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

*sigh*

[siyavash]

All I can say is "*sigh*" ...They really, truely do not get this "Internet thingy". :)

Re:*sigh*

[SerpentMage]

What do you expect?

1) Most politicians are lawyers, philosphers, judges, etc. Thus they will see these sorts of things from their perspective.

2) Techies have a serious communication problem. They believe in free without copyright, right to pirate, etc, etc. Take that attitude to lawyers and guess what answer you are going to get.

3) Techies don't get the business world. They don't think in terms of ROI, etc. And last I looked that is how the world turns, ROI, etc.

Techies need to start policing themselves. Yes BitTorrent has a real need, but until these protocols are managed to stop piracy nothing will change.

Here is the thing, I hate the drug laws, despise them actually. But I can't go out and start smoking pot because today it is STILL ILLEGAL.... The solution is to legalize pot, not smoke it and yell at the top of my lungs and say how dumb the laws are (they are...) How do I legalize pot? Work with the system and get it legalized.

Re:*sigh*

[Nursie]

"Work with the system and get it legalized."

Good luck with that. Meanwhile, those of us that have given up on the political process, given up any thoughts that "we, the people" will ever do anything about the daily abuse of our rights by politicians, given up any thoughts that most people even have a clue about any political issue beyond which candidate has the best hair, given up on the populace showing any sign of intelligence at all... we'll be having a quiet smoke somewhere out of the way, if you'd like to join us, because life's too short to wait for society to sort itself out.

Re:*sigh*

[pipatron]

What have HTTP done to prevent the massive filesharing through HTTP GET downloads?

What have the FTP protocol done to prevent it for being used as the central hubs for all cracker groups?

There's nothing else going on here than some politicians trying to get some free goodwill from the RIAA (A=Australia?) and the panicking parent crowd.

Re:*sigh*

[grarg]

Random point of information: Australia's equivalent of the RIAA just jumbles the letters around a bit to make ARIA.

Re:*sigh*

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

The solution is to legalize pot, not smoke it and yell at the top of my lungs and say how dumb the laws are (they are...) How do I legalize pot? Work with the system and get it legalized.

Like slavery!

Re:*sigh*

[moxley]

I totally agree....If my mod points weren't gone I'd + insightful on that....

The problem is that we don't truly have a functioning system - what we have could be described as forms of institutionalized corruption.

With this precious life that I have I have decided that I am not going to let tyrants deny me of freedoms I wish to undertake that meet my personal ethics, which are partly informed by things such as "the golden rule" etc.

Re:*sigh*

[SerpentMage]

This is a crap attitude...

The real problem here is that people become disenfranchised because they don't involve. After all why should I care about you because all you do is complain, whine, etc.

When you say people don't have a political clue, I would argue what you are saying is that people don't have a clue because they don't agree with you.

Well guess what this is a democracy (representative in most) and if you don't make yourself heard then it is your FAULT, not the politicians, nor the "clueless" voters who do vote and make themselves heard.

Re:*sigh*

[orielbean]

they have a censorship minister. enough said!

Re:*sigh*

[Nursie]

"When you say people don't have a political clue, I would argue what you are saying is that people don't have a clue because they don't agree with you."

Nope, I say it because they continue to vote along party lines, regardless of actual political actions. In the UK that would be "I'm working class, we vote labour" or "daddy always voted conservative" or any one of a myriad of tribal identifications with a particular party that preclude people actually thinking about anything much.

Well guess what this is a democracy (representative in most) and if you don't make yourself heard then it is your FAULT, not the politicians, nor the "clueless" voters who do vote and make themselves heard.

Who said I don't vote? Of course I vote. I just don't kid myself that anything will change. Established politicians routinely ignore the populace when they do try to speak (wars spring to mind), ignore scientific evidence in reports they commission because it doesn't fit with the political message they're pushing or their preconceived notions. Add in a little propaganda and a population conditioned to associate drugs with crime and death, susceptible to politicians doing their moral grandstanding acts and you have a recipe for a society that's not going to fix itself any time soon and is actively hostile to outsider opinions.

I'm sorry if you don't like my attitude, but working within the system is, AFAICT, an utter waste of time.

Re:*sigh*

[Nursie]

The whole argument "It's broken and everyone is dumb" is just a crutch for the lazy to fall back on when things don't go their way.

It's the truth though.
And maybe I am lazy, but I don't want to spend my life campaigning, I have better things to do (like living it).

Whining solves nothing.

