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Wikileaks Pages Added To Australian Internet Blacklist
cpudney writes "The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has added several Wikileaks pages to its controversial blacklist. The blacklisted pages contain Denmark's list of banned websites. Simply linking to addresses in ACMA's blacklist attracts an $11,000 per-day fine as the hosts of the popular Australian broadband forum, Whirlpool, discovered last week when they published a forum post that linked to an anti-abortion web-site recently added to ACMA's blacklist. The blacklist is secret, immune to FOI requests and forms the basis of the Australian government's proposed mandatory ISP-level Internet censorship legislation. Wikileaks' response to notification of the blacklisting states: 'The first rule of censorship is that you cannot talk about censorship.'" So Australians aren't allowed to see what it is that the Danes aren't allowed to see?
Aussie here, it has always been my contention that Conroy was in charge of the project to drag it out and make sure it DIDN'T happen, I think they are about to sign the death certificate...
Relevent info in amoungst the links...
"The Greens and Opposition also oppose the scheme, meaning any legislation to implement it will be blocked. The Opposition has obtained legal advice that "legislation of some sort will almost certainly be required", but others have said it may be possible to implement the scheme without legislation. Speaking at a telecommunications conference last week, Senator Conroy urged Australians to have faith in MPs to pass the right legislation."
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
The link in question was to an anti-abortion page containing some pictures of aborted babies. Apparently a member of the forum decided to test the filter by posting a link to the page and then submitting a complaint to the ACMA asking for such a link to be banned, for the purpose of seeing what would happen.
Lo and behold someone at the ACMA must of looked at the page, seen the pictures (I'm sure you can find much worse in any medical journal mind you) and decided that linking to the page was now illegal. So they sent a notice to the forum's hosting provider (bypassing the forum all together) informing them to take the link down within 24 hours or risk being fined $11K per day. The host then contacted the forum admin who obviously didn't want to put this on his provider took down the link.
I initially thought nothing would come of this ridiculous filter idea because it was just so plain stupid and so many people, including most ISPs, are against it. But I'm not so sure anymore.
Doesn't Australia have a constitutional document guaranteeing freedom of speech?
No.
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
Quoting myself here:
"[...]many of Australia's rights are "implied" in the constitution and exist merely through the High Court's "creative" interpretations. Such as the implied right for Political speech in Australian Captial Television Pty Ltd v. Commonwealth (1992) which was also extended in 1994 in Theophanous v. The Herald And Weekly Times. Australia also took an active role in 1948 when drafting the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.
Unfortunately, many attempts to introduce entrenched Human Rights into the constitution such Lionel Murphy in 1973 and 1985 with the Federal attorney-general have failed before they even reached the stage of a referendum."
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=436328&cid=22244392
Ironically it may turn out that my comment towards the end was a bit too quick to judge.
The Finnish police have already censored the Wikileaks page on Finnish internet censorship; see my comment at the appropriate talk page.
In the words of Thomas Jefferson: "A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have"
I like that quote, but have never heard it before. It didn't quite ring right for Jefferson, so I dug. According to WikiQuote, it's actually from Gerald Ford's address to Congress in August, 1974.