Slashdot Mirror
Some Of Australia's Tubes Are About To Be Filtered
Slatterz writes "The first phase of
Australia's controversial Internet filters were put in place today, with the Australian government announcing that six ISPs will take part in a six-week pilot. The plan reportedly includes a filter blocking a list of Government-blacklisted sites, and an optional adult content filter, and the government has said it hasn't ruled out the possibility of filtering BitTorrent traffic. The filters have been widely criticized by privacy groups and Internet users, and people have previously even taken to the streets to protest. While Christian groups support the plan, others say filters could slow down Internet speeds, that they don't work, and that the plan amounts to censorship of the Internet. At this stage the filters are only a pilot, and Australia's largest ISP, Telstra, is not taking part. But if the $125.8 million being spent by the Australian Government on cyber-safety is any indication, it's a sign of things to come."
Please, if you use one of the ISPs in this program, send a very strong message and dump them as soon as the filters go live. Tell them that you are quite capable, thank you very much, of filtering your own content.
I guarantee that if this gains traction it will not stop at porn. Welcome back to the Middle Ages.
if it wasn't so outrageous it'd be funny, labour gets back into power and the first thing they do is give us a 100 billion debt and filter our internet.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Everytime one of our friends or relatives asks us about a problem with their internet our response shall be,
"Oh that'd probably be the internet filter causing your drop-outs, thank Stephen Conroy"
I know what a secure proxy is, you insensitive clod!
Well, you're almost right. See, the English are a bunch of pussies and they run the country by suppressing the Irish (who made up most the convicts you mention).
How we know is more important than what we know.
Skynet is operaConnection reset by peer
Just VPN your way out and huzzah!
For putting the country back into debt and censoring the internet.
Its people's fault. Plain and simple.
Because after this tragic act of censorship, the people in the next elections, while having the opportunity to vote down the current government, most probably will not. Even if they do, they will most probably vote for another party that has most probably done something equally bad when they were government.
It's called mass amnesia, and its the reason why our democracies are in fact ""democracies"".
I know a lot of Chinese nationals have been immigrating to your shores lately, Australia, but this is the wrong way to make them feel at home.
Well - I was wondering why the net's a bit slower today... Thought it was the random fluctuations I get from time to time but no... Sigh... Sad thing is, you mention this to people here and it's oh... Well, kinda bad, but meh..
I don't understand these alleged Christians' obsession with force and control. Forcing your own will upon someone else is the very antithesis of Christianity.
I'm going to venture a guess that tor is going to become very popular in Australia very soon...
Though, I'm sure some teenagers will figure out how to bypass those filters even more simplistically. Good on them. Say no to a censored Internet!
Why do complicated things with VPNs when you can simply dump the ISP? It's still possible, sends a clear signal, and if people start using VPNs en masse to get around the filtering, they'll simply filter that as well. And you want a clear signal that filtering isn't wanted before all choice is gone.
Christian Groups in HK are trying to push web filtering on ISP to 'protect their children'. Those groups are nuts. They even think David (Michelangelo) is porn and should be banned. We will protest against it on 15 Feb. Sorry for my poor English.
I blame the Americans, for their culture of inactivity they brought over here back in the war.
Oh, who am I kidding, we're all lazy. And our general populous is just as ignorant as the American general populous.
I have not read TFA, due to the aforementioned laziness, but I think the summary misses some of the biggest news in regard to the filter trials: every damn ISP on the list (with the exception of iPrimus) are tiny little no-name setups that likely have customers numbering in the hundreds. Two major ISPs with large customer bases, Optus and iiNet, were excluded because, I would assume, their data would reflect poorly on the filtering scheme.
These "real world" trials are a sham, and Conroy's a bastard.
Ezekiel 23:20
But the 3 largest in Australia -- Optus and iiNet as well as Telstra are not taking part in these trials. How the hell are they going to get any accurate data if they're simply using 6 small ISPs? What next, they just flick on the switch for all ISPs and it it should work fine?
Once a jolly swagman plugged into the internets,
Under the shade of a coolibah tree,
And he sang as he watched and waited as he torrented
"Don't go deploying your filters on me".
"Deploying your filters, deploying your filters
Don't go deploying your filters on me"
And he sang as he watched and waited as he torrented,
"Don't go deploying your filters on me".
Down came the content speeding through the internets,
Up jumped the swagman and viewed it with glee,
And he sang as he shoved that content on his backup disk,
"You'll be a-wasting your filters on me".
"Wasting your filters, wasting your filters
Don't go a-wasting your filters on me"
And he sang as he shoved that content on his backup disk,
"Don't go a-wasting your filters on me".
Up rode the Conroy, mounted on his ISP,
Down came the troopers, one, two, three,
"Where's that jolly content you downloaded so illicitly?
You've been evading the filters from me."
"Evading the filters, evading the filters
You've been evading the filters from me."
"Where's that jolly content you downloaded so illicitly?
