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Australia's Vast, Scattershot Censorship Blacklist Revealed
mask.of.sanity writes "Australia's secretive Internet filter blacklist held by its communications watchdog has been leaked, revealing the government has understated the amount of banned Web pages by more than 1000.
Multiple legitimate businesses and Web sites have been banned including two bus companies, online poker sites, multiple Wikipedia entries, Google and Yahoo group pages, a dental surgery and a tour operator.
Andrew Twaits, CEO of Betfair, a billion-dollar business blocked by the blacklist, was furious the government has potentially annexed tens of millions of dollars in revenue after the Betfair.com gambling site was blacklisted.
The blacklists were reportedly leaked by a Web filter operator to wikileaks which has published the full list of banned URLs.
Outraged privacy advocates say the government has effectively lied about the amount of URLs included in the blacklists, totaling more than 2300, and the type of content which it would ban.
The leak follows a series of attacks on the watchdog in which irate users successfully lobbied for web sites to be banned, only to be threatened with an $11,000 fine for publishing the link contained in the PR response. It was also revealed the watchdog can ban Web sites at a whim, with no accountability."
As for Rudd? He's one of the richest politicians in Canberra (oh sorry, it's all his wife's money /snark) and he's the leader of the Labour Party - I mean wtf? It just shows that we don't have a Labour Party any more. Thats what we really need, an old school Labour Party so we can switch back and forwards between the left and the right and retain a sensible balance like we once had.
It's like Lewis Black said about the Bush vs Kerry election - "we were offered two bowls of shit, the only difference was the smell." All you can do really is vote for the opposition at every election so each bowl of shit doesn't create a permanent stain.
"A cynic is what an idealist calls a realist" - Sir Humphrey Appleby
I'll be in the audience. Suggestions on the most effective way to point out flaws in the proposed censorship regime welcome. :)
Conroy and ISPs implementing the blacklist confirm that this is a fake
And yet in spite of this list's confirmed fakeness, Conroy has threatened that anyone distributing this confirmed fake list will be subject to investigation by federal police and suffer criminal prosecution.
o_O
"This is fake"
um ugh, hmph... and...
"ACMA is investigating this matter and is considering a range of possible actions it may take including referral to the Australian Federal Police. Any Australian involved in making this content publicly available would be at serious risk of criminal prosecution."
If the list is fake what exactly are they going to prosecute anyone for?
When my government denied their were secret CIA prisons then threatened to put people in jail for revealing stuff I nodded my head and said their are probably secret prisons. People don't threaten to call the police or put people in jail unless the item in question is real. I'm willing to bet that regardless of the fist pounding and outrage that this might not be today's list, and it might not be the August 8th list but it's the list at one time. No question about it because of the way he responded. The language makes you think they deny it's the list, but it appears to me their denial is very coached. It's not THE list. Not it's never been the list.
Um, we're a democratic republic, somewhat similar to your own country. We have no way of forcibly blocking legislation like this until the next election, excepting widespread civil disobedience or an outright coup.
They need to weight individual MPs votes by their local approval rating. That would give us a direct way to affect proceedings. As it is, the whole system's a farce. At least with a king, if he gets bad enough you can shoot him and install another one without having to wait until next election.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
But apparently, you didn't click the link. You should have. Apart from being funny, it's also a perfect example of the nonsense of these lists. Here it is: http://www.goat.cx (and no, it's not exactly why you think it is)
Last I heard there are still some books which are banned. For example, I think one of Dr. Nitschke's Euthanasia books is banned here.
Actually, one right right we do enjoy here in Oz is the right to 'political communication'. It would be intersting to see if the abortion people who've been listed took issue with this in the high court what the outcome wouldbe... Indeed, one might take issue with the whole list on that basis...
I must admit that I was one of the few supporting the blacklist, when all they said they'd block was porn. In the original proposal users could 'opt out' of the automatic censorship by contacting their ISP. Families can cruise the web with more confidence and those who want porn can get it easily. No probs.
When they put the anti-abortion site on the blacklist they made an enemy of me. That's political. That's an attempt to stifle public debate. Public debate is the basis of democracy. The current Labour government is the most pro abortion government we've ever had in Australia with a number of 'Emily's List' MP's to boot.
Guess I'd better not annoy anyone in that department too much though or those hairy arm-pitted lesbian feminist civil 'servants' will block my business website as well!
sudo mount --milk --sugar