Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Australia Ranked Fourth In Internet Freedom

Posted by timothy on from the have-you-seen-our-town's-giant-blindfold? dept.

mjwx writes "A report published by Freedom House has placed Australia in fourth in Internet Freedom, below Estonia, the United States and Germany. Freedom House highlights the lack of actual censorship in Australia pointing out that the highly unpopular proposed ISP level censorship has been shelved since the 2010 Australian election. The Freedom House report is available here."

15 of 221 comments (clear)

  1. Below Germany? by bbqsrc · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm pretty sure Germany has actively filtered their internet before, and possibly still continue to do it. As for America, hello ICE domain seizures? Wtf.

    --
    Disagree != mod troll.
    1. Re:Below Germany? by Kreigaffe · · Score: 4, Informative

      I'm pretty sure Germany filters out anything mentioning that party that was real big in Germany a few generations back..

      --
      ... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about. :|
    2. Re:Below Germany? by hweimer · · Score: 4, Informative

      As of now, there are two websites (Stormfront and NSDAP/AO) that are being filtered at several smaller ISPs in North Rhine-Westphalia. What you might heard of is that there is a controversial law that allows the German federal police to add alleged child pornography websites to a secret mandatory filtering list. However, this law has never been applied and will be repealed soon. In other news, most of Germany's states seem to push for web filtering of illegal gambling, but I doubt that this is going to happen in the end.

      --
      OS Reviews: Free and Open Source Software
    3. Re:Below Germany? by rolfwind · · Score: 4, Informative

      For what it's worth:
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Germany
      and:
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_by_country

    4. Re:Below Germany? by Kreigaffe · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It wasn't a stupid statement, it was a poorly worded statement.

      Holocaust denial is illegal in Germany. So are swastikas, and pretty much anything related to the nazis outside of "bad things, very bad things, happened in the early half of the 20th century". I'm exaggerating but this is fucking slashdot and only a mindless pedant would misinterpret me as badly as you have.

      The fact is Germany *does* censor their internet, and the content they remove *is* related to that party that was pretty big a few generations back. In other words, what I said is accurate, just not very precise -- I didn't expect, but should have I suppose, that some asshole would come by and think I was making claims that are so obviously not fucking true that even an idiot would understand that that wasn't what I was saying. Censorship is not denialism, censorship is simply not allowing certain things to be said or seen; Germany engages in censorship, regardless of whether or not the things they censor are things that any decent person would think shouldn't be said or heard. That doesn't make it magically become not-censorship.

      --
      ... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about. :|
    5. Re:Below Germany? by dreampod · · Score: 4, Interesting

      While I agree with them that the US probably is fairly good in comparison to much of the world, the major flaw I see in the Freedomhouse report is that it seems to treat the spirit of the law as being more relevant than the actual application and only considers governmental action rather than corporate activities (enabled by a bought and paid for legislative branch) that reduce freedom. Beyond ICE domain seizures, we have rampant DMCA abuse, government subsidized regional monopolies creating poor service and removing competition, extensive (though largely concealed) monitoring, attempted violations of net neutrality, traffic 'shaping' that is not required for its stated purpose, extensive abuse of the legal system to suppress unpopular or offensive speech of individuals or small business' unable to afford the expense of defending themselves, aging internet infrastructure the monopolies are making minimal efforts to upgrade except in the most profitable areas, and undoubtably more that don't come immediately to mind.

      The US is taking baby steps towards a less free internet and by ranking them so highly without comment on the glaring problems in the system they are enabling it by creating a false impression that this is acceptable.

      Also I find the mention of the US tech innovation particularly funny given that those companies all insist that they are primarily based out of Dublin, Ireland which is why they don't have to pay their fair share of taxes.

    6. Re:Below Germany? by jd · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Relative to what?

      Can you tell me, precisely, what bad things Sweden, Denmark, New Zealand or the Falkland Islands are doing that compare with intimidation and threats against companies that had links to Wikileaks?

      Can you tell me, precisely, how many domain seizures the UK has been involved in of late?

      Do you have any concrete examples of, oh, Lichtenstein ordering other nations to arrest minors and terrorize them for pissing off the MPAA?

      Can you name any country other than the US which forbids the distribution of World War I audio for copyright reasons?

      Inquiring lolcats wish to know.

