Slashdot Mirror
Australia Waters Down, Delays Internet Filter Policy
An anonymous reader writes "Looks like Australia's government is running a bit scared of a population enraged by its controversial mandatory filtering project. The Government today announced a suite of measures designed to provide controls around the filter project, including independent oversight and a review of content which would be included. In addition, some Australian ISPs will voluntarily censor any child pornography URLs. But the whole project is still going ahead — it's just been delayed and slightly modified."
I plan to put all Labour senators last, and to put the Greens ahead of labour in the lower house.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
With an election looming, the government can't afford to alienate anybody as their chances of re-election are marginal at best. Every vote will count.
Massive props to the major ISP's in Australia for standing up and showing the Government with action, what is the best course of action for Australia and it's citizens.
.
.
It's really disappointing listening to the arguments from the Labor government as to why Australia needs an internet filter. Tugging on the heart strings of the parents promising to "help protect their children" with a defunct solution.
I congratulate every Australian working hard to petition and protest about their rights and what is good for Australia. The people have spoken.
and slowly bringing it to a boil.
Seems like that has been happening all over the world the last few years. Phase things in gradually so people don't notice, but always under false pretence. But what does in it matter to the government? There will never be another revolution of any kind because now they have the technology to stop any kind of uprising (isn't the constitution against the government keeping a standing army?)
The changes announced today seem to be little more than a delaying tactic to remove the issue of mandatory Internet censorship from the agenda ahead of the election that is expected to be announced any day now. This issue has turned quite toxic for the government; the people who are for it are only weakly so, but the people who are against it are furious and are already organising campaigns against the government on various social media.
I don't think the government can be trusted not to bring it back in a essentially unmodified form after the next election. Vote accordingly.
But customer of both Optus and Telstra will be unable to opt-out.
You want to place restrictions on the internet, but you know people wont like it. Now - just place those restrictions is not going to work, because people would protest and you would have to remove everything.
What to do?
Well - Give a very harsh restricted policy and everybody jumps up and down and jells...
Now - water down a bit, and people are going to be happy and like you again. They have forgotten they did not want anything in the first place and are happy it turned out lighter than feared.
Result? You have your restrictions in place - with the strength you had originally planned without too much protest....
Mission succeeded indeed...
Yup, now its such a hot potato they are trying to patch up something to get the vote of the "think of the children" (anti-child porn, which lets face it, is not a bad thing to block) and the people who would have voted for them but the whole filter was a deal breaker.
...
For a long time now I've said that this will be kicked around parliament with no real action being taken. Every time KRudd bought it in the last year up he faced a rebellion from the back bench from those MP's who relied on a narrow margin to keep their seats. Gillard has not gone one way or the other remaining ambiguous on the subject (she's a lawyer after all). I don't think Labor needs the fundie vote and Abott is more likely to get the fundies on side with Gillard being "non-religious" but Labor is not willing to alienate any voters at this point in time.
This bill will get kicked around some more and dismissed or watered down so much that it's never truly implemented. With any luck, Conroy will lose his seat in the senate (dearest Victorians, this is your problem, we westies have our hands full supporting the nations economy right now) and a Labor/Green coalition will remain in power. I have no doubt the ACL (Australian Christian Lobby) will pressure Tony Abott to implement some kind of filter if he wins and I don't think Abott has the stones to deny the ACLs request.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Well, at least it's good to hear the concept of "separation of power", as developed by ancient Greeks as a model of democratic governance, is still in full swing downunder! No matter what everyone thinks about filtering and the so called freedom of speech (I personally think we have such an increasing amount of shit in our brains, filtering out child porn isn't going to revolutionize anything, though my take is that it's a good thing). Anyone whining about potential issues with your rights - take a few deep breaths - Australia isn't turning into North Korea overnight - there are more important issues to whine about. Millions of people are being incarcerated, hundreds of thousands are jobless, and more kids than you know are left without parents, which leads me to the conclusion - it's always better to deal with the root of the (perceived) problem.
-----
Realise!
Going by the Shotgun testing of the Filter trials by Tennex, the scope adjustments mid-project allowing the trials to complete with a 100% success rate, the lack of consulting from the Ministers Office to Telstra, Optus, iiNet and other major networking players, I'm worried we will see a similar thing with the RC review.
