Slashdot Mirror
Activists Use Wikipedia To Test Aussie Net Censors
pnorth writes "Editors at Wikipedia have removed a link to a blacklisted web site that sat uncontested for over 24 hours in the main body of the Australian regulator's own Wikipedia entry. The link, which directs readers to a site containing graphic imagery of aborted foetuses, was inserted into ACMA's Wikipedia entry by a campaigner against Internet filtering to determine whether Australia's communications regulator had a double-standard when it came to censoring web content. The very same link motivated the regulator to serve Aussie broadband forum Whirlpool's hosting company with a 'link deletion notice' and the threat of an $11,000 fine. Last night, the link became the subject of 'warring' between several Wikipedia administrators in the lead up to its removal, with administrators saying they didn't want to be used to prove a point."
>Last night, the link became the subject of "warring" between several Wikipedia administrators in the lead up to it's removal, with administrators saying they didn't want to be used to prove a point."
Petty drama, on MY Wikipedia?
Firehose story here
I think speech should be free, but seriously, how much worse off would we be if we didn't have breast feeding in public and demeaning of social groups?
Not very worse off at all.
But sadly there starts the slippery slope. If you give your government power over what speech is "hateful" or not, then it is they who decide just how hateful something must be.
Eventually, the more extreme politicians will have their say, and you'll soon find things that are not hateful on that list.
Then people become used to the idea of the list. Sooner or later someone comes along who wants to add their own little viewpoint in there without the "people" standing up and making a fuss. So the more extreme dissenters of government policy get quietly silenced. no one makes a fuss, after all, you've already banned the racists, homophobes and political extremists, so who will miss a few moaning greenpeacers or aclu-types. They could be dangerous, they stand up for terrorists after all. So dissent gets shut down and ever more extreme political power is yielded.
Do it all over society, as I believe is happening in the UK (protest is now illegal without permits, habeus corpus is suspended at will, it's illegal to say some things now), and you end up in a Police State.
I don't like the Neo Nazis. I'd rather they chose not to say what they say. But I will defend, to the death if needs must, their right to say it.
Someday, I might find myself the lone voice of dissension. I'd hope no matter what my views you'd stand up and support my right to say them.
Otherwise, one day *you* might be that lone voice...
The truth shall always be free: Boris Floricic is Tron.
I think speech should be free, but seriously, how much worse off would we be if we didn't have Nazi sympathizers and other hate mongers?
It is arguable that there are some materials so objectionable that ThePeople(tm) in a democracy could ask their governments to ban or restrict general access to them. But that is not the case here! This was meant to be a secret list, which means we have a (supposedly democratically elected) government acting without public oversight. This is to be tolerated only in the rarest cases when it strictly necessary (such as on some issues of national security). What the Australian government is proposing here is intolerable.
Hopefully the release of the list will serve to warn people about the potential scope of the secret list. And hopefully this will strengthen Sen. Xenophon's resolve (and perhaps pursuade some other cross benchers) to scuttle the enabling legislation in the Senate.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
how much worse off would we be if we didn't have breast feeding in public
We would be very much worse off! The breastfeeding rate would fall. Child abuse in the form of bottle feeding would become rife, with obvious negative effects on future economic and sporting performance as well as the rise in criminal acitivity among abused children. In cases when mothers resisted such bottlefeeding abuse, we would have an increase in the number of hungry babies crying in public. Worse still some mothers might take their babies into public toilets to feed them, the psychopathological effects of which don't bear contemplating!
But yeah, you're right ;)
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
Cool down a notch or two there. I'm in Canada, and Wikileaks isn't loading either. Slashdot effect or other server problems, I expect.
Censorship is one area where the behavior of Wikipedia as a whole is very predictable. Virgin Killer, AACS encryption key, Jyllands-Posten, etc... If you try to remove something controversial from Wikipedia and it gets publicized, it will get added back, usually with administrator support. If you make a really big fuss, the censorship effort will get its own article and it'll probably get mentioned in one of the articles about Wikipedia itself. WP:V + pro-free-speech admins = you're screwed.
The photos linked to in the article couldn't be really considered hate speech ... hate speech against whom? Not the fetuses, as the site is "pro-life". If publishing photos of dead fetuses is hate speech against pro-choicers then we may as well tear up free speech. (Technically the ACMA censors offensive images as well as hate speech, but still I don't consider the existance of such images offensive if they are not being waved in my face)
Troll? It's just a particularly tortuous Slashdot analogy. You see, the Yoda doll is the new internet blacklist, the grease is alleged child porn (allows you to accept the doll more easily), and 'you' represent the Australian public. The improbability of the whole process neatly mirrors the f**king impossibility of this scheme ever working in the real world.
I concur it was rather obvious but still, it could at least get an 'informative'.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
From the list:
www.goat.cx, 2girls1cup.com
So Australia's legislating for taste, then?
(lots of IP addresses including some with reputable hosting providers like Verio)
So hard luck if you got them after the original user whose content was blocked, then?
partypoker.com, www.pacificpoker.com, pokerroom.com, coralpoker.com
OK, the obnoxious advertising is more than a little annoying, but blacklisting them? Isn't that a little extreme?
hogtied.com
Well-known US BDSM site, complying with all relevant US laws. Almost certainly not illegal in Australia, although I'm not an expert.
encyclopediadramatica.com
OK, I know they're blacklisted from being linked to on Wikipedia (with good reason), but blocking the entire site for an entire country -- a little extreme for being obnoxious, isn't it?
biz
Huh?? Not sure how their interpretation of this list works, but with a badly written filter this would probably block all .biz domains. With a well-written one it would achieve precisely nothing.
myusenet.net
A usenet service provider.
churchofeuthanasia.org
A site that seems to be intended to make a political statement about population control, although doing it in a rather crude fashion.
satanservice.org
A site of information about self-identified satanic religious groups.
libchrist.com
From the site: "Promoting Positive Intimacy and Sexuality Including Responsible Nonmonogamy or Polyamory as a legitimate CHOICE for Christians and others."
18yopics.com
So, they're not even pretending to have underage models, yet they get blocked anyway? Presumably on the off-chance that some of their models are younger than they claim?
www.torrentspy.com/directory/1503/adult/videos+%2d+hardcore
A list of hardcore movies, 99+% of which are totally legal (although, in most cases, copyright violations).
http://xfreehosting.com/
A hosting service provider's web site.
pornspaces.com
Another one.
http://pornstarpasswords.com/
A site with a collection of pictures of well-known US adult stars and a 18 USC 2257 compliance statement.
www.bowwowlyrics.cn
A site that, when it existed, probably contained lyrics and images relating to a vaguely-popular 80s New Wave pop group, and in a mirror of the Wikipedia/Scorpions debacle was probably blocked for hosting a copy of this album cover, which shows the naked back of the band's 15-year-old lead singer.
torrentfive.com
A generic bittorrent links site.
legal-models.info
A collection of non-pornographic images of children.
pussy.org
An average, run-of-the-mill hardcore porn site with US legal compliance statement.
sensualgetaway.com
A swingers' classified ads site.
piratetourism.com
"a full service travel agency, operating with the full license of the Ministry of Tourism and a member of the Association of Travel Agencies of Turkiye"
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cyde/Weird_pictures, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ewlyahoocom/WikiPr0n
Two collections of somewhat-risque pictures that appear in wikipedia articles. None of these images appear to constitute child pornography.