      --
      It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
    7. Re:Below Germany? by dreampod · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Failing to criticize our national governments simply because others do worse guarantees a slow creep towards that worse behaviour because anything less is, by your reasoning, acceptable. The fact that Iran, Burma, and China engage in broader and more extensive internet control and suppression doesn't make the ICE domain seizures more acceptable or infringe freedoms any less.

      Further, I personally believe that we have a greater obligation to ensure our home country is abiding by the principals we want other countries to. Not only does it clear us of hypocrisy (see US on torture and prisons) when attempting to convince other countries to reform their practices, it provides a clear example that it can be done without catastrophic consequences (assuming they don't see our culture itself being a catastrophe), and is how our government is structured to function. Limiting our scope to local issues is often a matter of conserving our efforts and avoiding tilting at windmills. I can't personally stop hunger in Africa but I can ensure my neighbours get invited over for dinner frequently because I know that the adults in their house frequently miss meals to ensure that their kids always get fed. The same principle applies to world affairs - I can make real (though small) changes in the US but ignoring them because China is worse leaves the entire world a worse place.

  2. Why the focus on Australia? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why not whoever is in 83rd place? It seems like "Estonia Ranked First In Internet Freedom" would be the real story.

  3. That's a really short list. by rebelwarlock · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So only a handful of countries in the world have internet now? Or are we ignoring countries that "don't matter"? If you're going to pretend to do comprehensive reports, at least have a comprehensive list.

    1. Re:That's a really short list. by GNUALMAFUERTE · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Absolutely.

      One of the very few things that make me proud about my country (Argentina) is our internet freedom. Our connections aren't great, but they ain't bad either, and they are cheap and just about everywhere (you can get unlimited, uncensored cablemodem 6mbps down, 1 mbps up for ~30 dollars a month, and unlimited, uncensored 3G 3mbps down, 512kbps up for ~25 dollars a month). Domains (*.ar) are absolutely FREE for life, and there's no limit on what you can register (I have domains that contain all 7 words, are anti-government, anti-religion, and anti-corporations, I've had them for years, and none of them has been taken away or filtered in any way). Our copyright laws are fairly sane (well, as insane as copyright itself is, they aren't as bad as the states), and we have no DMCA or any other similar shit). ISPs don't hand out information without a court order, and neither do host companies. Nobody has been sued for file-sharing, and no ISP is throttling or limiting p2p connections.

      But we aren't even on the list, go figure ...

      --
      WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
  4. Re:Freedom House is heavily funded by the US gov't by jd · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Given that the US, in retaining control of ICANN, demolishing network neutrality, placing excessive restrictions on cryptography, pressuring organizations to drop any association whatsoever with wikileaks and encouraging Internet fraud through a lack of any kind of privacy legislation, has effectively crippled actual freedom without needing any censorship legislation per-se, it should be obvious that the US is only near the top for reasons that have nothing to do with freedom.

    --
    It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
  5. China by koxkoxkox · · Score: 4, Funny

    What rank is China ? Is there anyone below ?

    I would love to RTFA, but I can't access the report myself. They must have some technical difficulties in Beijing these days, because freedomhouse.org seems to be unavailable.

  6. Re:Freedom House is heavily funded by the US gov't by Carewolf · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I noticed that as well. Canada, the Netherlands and all Nordic countries are absent from the report. In their place a semi-nordic east-european country becomes the most free. I guess it would look too bad if there was 10 countries above the US, so they left out everybody above estonia.

    I would really have like to hear to position of France and Spain also though.

  7. Re:Blow Germany? by SuricouRaven · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This is only a problem if you believe that breeding is a fundamental right. I do not.

    Free speech? Good idea. Freedom of religion? Good idea. Freedom of movement? Good idea. Free press? Good idea. A few obvious limitations of course, to prevent one person's use of their freedom from infringing upon the freedom of another, but in general good ideas. Freedom to pop out another human even if you are using known flawed genetic material, do not have the money to properly raise it or have a history of violence or mental illness? Not such a good idea.

    Look at it more like this: There are laws for adoption. Certain conditions which disqualify someone. Some criminal offences, mental illness, things which have been deemed by those elected to write laws to render a person unfit to be a perent. So we already recognise, in law, and with very little contriversy, that some people just are not fit to raise children. And yet if they can manage to get knocked up themselves - which is not a difficult task - they somehow have a right to go ahead anyway? That just doesn't make sense. If you can't meet some minimum standard of parenting, you shouldn't be entrusted with that type of responsibility.