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Will Australia Follow China's Google Ban?
gadgetopia writes "A news report in Forbes says that China has blocked Google with its great firewall; now the world waits to see if Australia's Minister for Censorship, Senator Stephen Conroy, will do the same following his outrageous attacks on Google."
Politics might be stupid in Australia, like lots of places. But no, it won't go the same was as China.
We have transparency and rule of law.
However fucked out Communications Minister might be.
--Q
...one of the top google search results for "Stephen Conroy" being the less than flattering http://stephen-conroy.com/
Let's hope that his "McCarthy" moment comes soon. Unfortunately these kinds of delusional windbags are all too often give far too much rope, and while their fall is spectacular, there are a lot of casualties along the way.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Since slashdot doesn't link to the actual comments, here's what was said:
Conroy went on television to take a shot at Google: "Recently the founders of Google have got themselves into a little bit of trouble because notwithstanding their alleged 'do no evil' policy, they recently created something called Buzz, and there was a reaction and people said, well look aren't you publishing private information?"
"They said the following: 'If you have something that you don't want anyone to know maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place'. This is the founder of Google. He also said recently to Wall Street analysts, 'we love cash', so when people say, shouldn't we just leave it up to the Googles of this world to determine what the filtering policy should be...."
Notice how this politicians ASSUMES that we want filtering (either by google or the government). We. Do. Not. I don't need my internet filtered either for me or my kids. Show me all the dirt and disgusting things that exist in the world. I can handle it.
So fuck off Conroy. (Yes I'm angry - I'm tired of politicians treating adults like their children to be babied.)
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Do you mean *Bing* it on ?
(I know.. sorry.. you may mod me down as appropriate).
It took around a decade to discredit McCarthyism, and there's a small but significant group of right wing pundits who still defend him. While waiting for people like this to self destruct, it's important do your part and give them a good shove in that direction whenever possible.
Ok, so Google has this "safe search" setting. Presumably if safe search is turned off at least some of what it returns will be material subject to bans in Australia. So it seems that is a perfect justification for banning Google, or at least requiring that Google queries pass through a government-controlled proxy server that can ensure that safe-search is always turned on.
Furthermore Australia has not had the best record of transparency regarding censorship either. For example, 9 Songs was given permission for screening but Comstock Films' documentaries were not, despite those documentaries winning awards (both contain graphic, explicit sexual content). Given that the government won't let citizens see what they are banning, what makes you confident that this won't be exercised in arbitrary ways?
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
It took around a decade to discredit McCarthyism, and there's a small but significant group of right wing pundits who still defend him. While waiting for people like this to self destruct, it's important do your part and give them a good shove in that direction whenever possible.
A new generation of McCarthy sympathizers is possible, given that the Texas textbook requirements have now been revised to show McC in a positive light.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
No infrastructure
Nobody is going to enforce it
No company wants all the phone calls saying "I can't access Google" broadband margins are that bad on a per customer basis, the moment they phone rings from a customer they are losing money.
Not going to happen
Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
What about censorship of political, religious, and controversial viewpoints? This is about Freedom of expression and Freedom of communication more than it is about any single issue. If the blocking were voluntary so that people could decide individually if their internet should be censored, I could understand. If the black list were publicly available so that people inside and outside the country could audit what is being blocked, I could maybe understand. If the previously leaked block list hadn't included material that they had claimed wasn't going to be blocked, I could maybe, just possibly agree with you.
As it stands, you have a government organization which will have the ability to block any website that they want without warning or explanation. There will be no way for people inside the firewall to know what is and what isn't being blocked. And said government organization has already been shown to be either incompetent or nefarious regarding what is being added to the blacklist. It's a bad situation, and it in fact does trample on human rights.
The comments look a bit suspicious to me.
If he's trying to spin it so the Eric Schmidt quote was _a reaction_ to the buzz privacy cockup, he's way off.
The quote was in Dec '09, and Buzz was released in Feb '10.
The Schmidt quote sounds inflammatory, but the gist is don't submit sensitive stuff to a public network that is constantly spidered.