You've been evading the filters from me."
Up jumped the swagman and handed them his backup disk,
"You'll never crack my encryption", said he,
And his packets are tunneled and proxied through the internets,
"You'll never get your bloody filters on me".
"Your bloody filters, your bloody filters
You'll never get your bloody filters on me".
And his packets are tunneled and proxied through the internets,
"You'll never get your bloody filters on me".
In other news, astrophysicists have announced that they now know what all that dark matter is: it's stupidity.
Yahoo Serious when you need him?!
David from South Australia I would like to say that; I am so happy using Webshield because I don't have to worry about what the children are doing, passwords or anything. I was constantly keeping tabs on things before, but now I know Webshield is doing it for me.
Angie from South Australia Before I used Webshield, I would constantly be checking my children on the internet, worried and anxious about what they might 'accidently' find. But now with Webshield, I can leave them to their homework, etc and not stress."
Julie from Queensland With 2 boys approaching teenage years and a husband who works late into the night at times, we (and I say âweâ(TM) on behalf of my husband as well) are glad for the peace of mind webshield provides. With pornography and all that it leads too, sweeping through families â" even strong families â" as it is channelled right into our houses, wreaking absolute heartache and havoc, we can only be glad for protection.
Those three quotes are quite probably the most disturbing potential outcomes from such a system.
The brutal truth of the matter is that what ever you can _easily_ find on the web via http is far less dangerous than Predators lurking on Friend face or Instant Messaging, which cannot be filtered. (You could block them entirely, but could you imagine the uproar of Millions of people then!). And wanting to block "Unwanted Material" this screams scope creep in a big way.
I am an Australian, and the B/S the Dis-Honourable Senator Conroy continues to feed us is quite alarming. I have met the man in person and witnessed first hand his obvious technical ineptness.
I for one will be fighting tooth and nail to inform everyone I know and I am already geared up at home to "circumvent" any filter.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of cats. MEOW!!
There must be some way to bypass the tube tying that these folks in the governments around the world are doing. Yes, sure there are snoop blockers and other web sites that enable encrypted bypassing of restrictions but State based Freedom Limiting Terrorists have figured out that firewalls exist. I'm wondering about legal means to assault these State Based Terrorists who continue to assault our freedoms including our freedoms of communication.
Sure it's likely different in each country due to the differences in laws but there must be strategies that will work across the entire planet to protect the masses Natural rights to free communications.
One idea is the open project to monitor ALL GOVERNMENT AGENTS, EMPLOYEES, STAFF and POLITICIANS and publish their movements, their activities, their lives. Millions of Little Brothers watching the members of the Big Brother control freak cult (aka members of any group that considers itself a State or Government at any level).
The purpose in part is to expose the hypocracy of these members of the governments but it's also to let them know that they are being watched.
Who watches the watchers? The population must be the ones who watch the watchers. This is why all public business must be in the public domain for it to be valid public business, otherwise it's just the work of "terrorists pretending to be the State"!
ps. If I vanish you'll know why.
First, the little penguin bites Linus, and now it bites the internet!!
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
They should be spending that money on improving our internet instead. Doesn't seem like they want any votes in the next election.
"we've got trenchcoats and bad attitudes" - John Constantine, HellBlazer
like it or not, when all of you geeks become parents, either you will spend 95% of your time manually filtering your child's on-line access, buy closed-source software from some "very dependable" company or be a very bad parent.
And thinking, that 7yrs old can filter their own content is making you the last - bad parent.
yes, any censure is bad, but if you think, that there is none in today's mainstream medias, you are deadly wrong.
The Australians are only one of the first (of the "developed" countries) to go live. They will fail, as the geeks (without girlfriends, hence without children) will unite. And the gov. will make some mistake of filtering political content and the wall will fall. But after 10 yrs, others will pick it up, modify the idea, put gov. bodies (with a lot of good payed jobs for ageing geeks) to control the wall and it will stand.
I the wall will be political or not? Time will time. Possibly it will bring some "politically unideal censorships". You know what? I'd rather live in such a world, than in a world, where my 7yrs old daughter asks: "Oh daddy, what's an ENEMA and how can it enhance my backdoor fun?"
Don't get me wrong, TV with their crime channel is as bad as p0rn on the net. But hey, life is not fair (TV have their lobbiests, as do Internet companies selling p0rn these days). But why not taking it one step at a time, rather than not
taking any steps?
But a lot of arguing shall be done first, before such a plan will be fully deployed. That's for sure (egoistic geeks, strong lobbies for internet companies on one side and excetric religios idiots and political manipulators on the other) . That's almost case for any now days ideological war: idiots VS idiots, normal people standing by and taking collateral.
Contact the dumbasses located here:
http://www.acl.org.au/
Advise them of their dumbassery.
Don't like content filtering / tampering / snooping?
So what's YOUR excuse for...
