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."
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.
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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.
It would be an even stronger statement to only put Conroy last, not all of the Labor candidates. That way there is no doubt whatsoever what you're voting against.
Problem is it's not his personal policy, he's just driving ALP policy. Boot him out and the party just grows another arsehole to take his place and enact their policy.
Ahh - My eye!
The doctor said I'm not supposed to get Slashdot in it!
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.
Who ya gunna put first? It's not like Liberal has a different policy on the filter.
How we know is more important than what we know.
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.
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 still can't let Abbott get into power.
As a lefty trade unionist, here is my hierarchy of voting in Australia this election:
As a lefty trade-unionist my hierarchy of voting in Australia this election: Greens > Being Kicked In Crotch (Men's Size 10, Sharpened Wing Tip) > ALP > Skeletor > Stabbed By Transvestites In Mexican Cantina > Demi-crats > Nationals > Liberals > Suicide Booth > Family First
I can just imagine the call to Telstra to opt-out... "Yes valued customer, we will be happy to take you off of our internet filter and place you on our 'pervert' plan. Please download the necessary forms and fill in the exact nature of your perversion. Your next payment will be identified as 'Telstra Internet Pervert Plan' on your bank statement, in extra bold print. You can be sure that Telstra will be the first to give up your details when the government is hunting down potential internet predators. Thankyou for calling Telstra, you sick bastard."
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.
Oh their policy is "different."
Abbott was at an event a couple of months ago where he said he disagreed with the Krudd/Conroy filtering plans. Sounds good? During the handshaking afterwards a friend of mine asked him to clarify his position. He said, "You'll probably be disappointed, but.." and went on to say that he felt Conroy was wasting too much time consulting with biased parties and that the filtering list didn't go far enough in blocking things that no Australian wanted on their computers.
Still, a few hundred people left that meeting thinking that a vote for Liberal was a vote against internet filtering. It's not Abbott's fault they misinterpreted him, is it.