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Australian Enterprises Block Sex Party's Political Site
schliz writes "Corporate web filters in some organizations are blocking web access to the Australian Sex Party, which is a registered political party that is contesting Australia's upcoming August 21 Federal Election. The site features policies and campaign material, including opposition to the Government's mandatory internet filtering proposal. Party convener Fiona Patten said that although the term 'sex' in the party's website URL could be responsible for its filtering woes, the party is unlikely to consider a name change: 'I think the fact that people are still blocking our site just because of the word "sex" in the name shows that we need this political movement.'"
Just because they think the reason it is bolocked is because of the word sex in the URL, dosent meen that is the reason.
You have 5 Moderator Points!
Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
I have to admitt that seeing www.sexparty.org.au does not make me think of politics at a first glance. But it's interesting however that filters will pick it up as adult content when i'm sure other sites contain sex somewhere in the url - for example deliveriesexpress.com.au. I assume since sex is the first part of the url it is picked up. What about sextantrepairs.com or any of these http://www.morewords.com/starts-with/sex/ ?
Those who can, do. Those who cannot, sue.
In the (Blacked out) of the [Censored].
I've been making plans to get a job in another country. This is something you'd expect to see in North Korea or East Germany circa 1980, not Australia.
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
Is this a real political party or just a joke?
If it is a real party, what are their policies?
I know .au has a legal requirement to vote, and preferential voting, so I am not surprised if they get this sort of thing.
I couldn't care if it was 14, 14,000, 14,000,000 or just 1 person. Blocking a political party because "sex" is in the name is wrong. If you can't figure out why, you're part of the problem with those that want to stomp on democracy.
Om, nomnomnom...
Have you seen some of their campaign workers. I'm expecting someone to elect "Five Cougars, thanks."
As one of the few parties putting censorship up as one of their most visible policies I hope that their voters will number more than 14. Unfortunately there are a whole load of other important issues going on here in Australia at the moment and you only get the one vote. You can apportion preferences accordingly but in the end you're still only deciding on one candidate.
Australia may rank 16th on the Press Freedom Index, But unfortunately Australia doesn't have US 1st Amendment-like protection for political free speech. (The High Court has ruled that it's heavily implied in the constitution, but it's not absolutely stated). There's no "You can't block that, it's political free speech!" kind of laws.
I can figure out why you think it's wrong. Perhaps you can similarly figure out why I think that forcing private companies to use their internet connections a certain way is wrong.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
For a long time the system where I work blocked games.slashdot.org because it had games in the name. They don't block general news sites but some sites are banned on the grounds of "Entertainment". They have a process where you can argue for sites to be permitted but frankly I would just go outside the office and use the free wifi on my eee 701. Its easier and more likely to succeed.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
haha i shoulda guessed this would get modded down, its hard to explain the Australian sense of humour.. But that said being blocked by a corporate web filter because it has sexual related links with some graphic content and has triggered its rules or whatever has little or nothing to do with democracy.
"Prophylactic filters foil fornicators' free forum . . . film at five!"
Blocking a political party because "sex" is in the name is wrong. If you can't figure out why, you're part of the problem with those that want to stomp on democracy.
This is the age of context-free grammars in natural languages..
... That means, filters on the work floor, right? Who cares? You shouldn't be doing politics while you work anyway.
Blocking a political party because "sex" is in the name is wrong. If you can't figure out why, you're part of the problem with those that want to stomp on democracy.
This is a side effect.
This has nothing to do with democracy, and everything to do with bandwidth availability.
At my company, we set up DansGuardian, which is probably the same filter used here.
DansGuardian can block sites based on their URL (or reverse DNS), by keywords filtering (a word can block a link), and content filtering.
Because we have bandwidth problems (in this case, people at work abusing it), DansGuardian was installed.
It was first configured to use all the possible filters, but after a few days, we realized that it was not possible to do anything because of the settings.
So now, there is no more keyword filtering nor content filtering.
However, we are trying to monitor the bandwith to find who abuses the system.
Recently, one of the employees streamed 800 megabytes, meaning that he watched something on TV during 2 hours during work hours !
Now, this site is blocked, and I'm pretty sure it contains political insights, but frankly, why do you consult such sites AT WORK ?
