Australia To Block BitTorrent

Kevin 7Kbps writes "Censorship Minister Stephen Conroy announced today that the Australian Internet Filters will be extended to block peer-to-peer traffic, saying, 'Technology that filters peer-to-peer and BitTorrent traffic does exist and it is anticipated that the effectiveness of this will be tested in the live pilot trial.' This dashes hopes that Conroy's Labor party had realised filtering could be politically costly at the next election and were about to back down. The filters were supposed to begin live trials on Christmas Eve, but two ISPs who volunteered have still not been contacted by Conroy's office, who advised, 'The department is still evaluating applications that were put forward for participation in that pilot.' Three days hardly seems enough time to reconfigure a national network."

Comments

World of Warcraft and p2p...

[ILuvSP]

This does not fair well for all the World of Warcraft players in Australia. Blizzard "legally" uses p2p to distribute patches and such. I guess only one question remains to be asked to all Australian WoW players...Can I have your stuff? Sorry, it had to be said.

A Good Thing?

[splodus]

I think the sooner an 'important' state does this sort of thing the better.

The current situation is a chaotic cat and mouse game that's gradually playing into the hands of the publishing industry.

If a big state blocks and censors parts of the internet, they can probably make it stick. The result might be an incentive for people to start encrypting data by default, and I kind of think that would be a good thing for the whole world.

Here in the UK the government is up to all sorts of tricks - the RIP Act gives them the power to monitor all internet traffic and store it for up to 2 years. Even your local council can request to see which web sites you've been visiting - no need to involve the police or the courts, just a 'senior official'.

I think there's just not been a good enough reason so far to encrypt more than the bear minimum. This sort of thing might shove things in the right direction...

First they came for...

[guruevi]

First they came for the child pornography on the internet ... and I did not speak up
Then they came for the organized crime on the internet ... and I did not speak up
Then they came to 'protect the children' against 'vulgar images' ... and I did not speak up
Then they came for the illegal warez ... and I did not speak up
Then they came for my bittorrent ... and I did not speak up
Then they came for me ... and there is no one left to speak up for me