Who will review it? What will be done to ensure that the review will be transparent and all voices can participate and it won't be a front for the Australian Christian Lobby or Family First to get whatever they find morally objectionable banned for all of Australia.
When reviews of censorship happen they very rarely get relaxed or reduced and its more likely we will see RC grow.
Why don't people in China and Australia just get Cheap Linux Servers in the US and just tunnel into them when they want to hit some blocked content? I use mine whenever I travel and/or use public wifi. Then I know anything I do on the web is encrypted until it his my server in NJ.
Child pornography URLs? Really?
There have been fuck-ups, most notably the Virgin Killer affair which (a) revealed that Wikipedia doesn't play nicely with ISP-level proxying and (b) there are edge-cases in the law on child porn. The argument that the record cover in question isn't child porn is weak, but the whole affair was mis-handled.
Is the system perfect? No. Because it was never intended to be. A proxy or an https tunnel or any number of other things will subvert it. The effect is more straight-forward: it removes the ``oh, I stumbled over it accidentally'' defence, and prevents pressure to impose filtering for anything other than illegality. In the grand British spirit of compromise (which tends not to sit well with the American desire for 100% legal clarity) it does a reasonable job reasonably, and if it lost public confidence it would rapidly have to adapt.
The Australian problem is that (a) it's being imposed by legislative fiat, rather than emerging from industry debate (the UK system arose from a couple of the major ISPs) (b) Australia has some states that are culturally conservative that the central government isn't prepared to overrule (a problem we don't have in the UK) and (c) there's a skein of support for strong censorship that neither the UK nor the US suffers from.
I know it has been said before many, many times but if you want to protect children from stuff they shouldn't see on the internet then it is the parents' duty to monitor what they see and do on it. Simple as that. State butt out of families. Keep it free and nasty and abolish Windows!
http://www.acetonestudio.com
All they have to do is arrest the volunteers for being paedophiles!
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
For those like me who aren't so sure we want to vote Green there is at least one other viable alternative:
The Australian Sex Party are contesting senate seats for the first time this coming election http://www.sexparty.org.au/
One of their policies is to oppose compulsory internet censorship.
Pre-canned Evolution Links for all those Slashdot holy wars.
I never really took australia for a backwoods censorship type country before... I mean wasn't the country founded by inmates?
And let me say again NO! You are 100% entirely wrong
If you see a man being beaten to death by the side of the road, do you
"Filtering" the internet actually encourages child abuse and paedophilia, because it shows YOU DO NOT WANT TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM, you just want to pretend that it doesn't happen.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
of VPN/Proxy services :)
I'm thinking about starting my own ISP. Please reply with a list of all of the URLs that contain information you don't want me to be able to see.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
Wait, so how is having these sites that cannot be controlled (because I am betting if the police could shut them down without filtering, they would) filtered off the net so that no one has to see them or can a bad thing?
I am not saying, as you so vehemently (with prodigious use of capslock) say that I won't do more? I am not only morally obligated (both peer morality and my own) but legally required to stop child pornography and child abuse wherever I see it, and your comment is a slur on my person and all but accusing me of a crime I have no intention of committing.
I would consider legal action for slander but there's three things stopping me:
1. your a troll
2. this is just the comments page of a blog no one important reads
3. I am not an American and don't consider legal action as my every recourse
...
failed to act on illegal boat people.
How is it "illegal" to flee from war and persecution?
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
How is it "illegal" to flee from war and persecution?
You flee to a safe country - away from your persecution and register as an asylum seeker there.
The illegal way, is to fly to Indonesia, throw away your passports, claim that you are from an area that you are not, and hop on a boat to come to Australia.
Obviously these are the two edge cases - and most will fall in between them. Many of the genuine asylum seekers are in large concentrations in neighboring countries to where they live - as they have no money or belongings. Many of the fake asylum seekers have money to travel - and end up in Indonesia, where it is quite convenient to hop over to Australia, and try to jump the asylum seeker queue.
the only solution here is to not allow the boat people - but to take more genuine asylum seekers from refugee camps and bring them to Australia. Australia takes a pitiful amount every year. Simply allowing the boat people into the country is only going to cause more problems, and is why both major political parties are trying to avoid it.
In Soviet Russia the insensitive clod is YOU!