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Australian Government Backing Down On Censorship

Posted by kdawson on from the won't-work-won't-scale-but-besides-that dept.

Combat Wombat sends the news that the government in Australia has begun waffling on whether country-wide Internet censorship will be mandatory. "The Rudd Government has indicated that it may back away from its mandatory Internet filtering plan. Communications Minister Stephen Conroy today told a Senate estimates committee that the filtering scheme could be implemented by a voluntary industry code. ... [The shadow communications minister] said he had never heard of a voluntary mandatory system. ... Senator Conroy's statement is a departure from the internet filtering policy Labor took into the October 2007 election to make it mandatory for ISPs to block offensive and illegal content." The censorship plan, which has been called "worse than Iran," was bypassed even before trials started. A minister's defection may have effectively blocked any chance of implementation.

4 of 116 comments (clear)

  1. !victory by sakdoctor · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Keeping back dumb censorship plans, in otherwise democratic countries, is an eternal struggle.

    1. Re:!victory by qpawn · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Agreed. There was no need for it in the first place. Sometimes politics is like when you dangle a person over a cliff, but then pull them back up and act like the hero.

    2. Re:!victory by Shakrai · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Sometimes politics is like when you dangle a person over a cliff, but then pull them back up and act like the hero.

      Reminds me of the old joke about "moderate" Democrats and Republicans:

      A moderate is someone who throws you a ten foot rope when you are fifteen feet offshore and later tells all of his friends that he went more than halfway.

      --
      I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
      We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
  2. Re:Who didn't see this coming? by kestasjk · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You knew it would happen.

    I knew it would happen.

    Things that live under rocks on the floor of the Pacific Ocean knew it would happen.


    Something like this won't get off the ground as long as there are people willing to fight against it, and we've got no shortage of those around here.

    Not really.. It has been very close to getting through, even recently there was a TV show about it and it gave a definite impression of an idea which is unpopular but will go through.

    Remember it was (I think still is?) actually implemented on several small ISPs, and I won't be happy until I hear a definitive no; watered down filtering isn't a victory, an opt-out clause isn't a victory, and it could still well end up that way.

    Also I don't know about "people willing to fight it" being the real reason. In the TV show debate about the internet filter (and in mainstream online news forums) the audience were largely in favor of censorship, but it was the glaring impracticality that swung it slightly in the opposition's favor.
    Maybe the debate audience was a biased sample, but there really wasn't (and isn't) the fierce opposition to the filter that would make a senator do a U-turn.

    --
    // MD_Update(&m,buf,j);