Slashdot Mirror
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 :-)
WikiLeaks will show them the stupidity of this.
In the meantime, time to fire up Tor and change ISPs.
It's GNU/Linux dammit!
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.
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.
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.
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.
Er it's only two ISPs that have made a decision themselves to do this - not a law, and not something that affects 'Australia' as a whole. Easier to change to another ISP than to start talking about proxies and stuff...
Except the NBN was proposed as in the lead-up to the 2007 federal election. Policy regarding filtering wasn't mentioned (at least publicly) until after the party had gained power.
The 'nbn' was part of the previous govenments commitment for many years to support faster broadband in rural Australia, not the major cities
bæ8Ã0sÃOE?5r©oÂÃ?âz:ÃÃAÃ?ÃOEÂ6fXÃ?]Â
Whats all that copper worth recycled in China ?
bæ8Ã0sÃOE?5r©oÂÃ?âz:ÃÃAÃ?ÃOEÂ6fXÃ?]Â
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
The post was intended as clarification (for those unaware) that the NBN was proposed (by the same party - Labor) well before 'clean-feed' or filtering of any form had been publicly mentioned, or suggested in Parliament.
It's debatable whether the government's original intent for the NBN was for use as a means of filtering/monitoring. I've only highlighted that any form of filtering was proposed well after the original NBN announcement (and Labor's rise to power). Not before, as suggested in your original post.
I'm not sure if you're unaware, or conveyed that message unintentionally because, at least at the beginning, it wasn't simply a case of 'hadn't worked it out.'
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/
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.
I dont think Telstra or Optus have the technical ability to mess with their wholesale customers in this way.
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.
========
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.
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.
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?