Not having a PGP key of your own so people can send you secure emails / files?
Sending emails without digitally signing them (anyone can do it) and by default encrypting them to any/all recipients who will provide their keys for that purpose?
Complaining about "internet filtering" yet not even running the software to check and see whether YOUR internet / ISP is filtering / port blocking / et. al.? Last time I checked there were pretty pervasive problems with wholesale port blocking for both incoming and outgoing traffic on many ISPs. That's wholesale blocking / censoring / filtering of communications too. A "network neutral" internet provider should allow ANY protocol, on ANY port, IN or OUT without tampering with the connection (throttling, blocking, et. al.). Anything less is just accepting the encroachment of such filtering.
Willingly USING an ISP that does any kind of connection filtering / tampering?
Willingly USING webmail systems and similar ones where your private communications are left out on some 3rd party server, especially ones where they don't facilitate end to end message signing / encryption / access purely over HTTPS, et. al.? Sites like yahoo, hotmail insert ads into every message you send by modifying YOUR content / message. Sites like google/gmail snoop on the contents of all your email and basically sell that information to advertisers to profile you and intrude on you with ads. If you don't want your content to be modified, filtered, sold, snooped then make sure they cannot either understand or alter your communications and the problems will be mostly solved!
Willingly using software like SKYPE or MSN Messenger or Yahoo Messenger all of which go to great efforts to be able to be able to route your communications through THEIR servers and not offer any meaningful true verifiable end-to-end content encryption such that not even the service provider can intercept / filter your communications.
Most of the IM software that is "popular" indeed does all sorts of content filtering based on keywords, blocking URLs it doesn't want you to share, et. al. Content tampering / filtering of a private communication should be the end user's option, not the service provider's! There are alternatives out there that use open source software, publically documented protocols, and which offer true encryption / privacy support like SIP, JABBER, et. al.
Running a site that doesn't use HTTPS as its PRIMARY mode of communication, i.e. don't even ALLOW HTTP except as a deprecated option to satisfy very old cell phone browsers or such that aren't capable of SSL?
Using HTTPS, although they could block sites based only on the domain name, they couldn't easily look at or filter / tamper with the content of the communications themselves -- NebuAd insertion or whatever simply wouldn't be possible. Also one wouldn't reveal anything more than the domain name / IP address being contacted for HTTP, so even the rest of the accessed URL would be secure. Enabling HTTPS is a trivial change to almost any web site, and compatible with most any browser platform. Why don't we provide this as sysadmins and demand it as users. Why
am I not on https://slashdot.org/ now? In the old days the CPU performance cost for the crypto was somewhat of a factor for fairly high traffic sites, but now that CPUs/Network processors are much more capable, I very much doubt it would be a significant impediment for ANY site to offer. Is the privacy and security of your users not worth another 3% of your CPU load or whatever? Certificate cost? Ok, self sign (it's better than plain HTTP!), or use a public / free CA or whatever.
As others have said, it more customers demanded full open unmodified internet access from their ISP, it would be offered by more ISPs and ones that want to tamper with your data (NebuAd, DNS hijacking, content snooping / altering) or whatever either wo
And one of the ISP's, Webshield, is only known because it's business model is based on already offering a "clean-feed" connection.
For this to come into force properly, the Government will need to pass legislation through Parliament. While they can get it through the lower house easily, the Senate will be much harder. In the Senate the Government will need the support of either the Coalition or all the cross-benchers (Greens, Family First and Xenophon) in order to gain the majority. I know the Coalition intends to vote no and I can't see Greens supporting it, so it will fail to pass.
Now that a pilot's up and running, has anyone got any ideas about actual attacks that can be launched against these systems?
DDoS, etc?
Dear Senator Conroy,
I am a member of the Western Australian Labor Party and a long time supporter of the ideals and values the Australian Labor Party and Trade Union movement promote in our country. I am writing to express my extreme concern on the mandatory Internet filtering you and your office are trialling over the next six weeks.
I understand that the decision is being considered as an option to assist parents, schools and public resources (such as libraries) to keep children away from unwanted Internet content. However, I do not believe that the planned solution will ever be appropriate for the Australian cultural climate. As a teacher, uncle and future parent I cannot stress enough the complete apathy and ignorance this policy encourages in parents of young and adolescent children in relation to the Internet. It should be the absolute responsibility of the authority figures of each household to understand, take action on and maintain any steps taken to remove perceived inappropriate content entering the household through a connection to the Internet. This policy is the antithesis of promoting an open caring relationship between parents and children in relation to online content.
Your policy discourages education and accountability because it takes the responsibility of filtering away from the parents of the household. It also discourages communication between the parent and child, not only stifling the need for dialogue but also, as shown through the lack of information given to the public by your office, the idea that information can be withheld by those "who know better" (in this case those who think they know better). Furthermore, the technical, financial and freedom of expression (as upheld through our constitution) issues are well documented and those in themselves should be more than enough to kill any further life in this poorly planned, poorly executed and poorly though-out plan.
