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Largest Aussie ISP Agrees To "Ridiculous" Net-Filter Trial

Posted by timothy on from the may-you-get-what-you-desire dept.

Klootzak writes "Michael Malone, head of Australia's largest ISP iiNet announced today that his company would sign up to the Government's live trials of the Great Firewall of Australia. In an article published by The Age, Mr Malone is quoted calling Stephen Conroy 'The worst Communications Minister we've had in the 15 years since the [internet] industry has existed.' Despite at first giving the impression that iiNet is rolling over like a good Government puppy the article quotes Mr Malone saying that the reasons for participating in this trial is to show how unfeasible and stupid it is — Quoted from the article: 'Every time a kid manages to get through this filter, we'll be publicizing it and every time it blocks legitimate content, we'll be publicizing it.' Let's hope that in typical fashion of government-instigated Internet-filtering that this stupid idea is just as useless, inefficient and ineffectual as the last one, and that the Australian Government realizes this before wasting more taxpayer dollars on it (seeing as the first attempt only cost taxpayers $84,000,000)."

7 of 231 comments (clear)

  1. Oh no... by hopejr · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ... iiNet is my ISP!!! It will be interesting to see what happens, and what sites get blocked. I like Mick's idea about doing it to show how unfeasible it is, just hope it won't sour iiNet's reputation. Their already overrun support lines may end up getting worse.

    1. Re:Oh no... by srjh · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I'm with iiNet and I fully support Malone's plan to continue with the trial. Reading his comments, it's perfectly clear that he is opposed to the filter and that he doesn't think Senator Conroy is playing with a full deck. The internet industry has been telling him all year that his plan will never work, and he continues to ignore and harass them. The only way to bury the plan once and for all is to get it out in the open and let the spectacular failure of the filter be visible to all.

      At the moment, 90% of the politicians don't understand the issue (clearly including Senator Conroy), 90% of the public hasn't heard of it, and the Labor party just keeps parroting the same bullshit about protecting children whenever someone objects to the filter on technical or censorship grounds. Nevermind the fact that even if the filter is a perfect list of kiddy-porn websites, when it leaks, they've just provided the most comprehensive list of such websites to the entire online community.

      When the test goes live, I'll opt-in to the kiddy filter and complain when I still see some naughty bits. I'll find the sites that have been accidentally blocked (there is no doubt that there will be some, the government's own tests showed that between 2% and 8% of the internet will be accidentally blocked), and complain when I can't reach them. I'll complain when the ~30% speed penalty hits. I'll find every flaw that everyone in the industry is predicting, and complain at every step.

      The government is conducting a test, and we need to let them know it failed by demonstrating the failure ourselves. If the only people participating in the test are people naive enough to want ISP-level filtering to begin with, the problems won't be revealed and Conroy gets his pet censorship project through.

    2. Re:Oh no... by phyrz · · Score: 3, Interesting

      iiNet is a good ISP. They were the first to support ADSL2 by installing their own DSLAMs (at least in West Oz), they were the first to trial naked DSL. They help push the industry forward. If it wasn't for these types of ISPs we would still be paying $50 / month for 512k / 5gig.

      Also I appreciate the fact that MM built the company from his garage like a true geek. Also they were the first to offer TCP/IP.

      Not to say that iiNet doesn't have some bad moments, but they are far from the worst in Australia.

      They really hate this firewall crap, and have been one of the biggest voices against it.

      --
      Don't point that gun at him, he's an unpaid intern!
    3. Re:Oh no... by lysergic.acid · · Score: 4, Interesting

      if they have a list of all the kiddie porn sites on the web, why don't they just go after the site owners? even if the sites are hosted overseas, there are very few countries in the world that tolerate that sorta thing, and with a little international pressure it shouldn't be too hard to get their own governments to shut them down.

      if the RIAA can get the Swedish government to illegally shut down the pirate bay and seize their equipment, i'm sure it'd be no problem for the Australian government to pressure other governments to go after their own kiddie porn sites.

  2. "Filter advocates need to check their facts" by apathy+maybe · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Mark Newton (of Internode, not the same mob as this story is about) has an opinion piece on the ABC (which I submitted to Slashdot, but still pending...), entitled Filter advocates need to check their facts.

    In my observation, it's obvious that the debate has polarised into two camps. One of them is largely populated by people who know what they're talking about and who mostly oppose the ALP's censorship plan;

    The other camp includes people who just make lots of mistakes; including Senator Conroy, who claimed that Sweden, the UK, Canada and New Zealand all have similar filter systems as are being proposed.

    ----

    Anyway, if Conroy is the worst minister, that's pretty damn bad. After all, Richard Alston, Daryl Williams and Helen Coonan were all communications minister under Johny sticken Howard.

    According to Wikipedia, Alston tried "to ban online gambling, and make email forwarding illegal, he was dubbed 'the world's biggest luddite'. [1]".

    Maybe this "representative" thing isn't all it's cracked up to be? Anyone up for some Demarchy?

    --
    I wank in the shower.
  3. Re:What a scam by nurb432 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Anyone that has traffic on lets say... port 22 is *obviously* getting around it and will have their name paraded as a violator.

    --
    ---- Booth was a patriot ----
  4. Re:What a scam by Fex303 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The thing is there's no motivation for them to screw us over. iiNet are out to make money, and filtering is just going to be a massive problem/money hole for them. Sucking up the government won't get them anything because of the telco situation here.

    So iiNet are taking the long term view that being seen as 'the guys who stopped the filtering' will be seen as a positive for their brand and mean when people ask their local geek who they should get their interwebs from said geek will be more likely to suggest iiNet.