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Australian Net Filter Protest Site Returns
An anonymous reader writes "The Stephen Conroy 'Minister for Fascism' website, whose stephenconroy.com.au domain was forced offline by the Australian Domain Name Administrator, has now reclaimed the name after the initial 14-day injunction expired. During those 14 days, the protesters managed to comply with the Australian domain name registration criteria. However, contrary to auDA's own rules and contrary to public quotes by the auDA CEO, the protesters were continually refused the domain. Now, however, it seems that they have unequivocally shown that they have the right to the domain and have re-registered it."
The parody/satire defense doesn't work in this case, because a reasonable person familiar with his politics might well believe that Stephen Conroy is currently serving as the Minister for Fascism in Australia's government!
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
An injustice occurred, and now it's been righted. I suppose I could say "goodo" or "w00t" or something. I mean, it's just a little weird, because I'm used to attacking wrongs, not praising rights.
Oh, wait. "managaed" in TFS is a typo. There, I've justified my comment.
On a more serious note, I mean it when I say "good for them." I do admit that it's a little weird for a parody/criticism website of a person to use a URL that is not obviously parody/criticism. But I tend to err on the side of the little guy when he's pitted towards the big guy.
(Also, it's a little ironic that the issue behind the website's existence is online censorship.)
That Anonymous Coward guy is pretty annoying. Can we have the government censor him or something?
AuDA is the epitome of an organization that is operating outside its moral guidelines.
AuDA should be removed and a responsible organization put in its place,
Sorry, Australia. You allow this crap to control your access to DNS. You hurt yourself only, not the real world.
E
Given his stonewalling of public questions, his inability to answer parliament questions in question time, his personal time spent with the Australian Christian Lobby, and his departments attempt to get the IIA to shut Mark Newton up, I'd say he's well and truly doing that role.
YAY! About time. I still don't understand the motivation of AuDA. Maybe they're a bunch of jerks.
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
Kevin Rudd isn't sitting up in The Lodge scanning the opinions of contributors to this site. OTH he is surely paying close attention to public opinion and the opinions of certain members of parliament who hold the balance of power.
I think it is important to avoid giving Rudd and Conroy ammunition at this point. Do not behave like a bunch of idiots. Public opinion is fragile. I am reminded of the pilots dispute of almost 20 years ago. The Government swung public opinion their way early on and the pilots never had a chance.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Forgive my ignorance .. i assume he is the shadow minister for fascism then?
In 1944 George Orwell wrote: "It would seem that, as used, the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox hunting, bullfighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley's broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else."
Recently on Slashdot the term has become significantly less specific.
The domain name is stephen-conroy.com. I'd say, that's trademark infringement. Like, you could own stephen-conroy-sucks.com, but, having a site that has the capacity to mislead people in order to get hits is as wrong as calling something Cheerios when it is not.
The irony here is that they basically are saying that someone is a fascist in order to protect their right to lie. I wonder if, really, the rest of the their message is actually honest.
This is my sig.
"Hi, just a couple of quick questions:
What does "fascism" mean?
Which policies does the fascist party of Australia advocate regarding network filtering?
"Fascist" is frequently used in this day and age as a pejorative insult to those with whom the speaker disagrees politically. In which ways does this man's viewpoints agree with actual, objective fascist policies? Keep in mind that there is no "right" or "wrong", merely different points of view, all equally valid." - by DNS-and-BIND (461968) on Tuesday January 05, @05:45AM (#30653160) Homepage
Good points DNS-and-BIND (or rather, good questions for clarification on your part).
I'd also like to further your questions in fact! Only 2 more questions, actually, on MY part:
#1 - I'd like to know what it is that the Australian gov't. is supposedly blocking out that are "so bad to block out"...
I mean, because if they're blocking out KNOWN purveyors of malwares (any types) or KNOWN botnet "C&C" servers for example? Well, then, if those 2 are the case here & that's it?
Well, I'd have to say they're on the "right track"!
(And, I certainly can see malware makers &/or botnet masters being "p.o.'d" about being 'shot down' @ the DNS/ISP/BSP level for instance, before they can even GET anywhere (for most folks that is, there are ways to circumvent things after all))
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#2 - Plus, on the "political front" (the province of scumbags largely imo @ least)?
I can see your points there, & how I perceived them is that in that case, that their opponents would use ANYTHING to try to cut these folks down in Aussie gov't., so they can 'take the reigns' themselves.
Yes, even IF the folks instituting this filtering are out to do good (the current folks in Aussie gov't. instituting this filtering) because the current gov't. in Australia's opposition are just "grasping for power" themselves and are attempting to discredit the folks in power (who apparently are doing this filtration currently)
APK
P.S.=> I ask the same things DNS and BIND does here, & what I did about blacklisting, because in THAT case? So-called "blacklisting" does work & work well (on the SIMPLEST PRINCIPLE OF ALL, in "you can't get burned if you don't go into the fire")... apk
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"Keep in mind that there is no "right" or "wrong", merely different points of view, all equally valid."
