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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.
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"
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.
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.
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.
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.
Fuck that is one of the most idiotic things I've read today (I won't go 'ever'). Are you that much of an opportunist? You've never alluded to this in earlier posts.
It is so dumb that you sound like one of those people who watch and believe 'Today Tonight'
Kevin caused the financial crises, eh? The coalition never had plans for filtering? This is Australia ... nobody else gives a fuck ... and I like it that way.
C'mon, you're smarter than this.
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And I thought that censoring what my 7 year watches would be MY responsibility as a parent. Turns out you can just get the government to do it for free. Who'da thunk it ?
Just turn OFF the damn TV, parent your OWN kids, and stop spoiling the fun for the rest of us who ARE old enough and mature enough to decide what we watch.
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.
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.
I can tell you first-hand (as a parent and someone from a "very dependable company") that Internet filtering is not all it's cracked up to be. The filters are simply not accurate enough to rely on for home use; there are sites out there which deliberately try and remain unfiltered. There are a LOT of ways to get around them, depending on the tech. I can tell you that none of the companies that I know of are perfect. The government's expensive testing even proved that. The only reason Internet filtering works in schools and businesses is group mentality. Students and employees start to think they're being watched and tend to avoid doing things that are inappropriate lest they be found out and others find out what they're doing.
Porn is not a problem. If you're letting a young child out onto the Internet unsupervised you're a fucking moron. You are the problem in that case. Plain and simple. Are you so fucking stupid you let them swim in a pool without watching them too? I bet it'll be the government's fault for not when they drown! Do you take them to large events (sporting ones perhaps) and let them run around where you can't see them? Oh, Uncle Sam should have protected them there too because you were too fucking lazy to!
Being a parent is not the job of the gumbiment. Being a parent is your job, and I've got some news for you shit-stick; it's a full time job. I know this because I am a parent and it never ends. It may be hard work, but it's also great fun and a real rush, knowing you're molding and shaping them into responsible little versions of you.
*end rant*
I make no apologies for flying off the rails. It sickens me to the very core that some people actually think they shouldn't have to look after their own children.
I drink to make other people interesting!
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.
Why does no one ever demand actual evidence of harm from people like you? You claim that all of these dire consequences will arise from allowing your children unfettered access to information, and that we, as a society, will have to accommodate your beliefs. We've heard it before, over and over, for a large part of a generation now.
If you actually had to cite concrete, peer-reviewed, reproducible studies demonstrating the societal benefits of draconian ISP-level censorship before your position was taken seriously, it'd be amusing. Because such a requirement would leave you gasping and sputtering and waving your hands, unable to point to any evidence that children are actually harmed by media content. Yet, for some reason, people with your opinion are exempt from such requirements.
So... let's see that evidence, shall we?
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) --
He's not sending us into debt, we're already in debt! It's amazing how the coalition fed us the bullshit of historical consecutive surpluses and 'fiscal conservatism' but managed to DOUBLE the national debt to a trillion dollars in ten years.
This is after record taxation rates on the population (remember that the GST was meant to get rid of various taxes ... no wonder he promised never to move the GST to 11% ... Costello never needed to. How much after PAYG tax do you then end up paying on more taxes? Petrol? Milk? Bought a house in the last ten years? How much tax do you pay?) and a mining industry that brought in such huge amounts of cash from China and other developing nations but somehow the tax gained from that never found its way towards infrastructure or reducing the national debt.
They are all the masters of spin. Feed with one hand and rob with the other.
The filtering software was a first step that was deemed to be inadequate. They just got booted out before they could initiate secondary protocol.
Apologies for getting an Insightful mod on my previous post. It never should have.
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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.
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.
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.
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.