Australian Website Bans ... Australians

Nazlfrag writes "Earlier this month the blog and discussion forum ZGeek was sued for $42 million AUD over a user's comment. The plaintiffs are aspiring movie producers who claim to have lost a movie deal due to a 9/11 conspiracy discussion thread. Even though the initial lawsuit has been thrown out, and the company complied with lawyers' demands by taking down the offending posts, it is believed the plaintiffs will file suit again. In addition to suing the forum, in an Australian first they have been granted an injunction to force the ISPs to disclose the IP addresses of the two posters involved. Due to the risk of incurring even greater legal costs the company is closing its doors in Australia, and will ban their fellow countrymen from posting there again."

Comments

Poor Aussies

[Gravedigger3]

Why does everyone keep treating them like a bunch of criminals?

Re:Poor Aussies

[houstonbofh]

Why does everyone keep treating them like a bunch of criminals?

The sad part is that it seems that only Aussies treat Aussies like a bunch of criminals. Yes, I get the joke, but considering the great firewall and more, it just seems less funny.

Re:Poor Aussies

[Derkec]

They're used to it, because iocane comes from Australia, as everyone knows, and Australia is entirely peopled with criminals, and criminals are used to having people not trust them

Re:Poor Aussies

[DoofusOfDeath]

Why does everyone keep treating them like a bunch of criminals?

Oh come on... we can't be dicks to a penile colony?

Re:Poor Aussies

[girlintraining]

Why does everyone keep treating them like a bunch of criminals?

Because the purpose of every country's legislative branch is to add laws, not remove them. The judiciary's job is to review laws, not remove them. And the executive branch's job is to suggest, review, and approve laws, not remove them. Therefore, the older the country, the more laws. And it doesn't take long before all the major ones required have been added, so there is an inevitable climb toward the bottom, to regulate even the smallest matters, until everyone is a criminal, though they may not know or consider themselves as such, in some fashion.

Consider this: The Ten Commandments contain 297 words, the Bill of Rights 463 words, and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address 266 words. A recent federal directive regulating the price of cabbage contains 26,911 words.

Re:Poor Aussies

[Kozz]

Consider this: The Ten Commandments contain 297 words, the Bill of Rights 463 words, and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address 266 words. A recent federal directive regulating the price of cabbage contains 26,911 words.

I'm shocked nobody has called bullshit on this one yet. Damn, dude. Check snopes.
http://www.snopes.com/language/document/cabbage.asp

Unless of course you also read this on snopes and decided it was a good time to perpetrate an urban legend. *shrugs*

Re:Poor Aussies

[girlintraining]

Why are we regulating cabbage? Are they requiring the price to be low to combat anti-competition tactics in cabbage syndicates?

The government has regulated the cost of food for a long time for many reasons...

1. The free market cannot be trusted to maintain price stability. If there was a sudden drop or rise in the price of food, then people might not be able to afford it, or in the reverse, that farmers would go bankrupt and supply would diminish. When it comes to basic needs things like food, electricity, water, stability often sought after.

2. There is no cabbage cabal, only Zuul.

3. Incorporating a price floor prevents large corporations from winning based on economy of scale -- they cannot undersell smaller operations, thus existing infrastructure (land, mainly) will never be repurposed at a lower cost. But it "protects rural america" doing this.

Re:Poor Aussies

[AndrewNeo]

Who the heck moderated this interesting? It's supposed to be funny!

Re:Poor Aussies

[Werkhaus]

A recent federal directive regulating the price of cabbage contains 26,911 words.

Ah, yes. Also known as "Cole's Law".

Re:Poor Aussies

[kzieli]

Most of the ten commandments are not enforceable by law though. Murder the theft are crimes. Bearing false witness is only a crime in some circumstances. More to the point it is against the law to enforce some of them, seeing as most western countries have some provisions for freedom of religion).

Laws do get removed and replaced over time. What tends to happen is that breaches of some particular law first start getting minimal sentences. Then cases invoking it start getting dismissed the public prosecutor stops bringing the charges forward.

After a while no one remembers the law and no one heeds it. Eventually someone will notice and it will get repealed. These days there are openly practicing Wiccans in most western countries. Go back far enough and you will find laws prohibiting the practice of witchcraft. It was once a crime but is no longer viewed as a crime.

Re:Poor Aussies

[sumdumass]

1. The free market cannot be trusted to maintain price stability. If there was a sudden drop or rise in the price of food, then people might not be able to afford it, or in the reverse, that farmers would go bankrupt and supply would diminish. When it comes to basic needs things like food, electricity, water, stability often sought after.

You would be surprised at how unobvious that is to so many people. I recently spent the better part of 5 or 6 posts talking to a guy over subsidies and their intent while all along he couldn't distinguish between protecting a food source (starvation) compared to protecting manufacturing jobs and so on.