Please understand that I do not advocate nor do I support the idea that the government cannot assist parents, schools and other public institutions from helping them with filtering their access to online content. However this policy which will continuously block any number of unnamed web sites is not aimed at targeting an individual's right to choose what they view, instead generalises values for the entire Australian population. I cannot think of anything more "un-Australian" than that.
As a Labor member and supporter of both a Labor government at both a state and federal level it is with great disappointment that if this policy is to be enacted I will do everything in my power to ensure that only members of parliament who oppose this policy will represent me in my electorate in the future. I understand that this may well end up in me needing to leave the Labor party but this issue is too important and your policy to narrow sited for me to ethically be able to support any Labor party member encouraging this policy.
I am looking forward to your response.
Yours sincerely,
For those that don't know all of those ISPs have tiny customer bases, the only one which is actually of recognisable size is Primus.
All those filters are usually erected in an attempt to 'protect the children' but so far I haven't seen any kind of hard evidence showing the children are 'damaged' from looking at porn or similar.
Actually I've seen a study showing quite clearly that porn has no negative effect on children at all. Back in 1968 porn was legalized in Denmark and porn shops popped up everywhere, especially in a section of Copenhagen called Vesterbro. About 1/3 of all shops there were porn or porn-related shops in those days. This meant that almost no matter where children looked they saw porn (dildos, explicit magazines, books, movies) and there was a lot of prostitutes in the area as well. All this happened when the children was mostly unsupervised by adults (on the way to school etc.). Now the study compared the children that grew up in this area with similar children from similar backgrounds growing up elsewhere, and looked at deviations from 'normal' when it came to crime (especially sex offenses), sexual preferences and orientation, attitude towards sexual deviations and so on. The result was quite clear: The 'porn-exposed' children had a similar life to the 'normal' children but had a more tolerant attitude towards everything sex-related, and often had more friends from the 'deviant' groups like homosexuals, transsexuals or so on.
The conclusion was therefore clear: Porn does not hurt children emotionally or sexually and it even seems to create more tolerant adults that is less likely to be ignorant of sexual themes. This is a good thing in my book.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
You're
Don't let them do it. Aussies can kick just as much ass as anyone else. Show em how Aussies bring the pain. Don't put up with the censorship bullshit. Proxy up and watch as much hard core fucking porn as possible. Display it on the sides of buildings. Watch it on those little tv's that people put in the backseats of their SUVs, all while driving around your local church or legislative building! FIGHT THE GODDAMNED POWER! WHY!? CUZ AUSTRALIA HAS BALLS!
Let us know how it goes. I'll check my comments page for a response.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
And one of the ISP's, Webshield, is only known because it's business model is based on already offering a "clean-feed" connection.
Which is a fine business model---it's selling something that people want. And by participating in this trial, they might demonstrate that they've got a product that works. (Maybe. For some value of "works.") Or get some free publicity.
What's not OK is imposing a filter on people who don't want it.
Isn't that really what this is all about? Surely ISPs can "choose" to give their users a "choice" of having a Filtered internet connection, or not?
Or perhaps ISPs can "choose" to have an all or nothing type approach. Certain ISPs can filter, and others can decide not to. At least people could then decide on if they want filtered internet or not. And both types of ISP can have a distinction and even make it a selling point.
Our prime minister is a communist. He is good pals with the Chinese who send their prostitutes/women to his office to, persuade him.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
Iprimus is just in there to lend credibility, I have never heard of the other ISPs.
But wait, iPrimus is not actually listed only their parent company Primus Communications who won't have the same infrastructure configuration as an actual ISP.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
What gives is that modern Australians aren't the same hardass cons that built the country. Life's so good and easy and comfortable here that people have nothing to really worry about, so they make shit up and worry about that.
Half the equation is that Australia's population is aging badly, and most old people think that everything is too fast, too loud, too dangerous and too untidy. This is a problem when a sizable portion of the voting public makes up this group.
The other half of the equation is, as I said first up, that life's too good here. We don't worry about getting shot at or knifed. The worst we generally have to contend with is bushfires (just had a doozy but it's been a few years since the last big one before that) and poisonous native animals. Out of work? No problems, Centerlink will pay for your cask wine and internets.
When people spend too long without serious threats to life and limb, their brain adjusts to see trivial things as big and important. Humans do that, our brains are great at adapting to their circumstances... but in this case, people rate their top 3-4 concerns as "life threatening" even when they are things like "my neighbour plays music after 7pm" and "my kid might see a digital nipple if he plays this M-rated game".
Another exacerbating effect of the general pantywaistness of the proletariat is that our political system is, for want of a better word, pan-partisan. Campaigns are based either on smearing the opposition (the last couple of federal elections have done this) or making a stand on the traditional party differences (unions and workers rights vs. tax breaks for businesses, for instance). Any remotely controversial issue is swept under the carpet and then laws about it are ninja-passed at 3am. As an Australian citizen I feel about as far removed from the running of this country as I am from the running of Uzbekistan.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
sighted*
thought*
and I'd reword the line:
"poorly planned, poorly executed and poorly though-out plan."