Bollocks!
Complete nonsense. If your point of view is that it is fine to have non-consensual violent sex with children under the age of 6, then you are clearly wrong, and your point of view is not valid at all.
[INSERT A BILLION OTHER EQUALLY RIDICULOUS EXAMPLES]
Conroy's desire to control and censor the population easily satisfies the modern, post war, definition of fascism, as it is popularly used.
Actually, if I'm not mistaken, the business name was granted to them before auDA took their domain away.
It appears that they always did have a valid reason to have that domain and auDA's actions were taken hastily and in a manner that could have denied them the domain. The fact that they did not clearly state their valid reasons is in fact a very good argument AGAINST hasty action. Had auDA acted in a fair and reasonable manner the dispute could have been dealt with and resolved without needing all this hullabaloo.
auDA behaved like a bunch of pricks rather than like a responsible authority.
Mod parent up. AuDA are in fact a bunch of retards for many reasons, but this is not one of them. Simply, the domain as registered did not originally meet the criteria for a .com.au domain (a valid, registered Australian business).
Didn't know they got around this by actually registering a business called STEPHENCONROY. That is pretty funny :)
I'd like to have my twenty seconds back.
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Yes. That's me.
Believe it or not, I'm actually married now to someone I met on Sim City (talker.com:8200 if I remember correctly), hahaha.
The "strict rules" are a bunch of baloney when you can spend fifty bucks or something to register a vaguely related business name for no particular reason, and thereby hold the domain. They might as well just give up on the rules and make it a free for all.
I might add that I had problems with auDA ages ago because they wouldn't let me register the exact name of my company, which I had owned from well before the internet was popular, just because my company name was considered "generic" or some crap. I appealed and won, but I still consider auDA to be a bunch of retards.
Are you stating that only a business can get a domain name from this group? That in itself is censorship. If this is the case, then things in AU must be in worse shape than I previously imagined.
> i assume he is the shadow minister for fascism then?
Sorry, I don't have "root" for Australia, so I can't read /etc/shadow to find out...
DISCLAIMER: I have a direct relationship to stephenconroy.com.au.
The real issue here is that the domain administrator chose to give us less than three hours to explain our eligibility for the site before closing it down. This is contrary to their published policy as well as other documented instances of this arbitration process, which all seem to indicate that generally ~ 1 week is provided for the respondent to make representations regarding their eligibility. We became aware of another policy complaint lodged with auDA on 21-12-2009 where they responded to the complainant stating that their investigation would take up to 30 days. To this date we are still unaware of any reply form auDA regarding this, which seems to indicate a direct contrast between the way this and our complaint was handled. We specifically asked auDA about how this complaint was different a number of times and these questions were all flatly ignored in return correspondence.
Further to this, auDA flatly refused to rationally consider to any statements regarding our eligibility following the initial three hour period. This seems to indicate that the 14 day 'pending-delete' period the domain was placed in is superfluous, as all arguments following the initial 3 hour period were ignored. Again, we questioned this, as well as the extremely short 3 hour takedown window, a number of times and again all questions were flatly ignored in return correspondence.
Your comment regarding laws seems a little ill-conceived: there are no 'laws' regarding domain registration criteria in Australia - this is handled solely by auDA as an independent body with absolutely no regulatory oversight whatsoever. They make the rules, enforce them how they see fit, and are accountable to nobody. As is quoted on our website:
"This incident reflects worrying concerns about the power that private domain name regulators have to silence critical political speech without going through legitimate legal channels." -- EFA
If nothing else this whole scenario (which, as we're been repeatedly saying, is ultimately a red-herring in the whole censorship debate/movement) has brought international attention to the Anti-Censorship cause. At times we've been taking tens of thousands of hits per day from all over the world, many of which it's rational to assume are from people who were previously unaware of the fight going on here. Love us or hate us, we want exactly the same thing as everyone else -- to see this whole filthy thing dropped. Our methods may have been to date somewhat more guerilla than others, but we're getting the word our en masse.
Sticking to those (informal) definitions, US is a full fledged facist state today. Along with Russia, to some extent China and some others. It seems that facism sadly became a dominant form of government in the world.
I' reall'y get annoy'ed whe'n people ca'nt spel'l or the'y spel'l with everythin'g apostrophe'd in the wron'g place's.
You are wrong around the registration requirements for .com.au domain names. Simply selling advertising relating to the domain name is enough to show a 'close a substantial connection' and qualify and the stephenconroy.com.au. name could easily meet these requirements. Things have changed since the auDA took over, and the auDA has allowed the .com.au domain name space to become full of parked monetised websites.
Laughs, sensible laws you say. Well you must be under 18.
1.Conroy is not listening, he only hears what he wants by "Yes" people. I know of this and same for a former NSW Premier, he liked "Yes" people, anyone that had different ideas was shoved aside, my friend was a former MP, talking and watching what they went thru, they quit the game.
