news...

[therufus]

...for the first time in history, Australian ISP and telecommunications company Telstra have done something right. After blindly ripping off consumers and having anti-competitive monopolistic policy, Telstra have done something completely uncharacteristic - they supported their customers.

Stay tuned for news at 11, where we report that hell has indeed frozen over.

Debate rages on in the Australian Broadband Com...

[WTW - WP]

The debate has been raging for over 7 months on the Australian Broadband Community web site www.whirlpool.net.au See: http://whirlpool.net.au/wiki/?tag=cleanfeed Current debate: http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1079347 Many Australians have taken to using their graphic design skills to get their message out. See: Posters and Stickers here http://www.bbinternet.info/content/view/8/7/ It has been the governments attempt to mussel the debate by industry leader, Mark Newton, that has really fired up the community. Cheers WTW

a shell script

[doktorjayd]

#!/bin/bash

$> ssh -L80:www.kiddieporn.com:80 my.overseas.host.com &
$> cat "127.0.0.1 www.kiddieporn.com" >> /etc/hosts
$> firefox www.kiddieporn.com &

$> echo " what filter? "

Re:a shell script

[kayditty]

I just get some boring site about protecting children. why would anyone filter that?

Re:a shell script

[doktorjayd]

ha!

s/kiddieporn/someotherdomain/g

i presume you respond in jest, but clearly what is being proposed is technically flawed, unless of course they declare ssh or any other tls protocol illegal and block such connections.

Re:a shell script

[alecwood]

Or maybe just use another piece of legislation to prosecute those who use it for what they suspect are nefarious purposes

For example, in the UK you can be demanded to provide the passwords for any encrypted material on the say so of an officer of a dozen or more agencies including the police. Jail tariffs are stiff for anyone not complying with such a request. Incidentally, it is also illegal to divulge that such a request has been made to any third party, and no material evidence of the presence of encrypted material, or the nature of its content, is required beyond the agency concerned having reason to believe that such material may exist.

It would be easy to say that a particular use of SSH fell under those criteria, and that the defendant having failed to provide a decrypted version of that session on demand, was therefore a terrorist.

Muslims

[Anonymous Coward]

When discussing this with proponents of these laws, let them ramble on for a while and then ask them what they would think about this law if it was a muslim country implementing this.

Use Crelm toothpast

[jonaskoelker]

Use Crelm toothpaste, with the secret ingredient Fraudulin. It's the he most effective way to fight

• Tooth Decay
• Gum Disease
• Iternational Fascism

Fascism has a domino effect: once we restore liberty and democracy to the US, the rest will fall like dominoes.

Use Crelm toothpaste, or a well-regulated American militia (being necessary to the security of the free state), to fight fascism.

(apt-get install miscfiles to get /usr/share/state/us-constitution.gz)

Re:Use Crelm toothpast

[Anonymous Coward]

Just out of interest, who does the regulating?

hardworking Australians

[Anonymous Coward]

giving it back to hardworking Australians.

If you can find any.

Shared hosting

[tepples]

DNS blacklists are pointless. I've already memorized the IP addresses of all my favorite sites after a DNS filter was implemented at work.

But if your web browser just sends the IP address in the Host: header, how will you get to those sites that are on name-based virtual hosting?

Re:Shared hosting

[Zerth]

telnet. I don't want it showing up in my browser history, either. It'd make them suspicious.

Plus, if I was using an open source browser, I imagine it wouldn't be to hard to change the address bar to accept a host name, much like the :port or @username:password functionality.

Wake up! Take action!

[a.ameri]

The only reason a government can get away with this is if we, the citizens, don't act, and let our liberties gradually slip away.

If you are an Australian, please take action:

1) Call Senator Conroy's office on 03 9650 1188. Do not be rude, do not swear, just in a very reasoned and rational voice, express your disapproval, and in a few short sentences, say why you disagree. It matters a lot.

2) Write a letter to Senator Conroy, make sure it's between half a page to one page (no more than 400 words). Again, in a polite tone (that doesn't have to be formal, and doesn't have to have letterhead, etc., just your name and address) let him know why you disagree with him. His address is:
Senator Stephen Conroy
Level 4, 4 Treasury Place
Melbourne Vic 3002

3) Write a letter to your local MP. It doesn't matter what party he/she is from, Liberals will use your letter to back up their claims in Question Time, which gives publicity to the whole issue and will bring it to mainstream media's attention. Labor members will also express their criticism, privately, to him. This specially matters if your local MP is a Minister and serves in the Cabinet. To find out who your local MP is click here

4) Write a letter to Prime Minister Rudd. Let him know that when the Australian people voted him in office last year, they didn't know "Education Revolution" means censorship. Rudd's address is:
PO Box 6022
House of Representatives
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600

5) Donate or become a member of Electronic Frontiers Australia . Right now the EFA is the sole organisation fighting this. They need all the help they can get.

6) Write a letter to your ISP. It doesn't matter if it's the Evil Telstra; on this, we're all together. They are fighting the battle for us right now, but it would help them to know that what they are doing is a good business practice, that you expect them to fight this to the end.

Don't just sit around and do nothing and then complain about how evil governments are. We, the citizens are the ones who allow governments to become evil, by our political apathy. Move! Take Action! Now!

Re:Wake up! Take action!

[Dracophile]

Well, I've written my letters and I will put them in tomorrow's post (it's Sunday). How 'bout everyone else?

Re:Wake up! Take action!

[Ash-Fox]

Well, I've written my letters and I will put them in tomorrow's post (it's Sunday). How 'bout everyone else?

I don't live in Australia.

Re:Wake up! Take action!

[Dracophile]

Well, I've written my letters and I will put them in tomorrow's post (it's Sunday). How 'bout everyone else?

I don't live in Australia.

Consider the (rhetorical) question suitably modified.

Re:Wake up! Take action!

[phaic tan]

or just try and get a photo of Senator Fielding coming out of one of those special public toilets that don't actually exist in this god fearing land ... That'll stop it sone dead.

and here's the coming conundrum...

[Anonymous Coward]

If everything is filtered, then they are gonna have shitloads of trouble pinning stuff on people in court. See, all you will have to do is argue thus:

"As the gov is filtering all the illegal stuff out, I thought everything that I found on the internet is legal. If it isn't, why do they allow it?".

Their only answer at that point would be to claim that their filtering doesn't work.

Some smartarse playing totally stupid along with a cunning legal eagle will make for a hell of a show.

No way to know?

[nurb432]

I have to disagree.. If i look for x or y, and its not there, i know something is up.

There is a simple solution

[thogard]

Every ISP in Australia needs to null route the ALP's web site until they see the light.

Re:There is a simple solution

[laptop006]

No, no, just redirect all traffic to that, and any other pro-filter sites to a web page saying "pre-emptivly blocked due to proposed legislation, catagory - hate speech".

...and were suddenly silenced

[simplerThanPossible]

It's easy to explain the problem with filtering the internet, China-style. One symptom is the silence of the mainstream media in Australia (reports have been from blogs and other countries...).

The real, underlying problem is obvious as soon as you say *********.

Re:...and were suddenly silenced

[alecwood]

I think the current government might regard that as more of an advantage than a problem.

That's right - what Australia needs is

[Anonymous Coward]

FOX News, Hannity, and the O'Reilly Factor.

Re:It will ruin the politicians involved

[Gumbercules!!]

The reality is, this wasn't an advertised policy. This is back-door politics. This government was voted in and then brought this crap out of the closet.