Don't be surprised.

Re:Poor Aussies

[Wingman 5]

First, Not. A. Dude.

From the American Heritage Dictionary
3 Slang.
      2. dudes Persons of either sex.

Re:Poor Aussies

[Dayze!Confused]

Dude, lighten up a bit. Dude is a generic term and a filler word. This is a tech forum, let's not bring sexual (mis)identity into this.

The Ten Commandments contain 297 words, the Bill of Rights 463 words, and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address 266 words.

By removing your urban legend portion your point is now lost. Unless, of course, we also remove the Gettysburg address since it isn't actually law of any sort, then we see a pattern forming; although you can't really make a good pattern based off of two occurrences.

This is all assuming that your "point" was that laws are using up more and more words, which wasn't very clearly stated at all; or possibly that laws are getting more and more specific. Which still, you gave four documents which range widely in purpose and use.

Re:Poor Aussies

[MaskedSlacker]

Personally I prefer +5 Troll.

Re:Poor Aussies

[Anonymous Coward]

First, Not. A. Dude. I'm a dyke, get it right.

You put too much emphasis on your gender and sexual orientation.

From your user profile:
"A geek like you, but who doesn't get the respect you do because I wear a skirt and you wear pants."

It seems that you have self-steem issues you need to sort out.

Re:Poor Aussies

[Landshark17]

Don't be so quick to trust snopes... http://xkcd.com/250/

Re:Poor Aussies

[tpgp]

The government has regulated the cost of food for a long time for many reasons...

Hey dude, as someone else has pointed out in this thread, your tale of cabbage regulation is an urban myth

Do you have anything to back up anything you're saying - or are you just trolling?

Re:Poor Aussies

[fractoid]

How on earth is this redundant? They *clearly* cannot take the whine in front of ZGeek!

Re:Poor Aussies

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

The sad part is that it seems that only Aussies treat Aussies like a bunch of criminals.

That's because they forgot to kick out the guards.

Re:Poor Aussies

[twostix]

That's an extremely starry eyed and naive idea of much primary production regulation.

The alternative and reality in most cases is that huge corporate interests, often the supermarkets and generally large agricultral management corps want to apply pressure on smaller and independant farmers. Large supermarkets don't like having to deal with small farmers and in many cases are in direct competition with smaller farms through their own holdings in large agricultural management firms. And obviously large agri-holdings have many reasons to want to shove the small old school independents out of business.

But you keep believing the government is acting primarily in the interests of the handful of small 100 - 2000 acre unorganized independent farmers remaining in the west rather than the large billion dollar agri-corps and supermarkets that give politicians hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign funds each year.

Re:Poor Aussies

[MillionthMonkey]

If we could afford to completely imprison our entire public, we would do it, sure. But now with this recession it's only a dream.

Re:Poor Aussies

[MrNaz]

I think you just came up with a great idea on how to spend stimulus money!

Re:Poor Aussies

[Bigjeff5]

Lobbyists, duh.

Does the GP ACTUALLY think that the massive and powerfull aggricultural lobbies exist to keep corporations from "winning"? Large "family" farms (usually a corporate operation privately owned at that size), very large family farms, and non-family farms (8 percent of all farms) account for 68% of production in the US. Who do you think is benefiting most from a price floor? Cut prices by 3/4 and eliminate the competition or make twice as much with a price floor. Hmmm... USDA stats on the matter are here.

Not too many high paid lobbyists schmoozing politicians for the guy who works but can't afford a decent meal. The fact that the corporations can make more money ripping off their customers via the US government than they can by killing off small family farms is just a happy side effect for the little guys.

The food price stability argument is bullshit. If the government were really concerned about food shortages in times of crisis they would set up emergency food supply stores across the country. You would only need to store things like grains, which last for a very long time and provide enough nutrition to live on until the crisis has passed. This would cost the US citizen significantly less per year than the farm subsidies do.

Re:Poor Aussies

[atmurray]

The beer mat lady? Her friends later admitted to putting the beer mat in her bag as a joke without her realising, but they still locked her up. An interesting thing that all your quality examples have in common is that western style judicial process wasn't really followed in any of the cases, their trials were all a farce. I guess that says something about most of the world.

Re:Poor Aussies

[u38cg]

Do, please, name one well governed country with stable property rights, a functioning financial systems, and access to world markets, that has ever suffered a famine.

Re:Poor Aussies

[MindlessAutomata]

If prices rises, farmers will likely try to increase their yields leading to eventually lower prices, or more farms will open. If the price falls, then that would almost certainly be due to supply. You say that farmers would go bankrupt and supply would diminish if prices fell too much, but you fail to ask why prices would fall--it would almost certainly be due to an overproduction of any particular foodstuff to begin with, so farms going out of businesses would be a corrective measure. The reason small farms are subsidized is because some people find that way of life fanciful and want to protect it, and for political capital first and foremost. Price controls and farm subisides are political largesse, period.

