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Aussie Internet Censorship Minister Censors Self
An anonymous reader writes "Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, the minister attempting to ram the great firewall of Oz down everyone's throat, has been removing all traces of the unpopular legislation from his main website with a JavaScript filter. From the article: 'It was revealed today a script within the minister's homepage deliberately removes references to internet filtering from the list. In the function that creates the list, or "tag cloud," there is a condition that if the words "ISP filtering" appear they should be skipped and not displayed.' Bear in mind, this is the same minister that tried to get the ISP of tech forum Whirlpool to pull the site after users there posted a response email from the ACMA (Australian Communications and Media Authority)."
Their media releases trip our spam filters. I can't remember the exact rules, but they were the dodgy mail server kind.
The previous first post was skipped and not displayed because it contained the words "ISP filtering."
Conroy is only a puppet for the ACL
We keep on asking for Conroy to shut up but this is not what we meant :(
There's federal elections later this year so I imagine the government will be wanting to keep this particular piece of extremely unpopular legislation on the down-low for the rest of the year so that they can do what they did last time and trot it back out after the elections with the statement that they received a mandate from the people to implement it, despite it not actually being a major part of their platform.
After all, no political party in a supposedly free country would want to start campaigning with something as undemocratic on their books as a secret censorship blacklist run by the government with no judicial oversight and no right of appeal which blocks 'undesireable' content as defined by the government's whim at that particular time of the day. Any competent opposition could make it into a very major issue.
They can't be trusted to not use it for political ends. You wont ever hear the words "We've legislated against the filter being used to block political material."
We're already got the ACL (Australian Christian Lobby) attempting to file its members into the classification board by applying for positions to put their own slant on approvals or most likely disapprovals.
Every little interest group that wants the particular vice that they're against is already lining up to whisper in the Senator's ear. He's ethically corrupt and making dubious shady decisions. $250 Million for the free to air channels around Australia with no strings attached. I wonder why there is little to no coverage in the main stream press now days?
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
Does anyone else find the tone of this article, and the tone used by similar stories about Conroy, to be childish and overall harmful to any kind of legitimate debate or possibility of changing the minds of the people in charge?
Saying he wants to "ram the great firewall of Oz down everyone's throat" makes you sound like a childish politician yourself, making every point in as dramatic a tone as possible, one step away from begging him to 'think of the children'. It almost makes me feel sympathy for the guy, who surely can't like what he reads when he makes a vanity google search.
It seems that 'geeks', 'gamers' and 'youths' generally can't seem to understand that when you complain rudely, the powers-that-be aren't going to listen. If you behave in a way that they see as childish, they will continue to treat you like children. That's why constantly defending games as 'not harmful' (instead of the more measured response, 'surely not any more harmful than movies, etc') is not useful. That's why Jack Thompson stayed around for so long. It's why Conroy's determination continues to get stronger, and why the SA Attorney-General isn't going to approve an R-rating anytime soon.
USE YOUR NOGGINS, INTERNET
There are 10 kinds of people in this world: those who understand binary, and nine other kinds of people.
I am so embarrassed to be an Australian right now...
Those corrupted by power never want to lose their power. If this means disregarding morals, ethics, and standards of any kinds, so be it. It is a plight of the human condition that we are so easily corrupted, and a shame that we haven't seemed to outgrow it, and frankly, I don't believe this race ever will.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
Yep, I'm sick of this country, I dont have the patience for politicians comparing cock sizes at all levels, local, state and federal. It's just a joke.
Going elsewhere with real laws.
If I understand TFA correctly, he's pulled references to internet filtering from his website. He's done it through a script, rather than by completely deleting the reference, which suggests to me this is meant to be a temporary change. Maybe the internet filtering pages need some work and he doesn't want to display them at the moment. But I can't see any way it's morally worse than, say, deleting the internet filtering link altogether. In fact, it doesn't seem to be evil at all. So what's the fuss?
You appear not to have any UID. I guess that makes your 31 first posts even more impressive?
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
Somebody rings you up or corners you in the street and asks you if you support internet filtering and you say yes so you don't look like a creep but when you get into the polling booth it might be an entirely different situation.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
It seems that 'geeks', 'gamers' and 'youths' generally can't seem to understand that when you complain rudely, the powers-that-be aren't going to listen.