Who said it solves anything? I just said I'll get on with my thing on the quiet, screw the rest of you.

Move somewhere else, found your own nation, or revolt. All are valid options for you, all have had historical success in allowing people to live lives more attune with what they want. Take a pick, just stop bitching.

Do you have secret knowledge of an undiscovered continent where these things are possible? Or a nation that isn't as set in its ways? Or any sort of revolt strategy that's going to do anything but get me put in jail and further waste my life?

Didn't think so.

Re:*sigh*

[squiggleslash]

I'm pretty sure that just jumbling the letters around isn't covered by fair use, especially when it's fairly obvious you're a cheap knock-off of the real thing.

Let's hope the RIAA sends MediaSentry after these ARIA people and forces them to pay a $5,000 fine for blatant copyright infringement...

Re:*sigh*

[rve]

http/ftp have done, wtf? Is english your second language?

omg lol wtf!!!1122

furreners r so dum

Re:*sigh*

[unlametheweak]

Work with the system and get it legalized.

1) It's been tried. Trends in most countries are towards authoritarianism and more laws, not less.
2) The "system" is broken towards rationality. Simpler (or simple-minded) solutions are almost always more "rational" to people than more correct and thoughtful solutions. It takes time and energy and diligence and intelligence to think things through logically, for this reason sound bites like "think of the children" have more effect on the status quo than an essay from an ivory tower scholar or a slashdot geek. The democratic "system" cannot escape the lowest common denominator.
3) Money talks. If you aren't a part of the "system" then chances are you don't have any.

I think Napoleon had it right: revolutions often do work, but the unfortunate thing is that even revolutionaries who get into power let the power get into their head.

Re:*sigh*

[meringuoid]

Techies need to start policing themselves. Yes BitTorrent has a real need, but until these protocols are managed to stop piracy nothing will change.

Good luck with that, Cnut.

BitTorrent was created by one man. If he had created a system that included some way to prevent piracy, it would have been a straightforward job for another man to remove that defect, and create a BitTorrent 2 without it. Then BitTorrent 2 would have become popular worldwide. It's not that techies are all hard at work filling the world with villainous P2P apps - it's just that whenever one does create such a thing, the great masses of the public begin using it with enormous gusto.

You ask that nobody, anywhere in the world, ever, should write any software that transmits data over networks, without seeing to it that the media cartels have power of veto over what it transmits. I wish you all the worst of luck in achieving this.

Re:*sigh*

[Endo13]

The thing is, the problem doesn't even begin with clueless voters. The problem begins with the fact that all the choices you have to vote on are bad. I mean really, a choice between 2 candidates that are both going to take the country even further into the crapper? It's like your financial advisor giving you a choice between setting your cash on fire or flushing it down the toilet.

Give me a government system where literally anyone who is competent has a real chance to get elected, and I'll agree that my vote matters.

Re:*sigh*

[Nursie]

I'm in the UK so we have no senators, but your point stands.

And I have written to my MP about this. Stating clearly my concerns about the massive back end database that will contain masses of information about individuals, be a security nightmare, be abused etc etc. I also mentioned that I had no faith it would be delivered to time or budget, would not solve any of the problems it's supposed to etc etc.

Three months later I got a form reply starting -

"We've listened to your concerns but would like to reassure you that the ID card scheme isn't just about ID cards, it'll be backed by a national database..."

i.e. Making it unequivocally clear that they had not read a damn word I said and didn't care at all about my opinion. This has happened with other issues too.

Look at the Iraq war - Between 1 and 2 million people took to the streets of London, which is a lot in a country with a population of 60M, and to get that many protesting takes some serious feeling amongst the population as a whole. What happened? We went to war.

The politicians in this country are in the business of overriding and ignoring public opinion at every turn. the public are in the business of voting for the best looking, most eloquent, best funded or smartest dressed guy, so long as he's in the same party their family always vote for.

It's useless to try and get anything done this way.

Re:*sigh*

[RabidMoose]

I've got to disagree. Movies keep breaking box office records, because there's no way to pirate the experience of going out to the theatre. If anything is going to kill that, it's going to be the bad economy.

DVD/Blu-Ray sales also continue to increase. I just read an article yesterday stating that legal music downloads are growing faster than illegal ones. The only explanation is that priacy is just not as rampant as it's being made out to be. In reality, most people (read: average consumer) would sooner go out and pay for a physical disc instead of figuring out how to pirate the movie/music.