Anyway, there is no free market, and never has been, and you both are portraying extremely unlikely and overly paranoid scenarios that are not applicable in today's economy to apologize for populist political measures. And not to mention that Americans eat too much to begin with...!

Re:Poor Aussies

[MindlessAutomata]

Farms would certainly go under, but this would be a corrective measure. Populist farm measures were implemented to keep farmers in business, not to prevent starvation--there are too many chefs in the pot already, and instead of letting the market correct itself (who wants poor ol' farmers to have to feel the pinch?) it's more politically expedient to prop up the excess farms and get votes.

Re:Poor Aussies

[rtb61]

In this case it represents the difference in slander laws. You can be sued for slander if you make a statement of fact about someone that you cannot prove to be factual in a court of law, rather than only having to demonstrate that you believed that fact to be true. The simple solution is to couch statements as opinions rather than as facts or where you manage a forum ensure that all users are informed that 'all' postings regardless of content are the 'opinions' of the poster and should not be construed as statements of fact, include an agreement to this in the sign up that no one reads.

So opinion is not suppressed only false statements of facts. Would it be better if they took on similar laws in the US, probably, especially when politicians, lawyers, PR executives, lobbyists, corporate executives purposefully lie to you and when you go to the trouble to prove that lie false, without any shame, conscience or, remorse they look you straight in the eye and repeat the exact same lie again and again and again, even when those lies are personal attacks and attacks against organisations, hiding behind the deceit that they believed them to be true at the time.

Re:Poor Aussies

[L4t3r4lu5]

They didn't have Lawyers when the 10 Commandments were written.

Re:Poor Aussies

[mcgrew]

I'm normally for heavy regulation of corporations so long as it is GOOD regulation; corporations NEVER have the public welfare or public good in mind. People say the electricity problems in California were from overragulation, but rather than overragulation they stemmed from BAD regulation.

In the US, there is a lot of BAD regulation regarding farming. Small family farms are dying, big megacorporation food factories are taking over. And the food sucks. I'm glad I have a back yard I can grow a garden in, too bad the city won't let me keep livestock.

Have you ever driven past a mega hog factory? They're environmental nightmares.

Re:Poor Aussies

[mcgrew]

But the fact is, as the GP pointed out, you don't have to be male to be called "dude". It was obvious that he wasn't calling girlintraining a city slicker or a fancy dresser. From the context it was obvious the meaning was "fellow". Kennedy would say "My fellow Americans", Obama would more likely use the more contemporary "Dudes". Kennedy wasn't just referring to men whan he spole to his "fellow Americans".

Re:Poor Aussies

[geekoid]

Your scenerio would need infinite arable land.

Price fall for a variety of reasons. Farms aree NOT a corrective measure the way youi think of them. You can't stop and start a farm business, yit needs constent work. When you happen to ahve a poor yield, you need to work it so it's ready for the next year. If we let just the amrket drive it, we wil have a low yield years, farmers will go out of business, and then the next year we wont have enough.

  A bad year, or decade even, can be caused by forces other then market forces. too little water, too much water,a freeze, insects, and disease can kill a yield even when demand is high.

You do realize we are talking about food here, right? People die without it?

maybe you should take a look of what farming and food markets are actually like before yapping off?

Re:Poor Aussies

[PRMan]

We really need (-1, Whoosh)...

Local solution

[DoofusOfDeath]

Throw anotha lawya' on the barbie, mate?

So Where is the Forbidden Thread?

[JumperCable]

So a 9/11 Australian conspiracy theorist, Greg Smith, gets his butt whooped in an on-line thread that he participated in (big surprise). And now he wants to sue over his damaged character? I suspect his damaged reputation has much more to do with what he said and how he handled it.

So where is the cache of the thread?

Australia is a little jumpy right now

[circletimessquare]

what with Sasha Baron Cohen making a contentious movie about a flamboyant gay Australian

and their favorite Australian son, Arnold Schwarzenegger, is having major troubles in Caleefornya

but Australians will always have the Sound of Music, Mozart, the Tyrolean Alps, and Hitler

Re:Australia is a little jumpy right now

[Anonymous Coward]

*Whoosh*

Sad to see you go.

[slack_justyb]

Dear Australia,

Hate to see you guys drop off the face of the Internet, but I guess that's what happens when you get a bunch of pricks in Parliament.
But I guess that the government will figure it out when no one wants to deal with Australia as far as the Internet goes.

Re:Sad to see you go.