Many of us hear on /. feel that all complaints are ignored by politicians unless they are complaints linked to an politician's income source. Whether the complaint is kindly worded or not makes absolutely no difference. Rational discussion appears to have little place in modern politics.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
from when I was down there (USN) in 1976 -- folks were pretty much left to act like adults and be responsible for themselves. Now the whole country seems more farked up than the U.S., or even Britain!
Maybe they should start referring to him as Kim Jong Conroy?
So much for the concepts of "Freedom" and "Democracy" for Oz...
--- Asking inconvenient questions for over 30 years...
My/Our UID is actually 0
Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, the minister attempting to ram the great firewall of Oz down everyone's throat has been removing all traces of the unpopular legislation from his main website with a javascript filter.
The summary of this article is a ball-faced lie. The JavaScript in question removes the term "ISP filter" from the tag cloud on the home page of the site, nothing more.
There are still plenty of pages on the site that mention "ISP Filtering" such as the following:
Media Release - Measures to improve safety of the internet for families
Measures to improve safety of the internet for families
Media Release - Optus to participate in ISP filtering pilot
Media Release - Pilot to assess technical feasibility of ISP filtering
PS: I still think Conroy is an ass-hat. It's a very small minority of Australian citizens who want internet censorship - Kevin Rudd and his government need to remember that they were voted in by the majority. Say "NO" to Kevin in 11!
When I read the headline, I thought the summary would be about how the internet censorship minister accidentally blocked himself from seeing things he wanted to see. Yes, that would be sweet justice and deserving of the "humor" tag. But, the article speaks of something far more nefarious. It should probably be tagged "scary", not "humor". Except that it's kinda funny in a we're fucked kind of way.
My/Our UID is actually 0
No Anonymous Coward is 666.
Anything can be found funny, from a certain point of view.
Somebody rings you up or corners you in the street and asks you if you support internet filtering and you say yes so you don't look like a creep but when you get into the polling booth it might be an entirely different situation.
You shouldn't feel scared or embarrassed for being against something that is unethical. And you shouldn't need to explain yourself. If anybody ever asks you, just state that you are against Internet filters because (mandatory, ubiquitous) censorship is immoral. If they accuse you of being in support of child sexual slavery, rape or what else their perverted minds will think of then just tell them to stop being neoconservative with their lies and propaganda techniques. Of course "Liberals" and "Labour" will never admit to being neoconservative, which is the Big Lie of Australian history.
To sum up, don't be embarrassed, be outraged!
he has been marked...
Wow I'd like to see where you are getting your stats from but the majority of child abuse is from family and friends (82% according to a quick wiki search)
Maybe show some references and I'll take you seriously but at the moment you are coming across as nothing more than a bigot.
Kactus
Does anybody else find it surprising that Labour government is pushing for Internet censorship?
The intent of the filter is to block everything that is RC (refused classification)
http://www.comlaw.gov.au/ComLaw/Legislation/LegislativeInstrument1.nsf/framelodgmentattachments/A4DD01BB110AD94DCA25700D002EF73E
Anti abortion sites have already been black listed, games involving graffiti have been banned. And the Good minister him self has already said the black list may grow very large as sites surrounding bulimia and safe drug use are also put on the block as well.
The biggest problem I have with this whole debate is that, while there are plenty of people that are flat against the blacklist (for plenty of good reasons), nobody is offering any decent alternatives or trying to find a middle ground.
From what I understand, the main role of this filter is help parents police their kid's activities on the internet, which in principle, I'm all for. There's the secondary goal of preventing kiddie porn and other unsavory content from appearing too, but blocking it won't make it go away.
So why not an alternative? They could set up an opt-in system that allows parent's to decide what their kids see (and achieve their primary objective) and let the police go after the child pornographers (which they do already).
As an example: a custom, government subsidised router with a white list (Conroy can handle that) of a few thousand domains/url's should be enough for most parents. Any additional sites that the parent's want to allow can be added via a password controlled page on the router. One could also offer parents the ability to review pages that have been added recently in case they're dumb enough to let their kids figure out their password. I'm not the worlds best developer but I'm pretty sure that even I could implement something like that.