I get the feeling that if there were a magical statistic machine that were right 100% of the time (if only!), we'd see that the ratio of pirates:paying customers is rediculously low, and that a relatively few people are the cause of a relative majority of pirating.

It's been said before, but I'll state it here again: Movie/music executives are using the fact that piracy exists at all as an excuse for any decline/slow increse in their sales numbers. In reality, it's more likely a bum economy, and a lower quality of product (though 2008 was an incredible year for movies) that's causing the dip in sales.

Re:*sigh*

[Endo13]

Yes yes, we've heard those arguments a billion trillion times. And they still mean nothing. Because Copyright is suppose to be a time-limited period for the creator to make a profit before it hits public domain for others to profit from it. Life +75 years is not time-limited. "Time-limited" means you get a reasonable but short duration to recoup your investment and make a reasonable profit. That usually happens within the first year from release or publication. In any case, for copyright to be relevant and serve the intended purpose, it needs to end while there is still profit to be made from the work. Not once it's obsolete, not after every possible cent has been sucked from it.

It's not that Joe Public doesn't realize that work goes into making these things - it's that Joe Public realizes that he constantly has earn his pay, and it's only fair that others should too. The other thing that Joe Public realizes is that it's not possible for everyone to be a performer/writer/artist of some sort - someone has to do the real work to provide the things we actually need. And since Joe Public is doing that work and isn't making that great of a wage doing it, guess where his money is going to go. Yep, for the things he actually needs, and things that actually took real work to produce.

So in the end, it's probably you who doesn't see and understand the whole picture. Have you ever gotten your hands dirty doing real work that pays just enough to keep you going, at a job you didn't really like, for 40+ hours a week? You should try it some time, instead of sitting there complaining about people downloading music. When you actually work (note: practicing with a band != work, sorry) for your money, it puts a whole different perspective on things.

Re:*sigh*

[Artemis3]

The system IS crap and won't let you do anything the big parties don't want, closing any pacific way out. See Greece for example.

These guys are wrong, the RIAA and MPAA, and big game publishers like EA are wrong; this is resistance and they can't stop it, and they won't stop Bittorrent in Australia or anywhere else either. The protocol is not going to be improved to help those who are wrong, it will be improved to resist and bypass the old fools who just don't get it. Put more restrictions and the answer will be widespread strong anonymous p2p. Prosecute sharers and see a rise in cryptographic and stenographic content. This is not cooperation with the system, this is struggle against the system until they behave or get retired.

Sharing is caring, period.

Re:*sigh*

[jlarocco]

A person shouldn't have to complain to the government to keep their rights and be left alone.

The question isn't why you should care about me - it's why you should have anything to do with me at all.

Re:*sigh*

[davester666]

Australia, where you go if you want your tubes tied...

Re:*sigh*

[Petrushka]

That was just a wee jab by the submitter. His official title is "Minister for Broadband, Communications, and the Digital Economy". I'm in favour of the new title catching on, though.

Re:*sigh*

[lgw]

There are *many* contries with other systems, and the facts don't support your desires.

Having the general public involved *directly* in lawmaking is a *terrible* idea. You think your elected officials are uninformed? Study the history of Athenian democracy for many examples of just how crazy this can get. Charismatic speakers with good sophistic techniques could get all sorts of crazy laws passed, by simply making the law "sound good" to the average voter.

There's are *plenty* of sides in a two-party system, if you care to pay more than the most passing of attention to the process. Political parties are nothing more than a group of "sides" who have made some internal compromises to form a voting block: you vote my way on my most inportant issue, and I'll vote your way on your most important issue. *That* is the essense of all politics. With a parlamentary system, you elect your representative from a long list of parties, and the many small parties form coalitions after the election - coalitions which you might be quite upset with.

How would you like it if, in order to get results on your hot-button issues, your representative joined the neo-nazi-led coalition. Sure, you got your way on your geek issues, but the neo-nazis are in charge. That sort of thing *happens* in real governments. At least in American system the coalitions are formed *before* the genral election, and if it turns out that the guy you voted for in the primary decided to join with David Duke to get your geek issue passed, you can still vote or the other party in the general election.

Re:*sigh*

[suckmysav]

There are four types of voters in modern politics.

1) The cheerleaders

These are the wonks that always vote the same way and remain totally oblivious to the shortcomings of their chosen "side"

2) The fanatics

These are the single issue voters that vote solely on the issue that concerns them. Mostly Greenies and Fundies.

3) The Morons

Vote for the best haircut or the best pork-barrel artist without giving much though to much of anything.

