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iiNet Pulls Out of Australian Censorship Trial
taucross writes "ISP iiNet today confirmed its exit from the Australian government's Internet filtering trials. iiNet had originally taken part in the plan in order to prove the filter was flawed. Citing a number of concerns, their withdrawal leaves only five Australian ISPs continuing to test the filter."
Time for everyone to start using Tor and I2P for some safety. Or simply SSL to get started. How exactly were they planning to check the content of that? Or are they only filtering on hostname?
iiNet had registered interest in participating in the trial, but they were not selected for first round of testing. Now it appears as if they've pulled out of the whole process completely.
It seems the major reason for the backout is because wikileaks published the ACMA blacklist. There were many URLs on the list which were not associated with illegal sites, but instead, politically undesirable sites.
Hooray for wikileaks! They've proven how easy it is to abuse compulsory censorship, even in a democracy of elected officials.
iiNoMoreNet
According to TFA, it leaves Primus Telecommunications, Tech 2U, Webshield, OMNIconnect, Netforce and Highway 1. Not exactly what you'd call heavily-populated ISPs.
You can learn a lot about a person if you just take the time to inject them with sodium pentathol
I've heard of Primus... and that's it.
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
"their withdrawal leaves only five Australian ISPs continuing to test the filter."
Correction; There were, and remain, six participating ISP's in the trial; Primus Telecommunications, Tech 2U, Webshield, OMNIconnect, Netforce and Highway 1
Iinet have only withdrawn their application to participate in the trial.
To put it in perspective, Optus, the second largest ISP still has an (as yet unaccepted) application to participate. iiNet is the third largest ISP. Primus is possibly in the top 20 ISP's in the country, and the other 5 might sneak into the top 200. There are no other notable publicly known applications from other ISP's
Before I start I want to make it absolutely clear that I am completely opposed to filtering, and I am an Australian.
What I want to point out is that there is a pretty solid chance that the list on wikileaks isn't the ACMA list. If this was leaked from a vendor (eg. Websense) then they may have incorporated the ACMA blacklist into their own blacklist and then a staff member leaked _that_ list.
This would still mean that the entire ACMA list is in the leaked list, but it means that a lot of the sites that are questionable (not illegal but listed) may not be anywhere to be seen on the ACMA list and were added by the third party (the sites everyone is complaining about).
This also means that Conroy stating that "that isn't the ACMA list" is actually true, the fact that it contains the ACMA list is a point that was skimmed over.
Now that wikileaks have some new 'leaked lists' that apparently show a great drop in the number of banned URL's and suggesting a government 'clean up' could easily be attributed to the fact that their new leaked lists are the genuine article, and not a list leaked from a third party with additional URL's.
Just want to put it out there. If the government are trying to ban non-illegal content they should be strung up.. but I just don't want to jump to the conclusion that everyone seems to be jumping to.
Thankfully I'm entirely too lazy to go trolling through my comments on Slashdot from months ago where I said that the Government was primarily interested in blocking "hard core" porn sites.. otherwise I think some "nya, nya, told ya so" would be in order for the slashtards who disagreed with me. The kind of porn people regularly access on the Internet has been "illegal" in every state of Australia (but not the territories) for a long time now. Why do people find it so surprising that those-who-like-to-censor would apply the same standard to Internet porn that they do to video tape porn? It just makes sense that they would. People failed to object to film censorship. They failed to object to video censorship. They failed to object to videogame censorship. Now, finally, when they do try to object, the established censorship mechanism of government is too strong.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Bigpond & Optus are not involved in the trial
What are you listening to? (http://megamanic.blogetery.com/)
I can't understand why any ISP at all (even a tiny one) is signing up for these trials. I mean, it's like the government saying that they're going to inject the ISP and their customers with herpes as a trial run for injecting the whole of Australia with herpes. Herpes brings no value to your business and causes a lot of headaches for you and your clients.
The moral of this story is: Practice safe browsing, and don't let the government stab you with herpes infected needles. If a needlestick happens accidently, seek another government immediately.