A poorly planned plan is just a poor plan. Perhaps "poorly conceived" would work?
Either way, onyamate.
Why aren't iiNet participating in the trial?
They have been the most vocal in agreeing to the trail since it was announced, specifically so they can use the results to show how stupid this is!
Have they been banned from the trial because of this attitude?
I'm hoping that all these attempts will fail in the test phase. Because the last thing I want is to be denied information because someone else is not capable of protecting themselves due to their stupidity.
populace.
- "ignorant american"
The Australian Labor Party that's pushing this isn't particularly known for its ties to Christianity, growing as it does out of the historically anti-religion Socialist movement.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Thanks .... I will do that
Cheers
There's PORN on the Internet?!
Ummm, will you have my babies?
"You can't fight in here, this is the war room!"
I hope you have some success, it's worth sending, but I can probably send you the same scripted letter I received. Quite offensive and completely dismissive.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of cats. MEOW!!
You also have to know that some colonies were settled by freemen. Melbourne and Adelaide were founded as cities rather than penal colonies. Convicts, if present at all, were a very small minority.
As far as the filtering goes, it's all politics. The Government has stuff it wants to get through and the weirdos will do it for them if the filter (and who knows what else) goes ahead.
So you're just saying:
Harden the fuck up Australia!
I go to the protests, I write to the appropriate officials, and since neither of those look like they'll have any effect, I have a wide variety of free VPN solutions and the like to distribute to anyone that wants one. :)
Ezekiel 23:20
Oops. My bad. I've been playing too many old PC games.
Ezekiel 23:20
Tech2U has worse value for money than even telstra. Omniconnect, netforce, and highway 1 provide internet for businesses. In short, the people who will be trialled will either have more money than sense and no idea about technology, or be one of the miniscule amount of businesses that are with these ISPs.
Any results from this trial have no credibility at all.
Ezekiel 23:20
These so-called Christian and Parent groups who advocate such nanny state intervention are only doing so because they are too lazy.
You want to protect the children? You supervise them. You don't give them a computer with internet access that they can use privately in their bedroom in the dead of night: You put the computer in some family location where a responsible adult is available.
Or... Lock the router in a cabinet with a simple timer switch on the power brick.
The phrase which sums up our modern era : "Can't someone else do it?"
Bah!
No sig. Move along - nothing to see here.
I would think they would be against the filter, since if it becomes widespread, there is no need for their business model anymore. They will go the way of the buggy whip manufacturers.
My wife won't let me. ;) To save double posting, @sortius below: Yep, I'm basically saying that a bit of HTFU won't go astray.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
I agree with you and sortius_nod, this country is a fucking nanny state. We have governments who insist on appeasing a bunch of scared old fuddy-duddies. At this rate every corner will have a padded edge, driving will be at the fixed speed of 40K everywhere and a curfew will apply to everyone under the age of 30(those over that age don't need a curfew, they never go out at night). 1984 comes in a maid's outfit under the guise of fixing your buster.
This country needs to get some fucking dignity and remember where it put it's balls.
Dude, you live on an island with the most poisonous animals on earth. Ridiculously poisonous spiders that snuggle up in the toes of slippers and are native to your capital city.
I live right outside of Washington, D.C., and if I couldn't walk around at night in my apartment for fear of poisonous, deadly varmints holing up in my Nikes the last thing I would be is complacent.
Re: governance, I would like to point you towards a recent statement by our new president in which he said something along the lines of, "Debate's nice and all, but you've had your fun and now it's time to pass the legislation I want you to pass." Translation: "Democracy, shemocracy, blah blah blah!"
This unbiased moderation brought to you by the Porcine Aviation Group!
I can't say anything at all about Webshield, but most commercial filtering software also blocks things like game sites and employment resources(job search sites, as well as sites with information about how much people in specific jobs get paid) .
They wouldn't have to pay for an anti-porn blacklist, so that saves them a little money and they probably offer services(or at least could) above and beyond just porn and IP filtering.
This is net neutrality in action. Once you hand over responsibility to the government, your service is only as good as those in power see fit. Internet censorship becomes a political whim, to be used when it is politically profitable for campaigns.
Parents are going to get a false sense of security because of the web-shield -> less parental control -> more unsupervised children online
if the parents think that the biggest problem online is the porn then they are more ignorant than i thought, and that's the main problem here isn't it?
so government censorship cant work without the parents involvement with the protection of there children and if the parents are involved then why the hell do we need government censorship in the first place.
the even more important point here is freedom, shouldn't I as a consenting adult have the right to view any website online, what give the right to any person to control or limit my activity's online, and whats next censorship of the media if they say something anti government or god forbid(i say sarcastically) anti Christan.
