Aussie Gov't To Introduce Bill That Would Require ISP-Level Censorship

bennyboy64 writes "iTnews reports that the Australian Government has announced its intention to introduce legislation that will make ISP-level filtering mandatory for all refused classification material hosted overseas. The Government intends to amend the Broadcasting Services Act in August 2010 to enforce the filter, and expects the filter to be operational within a further twelve months. 'The report into the pilot trial of ISP-level filtering demonstrates that blocking RC-rated material can be done with 100 percent accuracy and negligible impact on internet speed' Senator Conroy, Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy said." This despite, as reader Sharky2009 writes, the trial run showing that "a technically competent user could circumvent filtering technology based on ACMA’s blacklist."

Comments

what the fuck.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there a way to vote this guy out of office or something?

Would this block web stores?

[tepples]

If the lone holdout Attorney General gets his way, Australia will ignore comments from the public and continue to refuse classification to video games that have been rated mature in other regions. Does this mean Australia will start blocking Amazon, eBay, and other foreign sellers of mature-rated video games?

Re:Would this block web stores?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, since Australia, as we all know, is entirely populated by criminals, and criminals are used to having people not trust them, I can clearly not choose the unfiltered internet in front of me.

Wake up Australia

[jack2000]

I can't believe you're still swallowing this bullshit by the buckets. It's time you did something. Get those people out of parliament, elect new officials!

Re:Wake up Australia

[Anonymous Coward]

We voted out the last government, who at one point tried to introduce Internet filtering (they currently don't support filtering), and now this government wants to do it (who went to the election proposing voluntary filtering). We're fucked either way eventually when one of these bunches of cocks decides it's a good idea and has the numbers to push it through.

Re:Wake up Australia

[Techman83]

Believe me, Australians are not asleep. Senator Conroy has chosen to barge ahead regardless of any public outcry. Fortunately the Labour Government do not hold enough power in the Senate to push this through with out the support of the opposition and the Independents/Minority Parties, which they just aren't going to get. Independent Senator Nick Minchin and Greens Senator Scott Ludlam have both been very vocal in opposition to Censorship in Australia. The Librals (the other major party) seem to be fighting the Labour party at every turn, so I suspect their support will be limited. I think if it doesn't pass, the worst outcome will be that Labour will use this as a slander campaign to paint the opposition as supporting "Child Abuse".

Re:Wake up Australia

[zsau]

There hasn't been the opportunity to since they made it obvious they would stick to their idiotic promises and drop their useful ones (i.e. since they got into power). You realise we can't just get new elections every news cycle. (Although the Prime Minister can call elections for the House of Representatives almost as often as he likes, it's terribly inconvenient and if they do go early (or, as early as you're suggesting they should've gone), people are inclined to vote them out just for dragging them out to the polls one more time than is necessary.)

In any case, even if we could, the other lot aren't any better... Most people would rank this (known) temporary inconvenience as a lot less bad than the (unknown) evils a government ran by Tony Abbott, Leader of the Liberal Party, would bring.

In the last case, we have a Senate and the Australian people are generally not idiotic enough to give the Government unmitigated power there. I expect the Liberal party will oppose it on the basis that they're the opposition, the Greens will oppose it on the basis that it's neither left nor liberal, and the independents will probably vote quite randomly on the basis of stellar alignment and what their advisors tell them people think.

So ... don't say stupid things like that. The least you could do before commenting on our political system is inform yourself of the absolute basics of how it works. And in this particular case, almost every political system in the (developed) world works comparably.

(If you really *were* telling us to use pitchforks, then either you're completely unrealistic, or completely crazy. In any case, whoever said "those who would give up an essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety" was obviously crazy and/or making use of hyperbole and/or hadn't thought about his own position, and if you're an American you've probably been brainwashed into both believing that and not acting on it. Our society is so great, and so free, precisely because we complain and wait until its time to vote instead of getting out the guns and pitchforks and executing anyone in Parliament)

Re:Wake up Australia

[BakaHoushi]

That would be Benjamin Franklin who said that, I believe, and I don't see anywhere where he is suggesting the wholesale slaughter of those who oppose liberty.

Re:Wake up Australia

[BlortHorc]

Yes, sadly so, we need to introduce a new law. Must be at least this technically literate to hold a ministerial position governing technology. Sadly, that would exclude essentially all currently elected politicians, as well as the vast bulk of the potential electoral fodder.

This is essentially the end result of having a technological society where technological education is not mandatory. They require you to learn English, so you can speak to people, but the don't require you understand technology, so that you can understand the society you live in.

As a consequence, at best, the pollies are neophytes, and at worst luddites.

Re:Wake up Australia

[caitsith01]

I refuse to believe that there is a whole continent-sized country with two and only two political parties.

Well, believe it or not, that's how it works in Australia, both practically and politically.

We have a compulsory, preferential voting system here. This means that in most cases, you actually have to vote for one of the two major parties.

The way this works is as follows: say there are three candidates, Labor, Liberal and Green. Every voter must put them in order, 1, 2, 3. Then all of the 1s are tallied up. The candidate with the least 1s gets eliminated (say, the Greens candidate). Then all of the votes for that candidate are re-allocated according to which of the remaining two candidates got voted 2. In this way, in a typical Australian electorate, 100% of the votes will ultimately be divided between the two major parties.

So let's say I really, really don't want to vote for one of Labor or the Liberal party. Well, that's a shame for me, because at the end of the day I have to rank one of them last and one of them second last, and because of preferential voting the one I put second last will get my full vote after all of the other parties have been eliminated.

On top of this, voting is compulsory. Even if a decent sized chunk of highly motivated people go out and vote for the Greens, the fact that all of the sheep will also be herded out of their pen to vote whether they like it or not means that the major parties inevitably get a very large default vote. Stick a non-political person in a voting booth and tell them they have to vote and chances are they go with what they know, which is either the government or the main opposition party. Compare with the USA where something like 40-50% of people don't vote, IIRC.

Add to this that most Australian cities have one or sometimes two newspapers, and that we get serious political coverage on only one TV channel which many intellectually lazy Aussies wouldn't watch because it's the boring government channel. All of our newspapers are actually owned by either Murdoch (in which case they are sympathetic to the Liberal Party) or Fairfax (in which case they are sympathetic to the Labor Party on the whole).

Politically, Labor and Liberal hate each other but not as much as they hate the minor parties. So they spend a lot of time either discrediting or outmaneuvering any small party they see as a threat. For example, they both demonize the Greens as a bunch of environmental crazies who all want to take heaps of drugs and have orgies in the forest. A few years ago there was a far right party with a bit of clout ("One Nation") which the government promptly dealt with by subsuming most of its policy positions on key issues. That party is all but dead now.

Conroy is a Traitor.

[ozmanjusri]

The new leader of the opposition, Tony Abbott, is an outspoken catholic. His party has opposed the ISP-based filter in the past, so it's just possible this nasty piece of trash legislation is an attempt to politically embarrass him.

If he opposes the bill, the government can accuse him of hypocrisy. If he supports it, he faces rebellion in his own party.

But if it is brinkmanship, Conroy is playing with fire. There could be a very serious electoral backlash from this.

Time for heads to [politically] roll...

[Smegly]

Send a clear message in next Aussie elections... Pirate Party Australia.