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
...because we all know that the filter can be circumvented. I'm sure the government also knows this. The problem for us will be political. If the government can have legislation rammed through the parliament, then it doesn't matter even if every ISP drops out of the filter test. They can just ram it through (in principle at least) anyway and make it unlawful to attempt to circumvent it. If they could do it, they would, and no amount of non-testing or technical faults would stop them.
However, given that a) they do not have the numbers in the senate on their own to ram it through, b) there is no way the Greens will support it from the cross-benches, and c) the Lib-Nat coalition seems bent on opposing the crap out of everything the government does out of, well, who knows why those clowns do anything at the moment, I cannot see the return they're getting on the investment of political capital in this scheme. Independent Senator Nick Xenophon seems to have lost interest in the filter lately, so that leaves only Senator Steve Fielding of Family First. This filter would naturally appeal to Fielding, but what on earth does the ALP think they can gain by courting him this way? He's shown that he isn't that interested in dealing with the ALP but is instead prepared to scuttle legislation unless he gets his way.
So what's this really all about? Is it really just some bloody-minded insistence upon seeing the program through to its bitter end regardless of its seemingly inevitable failure on both technical and political fronts? Surely, they'd look less daft just admitting it's a failure now than seeing it through to an end of certain failure? I don't see why they're pressing on with it.
Athy, athier, athiest.
According to TFA, it leaves Primus Telecommunications, Tech 2U, Webshield, OMNIconnect, Netforce and Highway 1. Not exactly what you'd call heavily-populated ISPs.
Careful there. You're citing highly relevant, factually correct, widely available but politically undesirable material. Next thing you know you'll be threatened with an $11,000 fine and slashdot will be added to the list!
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
"iiNet pulls out"... "another blow for the controversial project"... "iiNet's withdrawal"... "Senator Conroy plans to use parts"...
Very clever, internet... very clever.
I wonder if any of these sell themselves as a "family oriented" ISP - That is they embrace the blocking because it is a point of differentiation and thus a marketing tool for them (Webshield in particular sounds suspicious)? If so, and this misguided project comes to fruition, they will lose their advantage.
-- Braden's law of data: All data spends some of its lifetime in an excel spreadsheet.
I think the explanation is that, with Conroy having made such a concerted push to implement this filtering, he's now in a position where he can't afford to be seen to back down. This IS politics, after all, so the lack of common sense, consensus and viability is only a minor detail.
As you say, the only support he seems to have in parliament is from Fielding; the rest of the ALP seems to have just stepped quietly back into the shadows on this issue, leaving Conroy on his own.
The one ISP who joined the trial to prove that the filtering scheme is broken has pulled out. Doesn't this mean that a major influence in the scheme's failure has just been dismissed?
I'm sure the Aus government are sobbing their little black hearts out over the loss.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
... to bypass this Internet filtering, say that could be run inside a Firefox browser session. That would let us reverse the ROT - I'll say that again - reverse R-O-T. You know; the letters "R", "O" and "T"; if you just could reverse that, then you might have a viable solution, that you could use to bypass all that Internet filtering.
Pity that our govt has almost certainly considered all that, and has a highly intelligent and technically sound way of ensuring that that couldn't possibly work. Gosh these pollies are clever chaps; much smarter than any of us technical people.
Nick Xenophon has gone a little bit past having "lost interest" previously stating his opposition to the filter. He has also stated he isn't convinced the trial should go ahead in its current form:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/02/27/2503830.htm?site=local
"But I think the means of doing it really are very problematic and when ISP after ISP [are] saying that this won't work, it will slow down the internet for everyone, and it won't deal with the issue of the peer to peer networks that paedophiles use, then I think we really need to rethink this."
More importantly though, you seem to be under the impression that Conroy doesn't understand the political problem here. The last sentence from the above article states it quite nicely:
"A spokesman for Senator Conroy says the Minister is still looking into whether the filter would require legislation, or could be implemented through another means."
He's very aware that this isn't going to get through the legislative process. There are obviously other agendas involved that prevent common sense prevailing.