[TapeCutter]

You need to read something else besides slashdot reporting greatly exagerated news of our demise. This bunch of pricks are the same as the last bunch of pricks when it comes to mandatory filters; all talk to impress a couple of independent senators. There has never been, nor will there ever be, an Australian "great firewall". The closest thing we have is "the great rabbit fence" but even that leaked rabbits all over the place.

Re:Sad to see you go.

[VoltageX]

I'm in Australia and I just registered and posted.

Re:Sad to see you go.

[deniable]

Sorry, I'm only in my thirties. I don't remember the time before pricks in Parliament. Neither do my parents.

Re:world screwing

[bertoelcon]

Maybe its a good thing we have not found a way to leave earth (permanently) yet, we only have to deal with running one planet into itself.

Banned? Not so much.

[Fex303]

Due to the risk of incurring even greater legal costs the company is closing its doors in Australia, and will ban their fellow countrymen from posting there again.

Wait what?

As a longtime user (~10 years) of Zgeek, and an Aussie, I'm pretty sure we haven't been banned. It's just that the site, which is hosted in the US already is going to legally set up shop outside of Australia to avoid these kinds of legal hassles.

For the record, the whole lawsuit thing is a joke, and everyone's aware that it's doomed to failure. The problem is that since Zgeek is essentially run by one guy in his spare time, he doesn't have the resources to fight it effectively, so it's better to run away rather than set yourself up for future problems.

For the record, the site really isn't too much more than a place were people post random news, and a forum which is dominated by in-fighting, trolling, and a bizarre 'shit-in-his-shoes' meme (it was started after Google started rating us highly as place to get life advice). And yes, it's as much fun as it sounds.

*WHOOOOSH*

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally on BBC News we go to Sheila McCarthy, who is braving the UNIX longhairs on Slashdot to bring us a *WHOOOOSH* post. What's happening there Sheila, you big-titted should've-been-a-pornstar shagpot? Oh, thinking out loud again. Errrrm, cut to Sheila, cut to ...

- At Slashdot -

I'm reporting live from Slashdot where someone has just mis-understood a joke. "Now what's unusual about that, you news-readin' ho'?" You might ask. The person doing the mis-understanding is a male, basement-dweller, with an enormous beard and a stupendously huge ... collection of adult videos. But the unusual thing is how smash here is a four-digit UID'er. This is someone who has spent literally millenia on Slashdot, yet when he saw this -- fairly elementary -- joke, it flew right over his head. Let me tell you, Dermot MacDermott, it was quite a sight and not something this community is likely to forget in a hurry.

- back in the studio (where Dermot is scratching his crotch with one hand, whilst gesticulating toward a monitor screen with another) -

Those fuckin' tits man, they're like what they model implants on, you sure they're fuckin' real man? *Ahem* So Sheila ... Is it likely that Slashdotters will erect some sort of monument to this event, maybe erect a ... ummm ... statue?

- Outside Slashdot HQ, Soviet Nealistan -

There have been discussions of celebrating this event yearly, some names for the event have been discussed, but have all been shit so far. For example: "smash-n-whooosh", "-1 Funny Day" and "Day of the Whooosh" are some of the names suggested. Since these are a bit shit, it has been decided -- in a joint meeting of Neal Industry executives, Netcraft's resident BSD troll, and Rob - Dingo Ate Ma Baby - Malda -- that a name for this soon-to-be historic occassion be opened up to the wider Slashdot community. With a winner being the first post following this one to be moderated "+5 Troll". We're attempting to get an interview with smash, but until we can find him it's back to Dermot in the studio in London, where hopefully he's not having a wank like during the report on women's mud wrestling last Thursday, dirty bastard.

Some snippets of the thread from caches.

[Doug52392]

Here it is, ladies and gentlemen, The Thread That Cost Someone $42.5 Million Dollars:

Page 1.
Page 2 (John posts as "Doghead" on this page).
Page 4.
Greg Smith's threat/post.

Mirror - Page 1
Mirror - Page 2
Mirror - Page 4
Mirror - Greg's Threat

If there are any other pages I missed that got picked up in the cache, post them here.

Re:So much for the First Amendment.

[Nefarious Wheel]

Sorry, amendment to what? We don't have that fancy-schmansy Bill of Rights you yanks have, we go back to the Magna Carta, mate.

Oh, wait...

Re:Microsoft can sue Slashdot, or any other pro-Li

[countach]

.92% of windows sales would send slashdot broke and keep hundreds of lawyers in beer and skittles.

i W0n teh intarwebs!

[circletimessquare]

what's awful is that although its the most spectacular troll i've done in awhile, its this retired chestnut of a joke that should be old and tired and expired by now

i think this silly joke has been featured in at least 100 fark headlines over the years, no?

oy