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Australia Says No to Internet Censorship
Brenton Fletcher writes "A nationwide protest rally against the internet censorship filter proposed by the Australian Labor Government was held today. Over 9,000 people were slated to attend. I was fortunate enough to go to the rally on the steps of Parliament House in Adelaide, South Australia. I heard speeches from the Digital Liberty Coalition, the Green Left Weekly, and other concerned members of the public." Reader mask.of.sanity adds a link to ComputerWorld's photo-heavy coverage of the gatherings.
By raising a big, public stink about it, all that has been done is to teach the politicians that they need to sneak this through the next time -- either by hiding it within some broader "anti-terrorism" or "think of the children" bill, or by passing it before the public can get wind of it. This is the main failure of legislative bodies -- a given bill can be put up for a vote repeatedly (maybe worded a bit differently) or integrated into something larger that is difficult to oppose. It can face any number of deaths in committee, or beat-downs when held to a vote, and it doesn't die. Yet it takes only one passing vote to put it on the books forever.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
http://nocleanfeed.com/ - i personally have not been and likely never will go to australia, but if you are a citizen, you would be hurting the rest of the world if you didn't help fight censorship. keep on trucking, aussies.
Incredible showing of people and protest. That % of people rallying behind anything is sure to make a change!
/. doesn't support that tag, pity really.
I'd type in the sarcastic font but
I haven't been back home for almost 5 years, but it saddens me to see that only 7000 people were in protest.
Come on, there was 1/2 a million for the anti Iraq rallies, I guess since the public couldn't stop the government on that one they just can't be bothered anymore.
I never realised Australia had a problem with an over controlling government until I moved to Europe.
Something has to be done before you all just give up all of your rights!
....... /
depend upon your defeatist attitude to make sure opposition is muted
i mean seriously, wtf: "all that has been done is to teach the politicians that they need to sneak this through the next time"
really? all of our representatives are programmed androids? they aren't people like you and me?
"Yet it takes only one passing vote to put it on the books forever"
forever? seriously?
look, your attitude is part of the problem
a legislature is a representation of the will of the people. does the people's will get warped? absolutely. does it get betrayed? absolutely. but not all the time, and not forever. if the right thing is ever going to get done, defeatist attitudes that accept bullshit, like yours, must be destroyed just as much as bad legislators need to be brought down
yeah, really: you're part of the problem
ultranegative, ultracynical attitudes are the beginning of acceptance of the crap you complain about
i don't accept this bullshit
by your words, YOU DO
change your retarded atittude, pronto
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
What amuses me about this censorship is the fundamental lack of understanding of the Internet as it stands today.
There is a perception that it is websites that contain the kinds of material to be blocked, and for some countries, the conversations to prevent.
Whats wrong with this? Online games, that's what. Even at this early stage its possible for people to meet in groups online in games and talk.
mummorpegers are becoming more complex as time rolls on, and with them, the ways in which players can interact. My son does all his online chatting in game, or through things like steams speech comms.
Can these be censored? Not easily, if at all, about the best the can do is prevent swearing, and that assumes a list of pre-established stop words. Apply censorship more complex than swear filters to online games and you kill them, because the costs of administering the censorship would outstrip the money to be made, or dent it so much as to make it non viable.
Then there's the fact that not all online games are run by conveniently visible corporations, a trend also likely to continue.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
Hey, I do have an answer for this -- sunset clauses. They should work both ways and be MANDATORY.
Propose measure X, with a sunset clause of five years. If it passes, it has to be re-passed after those five years or it goes away. On the flip side, if it makes it to a vote and is defeated, it CANNOT BE PROPOSED AGAIN for five years. This should stop legislators from trying to bite off more than they can chew. Laws confirmed to be a good idea can be given longer sunset clauses the second time around -- say up to some multiple of the original. If it can get passed a third time, then some "cap limit" such as 99 years would come into play.
But do you think the legislatures would actually want to DO this? It would require them to not only pass laws, but to examine and renew those that have already been passed... and that would be WORK!
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
"Over 9,000 people were slated to attend" Slated to attend? That's not even English, it's barely bad journalese. It seems to be a way to avoid saying "25 people attended, with 2 crappy banners, and nobody cares. We'd better make up some shit so we don't look totally ineffectual".
No, the senator pushing for this is the "family" party. The majority party, in order to get his support, decided to go with him on this... to my understanding, anyway...
Your understanding is incorrect. This is ALP's baby - though it's true that Family First would like to ban "hard-core pornography" altogether. Libs are not much better (and are only likely to oppose it for their own political reasons - there's no driving principle of free speech, etc)
This has less to do with "religious nutters" (of any persuasion) and more to do with control. The problem with politicians (on all sides), is that they just love to control people... they'll say they believe in freedom of choice, but only if you make what they consider the "right" choices.
Even people opposed to the censorship law include socialist mobs like Green Left Weekly... hardly a pro-freedom movement.
One of the reasons for poor turn-out is that I have not seen even ONE news report, nor newspaper article on this. The only information regarding this has purely been on slashdot, computerworld, and a couple of youtube videos. How can people protest something if they don't know what is going on? I certain that there are many other people who would protest this, but they don't even know that it is happening behind their backs
>>>We had forgotten how much of irresponsible populists the Labor party are.
They don't sound like populists. They certainly aren't listening to the people demanding "no censorship".
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
And anyway, why shouldn't religious groups contribute to political parties, just like any other group?
Because people who believe in completely asinine shit dreamed up by scientifically ignorant folks three thousand years ago simply because a) it's what their parents believed, b) some narrow sliver of the dogma fills a spiritual need in them, and/or c) it is politically convenient to do so, are arguably dangerously irrational and should be barred from influencing government?
Seriously, this ancient religion shit is a cancer. There's nothing wrong with spirituality, but when you start getting your moral lessons from a collection of iron-age fairy tales, you're not behaving in a civilized manner. I know, something like 80% of people are "believers" in one ridiculous ancient religion or another, and that (for example) you can't get elected President in the US unless you profess a belief in the Almighty God of the Christians, but that doesn't make it right. In this country we even have some states that have allowed religious definitions of sin and marriage to be codified into law via constitutional amendment. Some day in the future, people are going to look at the stuff our [politicians|judges|*] say about believing in God's word as guiding principle the same way we look at the Inquisition's belief in witchcraft.
Anyone of a rational bent interested in a good examination of the dangers of religion, even as practiced by "moderates", pick up a copy of The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason by Sam Harris. It's very good.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.