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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.
/b/ is going to be all over this story...
But "Australian Government Says Yes" The government always knows whats best and do not question their motives.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Removing the 'Passive' from passive-aggressive I see
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
For those of you that don't understand the reference Tasmania is a state of Australia that is an island and shaped something like an upsidedown triangle. "Show us your map of Tassie" is slang and translates to "show us your pubic hair".
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
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".
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2008/11/28/1227491813497.html?page=fullpage You know it is bad when children's groups want clean feed as well.
[Parent comment omitted]
It's nice to see all you have to do to get a +5 Insightful on Slashdot these days is spew unrelated obscenities in a semi-literate fashion. Well done.
I'll bet that this whole thing really has little to do with "Christian nutters" as you so eloquently put it. To get the government to spend that kind of money on that kind of project just screams corporate lobbyists. The real targets of this "censorship" project is probably downloaded music, movies, and software. They can block torrents for movies and software as well as any unofficial music sites like AllOfMP3 (now defunct) and MP3Sparks (still online) -- all in the name of protecting the children.
The fact is, it is incredibly hard to effectively censor pornographic or other generally illicit websites. There are always exceptions to the contextual rules the filters try and use to determine what shouldn't be allowed and URL blacklists are completely worthless. Since the filtering is done at the ISP level, how are you supposed to bypass the filter so you can read that Wikipedia article? On the other hand, blacklists are easy and work great to block domains and IP addresses of the most popular torrent sites and trackers.
The whole thing smells like an attempt at continent-wide piracy prevention, Internet DRM, or whatever you call it. Don't be surprised when port 6969 all of a sudden stops working.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
/)
I'll bet that this whole thing really has little to do with "Christian nutters" as you so eloquently put it.
The whole 'censor the internet' thing has been a vote-grab by Labor to pander to the permanently-morally-outraged socially conervatives, who became increasingly more visible during the last decade.
It is exacerbated by the balance of power being held by "Christian nutters".
While I would never suggest the whole "corporate lobbying" thing doesn't happen in Australia, it is nowhere near as widespread and blatant as the US.
In short, yes, it is the "Christian nutters" who are responsible.
Actually, the current Government (Australian Labor Party) does not have a majority in the senate, requiring the co-operation of a Family First (christian) senator to pass other legislation. So yes, religion probably DOES have a lot to do with it.
Also, the filter is only http - no P2P is being blocked (how can they?) and presumably https will not be blocked (as they will not be able to see the traffic).
- Chuq
... Australia says "No [expletive deleted] way!" to Internet censorship.
Have gnu, will travel.
This is totally to do with "Christian nutters", in particular one Senator Steve Fielding from Family First Party (i.e. the Christian Right). Other party site here. He holds the balance of power in the Senate and this is totally about getting his vote so as to enable the sitting government to get their legislation through. There are plenty of press [pdf] releases [pdf] on these sites to demonstrate their position and lobbying [pdf].
Big Media may be lobbying and pushing, but this is nothing to do with what is happening here in Australia with regards to the current push for filtering.
Don't tailgate - the end is near!
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.
No way, it teaches school kids about proxies. :P
Ezekiel 23:20
According to news.com.au, the attendance in Sydney was about 300, so you'd assume nationwide it was closer to 1,000.
It was also raining, which didn't help.
The nutters that pretend to be Christian unfortunately are the difference between the government getting laws passed or not. This makes politicians nervous that their own backsides may not be on their parlimentary seats after the next election if they don't do something about it - and that's about the most powerful force in politics.
We've imported a bit of US pentacostalism (despite being excommunicated as a nation by Oral Roberts) but then got it wrong and given it an even more unfortunate twist with cults like Magnificant Meal and Exclusive Bretheren. The EB in paticular put a huge amount of effort into the last two elections. That is the "corporate lobbyist" you are loooking for.
Personally I think it was seen as a quick way to appease some single issue nutters which got badly out of control. Anything with secret rules and secret lists is anti-democratic in my opinion, and I really think we should be worrying about the people doing horrible things to children a lot more than worrying about pictures (which is bizzarely beconming the greater crime).
and presumably https will not be blocked (as they will not be able to see the traffic).
It could be if they use evil products like the ssl inspection engine of Webwasher which breaks the entire trust chain...
An upside-down triangle? What does that even mean?
By convention:
Therefore, a triangular land mass is "right side up" when pointing north and "umop apisdn" when pointing south.
Turn out was disappointing. The Brisbane protest was probably the most successful, but of the thousand people on Facebook who said they'd attend only a hundred turned up. Kudos to those who did.
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/queensland/rally-rejects-rudds-internet-filter/2008/12/13/1228585168416.html
The Sydney rally was a disaster. Poorly organized, it was supposed to start at 11AM but didn't start till 11:40AM. When they did it was a very poor speech by of all people some wannabe-politician from the "Sex Party", and by some dufus with a guitar who thought this was going to be his break into the music world. Those few who attended just wandered off.
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1102985&p=35
> 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.
True. The people got out and protested but the then Howard government ignored them. The people said "well, what can you do?", went home and re-elected Howard anyway. LOL Western Two-party Democracy.
But back to the protests... the organizers of the Sydney one should be shot. I went to a few of a the war rallies after the big one and they were a poor effort: organized by students whose egos were overblown at their now found (and very short lived) celebrity. If they try these anti-censorship rallies again, they need some decent organizers. Get rid of the hangers on like marginal parties no one will ever vote for and any wannabe musician who is friends of the organizer. Get someone from the Greens or even the Liberal Party to speak. My enemy's enemy is my friend if you will. This was an opportunity lost through sheer ego. Sure the Greens/Liberals would have got on board if anyone asked them. Next time get EFA: they've got far more experience at lobbying than the Sex Party clowns do.
I noticed the protests received marginal coverage from the mainstream media (at least for the Sydney protest their lack of coverage was deserved). They're probably hoping the net dies anyway.
Remember the following facts.
Prime Minister Rudd is a Fundamentalist Christian.
The previous Prime Minister, John Howard, was a "devout" (read - fundamentalist) Christian.
The previous government's Health Minister was a Christian fundamentalist, who refused to allow the "morning after" pill to be prescribed, even to women who had suffered rape. He even admitted that the ban was because of his religious beliefs.
It was the Howard government which first started talking about this idea.
The (so-called) Family First party is a front for the extreme Christian fundamentalist groups. Its primary sponsors are the Churches of Christ and the Assemblies of God, two of the most rat-baggy fundamentalist denominations in Australia.
There have recently been a series of current affairs programs showing that the extremist Christian group, the Exclusive Brethren, have been actively interfering in Australian politics at all levels. The are one of the major financial contributors to all major parties.
While politicians are required to reveal any financial matters which may lead to a conflict of interest, they are not required to declare any religious or ideological matters which may lead to a conflict of interest.
IMO, the major risk I see is using this to prevent access to any (insert name of religion) sites other than Christian sites, which would actually be illegal under the Australian Constitution. It would not be the first time an attempt has been made to circumvent the freedom of religion provisions, (and it most certainly won't be the last).
Your facts are hardly facts.
I've never heard John Howard claim to be a Christian, although he holds conservative values, and cultivated Christian groups.
Tony Abbott, the previous Health Minister, is a Roman Catholic, not a fundamentalist Christian.
The Churches of Christ and the Assemblies of God are hardly "extreme" Christian fundamentalist churches.
And anyway, why shouldn't religious groups contribute to political parties, just like any other group?
Great Windows SFTP Server!