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US-Australia Tensions Rise Over Net Filter
daria42 writes "Tensions between the US Government and its counterpart in Australia appear to be rising over Australia's proposal to filter the internet for objectionable content. The US government has raised its concerns over what it sees as potential censorship directly with the Australian Government. However, last night, Australia's Communications Minister Stephen Conroy denied he had had any approach from US State Department officials."
"We can censor you but you can not censor us, we can hide info to you but you can not hide info to us." --United States of America
One branch is expressing concerns about our lovely Internet filter while the other is trying to ram ACTA down our throats.
BOTH will have an effect on free speech... neither of them we want.
Successfully filtering the net is impossible - that's been proven time and time again. If either one of them realized this simple truth then they'd know that their statements are somewhat nonsensical.
...except that they haven't done anything at all. There are just a few mumbles of 'concern' over something their voter-base is likely to disapprove of. I don't see that making a difference any-time soon.
*runs*
...except that they haven't done anything at all. There are just a few mumbles of 'concern' over something their voter-base is likely to disapprove of. I don't see that making a difference any-time soon.
True... we need a larger, more official push. If we get that, then the Australian government will cave as it always does e.g. FTA (Free Trade Agreement) between the USA and Australia.
Please don't send a Word document when a text file will do the job.
...how both so-called "free" countries will crack down upon China for filtering the internet on what they claim to be important free-speech-issues, but in the same time will not hesitate to implement rather identical measures at home.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Today in The Age: Government goes to war with Google over net censorship
Senator Conroy has conceded that greater transparency is needed in terms of how content ends up on the blacklist, but last night he again refused to make the blacklist itself public, saying it would provide people instant access to the banned material.
Okay Stephen here is how it works: every time an Australian hits the black list they post the URL on a wiki somewhere so if anybody needs some porn or the libaral party website or whatever they just follow the link from there and access it through a russian VPN? Simple? Okay.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I really hope that the US put a lot of pressure on our Australian government to try and prevent this draconian Mandatory Internet Censorship. If it goes ahead in Australia, it will pave the way for many more developed Western countries. This is a serious attack on our freedom. There's not much left we can do at the moment - the internet community is kicking up a fuss, most polls & votes are >94% AGAINST the censorship, the US gov, google, local telcos, ISP's and all the technical experts are advising AGAINST it, but ignorant Senator Conroy and the government keep pushing ahead to censor the internet. If it goes ahead it will be bad news for everyone. The more people that support us on this VERY important issue, the better. Slashdot + its community probably have the potential to help make a difference. Please USA, and the entire international online community, show your support on this in any way you can!
Since he would seek to push ahead despite this he should be sacked. I have no idea if there's a legal provision for it in the Australian constitution (and I doubt there is) but there ought to be.
I don't know if you are an Aussie but it seems to me that the Government is being pushed in this direction by the owners of media companies. This could be because of thoughts like "the internet competes with TV so it should have the same ratings system" or "first we block child porn, then those torrents of Neighbours and Blue Heelers" or "more people would watch A Current Affair if they weren't browsing 4chan one handed".
In any event it is doomed to failure and I am reminded of a science museum years ago which set up a termian (VT220 or similar) for kids to play on. It accumulated a lot of rude words so somebody wrote a black list but there had to be a command to print the black list out and some young geek found the key combination...
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Seriously, shove these Aussie stories up your ass. We're fucking sick of the sight of them. Go beg for attention elsewhere.
This is slashdot.org, not slashdot.org.us
Please don't send a Word document when a text file will do the job.
Also noteworthy: We have the worlds largest reserves of Uranium and we know how much the superpowers love that shit...
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
The Australian girls do pretty good. Among the best when it comes to drinking and dirty talking, but they have some learning to do when it comes to fighting for their rights.
Norwegian women is total pain in the .... for the Norwegian men! That is how we like them! :-)
US girls has been pushed down for a long time.
Against all my instincts, I find myself for the right of governments to filter, as long as they are 'legitimate' governments.
The issue is that while you might be quite happy for a legitimate government to filter, they can quickly become an illegitimate government, perhaps especially because they control the filters and will filter any evidence of their illegitimacy from the public at large.
The biggest issue governments have is that there's no heirarchy to the internet - they can't speak to the owner of the internet like they could with newspapers or TV networks or radio networks - and that lack of a single point, or even a limited set of points of control freaks most governments out. Spin is awful hard to get out there when you need to spin hundreds instead of a handful.
Man who leaps off cliff jumps to conclusion.
I can just picture the questions now:
"Hi folks, here's the poll! If you are for the filtering of indecent images of children and violent sexual acts, dial this number! If you believe that everyone should have access to indecent images of children and violent sexual acts, dial the second number."
Lies, damn lies, and statistics. Filtering does not solve the problem of child abuse: It just takes it out of the public eye.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/