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Australia's 2 Largest ISP's Start Censorsing the Web
unreadepitaph writes "Looks like after Stephen Conroy's web filter went down in flames he went quietly behind the backs of Australians and struck a deal with Telstra and Optus to start filtering an undisclosed blacklist of sites from organization within and external to Australia. From the article: 'Electronic Frontiers Association board member Colin Jacobs also expressed concern at the scheme, saying the Government and internet providers needed to be more upfront about websites being blocked and offer an appeals process for website owners who felt URLs had been blocked unfairly. "There is a question about where the links are coming from and I'd like to know the answer to that," Mr Jacobs said."
...because the current government is utterly doomed at the next election, and all their half-baked ideas will be junked, like they should be. Given the current - and trending downwards for over 12 months now - opinion polls, they'll be reduced to a mere rump of their former selves. The Australian Labor Party federally has the same disease as their state-based comrades in New South Wales and will be severely punished in similarly spectacular fashion at the next election, you mark my words :-)
I couldn't care less as long as they don't do it to their wholesaled connections since Telstra and Optus retail suck.
WikiLeaks will show them the stupidity of this.
In the meantime, time to fire up Tor and change ISPs.
It's GNU/Linux dammit!
Proxy Around Fascism
Time for other countries to step up and give the Australia some help
They can't ban everything or nobody will pay for nothing. ...
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Meanwhile keep exposing the globalists, make it so they never get anything to do with government.
Just before someone chimes in with this, iiNet is the 2nd largest ISP in terms of Broadband DSL subscribers - Optus would have more combined subscribers with DSL/Cable/other (which is what OP would be referring to).
Get your real info from here :-
http://whirlpool.net.au/wiki/cleanfeed
Why does everyone want to save me? I am happy to be damned!
Yippee!!!
If I was Stephen Conroy, I'd censor posts like that.
Gizmondo recently wrote that Optus and Telstra have just signed a lucrative NBN deal. Coincidence?
Can't force it through parliament, so get the major ISPs to voluntarily do it via an offer they can't refuse?
It's GNU/Linux dammit!
Not cool Optus. Not cool Telstra.
Considering Phlebas, whoever the hell he is.
who the hell uses telstra or optus????
This is only the start of it.
The NBN will kill the Internets as Australians know it.
The current plans to force everyone to connect to the NBN weather they want to or not gives the Grubbermint instant control over all net traffic.
FWIW, the biggest winners from NBN will be Foxtel and other media providers who will simply suck up as much bandwidth as they can get. The current cable TV networks will be shut down and everything will be moved to the NBN. Where do you think the bandwidth is going to go then?
All telephone lines including POTs will be routed though the NBN.
The people who actually believed the garbage about 100Mb to their homes were only dreaming. They never had a hope of getting those sort of speeds as it was never in the game-plan.
The NBN is going to make Telstras Bigpond look like a good deal. All of the current ISP's will simply be relegated to be billing companies. In one swoop the Grubbermint get the control they want and their friends in big corporations that will hire them when they get thrown out of office will have somewhere cushy for htem to sit while they continue to suck on the public tit with their pensions.
Australia, is having a lemon shoved down it's throat, while the vocal kiddies who dream of 100Mb porn to their screens are being flashed a pair of titties to tease them.
Why the hell is Conroy still pushing for this? He has a face saving excuse to drop it with the hostile parliament so why doesn't he just drop it?
It seems like he's taking it _way_ to personally. It's as if he wants to filter the net just to spite everyone.
What's the bet this is just going to be DNS filtering?
Or, to put it more rationally:
The NBN takes the aging copper network out of private hands where Telstra was using it to restrict competition, and replaces it with an open-access high speed network open to full competition.
Just to be clear: almost everyone being forced to switch to the NBN is currently using Telstra infrastructure. If you're on iiNet, Internode, TGP, Optus ADSL etc then you're using Telstra copper. The only people being forced to switch to the NBN who aren't using Telstra infrastructure now are the relatively small number of people on Optus Cable Broadband. After the switch to the NBN, you'll still be using iiNet, Internode, etc for your internet access (if you want to) but instead of using Telstra's infrastructure you'll be using NBNCo's infrastructure. And it will be damn fast and more reliable. And it won't be Telstra... which in itself is simply wonderful.
The act of censorship is always more obscene than the material being censored. My personal opinion.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
It seems kind of silly to break the internet in this way. It was designed not to be broken. Policies created by individuals who really don't understand the engineering and underlying technology should never be introduced into the system. I do still remember when we were being asked, "Should governments control the internet." It doesn't really matter that everyone who did understand the tech said, "No, that's ridiculous." They did it anyway. People who want to circumvent these filters will still, of course be able to do so. Those few people who do leverage the internet for illegal activities are unlikely to be stopped, only inconvenienced. I don't know the numbers, but I feel safe in assuming that this is a huge waste of taxpayer dollars.
Living here it's amazing. All I can say is Australia is undergoing some sort of social experiment. The Government is doing a whole raft of things that the majority of people disagree with. Infact I have come to the view we dont actually live in a Democracy, kind of like Greece but less obvious.