They're a not for profit organisation.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of cats. MEOW!!
I generally find these anti-censorship threads boring, because they end up being long rants by wankers worried about the loss of easy access to their free porn and movies. In this context, "free speech" is usually just camouflage for "free porn".
If you really want to worry about "free speech", go post in some threads about Google and China! Or, go blog about the US "Fairness Doctrine". Both topics offer you an opportunity to rant about political censorship pure and simple, with no subterranean porn issues.
Nevertheless, let me say I don't care that much about porn, per se. If you want to watch porn on your home or office PC (as long as MY tax dollars aren't paying for it) till you have a right arm the size of a pro wrestlers and a pecker so calloused it's always hard . . . have at it! It's no worse than spending your life on Warcraft or a some redneck virtual football pool.
But, this kind of filtering matters for reasons most of you wankers miss: its absence totally cripples the use of computers in public schools!
Public schools -- at least in the US -- specialize in educating kids whose parents don't give a sh$$, but who will $ue at the drop of a hat. Teachers, and especially administrators, live in terror of Johnny Pervert pulling up Wikipedia's illustrated pages on pornography. Johnny Pervert may see his mom or 'aunt' screwing around with 'Uncle Bob' at home, or may leaf through Hustler on his weekends with Dad, and nobody gives a sh$$. But mom is likely to become "upset -- just totally upset" if he sees a pecker or pu##-E on a PC at school. And she's likely to stay outraged till there's a school board hearing and hush-up settlement involving $$$. At that point, either the administrator or teacher or possibly both will be unemployed, and possibly sued or charged with a crime.
At least, that's what the teachers and admins believe -- and act upon -- thanks to some highly public cases and news accounts.
As a result, PCs at schools -- elementary through high school in my school district -- are so restricted and filtered as to be useless. They essentially have no internet access, except maybe to National Geography, Discovery Kids and the like.
I have to laugh, every time some PC industry titan, like Gates or Cuban, pontificates about needed more technology in schools. It's a big joke, because you until you give EVERY student one, PCs have to be used for largely unsupervised activities like research or using targeted programs for reading, math or typing. Because these activities have to be somewhat unsupervised -- since the REST of the class is doing something else -- teachers don't want, and won't use more PCs. They can sort of keep an eye on 2 or 3, while teaching the class, but they can't keep up with 6 or 8.
The bottom line here is simple: until you can find a way to keep PCs from being a threat to teacher's and admin's jobs, all the talk of technology in the schools will remain just talk, no matter how many millions or billions you spend. Even teachers with AOL level tech skills can find the off-switch!
In order for them to be able to use 6 or 8 PCs, they HAVE to have reliable and trusted filtering. It's doesn't have to let everything good through, it just has to keep almost everything bad out. AND -- and this is VERY, VERY important -- it has to be provided by someone official enough to create a high CYA factor. That is, if Johnny Pervert does manage to show Cindy Angel a stiff pecker, the classroom teacher has to be able to SUCCESSFULLY defend him or herself by saying, "But, we've been told we could trust the filter -- after all it's provided by the GOVERNMENT!"
Almost by definition, a private company's filter is useless for this purpose -- unless it's PERFECT -- because it will NOT be effective at protecting the teacher or administrator. At the outside, a private filter -- selected by the school board -- will only move blame from the teacher to the board . . . and THAT is NOT going to happen. By contra
Indeed, the free market will just come to the rescue with a huge escalation of VPN service providers and life will go on as normal.
What's not OK is imposing a filter on people who don't want it.
Well, it's a good thing nothing like that happens in the Democratic USA
I do not understand how someone in the 21st century would still feel the urge to CENSOR anything, again. We have not learned from our past , not a thing, if we are still debating such basic issues. Freedom of speech and thought is something that should not be never ever menaced. But since the governments are still so much into the deep mud of religious influences and other anti-human believes, I propose that the Internet should be split in two trunks, one for the government usage, that allows completely official comunication and information between citizen and the state. And another, which is the 'normal' internet, which would be only for 18+ yrs old citizens and has no censoring whatsoever. Granted, it is a compromise , but it's maybe the less problematic one. Religions are the relics of a world in which absolute military power and violence was the daily routine. We should get rid of them. And this comes by a correct education. my2c mrn
Re: governance, I would like to point you towards a recent statement by our new president in which he said something along the lines of, "Debate's nice and all, but you've had your fun and now it's time to pass the legislation I want you to pass." Translation: "Democracy, shemocracy, blah blah blah!"
I can actually empathize with that. If they're all talking and no-one's making any cohesive points, you'd want them to get on with it already.
I live right outside of Washington, D.C., and if I couldn't walk around at night in my apartment for fear of poisonous, deadly varmints holing up in my Nikes the last thing I would be is complacent.
