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."

Comments

diode effect?

[Anonymous Coward]

"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

Re:diode effect?

[aussie_a]

Australia jeopardizes all of this by possibly starting a trend that spreads to other countries, in effect, legitimizing filtering.

The problem is, EVERYONE keeps saying its impossible (which isn't a problem for those who don't want a filter).

First the ISPs joined the test-run specifically to prove the idea is infeasible.

Then Stephen Conroy kept pushing for it, so the company whose filters they were going to use stepped up and said "It won't work. Our filters are for small networks such as at a high-school. They won't work on a nation-wide scale."

A company, who the government wanted to throw money at, said "Don't give us money. We can't sell you this product because it won't do what you want it to do." They did this. PUBLICLY! That degree of honesty is just staggering and shocking. And if that company is sacrificing the chance to make so much money, the filter simply can't be done.

So no matter how much Stephen Conroy might want a filter, it won't happen unless he gets some technicians from China to help us out.

Re:diode effect?

[JasterBobaMereel]

What most people don't realise it the the great firewall of China does not work either ... it is only mostly effective because of the consequences of trying to get around it ...

If it was implemented anywhere in "the west" then most citizens would find ways around it, or bypass it completely ....

Re:diode effect?

[nedlohs]

Except the US doesn't block them, you can get to those gambling sites and play them just fine within the US. Of course you might be breaking the law and will probably have problems transferring money due to those laws but that has nothing to do with internet filtering.

Filters... What About ACTA

[Taliesan999]

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.

Both of them are missing the point entirely

[Whuffo]

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.

Re:Thank You USA

[LuNa7ic]

...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.

Remarkable...

[vikingpower]

...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.

Australia needs your support on this

[EoN604]

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!

Re:FYI almost NO ONE here wants this here

[MichaelSmith]

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...

Re:Since every other story is Australian...

[domukun367]

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

Re:Invasion needed.

[Fluffeh]

Also noteworthy: We have the worlds largest reserves of Uranium and we know how much the superpowers love that shit...

Re:The Cultural Exception: Preventing US Toxic Was

[dakameleon]

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.