4) The Disillusioned.

These are the ones who realise that both parties are corrupt and essentially the same so they either abstain from voting entirely or try and find an independent local candidate who has reasonably sane views.

I count myself as #4

Re:*sigh*

[Cassius Corodes]

That's called "tyranny". If I want to spend my election day sitting in my recliner, drinking beer, and watching the Buffy marathon, that's my choice. Who the hell if the government to dictate I MUST be at a certain place at a certain time?!?!? Fuck 'em. Normally I vote but if such a ridiculous law passed in my state, I would stay home. It would be my way of protesting that it's my body, my mind, and my liberty. Nobody owns me. I'm not a slave.

No, its not tyranny. Its your fucking responsibility as a citizen. Have you got such a warped sense of perspective that you think mandatory voting is anywhere near akin to tyranny! Deal with it - personally I would be for people losing citizenship if they fail to vote.

Tho +1 for mentioning Buffy!

What about my own content

[Alain Williams]

Be that software, video or music -- why should I be prevented from sharing it with world ?

Re:What about my own content

[Voyager529]

Be that software, video or music -- why should I be prevented from sharing it with world ?

Support the Australian Post Office and mail everyone CDs.

Re:What about my own content

[Anonymous Coward]

Because you are using Evil Technology(tm). You should switch to good wholesome technology like selling CDs. Otherwise you are a criminal, silly.

Re:What about my own content

[De Lemming]

The article indicates they want to filter peer-to-peer traffic, not completely block it. That would require an enormous effort and a lot of resources, to do content filtering on p2p connections. I'm wondering if it's even possible at all, as the original files are split up in blocks which are transferred between different peers. Seems to me a case of big words by government officials who don't know the technology...

Re:What about my own content

[Mille Mots]

Be that software, video or music -- why should I be prevented from sharing it with world ?

Because you aren't sharing profits with the people who make the laws.

Re:What about my own content

[SQL Error]

Yes, that's what it sounds like, which is even crazier than just blocking P2P traffic outright. I don't think Conroy is listening to anyone at this point.

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.

Re:World of Warcraft and p2p...

[MasterOfMagic]

<pedantic nitpick>TCP/IP is a P2P protocol. It was designed so that anybody could be a client and anybody could be a server - there were no special addresses that were client-only or server-only. Anything that flows over TCP/IP is using a P2P network, and I would guess that there is plenty of legal content flowing over TCP/IP.</pedantic nitpick>

Re:World of Warcraft and p2p...

[cromar]

You're right, and I'm glad they chose that distribution model because it will certainly get a lot of people's attention when they can't update their favorite game. Hopefully Blizzard will make some effort to point out the stupidity of this law, although I'm sure they will fix the updates in Australia if they are forced to...

Also, a nitpick, quotes aren't used that way. They are legally using bt, or *legally* using bt, but "legally" using bt implies that they aren't really using bt legally, or that they are using it in a way that is hardly legal or only pretending to be legal.

Re:World of Warcraft and p2p...

[plasmacutter]

Blizzard will introduce a new achievement: death to the labour party.

A million aussies will charge the halls of parliament on horseback screaming "FOR THE HORDE!"

Re:World of Warcraft and p2p...

[oahazmatt]

True, this does not bode well for WoW players, or people distributing files legally. This ban may serve as a wake-up call. File sharing has a very negative association with it, and many in Government positions will just take it to mean "piracy", as groups such as the RIAA and MPAA (and their overseas counterparts) imply it to be synonymous.

Now, Australia blocks bittorrent. So, you've got a lot of pissed off WoW players and hopefully at least one of them will stand up and say the block is not right at all. And what about the Australian ISPs who download linux distros through bittorrent?

This block is being put into effect by someone who clearly doesn't understand exactly what bittorrent or file sharing is. I'm sure he will be thoroughly informed soon enough.

Re:World of Warcraft and p2p...

[ZarathustraDK]

- Darkrogue hits Bennygnome for 400 damage.
- Australian Officer casts search-warrant on Darkrogue.
Darkrogue says: "What the h..."
- Darkrogue dies.
Darkrogue has left the game.

Re:World of Warcraft and p2p...

[mollymoo]

We're talking about application-level protocols (layers 5-7 in the OSI model), you pedantic git.

goodluckwiththat

[hcmtnbiker]

The thing about P2P that's not the same for the rest of the internet is it's protocols are always evolving. Sure you'll be able to stop some stuff today, but you'll always be one step behind in a feudal battle against users, and in this case registered voters who may not fully agree with your ideas.

