Slashdot Mirror
Australian Government Backing Down On Censorship
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.
Keeping back dumb censorship plans, in otherwise democratic countries, is an eternal struggle.
It's so funny to watch a government make a huge mistake, and then try to back down from the decision without saying "sorry guys, we screwed up"
Our culture doesn't get smarter, it just finds new ways of being retarded.
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.
How do you kill that which has no life?
The summary says "A minister's defection may have effectively blocked any chance of implementation."
But that link refers to Senator Nick Xenophon. He is an independent senator, not a Minister in the government.
This is why Westminster-style governments should never have a senate majority.
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
I'm really pleased to read this story, but sadly I think the only reason this "backing down" has come about is because the politicians in question were so bare-faced and blunt with the proposals in the first place. I suspect that has a lot to do with the character and nature of Australians in general. I may get criticised for stereotyping, but most Australians of my acquaintance take pride in the blunt honesty prevalent in their culture, so I don't think I'm out of line.
Unfortunately this culture of an honest (if ineffective and ill-considered) approach to government implementation of web-filtering - and indeed of all privacy-crushing legislation - is rather rarer elsewhere. I'd love to see our ministers "back down" from the measures being artfully and insidiously emplaced under the auspices of all sorts of other harmless- or necessary-sounding legislation, but I just don't see it happening.
I'm not saying Australia is the land of enlightenment and open government or anything, but somehow the top-coat of bullshit and whitewash over there seems to be somewhat shallower on the whole.
Good on yer, Oz. Now please, expose some of the hypocrisy and skullduggery going on in the rest of the developed world for what it is - an ingrained attempt at tightening power and control over the voting public.
Meta will eat itself
This idiotic plan is not killed and dead. The Labor government in general, and Senator Stephen Conroy in particular, have been taken aback by the strength of the opposition. The article noted in the summary only covers some of the incompetent answers given to hard questioning by the main Opposition party and one of the minority parties.
Trials are still being underway involving 4 tiny ISPs, one medium ISP, one Christadelphian ISP and one large ISP majority owned by Singtel.
There is no engineering, vendor neutral specification giving trial design criteria or testing methodology as the basis for the trials. There is no requirement for the ISPs to disclose which method of censorship they selected. The ISPs have been supported to the tune of $AU300,000 but there is still a $AU887,000 consultancy contract for the testing and reporting of on a system to block up to 10,000 URLs. The IWF annual report lists between 1100-1300 sites blocked by their system. Rumour has it that much of the testing in the small ISPs is using equipment from the same censorware vendor but this is not confirmed as several censorware vendors have been lobbying for the windfalls. Watchdog, using the NetClean system was involved in some separate testing undertaken by another ISP, Exetel. The Exetel trial received a great deal of criticism in the Australian internet community and Exetel customers. The trial has not been cancelled and neither has the testing consultancy.
Any assumption that the scheme will disappear is premature.
A list of 1000s of banned films and publications is still in existence. The censorship regime has become more and more repressive over the last 10 years. Realistically the entire basis of censorship needs serious review. It is managed by more than one government authority under several different pieces of legislation. The proposed censorship of the internet is under the control of the telecommunications authority which is yet another government authority.
You would have to try very hard to find a more incompetent approach to anything to do with IT, networking or civil liberties all in the same package.
In Australia, we have a small enough population (and mandatory voting) that its not a wise option to piss off too many people while you are in power. Especially if you want to get back in. The ministers' defection was caused due to backlash in his region. It is my guess that the labor government will try and sweep whats left of the issue under the rug and we won't hear about it again (or at least until some other polly thinks it may be a good idea and may get some conservative votes and we will have to go through this again).
Tell you what, on behalf of a vast majority of Australians I invite you to keep him.
would be a positive filter. Instead of trying to filter the entire internet for everyone, create a Government Certified Safe Internet that lists web sites deemed "appropriate for children" by a new bureaucracy, and make it available to anyone's private filter on a voluntary basis. Require all government internet terminals available to children (e.g. libraries) to subscribe to the filter. Yes, there are already private companies that offer this service, but the constituents driving this evidently trust a giant government bureaucracy more than they trust a somewhat smaller corporate bureaucracy.
There will still be a market for private filter companies because they can offer different censoring standards to parents. It could actually be a good thing to have a voluntary censoring standard backed by general consensus. Private filters could start with the government database as a baseline, then add sites that "really should have been approved" or subtract sites that "my kid(s) can't handle". (For instance, my daughter had nightmares about "ducks biting her" after an incident involving a goose. She was not allowed to view "Jurassic Park" until she was much older, even though it was appropriate for the other kids.)