He's saying that only a business can get a .com.au name from this group. The "com" is short for commercial, meaning a business, so this does not seem to be an unreasonable policy.
What on Earth would have been wrong with, for example, stephen-conroy.org.au?
DISCLAIMER: I have a direct relationship to stephenconroy.com.au.
OK, cool; perhaps you can answer the obvious question. Why did you want stephenconroy.com.au and not, for example, stephenconroy.org.au? Since you are not in fact a business, the latter (or some variant thereof) would have been the more correct choice.
The list of what is blocked is classified, you cannot have access. The filter is supposedly to block kiddie pron but since the list is classified there is no way to be sure.
More importantly, it's a slippery slope, once the filter is in place and maintained by the government then it is just begging to be politicised into censoring opposing political viewpoints or things which aren't illegal but are "wrong" (where "wrong" is probably defined by the Christian lobby).
Finally, it is technical suckage; the blacklist will add latency to already latent connections. It is ironic that Rudd is rolling out a high speed broadband system only to deliberately insert bottlenecks in the form of filtering routers.
and Conroy has taken lots of it ;-) considering that drivel.
to code or not to code, that is the question.
I always wondered why your lawyers never put the point up "but then AuDA needs to take more domains/websites offline as there are so many websites that claim they have got something to do with the domain name but when you look closer they have not. I get frustrated when Google searches return results that have got nothing to do with what I am searching for and is biased by "incorrect" domain names.
to code or not to code, that is the question.
The first people in this country from the general public to hear about this filter tells the story of what it is all about. Here's the link you can draw your own conclusions.
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
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"The list of what is blocked is classified, you cannot have access. The filter is supposedly to block kiddie pron but since the list is classified there is no way to be sure." - by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 05, @07:44PM (#30663520)
I don't like the "classified" part of that myself. Hence, I see YOUR concern here on that note. I do agree on the "kiddie pr0n" part though (what a world it is, when "people" (twisted freaks is more like it in that case) find "their jollies" with small children - they're one of the FEW redeeming qualities humanity has imo @ least, & when sickos like that "get off" on molesting them? I get OUTRAGED myself - nutjobs of THAT nature ought to be hung by their balls & whipped to death imo, I kid you not!)...
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"More importantly, it's a slippery slope, once the filter is in place and maintained by the government then it is just begging to be politicised into censoring opposing political viewpoints or things which aren't illegal but are "wrong" (where "wrong" is probably defined by the Christian lobby)." - by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 05, @07:44PM (#30663520)
That IS indeed, a distinct possibility: I don't trust politicians myself, IN GENERAL (not all). I don't think they understand that VALID CRITICISM is better than unjustified "praises"... critique, valid critique that is, makes one STRONGER for it.
However, I do agree that filtering child pornography is valid & should be filtered, alongside what I noted (in known malware purveyor sites or those that bear malicious scripts in their content, adbanners that do the same & yes, there have been many a case of that the past few years, alongside botnet "C&C servers" (& the rest of what I noted in this regards also, etc./et al)).
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"Finally, it is technical suckage; the blacklist will add latency to already latent connections. It is ironic that Rudd is rolling out a high speed broadband system only to deliberately insert bottlenecks in the form of filtering routers" - by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 05, @07:44PM (#30663520)
Sometimes speed is NOT "of the essence" & mandatory though... certainly NOT in the case of child porn or malicious websites &/or adbanners OR botnet "C&C servers) etc. et al.
APK
P.S.=> All in all, thank you once more, for the information... personally?
I not only would have went after the child pr0n, but also what I noted (as it is a large & CO$TLY problem for the past decade now online) as well!
So - this is why I do this (HOSTS file usage) here -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1461288&cid=30273506 to do it, myself, AND HAVE ABSOLUTELY FULL CONTROL OVER IT, from my OWN PC no less!
(Actually circumventing YOUR noted points actually & yet providing the same valuable & customizable blocking features, and also allowing one to GAIN MORE SPEED literally... take a read there, IF you are interested (others here were, they rated that post quite highly @ +4 upwards moderation)... apk
Oh for Mod points. Arctanx is right. There are at least three quite separate issues here:
a) Stephen Conroy's policies are woefully misguided. They will have the opposite effect on child protection to that publicly claimed, causing an increase the pain and suffering of many children.
b) Even so, registering this protest site is not a good response. Have the site, but put it in stephenconroysucks.com.au.
- I much prefer Australia's rather stricter DNS rules to the loose ones in the US. This is not a freedom of speech issue, it's a truth in advertising issue.
- Applying for a business name as a workaround is not a good thing. It will make the laws either a) more complex, or b) more vague so that they cover all the misleading behaviour.
c) Regardless of whether the AuDA rules are good, the AuDA implementation looks like it needs some work. Having said that, I'm a fan of stricter policing of au DNS rules. Noone was taking the server down - they were simply saying it can't have a particular domain name.