Re:goodluckwiththat

[0100010001010011]

There was Napster, but the centralized servers shut it down.
Then there was Kazaa, but it was a crap fast.
Then there was Bittorrent, shared bandwidth by all.

Our school tried to block BitTorrent too (back 2004-2005 era). One of my friends wrote a simple proxy server than injected a fake HTTP header into every new connection. Went straight through the 'firewall'. You block BitTorrent, it'll move to port 80 and look like HTTP traffic, or port 443 and then you won't know what the hell it is. Maybe it'll look like VOIP next. Maybe all of them.

"Strike Me Down and I Will Become More Powerful Than You Can Possibly Imagine".

Re:goodluckwiththat

[TehZorroness]

To compress what you said into one sentence; Banning the openly specified protocol with endless legal applications just because it may also be used to illicitly send copyrighted material will only serve to generate 20 new protocols which will only be used to share copyrighted material illicitly and do nothing legal or beneficial.

I'll admit that I'm no angel. I download albums over bittorrent from time to time, but I also download plenty of legal content over it, including a bunch of creative commons works, and plenty of free software distributions.

Re:goodluckwiththat

[TheSpoom]

"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."

- John Gilmore

Re:goodluckwiththat

[ChienAndalu]

You're school's admins were morons.

Most are.

Re:goodluckwiththat

[TheSpoom]

And a whitelist firewall would make the network almost useless to nearly everyone. From a policy standpoint, it'd be great, but they'd be constantly getting an influx of unblock requests, and most users (including and especially legitimate ones) would just give up on using it at all.

When will this die????

[OzPeter]

Government report shows censor ship scheme is flawed

When will this thing finally die? Every man and his dog acknowledges that it is a steaming pile of political rhetoric, yet it still goes on and on and on.

From the article I linked to:

Australia's largest ISP, Telstra, and Internode have said they will not participate in the trials. The second largest ISP, Optus, will run only a scaled- back trial of just the first tier while iiNet, the third biggest provider, has said it will participate simply to show the Government that its scheme will not work.

Re:When will this die????

[Davemania]

pfft, common sense or logic is no match for Senator Conroy or the Australian Government

Ministry of Censorship

[gzipped_tar]

> Censorship Minister Stephen Conroy announced

What is a "Censorship Minister"? Is there a "Ministry of Censorship" in Australia??

Re:Ministry of Censorship

[wall0159]

The summary is inaccurate, he is actually minister of
"Censorship", "Civilian Pacification" and "Eugenics for a better Australia".

Re:Ministry of Censorship

[rswail]

Actually, there is. There's 2 bodies that do censorship in Australia.

OFLC reviews media for compliance. It's an independent body that reports to Parliament.

ACMA is responsible for online/broadcast regulation. It answers to the Minister for Communications (ie Conroy). It refers things that it thinks need to be classified to the OFLC.

what happened to you, Austrailia?

[spidercoz]

you used to be cool

Re:what happened to you, Austrailia?

[grarg]

Imagine "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells" as a redneck and you'll get an insight into the mentality of a sizeable portion of the Australian electorate.

And in other news...

[leamanc]

Australia reports a rise in connections to proxy servers in the USA.

Re:Where is he saying that?

[Andr T.]

Found it:

The Government understands that ISP-level filtering is not a 'silver bullet'. We have always viewed ISP-level filtering as one part of a broader government initiative for protecting our children online.

Technology is improving all the time. 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.

There is

[iminplaya]

Only one way to block BitTorrent.

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...

Despite massive security holes, they dont listen,

[faldo]

And yet there are so many ways that this could comprimise internet security.

Why the hell aren't Conroy and his cronies listening to the people who know what they're talking about? All social points asside for a moment, there are huge risks with a system like this. Security for one.

You could man in the middle attack everyone in Australia if you wanted to, and nothing that is being proposed will help stop child porn. The blacklist will leak as was proved yesterday (there's a story about it on the site I mentioned) and when combined with proxies, the very people this plan claims to stop will be given the keys to their perverted kindgoms.

Is this all just the illusion of safety for the technically illiterate, or is it just me?

Australian politicians: Ignorant hypocrits?