It's not that bad, I had a spider in my shoe once and trust me, when you put you're foot in, it's vastly more stuffed than you are.
How do you kill that which has no life?
In a galaxy far, far away, I remember when many IRC channels banned .au addies on sight because, it seemed, the vast majority of Australians on efnet were troublemakers.
Seems the .au government agrees.
Here is a call to action: enable https on all your sites and use the Firefox extension that uses https instead of http by default.
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
...reason to be cheerful:
iiNet doesn't feature on the list of perpetrators. They were initially proposing to join the pilot scheme in an attempt to prove it wouldn't work, but for whatever reason it seems they've abandoned that idea. I guess there are arguments both ways as to whether or not that is a good thing, but as an iiNet customer (*) I'm not unhappy that my connection will not be slugged (yet).
* By way of an OT footnote, I might add that there was a time when the cognoscenti here in Western Australia (myself included) regarded iiNet customers with the disdain accorded to AOLites. Fact is that they were by far the first off the starting line with ADSL2+, and they've been good to me since...
Our prime minister is a communist.
I wish.
That would at least be interesting. Instead we have a narrow-minded, suburban, mealy-mouthed motherfucker who is content to run around screaming ohmygodohmygodwhataboutchechildren rather than actually do anything valuable or useful with his office.
All his blathering about "rolling up our sleeves" has no meaning other than that he doesn't want his cuff-links to bruise his butt.
Although I heartily despise the asswipe he replaced, Kevin Rudd is a serious disappointment.
I'm sorry, I don't click through to the websites of hate-filled morons.
I hope everyone in their government gets thrown out on their asses when this completely fails and pisses everybody off. They're wasting taxpayer money on a stupid and useless idea that doesn't serve the interests of the population as a whole but instead serves only a special-interest group. Dumbasses!
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
I am a Christian but one thing that annoys me about the Christian community is this nonsense about God being so overly worried about sexual practices. With all of the wrong things that every person does I find it mystifying that so many Christians are so hung up over sex. I suspect that the Lord has more concerns than just worrying about who, what, when and where we have sex.
Well their exports are: coal, iron ore, gold, meat, wool, alumina, wheat, machinery and transport equipment.
FRA: STFU GTFO
I assume that by "safe" they mean no phishing, no viruses, no botnets, no trojan horses...
Is the effectiveness of conservative opinion substantially diminished by the mere presence of dissent?
blame the Americans, for their culture of inactivity they brought over here back in the war.
The other possibility was for the Japanese to bring their culture of quiet industry and octopode porn Manga to Australia...OK, maybe you chose the wrong side!
Our Christian groups control our over air & pressure cable TV networks in the USA and tried to filter the internet too.
That's exactly what it's like in the US, right down to the campaigns. Except our police beat us, protest is suppressed, and there's a lot of dirty underhanded corporate and political scheming.
How do they plan to filter satellite internet? Drop a large mesh net around all of Australia?
Firstly:
* Really, the deadly animal thing, REALLY not that much of an issue unless you actually live in the bush. We have antivenoms for all the spiders and snakes and the number who are killed by any of them is sweet bugger all
* In regards to you thinking that somehow Obama is not being democratic in his current problems with the republican party, I would instead perhaps put this forward:
He has debated with, consulted, talked to and had great dealings with all sides, listened to all of their concerns, and yet really, the only thing that the Republicans want to do is... give tax cuts... that's it, that's their sole solution for ANYTHING, which makes no sense as then you have a government that has less money to DO anything with. You think somehow giving back little amounts to everyone will suddenly make the US become a power again? HOW?
Spending money on developing sustainable industries and education and things that might actually lift the US in its world standing are GOOD things to do for long term economic health. Giving a bit of money back to everyone so they can spend it on a larger tv or a few more take away dinners helps no-one.
The Republicans are blocking for blocking's sake. Obama was voted in with a landslide, which should suggest that the majority of the country believes in his ideas, so perhaps they shouldn't be so grandstanding as to block things for blocking's sake. If the populous want these things through, and have rejected the piss poor financial management of the Republicans for the past 8 years, then MAYBE they should let it through.
It seems to me that the very idea an ISP is allowed to interpret the data you transmit over their service *in any way* is akin to the phone company listening in on all your phone calls. Now we know in the US that's business as usual, at least in Australia it doesn't take an telco whistleblower for them to find out about it.
Time to buy stock in some VPN service companies, I'd say...
That's exactly what it's like in the US, right down to the campaigns. Except our police beat us, protest is suppressed, and there's a lot of dirty underhanded corporate and political scheming.
Oh, and you forgot-- for the last 20 years or so the banking and securities industry has been running a giant Ponzi scheme that makes even Madoff look like an amateur.
Well, I'd still be a little nervous about needing antivenin in a major city, but I suppose it's something you get used to.