Perhaps the presence of anti-abortion sites on the list will change his mind.
http://marriedmansexlife.com/
There has already been at least one ISP that offered filtering as a service, ISP level, not the programs they all offer for free. I don't remember the name so I don't know if it is still in business. I used the connection, it didn't work very well.
http://marriedmansexlife.com/
Won't somebody PLEEEEEEEEASE think of the children!!!
...posting here to clear my mods --- sorry, I somehow chose the wrong option from the drop-down...
!("Flamebait" && !"Troll") < !(!"Disagree" || "Insightful")
Only Primus has a page on Wikipedia, and apparently they filed for bankruptcy on March 16th.
Most human behaviour can be explained in terms of identity.
This story's getting a bit old, don't you think?
Australia is getting more & more like China every year.
Even the pseudo-open community of Whirlpool suffers China-style censorship, by unknown moderator.
Australia's PM Rudd was very recently reported as CAMPAIGNING for a BIGGER ROLE for CHINA in IMF.
We were once (before his election) happy to learn that Rudd had learned Chinese... thinking that this might help him negotiate more effectively in AUSTRALIA's interests.
Now, we are concerned that he's going down a Chinese road, now, in Internet censorship...
any day now, in embracing the Chinalco buy into an Australian company... to a HIGHER THAN LAWFUL level.
Soon, we'll all be learning Chinese.
(Except for the political implications, learning a language such as Japanese or Chinese - from an early age - might do Aussies some good... better Hindi, we'd suggest... ;-)
So, feeling Australia from a relative newcomer's point of view (ie, not biased by an blinkers-on "She'll be right, Mate!" or "I'm not interested in politics, Mate!" perspective), we are not expecting much on the Aussie Internet front.
There was one company, recently reported to be offering (was it:) WiMAX (?) to fill the many broadband gaps in suburban Australia... WITHOUT depending on Australian or other gov't handouts.
Them, we'll be watching... and hoping to see come to our neighborhood.
Faster speed, telephone line (read: monopolistic Telstra) independent, and - for the moment - fairly cost-effective (with lots of room for improvement, on the Cost axis).
Still, if the gov't pushes its censorship nonesense through, even the Good Guys like that ISP will be saddled with extra weights, just like the fastest racehorses in each race...
Past is Prologue: Once colonists in the British Empire; now, new-colonists to Telstra's legacy & a government bowing to the religious right minority, offering Australians a false confidence in the possibility of a "clean-feed," and slowing the Internet down (perhaps to make online shopping less pleasant, so folks will feel more like "Buying Australian"? I doubt they will.)
..and more to the point, iiNet pulled out of the trial months ago. I'm not sure why there's this sudden resurgence of interest, but hopefully someone can enlighten us.
Highway1, I believe, deals entirely with providing bandwidth for business/corporate clientele. They don't have 'mom-and-pop' customers.
I've heard of Primus... and that's it.
The band Primus bought a Ozzie comm company? Doubtful they would have volunteered to do anything with the government, unless it was to discredit this (likely).
Or is it the transformers in disquise, Optimus Primus? Which then begs another q, which is the real identity. Optimus Primus is either some buyer on Amazon, or some yank from MySpace with a few hot femme friends?
But this all still doesn't answer the base question; why is Australia still even considering this steaming pile or Wallaby feces?
Both iPrimus and Webshield offer filtered web services.
Webshield is a (very) small ISP in Adelaide, filtered internet feeds is their primary business.
Stephen Conroy is a former union leader, and while totally clueless about communications and internet, he is determined to thrust the unpopular filter down the peoples throat. Last week I heart him saying something in public to the extent 'people should trust the government'.
Oh, no sir, you have to deserve our trust first. Right now, you are a union red-neck with his feet solidly planted in something, he does not understand the first thing about.
Dude, the Primus that filed for bankruptcy is in Delaware. Delaware is not in Australia. The Primus in Aussie is the one at www.primus.com.au
Australia isn't. A few retarded monkeys in the government are still considering it, despite the number of times we've told them it's retarded in all senses of the word.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
Poor little twoll, doesnt anybody ever listen to you.
Oh thats right your a fucking moron.
I have called 4chan and told them one of the loopy inmates is loose on the internet again.
"Stephen Conroy yesterday attempted to hose down concerns ..."