That way everyone wins:
I'm know that they want to block ALL denied-classification content, but if you've spent a bit of time on the internet, you'd know that it's just not feasible. Why don't they make that a separate policy and at least get some benefit out of this.
this post is now diamonds!
The biggest joke here that he's trying to censor himself using client-side scripts.
But it does show how the "content-control" people think. They're the ones who try to block right-clicking and text selection. In their ideal world, the "content provider" controls the information right up to the moment it enters the "consumer's" eyeballs, and beyond. The digital age and lossless reproduction of information is their greatest nightmare.
sic!
I like to point out that in fact the vast majority of child abuse in this country has been carried out by members of the clergy, particularly the Catholic church.
I am not willing to let this one fly on by without a show of proof.
Most child abuse occurs within the family. Risk factors include parental depression or other mental health issues, a parental history of childhood abuse, and domestic violence. Child neglect and mistreatment is also more common in families living in poverty and among parents who are teenagers or are drug or alcohol abusers. Although it is certainly true that child abuse occurs outside the home, most often children are abused by a caregiver or someone they know, not a stranger. What do I need to know about child abuse?
Who has won our very most complaints?
Now is it Amy Johnson, or little Mickey Mouse?
No! it's just a country lad who's bringing down the house.
And he's Our Steve Conroy- And I ask you is he any good?
Our Steve Conroy- Making laws like no other should.
For when he goes in to bat
He knocks ev'ry geek flat,
For there isn't any thing he cannot do,
Our Steve Conroy - Ev'ry Aussie "says get f**ked" to you.
You're completely misunderstanding. He's testing a new ISP filtering technology that will solve all the technical problems with implementing the filters he is proposing. When ready he'll release it as open software for the benefit of the whole world. :-)
Once again we see child porn trotted out as a straw man in an argument which is really about getting the ability to arbitrarily censor any material which offends the moral majority or threatens the political power of those currently holding it. Child porn should be as familiar a straw man as terrorism, and it affects about as many people as terrorism.
If 82% of all children are molested by friends and family then you can rule out the internet and all it's filth in at least 82% of all cases.
"Oh won't somebody think of the children!" I'm going out on a limb here, but I'm going to state that in general it's not "the children" who are downloading and enjoying child porn. Children are being exploited by it, but they're dreaming if they think any filter is going to prevent those images swapping hands. There's altogether too many tech savvy kiddie fiddlers using encrypted systems, hidden partitions, private browsing settings...and...get this...the fracking mail system to simply post a DVD filled with porn straight to their well known "web of trust" kiddie fiddler mates. This filter won't even touch the ones they claim to be stopping - they're already too sophisticated.
What it will do is stop consenting adults from visiting niche / edge sites to view their particular form of pron, say BDSM for instance. You'll wake up one morning and find you can't look at pictures of women hog tied and spanked pink - because someone out there objects, even though all parties involved were of legal age, consenting adults.
We have to oppose the filter, because it's like the GST. It took a lot of work on their part to get it in place and set it at 10% (which they said they wouldn't increase) but once it was legislated it became easy for them to ramp it up from there.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Yawn. Another anti-Catholic bigot using any opportunity to have a go at the Church.
Of course the society that you subscribe to (and pay taxes towards) never laid a hand on a child...
You're also wrong - the vast majority of child abuse occurs within the family - by the father.
huh ? so you gone nuts over javascript. is it ?
Read radical news here
While the argument against child pornography is strong, it is not strong enough to strongly constraint approximations of the ideals of free speech.
Fortunately, there is an easy solution in this case that does not require apathy in the face of child abuse and the dilution of free speech: the government may prepare a blacklist of "dangerous" URLs and this blacklist must not be enforced on the ISP-side but rather on the client-side. Citizens are free to download this blacklist for the utility of their filtering software of choice.
Problem solved: the government avoids mucking about with free speech while concerned citizens stay away from questionable taste.
Anonymous Coward is 666.
See, AC has a 3-digit UID. Which is why we must always listen to them.
proud caffeine whore
Someone should pop a cap in his ass and anyone else who try's to play information god.
Will kill over someone stepped on shoes but when its needed for world good no ever steps up.