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Australian Government May Shelve Internet Filter
RobHart writes "It is reported that the proposed filters are seen as too toxic a policy to take to the next federal election — due later this year. This is according to a spokesman for the Greens party. A Labor senator has called for the filter to be opt-in."
I don't care if they keep or drop the policy at this point. I'm still not going to vote for them. They've shown their colours. Hopefully other voters who care about this issue are the same and show them that we care because Australia doesn't need both its major political parties appealing to the Christian right.
So when you go ask a politician if they intend on bringing the filter online after the election, they won't answer you?
It's pretty obvious that the whole internet filter plan was an appeasement move to secure support for some of the more batty parts of the politicum. Now that it's passed its use-by date, I think we'll see it tiredly retired after "public consultation" and "thorough analysis". To be honest, I think we'd have seen exactly the same thing under the Liberals.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
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Yeah you know, "Opt-in", so you are free to decline and accept a boot on your face when you download something outside of their guidelines.
If they make it opt in, than any amount of people opting in will be seen as support for the filter and it won't be long before they say "If its good enough for your Grandmother its good enough for you"
...kids finding out about stuff on the Internet. I mean, we all turned out fine, didn't we? ;)
Who'd have thought that adults would possibly object to being treated like 5 year olds?
I still can't wrap my head around how anyone in a democratic country could consider a nationwide Internet filter a good use of taxpayer money and resources. I can understand authoritarian regimes like the PRC doing it--obviously, money is not nearly as important to them as control (but the money sure helps.) Implementing it somewhere like Australia is just such a gargantuan waste of time and money as to be utterly baffling to me. The Internet, in and of itself, is just not dangerous. It's also far too large for any country--or even all countries together--to police it proactively and censor things.
Anyone who is *that* worried about what's on the Internet should perhaps "opt-out" of live in the developed world and go live in the Outback or something.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
The bottom line is: in a democratic society, you always have the chance to vote for a government with an open internet policy, eg. the revoking of London congestion charges was immediately abolished by Boris Johnson. But for users in China, there is only one dominate party, which pretty much means no hopes for change, so AUS, CHN is two totally different situation.
<embed src="http://puma.vizu.com/v4/swf/andes.swf?t=1"...
Ok, I'm done OfftopicTrolling.
... but they've already exposed what they intend to do if we vote them in.
Kevin '07
Recession '08
Conroy '09
GG Labor. Time to vacate office.
"It is reported that the proposed filters are seen as too toxic a policy to take to the next federal election
Good stuff. They might shelf a policy, not because it is
a. a bad policy
b. unrepresentative of the will of the people
c. probably immoral, possibly unconstitutional
but because
d. it might make it harder for them to get re-elected.
Way to go modern politics.
Best part of the article:
A Labor senator has called for the filter to be opt-in
I love it! "Yes, please monitor my Internet use and filter out content I know you know I won't like. Or agree with. Can you pick out my next car and decide on a good meal plan too? Do these jeans make my ass look fat?"
http://gadgetsteria.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/censorship.jpg Internet http://tizona.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/fosters-beer.jpg Beer (for impotent wombats)
If they put that filter on the shelf, it'll just collect dust. Which, honestly, is the job of a filter. However, I hardly think that will provide maximum efficiency! Perhaps they can sell it on Craigslist and get some of that taxpayer money back.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
1. we are all born vessels of purity, and the world corrupts us. the idea is to limit exposure to this corruption, and thereby remain a coherent person
2. we are all born with the seeds of rape and murder in our hearts. the idea then is catharsis: express your asocial transgressive tendencies harmlessly on sexual and violent media, and therefore you feel no compulsion to visit those tendencies on real people in real life
i mean its not like the ancient roman or chinese empires, with very little media, were places of calm and devoid of transgression. the opposite in fact is true. the history of mankind is LESS violence and transgression with more civilization (i'm talking domestically... in terms of war, population growth, the rise of nationalism, the march of technology has meant some spectacularly awesome killing fields). people are always talking about how we are all doomed, everyone is getting more violent, etc. the opposite in fact, is the real truth. people are just historically myopic. for every horrible story of murder and mayhem on your 6 o'clock news, human history offers far far worse, in much greater per capita bulk
and you only need to spend 5 minutes in your average kindergarten to come to the undeniable realization that bad behavior is innate, not taught
the fact is, if you took a psychologically normal human being and exposed them to 16 hours a day of violent pornography or violent fps videogames for 10 months, they will not become rapists or murderers. however, a psychologically problematic person might eventually rape or murder. anything could set him off, from his neighbor's barking dog or his boss's reprimands. such a psychologically unhealthy person might also seek out pornography and violent media, in a desperate attempt to get the catharsis most psychologically normal people take for granted. therefore, when violent videogames or pornography are found in the homes of rapists and murderers, someone somehwere will always say "see? that's the cause"
when in fact, there's no causal relationship at all. do some people REALLY believe that if you waved a magic wand and removed all sexual and violent media that everyone would be tranquilized and crime would drop?
in 100% honesty, i assert the opposite: we should ENCOURAGE people to use violent and sexual media. the result would be a LESS violent and sexually transgressive society. i say this with a completely straight face. i believe this wholly and thoroughly
japan has one of the highest production rates of pornography in the world. it also has one of the lowest rates of rape in the world:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_rap_percap-crime-rapes-per-capita
japan also has free and widely available access violently transgressive media. and it also has very low murder rates
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita
any country can emulate japan's enviable murder and rape statistics: just make pornography and violent media freely and widely available
the simply truth is, if you are honestly interested in the reduction of real world rape and murder, you are also interested in promoting, yes PROMOTING, violent videogame and pornography consumption. i sincerely and wholeheartedly believe that
it all gets back to the psychological notion of CATHARSIS
and understanding that we are NOT vessels of purity that are corrupted. we all carry rape and murder in our hearts. the question is: do we eject these asocial tendencies harmlessly on a computer screen? or in the real world?
access to violent and sexual media is the deciding factor, and MORE access to violent and sexual media results in LESS real world rape and murder
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Nothing stops some enterprising ISP from producing their own filtered internet feed and selling it to the customers that apparently want to buy it.