Accessing sex from work could be dangerous for your job.
If you really want to watch sex, just do it from your home.
...swing voters.
CORPORATE. CORPORATE filters block access to the website from within their PRIVATE CORPORATE NETWORKS. Companies can filter the web searches of their employees however they please. How is this in any way close to news?
You know, I know this is in the context of a business, but if you're going to name your political party the Sex Party, do you even stop and think about it? Are they allowed to run ads during prime time? Are you going to have 8-year-old asking, "Daddy, what does sex mean?" I'm not sure I'd vote for a party that put me through that kind of hassle.
Can we stop with the sensationalist non-stories about people sitting behind corporate intranet filters.
Just because you use a computer at work, that doesn't mean you have carte blanche to surf wherever and whenever you want. You are there to work, not play Farmville.
And what corporate filter WOULDN'T have the word "sex" on it's blacklist ?
There are no sinister connotations, no "big-brother" censorship issues, this is simply what's called a false-positive.
Nothing more to see, please move along.
You're mixing up two distinct issues here into one.
1) There are bad(cheap) corporate site filters that exist for a valid reason and they block a political party, this might be because it has the word sex in the url.
2) The Australian government wants to introduce a mandatory filter, this has completely valid reasons for existing also.
I can figure out why it isn't wrong to block url's with sex in the url (it's 99% of the time it's going to be correct - and it's cheaper than checking them all), and I'm pretty certain I'm not part of the problem with those that want to stomp on democracy.
Who is part of the problem are people who want to make rash blanket statements and not listen to the arguments.
The GP probably read the summary wrong like I did. If I had RTFA, I would have realized that it wasn't the great firewall of OZ blocking information about a political party (which would have been anti-democracy), it was instead a sensationalistic bit about a few corporate web-filters blocking the site.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
Recently, one of the employees streamed 800 megabytes, meaning that he watched something on TV during 2 hours during work hours ! Now, this site is blocked, and I'm pretty sure it contains political insights, but frankly, why do you consult such sites AT WORK ?
I think a serious talk with that particular employee would be a better idea than just blocking that site.
I don't think they're blocked because of the word "sex." I think they're blocked because of the phrase "sex party."
Are you adequate?
This is about corporate web filters, things like Websense. What happened to the /. mantra of it's their (the corporations) internet connection and they can do what the hell they please on it.
Hell, I know corporations which block any kind of political site under the category of "non productive" and they block a hell of a lot more then just political sites with that category.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
If their site is for promoting honest politics then they are one element short of a full deck. Liquor or beer.
I can figure out why it isn't wrong to block url's with sex in the url (it's 99% of the time it's going to be correct)
I dispute your claim that A. only 1% of accesses to domains matching /.*sex.*/ are accesses to safe-for-work domains, and B. these 1% are unimportant. Think of a word ending with S followed by a word starting with EX, like "Experts' Exchange" (before they added the hyphen) or "Australia's Exports".
You are confusing australian sense of humour with bad sense of humour. Sorry, but making a quip about the party that just had its site blocked is not particularly funny.
Had you thought that this might be the point of naming it so ?
Yeah.
But remember the price when you name your app "The GIMP?"
Not every idea is a good idea.
"sexparty.org." As in orgy? This has the feel of what passes for geek humor - not serious discussion.
However, blocking political sites on a corporate network is perfectly reasonable.
When a corporation decides to block certain content, that is _not_ censorship. That is a corporate policy that likely includes blocking other political sites.
Try going to http://www.antiwar.com/ when you're next on a large corporation's network and see what the response is. Very likely the content will be blocked because it's catagorized as a political website. Then try xkcd.org and it'll likely be blocked because it's a humour site. The arguement for both those sites is that there is no company business that will be served by visiting them.
Now, if the government was blocking the site to private individuals, we could have a censorship discussion.
As an Australian sysadmin, you couldn't be more wrong.
The proposed filter has been smacked down in parliament twice. It is not in any way shape or form mandated by law, this lie really really needs to die. Check these things before posting stupid comments in future.
Also, mod's, check these things before modding up or down comments in the future. BTW, I do not use any form of content filtering, the kind of content you're not allowed to access is laid out in the AUP and you get fired for violating it.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.