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A Sad Day For the New Zealand Internet
An anonymous reader writes "Another one bites the dust, as New Zealand's Internet filter stealthily goes live with two smaller ISPs, and three of the largest already rumoured to have signed up to do the same. However, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is apparently 'committed to helping people to circumvent government internet filtering,' so perhaps the USA will launch an invasion to free the poor downtrodden Kiwis from their own evil government?" Clever of one of the acquiescing ISPs to have named itself "Watchdog."
Why would an ISP implement a filter voluntarily?
Unless this is a filter designed to reduce bandwidth use (Torrents, P2P) I truly don't understand the logic here.
I did RFTA.
"Like internet censorship too will never last."
Censorship will exist as long as either
1.) There are governments with secrets to hide
2.) ZOMG SAVE TEH CHILDREN
I forsee neither of these going away anytime soon. As in, Ever.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is apparently 'committed to helping people to circumvent government internet filtering,'
You might have got that a bit confuzed: US only circumvents in the case of the Cuba's, Iran's etc of the world - it helps destabilize our enemies. For everyone else like NZ, WE are committed to forcing the world to filter as conditions on our trade treaties. (in this case, the Trans-Pacific Partnership Free Trade Agreement (TPP FTA) with Singapore, Chile, New Zealand, Brunei Darussalam, Australia, Peru and Vietnam.
Dropping connections that want to hanshake encryptions / look encrypted.
IP-bans of proxies; general useleness of open proxies; ease of proxy detections.
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Do not solve social problem with technical means, it will never work (see: drm).
-- Technology for the sake of technology is as pathetic as eschewing technology because it's technology.
If you want to know more about it, check the NZ Internet Filtering FAQ at: http://techliberty.org.nz/issues/internet-filtering/filtering-faq/
So drop all e-commerce and anything that requires a password, including half the forums on the internet? Yeah, that won't have any blow back.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
"so perhaps the USA will launch an invasion to free the poor downtrodden Kiwis from their own evil government?"
That is probably true.
Since there is rumor CNN might have proof that Bin Laden has been seen there for vacation.
People also say he is accompagnied by Sadam Hussein and Joseph Stalin.
Who are said to have found some oil offshore.
The world belongs to those who get up early. - I'm far from being the king of Earth then
Ok, I do have to admit that this is the first time I heard about the filter... but how can they possibly square that with human rights? Especially this part:
I get that various dictatorships and so on around the globe might not care all that much about human rights, but New Zealand was still a democracy last time I checked?
We have two major parties in NZ (Labour and National).
The filter process was started when Labour was in power.
It's now gone live while National is in power.
At least the Greens are against it! Oh, pity they only get ~5%.
Dropping connections that want to hanshake encryptions / look encrypted.
IP-bans of proxies; general useleness of open proxies; ease of proxy detections.
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Do not solve social problem with technical means, it will never work (see: drm).
That's probably true, but I wonder how far things will go? For example, where I live, there are already kids setting up local wireless mesh networks to share their music collections and other stuff around. Sure, these are small and operated by pizza-munching geeks, but if the idea gained general traction and the Internet as we know it simply became something similar to cable TV today (plus perhaps a comms network similar to email), would not the people be able to steal the Internet revolution back? I'm also interested in whether this might mean a return in some form at least to the ancient (and perhaps default) mode of human life: that of small, tightly-knit communities.
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"
"so perhaps the USA will launch an invasion to free the poor downtrodden Kiwis from their own evil government?"
The USA would be more than happy to overthrow your government for you and install a dictator friendly to our interests. We can also free you from your public health care system and bring in a less efficient private system that will only cost you 2X as much. We will though commit to spending billions to rebuild your country after our war of words. And finally the issue at hand. We promise to bring you the same great internet service that we have in the USA. If you haven't experienced dial up before you're in for a treat!
Nooo...
That means there's more chance the proposed filter might come to fruition in Australia. Now the Government can point and say "see, NZ did it!".
Although it's sorta funny ... I was being berated by a kiwi on this very forum a few weeks ago, who was going on about how crap Australia was and that he couldn't wait to go home to NZ where there was "no chance of an internet filter". Joke's on him now, I guess. At least our 'filter' is still only an (unpopular) proposal, rather than actually implemented. Yet.
Perhaps the uncensored internet is the fad coming already to a close?
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
And don't forget us brits too.
this has very little to do with the government, they recommend that isp's enable it, but it is not compulsory (as of yet) many of the isp's that are agreeing to implement it are ones generally regarded as companies that like to keep a strong-hold on their customers, many of the other isp's are relatively small ones that still value their image to consumers
That's basically the same ploy that was used here in Finland to get ISPs to censor certain (claimed to be) child porn domains. If the ISPs wouldn't do it "voluntarily", then it was understood that government would step in and make it mandatory. Interestingly, after a couple of years, some ISPs have turned off the censoring by default and allow people to explicitly order the censorship "service". Basically it felt like it was all about making politicians look good at that moment, nobody really cared about if it worked or not.
It is a very important topic taught to us every year at schools, universities and even in the news.
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