Nobody with a choice and a clue goes with them anyway (and there is quite a lot of choice in the DSL market in Australia). While I'm vehemently opposed to government enforced filtering, I have no problem with individual ISPs doing it - as long as they inform their customers that they're doing so. As long as we don't have the market collapse into a duopoly, and there's no government-mandated filter, those who want a clean feed have that choice.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
It's a 'voluntary' scheme whereby the biggest six ISPs implement a block list maintained by an organisiation called the 'Internet Watch Foundation'. They claim that only child pornography sites are blocked, but of course there's no way to know what is on the list.
Recently the first efforts to expand block lists to include 'other illegal' content have been made, and to set up a list for copyright-related restricted sites.
It seems governments have realised that legislative oversight is a bit of a nuisance, and it's just easier to coerce and/or bribe big business to get what you want.
Just to clarify, both ISPs have elected to be involved in the program - yet neither of which will (if I'm understanding this correctly) allow their users to opt out? Surely this is a breach of the contract terms/conditions.
Introducing mandatory filtering to customers (who, in the case of either ISP, are likely bound by 24 month contracts...) falls slightly outside the bounds of 'we reserve the right to alter terms and conditions at any time.'
This is far beyond a sick joke.
If Australians hadn't worked it out, when the whole broadband filter when a little quiet, along came the NBN. Its clear after trials of the filter that some smart guy told the government if you force everyone through the same controlled internet system you have a better chance of filtering / tracking sites , well the NBN was born. This is the only way the government could implement a broadband filter, and today Optus and Telstra signed deals with the NBN totalling billions, offcouse the NBN is just one big internet filter, and the government is going to try force everyone through it to implement their filter.
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He takes a lot of things way too personally. One hysterical press release of his was about a "lesbian cabal" that was trying to stop the NBN. It turned out to be a female staffer that was insisting on sticking to tendering procedure to avoid legal problems and a female former member of his department that just happened to work for a potential contractor that agreed to wait until a contract had been drawn up before signing on. Two parties agreeing not a sign a blank cheque became a "lesbian cabal" in a bizzare press conference.
Thanks to the necessity of dealing with Telstra the Communications Ministry is almost a punishment post so it has been historically been given to a complete dropkick that a Government hates but has to give something to keep a powerful faction happy. Thus the long string of utter bastards and incompetant wankers in the job. Sadly Conroy is a competant wanker so actually manages to make progress on a filtering policy that his own party hates and only put up to get the reactionary weirdo vote. If he stuffed about on the policy for a decade saying it was a good idea and he'd do something soon (which is what the previous government did) everyone would be happy - even the weirdos that may get a few more paying customers in their fake churches.
Whats all that copper worth recycled in China ?
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Once dox relating to the internals of the filtering machinery are leaked, I would imagine someone will figure out how to cure the cancer by disabling the filtering machinery. Like everything, it's bound to have some weak points making it vulnerable to being compromised one way or another. Unfortunately, disabling the filter might involve disabling the ISP's routing altogether. I guess these ISPs must have already built into their business models that they are painting giant targets for international protest action against them, and are ready to lose customers, handle complaints, and clean up the mess after the inevitable backlash.
Korma: Good
Today, Gillard and NBN paid Eleven Billion Dollars to buy the Telstra copper network. Do you really think they're going to rip it out or decommission it?
Yes, they are decommissioning the entire copper network: http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/350563/telstra-nbn_co_deal_telstra_plans_phased_copper_decommission/
Your assuming that the NBN is going to be accessible to everyone
You will notice the NBN roll out so far is in low density areas.
Have you ever tried to get cable in to an apartment / unit / business park ?
You will find that Telstra / Optus will force the strata of the apartment / unit / office park to foot the bill for each individual unit connection, as well as some of the costs incurred for the connection off the street.
This connection can cost up to and over a thousand dollars per each individual unit, which will be borne by the unit owner.
The NBN is going to be no different in the sense that there is going to be a significant cost for strata units to connect.
And with using Fibre, it means the average electrician / data cabler with their open cablers license will not have the necessary equipment to do this cheaply.
And with everyone being forced to use the NBN infrastructure, these poeple will be effectively blackmailed in to paying huge setup costs, as well the associated cost of fast data plans, for what ??? Checking email ? Posting on facebook ? A bit of online shopping on eBay ?
The NBN is a farce. Labor is betting everything they have on the NBN, and the tax payers are going to foot the bill !
Yet another reason not to use either of those ISPs
You could always get a low end box and tunnel through it. Since the data is encrypted, the ISP can't know a thing. Denying freedom is so 18th century, in this day and age things like these are nothing but a joke.
You mean that large companies can agree together to mutually do bad things to their customers without having any problems with the customers leaving them?
I'm so amazed, this wasn't written in my "Free Market 101: Why it works".
With the usual backlash that'll ensue when it's discovered that it contains dentist websites, political opponents websites, typos or simply unfortunate names (expertsexchange.com)
Non-Linux Penguins ?
"Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power." Benito Mussolini
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be-T J
From the wording of the summary, the submitter seems to be worried about the contents of the blacklist. Who cares what's on the list - the fact that some persons feel they are more qualified (than the person paying for access) to judge what is appropriate should have all of Australia in an uproar. Child pornography or not, I don't want anybody determining what is "appropriate".
Conroy isn't doing this for "political" reasons (of the sort that most Australian politicians have were they back down when it polls badly). He apparently strongly believes in censorship. Also people who blame Christian and other faith based groups for this are wrong, Conroy is pushing for it for his own reasons and not to buy votes. The rest of his party have pretty much dropped it because they are polling at around sub-30% approval or something silly.
I am an Evangelical Christian and am against filtering not only because it is a threat to democracy (the government originally wanted to block material related to political debate like euthanasia) but because there is almost no evidence that censoring material related to certain acts actually reduces the rate of offences. Instead the evidence seems to be pointing the other way (eg access to porn reduces sexual assaults, violent video games reduce violence). And what we know from psychology's studies into behavioural theory backs this up (ie that if you are denied the opportunity to partake in a desired behaviour your desire for that behaviour just increases, hence why food restriction diets don't work).
People abuse children because they are either paedophiles and hence sexually attracted to children, or just get off on controlling and domineering others and children are easy targets. They don't do it because they saw a picture of a naked child.
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CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
I know.
I'm always amazed by such comments.
The first thing is you have to have a floating paranoia. Then the paranoia become focused on something. The government is good because it's so vast, so integral to the functioning of the community and has such enormous power. Next you see conspiracies in most things (it goes with the paranoia) and finally whatever is being done by the 'Grubbermint' must be suspect thus the paranoid conspiracy theorist makes connections to to things were are not and fails to see the wood for their paranoid forest.
A censor sing-song?
I've put up a dedicated Freenet node for you. I also have a Tor node running. Let me know if there is anything else I can do from here.
Much love,
AC from US
When you google "Australian Evangelical Churches". Maybe that is why they claim social media tools edged out pornography as the nations No.1 internet activity by 09. Or better yet, how they know.
http://www.eyefortravel.com/news/online-travel/social-channels-top-porn-sites-australia
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
does anyone else think it's about time to build a new internet that doesnt allow this kind of bullshit?
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Check out the essay "The Doctrine of Fascism", attributed to him. Its roots are really in the philosophy of Hobbes, Rousseau, Hegel, and even Plato. Mussolini's main idea was that fascism is anti-individualist, and that all people should see themselves as incomplete beings whose lives only have meaning and value in service to the all-powerful State. That's not really a corporatist viewpoint. Re: Net censorship, a fascist viewpoint would be that your individual desire to see porn, bomb-making instructions, copyrighted material, or sites about democracy is absolutely meaningless before the State's collective desire to shut you up and make you obey. Not to say that the ISPs are innocent here, but it's not because they own the government.
Revive the Constitution.
If they refuse to reveal which sites are being blocked then they know they are blocking something they shouldn't.
I switched years ago, never looked back.
You're a complete and utter moron, you know that? Right now Telstra owns EVERYTHING. You're already "footing the bill" *and then some* by being forced to sustain Telstra's ridiculous monopolist profit margins.
Why would you NOT want the government to build and own the infrastructure, exactly the same freaking way it builds and owns the power lines, the sewer lines, the roads, etc. You don't have to pay for a bunch of CEOs' $10 million bonuses, or shareholder dividends. All revenue goes towards paying off the network.
How else were you planning on getting FTTH to 93% of Australians? Telstra had no intention of EVER building FTTH. They wanted to build a new monopolistic FTTN network that would have cost $20 billion (with most of the bill footed by taxpayers) and provided no upgrade path to FTTH.
God you anti-government morons make me sick. You WANT to keep paying Telstra for their rotting copper network? You DON'T want ultra high speed FTTH? Can you just drown yourself in an ocean and save the rest of us from your stupidity? PLEASE?
Huh ! Who on earth said ANYTHING about wanting having or even needing Telstra copper ??????
You have been drinking the labor cool aid for far too long, and it is clearly rotting your brain !!!!!
Laying fibre for Strata style units IS going to cost $$$$$$....
So as a taxpayer, I'm already helping foot the bill for something that I DO NOT NEED, DO NOT WANT, WILL NOT USE, and WILL NOT BE ABLE TO AFFORD !
I can, and already have said NO to telstra copper. For a complete and utter moron its very easy to do.
Simply tell Telstra to shove their bill, and thats the end of it !
Many properties do not even have copper, and as such are using wireless technologies, and are getting along just fine.
Also another problem with FORCING everyone on to the NBN is many of these Strata properties have already paid $$$$$ for Coax / Cable Networks.
Seriously, your over zealous and ignorant comments just go to show how little stupid Labor FANBOYZ like yourself know about anything that is slightly technical.
Go back to sucking on Conroys Cash Cow tit, and stop wasting our time with your useless comments
Australia country of freedom? Not anymore.
Recipes for USA bankrupt - http://tinypaste.com/0d66f dd = dollar deluge (printed in the infinity)