The real question is, why the !#&^$!@#% should the government be involved in providing it or paying for it?
Sure, you always have the chance to vote for a party with an open internet policy. That doesn't mean that that party has a chance of winning, even if the open internet policy has overwhelming public support. The media can simply ignore that any other parties exist, making it impossible for it to enter the mainstream.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
It's a joke. For the first time in my life, I won't be voting for either of the 2 parties. My vote will go independant, greens, or possibly in the bin (It's compulsory to vote here) The filter is a joke (and my primary reason for getting rid of the KRudd), and so is our current prime minister. (the opposition isn't any better though).
Opt-in is currently available from NUMEROUS commercial sources. And if you are opting-in, then those are certainly an option and a hell of a lot cheaper for Australians.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
That was worse than the great firewall. Banning small boobs.
And banning cartoon porn. Jesus. IT'S A FUCKING IDEA!
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
Good Aussie beer? Now there's an oxymoron if ever one was uttered. VB, Golden (all styles), Cascade (all styles), Coopers (all styles), Matilda Bay (only tried the Pilsner) and the THREE-DOZEN other beers I tried in Sydney and Darwin were expensive and sucked: most as bad as Americanized Fosters - some even worse.
Blue Tongue, a Tazzie micro-brew wasn't bad. Neither was the Piglet Ale, another micro-brew that the Kiwis scraped out of a vat.
Truly the only fantastic thing the Aussies knew how to make of brewer's yeast is Vegemite, and that particular nectar of the gods only mostly makes up for all the crappy beers. We'll just forget about iSnack 2.0 aka Cheesie-mite though.
Sure, you always have the chance to vote for a party with an open internet policy. That doesn't mean that that party has a chance of winning, even if the open internet policy has overwhelming public support.
Or that the party supporting an open internet policy doesn't also support other things you are strongly opposed to.
Or that the party espousing an open-internet policy doesn't change their minds as soon as their candidates are elected.
Or that what they call "open internet" only supports half of what you require for a truly open internet (the other party supports the other half, of course)
Or that the party, after getting elected and pushing forward their open internet policy, doesn't have to abandon half of that policy in order to get the other half passed.
Or that the party doesn't get the policy passed only to have it knocked down by unelected officials for violating an already existing law or policy.
It makes one wonder why we are still bothering with these republic things in the year 2010; we should have the technical capabilities to have a true democracy where we can vote directly on the laws themselves and get rid of these untrustworthy middlemen.
The interesting thing is the timing of this. Backbencher Lundy is allowed to have her day decrying the travesty that was the Internet filter, and along comes a data retention plan for ISPs that essentially applies the same type of thought-control that the filtering policy would have created. Online civil rights is now under attack even more so, now that we have a new election is on the way.
I can only hope that both the clean feed policy, and the ISP data retention policy, is simply an appeasement to the right-wing Christian lobby groups, and that neither were REALLY intended for actual legislation. If I'm right, we need to rid ourselves of this right-winged influence. If I'm wrong - well - the government can go jump.
As a citizen of the US, I can say that this is actually pretty much false.
*counts hands*
Yup, thought so.
http://www.netalarmed.com/
No, but seriously, these people are coming back for mandatory censorship as soon as the elections are decided in their favor. Please, do not let them get back into power after having showed their true colors.
We know nobody wants this and if we do it now we'll be crucified in the elections. So we'll wait until after so we can jamb it up everyone's ass with impunity. OH! Vote for Meeeee!
This is at least the third time /. have run a story saying the filter is dead. Here's the definitive word: There aren't enough sitting days left to get the legislation introduced before the election. So they will introduce it after the election, assuming they win. They have said repeatedly it's still policy, so the election is merely a temporary reprieve. This battle is far from over.
- Colin (from Electronic Frontiers Australia)
Everyone knows that damage is done to the soul by bad motion pictures. -Pope Pius XI
ask for them to put out a legislation that would BAN any such filters from being done by ANY government. dont buy the delay or 'opt in' bait. you opt in today,only to see it be mandatory tomorrow. go the 'stallman' way, ask for what you really want, push for it.
Read radical news here
Considering that "shelving" is a colloquialism for shoving drugs up your arse, lets hope that's where this stupid idea stays. After all, enough people have told Conroy to shove this filter up his arse, so I guess he's finally listening!
... wait, what?
It's like the uncoordinated kid in primary school that falls off the slide and breaks his arm and gets the slide taken down because it's 'dangerous'. Whether we like it or not the internet effects us, mostly all in a good way, but there are some that have taken it badly and it's all of a sudden deemed 'dangerous' and it gets taken away
Ahhh the Sydney Morning Herald, still shit
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd...is expected to call the election before the end of the year...
Really? Pretty sure the Constitution says we have to have an election by November
Wait! Whats a sig?
You must have scored a bad batch of Cascade, as it's a great beer. Carlton Cold is very good as well. Crown larger is awesome. Tooheys Dry is worth a drink. All of these are far better than Fosters. I really can't believe you tried to compare Cascade to Fosters. Shame on you!
Blue Tongue is a Hunter Valley beer. Brewed in NSW, not in Tazzie. It started as a micro brewery, but it has become much more commercial now. You're right. It's a very good beer.
...kids finding out about stuff on the Internet. I mean, we all turned out fine, didn't we? ;)
http://www.xkcd.com/598/
Most human behaviour can be explained in terms of identity.