[Jonas Buyl]

The idea of blocking P2P traffic is flawed in a lot of ways. What defines P2P traffic? TCP protocol IS a P2P-based protocol. Obviously they want to stop the illegal traffic going on but this is not the way and like any type of crime you can't stop it from happening at all. Furthermore, banning the in essence legal means to perform a crime implies that they also intend on banning cars because they can be used to kill people, computers as they can be used to intrude one's privacy and many more examples. The Australian government seems nothing more than a group of hypocrits. Yet again only the honest people will be punished by this because people will always find a way to get what they want. Either through paying for payed hosting services (like Rapidshare), by setting up a proxy or in other ways that will unquestionably discovered soon enough if they choose to push their plans.

and the land of the....

[sgt scrub]

At least they don't sing about their freedom while it gets taken away.

User friendly had a great comic on this

[closetpsycho]

I know it's not the ever popular xkcd, but this comic is just too appropriate here. http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20081109

Port 80

[WilyCoder]

So what's next for BitTorrent then?

Run it through port 80 or 443?

Freenet? Or some other encrypted filesharing?

[BenEnglishAtHome]

Frankly, I don't know if this is a bad thing. We've been saying for years that everyone needs to encrypt everything by default and it hasn't happened because "normal" people don't see the need for their "normal" traffic.

Take Freenet as an example. It's never reached critical mass and there's little worthwhile content (as of the last time I checked; I gave up on it some time back). But what happens if people can't get their torrents to work and all their mules and limes and kazaas stop working? Freenet with Frost needs just a decent installer package and enough users so that it scales up to reasonable speed. If that happened, how would that get filtered? Would the govt demand the blocking of everything that's encrypted? I can imagine some big players in the e-commerce game might have a thought or two on that subject.

I don't use bittorrent or any emule/kazaa-like applications, but I think I've read that they all can be configured to encrypt all transfers.

If governments want to stop "bad" traffic, they should realize that the tools are available for it to all go underground and flourish in ways the govt can't effectively monitor, much less censor. Are governments really stupid enough to hasten that situation?

I think so. Whether it's Freenet, some other encrypted environment, or just encryption on top of currently popular protocols, part of me welcomes the censorship because I know it will finally start moving people to protect their communications. I think that's a good thing that will come from all this censorsip silliness.

And to think - If the music industry had just bought out Napster and and used it to its potential, how many man-millenia of labor could have been put to productive use instead of wasted in stupid cat 'n mouse games?

Look at child porn, sue the government?

[mindaktiviti]

So what happens if you "accidentally" look at child porn? Can you sue the government for failing to protect you from illegal material? Since you're no longer given to choice to look at the stuff but are blocked automatically, if you happen upon a website where it's hosted I would imagine you can hold them liable for accidentally clicking on something illegal.

"OH DEAR GOD! It's child porn! I'm suing the Australian government for failing to protect me as they said they would!"

Solve this Australian style...

[Xenographic]

This should be solved Australian style. Just arrange so that this crazy filter guy has to be rescued from his locked office, where he gets found drunk and naked with a sheep and a pile of kiwis.

That should put an end to things, unless that helps him get reelected in New Zeland...

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

Letter sent to Stephen Conroy

[Nefarious Wheel]

Subj: Please do not block all peer-to-peer traffic

For one thing, World of Warcraft (a passion for our entire family) depends on P2P for the distribution of updates.

And where I have absolutely no problem with suppressing child pornography, I believe that in the long term censorship by filtration is not the answer. It's never the answer, in a free society -- no offence, mate, but you're the government and I don't entirely trust you. Once you start filtering content for good reasons, you'll soon be filtering content for bad ones. The answer is to find the perpetrators and take them out. I believe your efforts should be directed toward finding the source of the trash and taking it down, not slowing down the pipes for the rest of us. (name + address) IT consultant since 1969 Husband and devoted father of two

Re:Karma be damned

[caitsith01]

I'm Australian.

What's weird is that on an individual level, I never meet anyone who wants:
- net censorship
- more speed cameras
- more alcohol and drug testing
- compulsory ID cards
- biometric passports
- DNA databases
- detention without charge.

And yet we have had successive governments ramming these things down our throats for about 10 years now.

Australians are, on the whole, fairly laid back (some might argue this is the problem, because we as a community never seem to stand up and fight). There is a definite tradition of irreverence for institutions here. But lately it seems to be being overtaken by a nasty, petty sort of "ok, let's get serious" meme in government. Sort of like the powers that be have finally decided to "stop kidding around" and start kicking our arses until we behave.

My theory is that because we have never had a totalitarian government or fought in a civil war for our liberty, we have no sense of what it's worth.