Information wants to be beer.
when your economy is trashed by greedy speculation then fear and hysteria. that's what sent germany to the dogs: the great depression, the collapse of the financial world
aka, what the world just experiences in 2008 (on a much smaller scale, true)
but this historical parallel leads us to four observations:
1. the angry tea partiers, with their brick throwing and insane murderous anger, IS kristallnacht, on a smaller scale
2. intolerant deluded propagandized fools hording guns in the woods are the seeds of fascism, NOT our protectors from fascism
3. we need strong government regulation in the financial sector, and the assholes (greenspan and co) who dismantled the 1930s era (irony) protections need to be grilled a la congressional hearings and roundly castigated for their dangerous irresponsibility
4. hopefully the world, and the usa, can weather this horde of angry morons out of work, the seeds of fascism, without them crystallizing around some modern day hitler-like demagogue and mounting a political (and visceral: they love guns) challenge to civilization. and then let the retards fade away into history
interesintg note: many tea partiers receive government benefits (unemployment, medicaid)... while they rail against government aid. they go to tea party rallies... instead of looking for work. fucking ignorant hypocrites
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/us/politics/28teaparty.html
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Even if you grant that he was right (which I absolutely 100% do not) what he did was still horrible. He ruined people's lives out of idle suspicion, with little to no evidence to back it up. He split the country and indeed the world on how to handle communism and communist sympathizers and probably damaged his own goals at least as much as he helped them. Anyone who disagreed with him was immediately investigated and accused, regardless of how flimsy the evidence was. The man who called him out on the senate floor (Joseph Welch) was an American hero who showed real courage and could have just as easily have found himself being accused next.
As for the communists being 'everywhere', research has shown that of the more than 150 people accused by McCarthy evidence against them exists for only 9 of them. A significant minority of the people would have come back clean enough on a background check that they would have been granted security clearances. Finally, your assertion that communists took over one of the major parties I can only assume is idle trolling, I will simply respond by saying that if soviet controlled militant communists controlled 50% of the government for the past 40 years history would have turned out rather differently.
That's exactly what we're claiming. Google believes that information should be free, not controlled by those in power for their own ends, and it has shown a willingness to fight for that freedom.
Before you say "But it's only kiddy porn!" just ask yourself how often bad and self serving legislation is passed under the mantra that it's "for the children"?
I read the internet for the articles.
There's the problem right there: In a free society it's supposed to be a stewardship, not a dictatorship.
I highly doubt most citizens of a free country want their government to restrict where they can go online, much less censor via a secret list.
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
there's no fascism in somalia for example. it is a utopia of people free of government living in happiness and prosperity. unlike socialist european countries with their silly concern for the common good, mired in poverty and misery
and i am sorry for smearing the tea party the way i do. clearly, i have absolutely zero evidence of any tea party anger. it's a meek polite debate society of highly intelligent philosophers. all of their language and actions is something out of '60s love in. and i have absolutely zero, zero! proof to the contrary. i apologize deeply for my horrible misunderstandings
pfffffffffft
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
i stopped reading there
the usa has plenty of problems
but if you believe the usa government is fascist, in any way, simply means you're low iq, highly propagandized, and beneath the intellectual charity of paying anymore attention to your ignorance
please wake the fuck up from your delusions
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Unfortunately, it's no guerrilla theater. After Victoria Jackson left SNL and couldn't get any work, she went around the bend.
She's following the pattern of others that have failed in their chosen fields and have turned to right wing groups to try to resuscitate some sort of career. Dennis Miller is another. John Voight still another. I guess they figure the yahoos aren't all that discerning, so they can make a buck as long as they say bad things about liberals.
You are welcome on my lawn.
It took a decade, but times have changed. Information moves a lot more quickly these days, so I don't think it would take nearly as long to discredit a modern-day McCarthy. Remember that a lot of the support for McCarthyism fell away after the McCarthy hearings were actually broadcast, and people could see what was actually going on. That's where we got the quote, "Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" It would be much harder for a modern day McCarthy to do something similar.
McCarthyism was a matter of a power hungry person taking advantage of a real threat to increase his own personal power. It isn't a new thing, and has happened from time to time since the beginning of the country, and whenever it has happened, Americans have opposed it as soon as they realized what was going on. The solution is an alert and informed populace, and the result of the modern speed of communication can be seen in that Bush's attempt to consolidate power (based on the real threat of terrorism) was not nearly as horrible as McCarthy's or the federalists'.
On the other hand, if the population supports the power-hungry, then no amount of information will limit them. Fortunately for the US, the vast majority of Americans oppose this sort of thing when they are able to see it for what it is. I suspect Australians are the same.
Qxe4
First they blocked the child porn sites,
and I didn't speak up because I abhore child abuse.
Then they blocked all gay sex sites,
and I didn't speak up because I'm not gay.
Then they blocked all the sites that support terrorists,
and I didn't speak up because I forgot that one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter.
Then they blocked all porn sites,
and I didn't speak up because I like my sex real.
Then they blocked all the all political sites,
and I didn't speak up because who reads those things anyway?
Then they blocked all the web sites complaining about the blocking,
and I couldn't speak up.
(Apologies to Martin Niemöller)
Do as you would be done to.
Our Minister for communications etc. might be an idiot, but we're still a developed Western democracy in which the majority of the population have internet access and Google has most of the search engine market share. Blocking Google would be the end of this government and the internet filter; not a single voter would support it.