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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."
Stephen Conroy, Australia's Minister for Censorship to appear on ABC's Q&A on Thursday March 26.
Submit your questions people, Thrust
Me lost me cookie at the disco.
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.
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Iinet have only withdrawn their application to participate in the trial.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
I want to know why he continues lying saying that the list published on wikileaks is not the actual list when it has been proven several times that it is infact the real list.
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
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/)
That might appear to be the case because initially it wasn't:
Senator Conroy and ACMA initially tried to discredit Wikileaks by saying the leaked blacklist was about double the size of ACMA's list. However, they admitted that both lists shared "some common URLs".
Wikileaks said the disparity was due to the fact that the leaked list was from August last year and contained a number of older URLs that had since been removed by ACMA.
It quickly followed up by leaking a second version of the blacklist, dated March 18 this year, that is approximately the same size as the ACMA list and contains many of the same seemingly innocuous websites.
And the clever part about how they got the list?
The list was obtained by Wikileaks from internet filtering software that parents can opt to install on their computers. ACMA provides its list of prohibited sites to these software developers for inclusion in their products.
Man who leaps off cliff jumps to conclusion.
...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
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/
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.
My first brush with this came when I tried to email myself a copy of a text analysis program I had written in a previous job (I had a copy at home). It got stopped, due to "potentially offensive content". After several rounds of emails back & forth, including an approval from my boss, I finally managed to get it released (the means of doing so was by no means easy or transparent). What was the sticking point? Well, the program included some samples of text I had tested it on. What was the oh-so-potentially-offensive text? One of the plays of William Shakespeare...
I confirmed this by sending a copy of the full play (Shakespeare's "All's well that Ends Well") - sorry, it got stopped as "potentially offensive". I leave it as an exercise to the reader to work out just why. (OK, I'll tell if anybody asks).
Since then I have experimented from time to time. The latest "offensive" text I found was the text of the novel "Anne of Green Gables" (yes, the classic story for girls). At least, I think it was classified as offensive, and I think I know why - but all I know for certain is that I sent three different copies of the text, and all three have disappeared without trace, without even a notice of "potentially offensive content". Some things, it seems, are too potentially offensive for government employees even to know about.
I don't think my Grandmother would approve.
I am a Statistician. One false move and you are a Statistic