The thing about "blocking for blocking's sake"...that's exactly what drives me up the wall about what the current administration is doing. They assume that no one could possibly in good conscience disagree with Keynesian economic policies which have proven time and again to fail, or with a massive spending package concocted in secrecy and then rushed through Congress without anyone knowing how they came up with the numbers or how, for example, monies going to Ms. Pelosi's home state of California for the protection of a particular breed of mouse's habitat relates to economic stimulus.
"If you disagree with me, it must be out of spite." That's a level of arrogance I am uncomfortable with.
That argument is usually followed by the second you mentioned, which boils down to, "Well, the Bush administration was AWFUL!" As has been pointed out repeatedly, the race is over and Bush is no longer president. Stop running against him. Furthermore, just because the previous administration was wrong doesn't mean that this current administration must be right.
I don't disagree that developing a broader industrial base, investing in infrastructure, education, environmental policies, etc. are worthy goals. I have a problem with packing pet projects in to an omnibus spending bill of historic size and having the gall to describe it as an "economic stimulus package" when even the Congressional Budget Office has determined that, in the long term, our economy would be stronger without it.
And, speaking as one of the people who received the tax refund, I can tell you that I didn't spend it on a bigger television, nor did most other recipients. Although, as it was MY MONEY in the first place, I would've had every right to spend it on hookers and blow if I so chose, legalities aside. I, like most people do in a shitty economy when they aren't making enough money to pay every bill on time, paid off outstanding debts.
Believe it or not, the stereotype of the fat, lazy, consumerist American isn't 100% accurate.
This unbiased moderation brought to you by the Porcine Aviation Group!
Spiders? Hah! If you're ever by ol' Sydney town, you'd best watch out for the drop bears. Big, mean drop bears. Just waiting to... drop.
Would be for all major websites outside of Australia to start blocking Australia surfers preemptively, redirecting them to a page informing them they are being blocked from accessing this site due to the government's filter.
If they choose not to be full participants of the internet, why should the rest of it (that isn't blocked) cooperate with them?
Tell him exactly how you feel.
Senator the Hon Stephen Conroy
Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy
Deputy Leader Of The Government In The Senate,
minister@dbcde.gov.au
Tel: 03 9650 1188
Fax: 03 9650 3251
sustainable living
Furthermore, the technical, financial and freedom of expression (as upheld through our constitution) issues are well documented and those in themselves should be more than enough to kill any further life in this poorly planned, poorly executed and poorly though-out plan.
Constitution fail. There is no such protection under the Australian Constitution. We have no bill of rights. This is not the Almighty US of A. Are you sure you're a politician? If so, that's a bit scary... though not surprising.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_constitution#Protection_of_rights
-Steve http://www.stevennicholson.com
Yes I know that.. my point was more along these lines http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_constitutional_law#Implied_rights
However I can see that I may not have been clear in exactly what I meant.... and I agree that not having a Bill of Rights is rather poor on our part...
PS I'm not actually a politician simply a lowly paying member of the ALP... I also hope that I would be able to...express... my limited knowledge of the constitution a little better had I been one :)
Did you understand the headline - "Some of Australia's Tubes are About to Be Filtered"?
Yes? - you're a geek!!. No? - Congratulations, now get off slashdot, and spend some time with real people, before it happens to you.
And, have you ever heard anyone in real life refer to the internet at "tubes"?
I'm a software visionary. I don't code.
hear hear. I would also like to add that while some groups may have 'Christian' in their title, or in their party, its a bit much to call them Christian groups. This is not the only case I have seen, and it makes Christians seem like a bunch of fanatical luddites. While this may be true for some, its certainly by no means a requirement. And there are a bunch of other well-meaning stupid people who have nothing to do with Christianity who are behind this in the name of 'the children'.
I'm just really looking forward to the day when the people who were born before the invention of the transistor (1947: Bell Labs prototype) to either a) get the hell out of my government, or b) shuffle off this mortal coil. Whichever comes first.
We do have a implied freedom of POLITICAL expression in Australia. So says the High Court. But yeah, you're right. It doesn't cover all expression, and the link with the internet filtering debate is tenuous.
Couldn't agree more. Great post.
"What gives is that modern Australians aren't the same hardass cons that built the country."
Most modern Australians aren't related to the original convict settlers would probably be a big start.
Australia is, primarily, a nation of migrants.
Maybe they won't like having competition? I doubt it, I assume they're doing it not just for the cash, but because they believe porn &c should be filtered. Either way, good on them for providing a product that people want, and bad on them if they go trying to impose their own moral standards on others.
And---it may be unpopular around here, but---bad on them if they provide a broken filter so that people are paying for something they don't want (access to porn).
Does anyone have a list of the sites that the Australian Government wants to block. After all, I don't live in Australia so it isn't illegal for me to look at what the Oz-ies are being silly about. Indeed, it isn't illegal for an Oz-ie to look at these sites. Yet. So whom do they want to block?
Right now, I wish I was that cute girl from across the street from you. Too bad. Rock on dude!
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.