Australia Scales Back Internet Blacklist, Nixes Full-Scale Censorship

littlekorea writes "The Australian Government has officially abandoned plans to legislate a mandatory internet filter. The news ends a four-year campaign by the ruling party to implement legislation that would have compelled ISPs to block a list of URLs dictated by Australia's telecommunications regulator, the ACMA. ISPs have instead been told to block a list of known child pornography sites maintained by INTERPOL." Also at ZDnet.

Comments

Just block?

[srussia]

FTFS: "ISPs have instead been told to block a list of known child pornography sites maintained by INTERPOL."

I say make Interpol shut them down!

Re:Just block?

[TWX]

Why the hell is INTERPOL running child pornography sites in the first place?!

Re:Just block?

[unix_core]

No stupid, they just use their bookmarks.

Re:Just block?

[djl4570]

INTERPOL cannot just shut down a site. It has to be shut down by law enforcement where the server resides. INTERPOL can work with local law enforcement but it can be difficult to get local law enforcement to cooperate. Look at a timeframe here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Ukrainian_child_pornography_raids to see how long it took to shut down these notorious sites.

Re:Just block?

[Anonymous Coward]

the joke is that the summary makes it sound like INTERPOL is "maintaining" the sites.

Re:Just block?

[bluefoxlucid]

So instead of dictatorship by local government possibly abused to censor unfavorable political ideals, they have dictatorship by the International courts possibly abused to censor unfavorable political ideals? (Yeah, okay, child pornography IS an unfavorable political ideal; but I mean things other than stated, under the guise of being related to what is stated in some way.)

Re:Just block?

[wisnoskij]

I imagine that since all government employees spend all their time on porn sites they through it would be a good way of keeping track of them.

Re:Just block?

[SuricouRaven]

I'd worry more about the prospect for expansion. Law aside, this means that ISPs have to have a filtering system in place - somewhere, there must be a configurable lists of forbidden sites or servers, and the routers must be capable of comparing against it. Once it's established that blocking a site is just a matter of updating a list, it becomes much easier for either future acts or just judges to order that sites be blocked for other crimes - like copyright infringement, or libel, or whatever Australia's version of hate speech is.

Re:Just block?

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Why

$$$$$ Profit!

Re:Just block?

[just_a_monkey]

So if there is copyright infringement going on the US readily twists other countries arms so they shut down the sites and extradite the owners, but if there is child pornography going on there is wringiing of hand and "so sorry, nothing we can do, must have cooperation of the locals, incidentally we have this censorship thingy so that we can hinder our own citizens from seeing what we don't want them to"?

It's almost as if fighting CP wasn't the real priority here...

Re:Just block?

[Firethorn]

I'd dispute the US 'readily' twisting other country's arms over mere copyright infringement. It's rampant overseas, far more widespread than child porn.

The Ukranians will eventually bust the child porn servers. They'd laugh at any efforts to shut down equivalents to megadownload and piratebay.

Re:Just block?

[SleazyRidr]

I'm straying far from what we're talking about here, but just shutting down the sites doesn't do you much good, you need to find the people responsible for actually abusing the children and bring them to justice. Stopping the pics from flying around just makes you look like you're "tough on crime" (TM) but doesn't really help anyone.

Weird.

[Anonymous Coward]

Still sounds like a mandatory internet filter to me. If anything, a worldwide blacklist of websites seems more troubling than an Australia-wide blacklist.

Re:Weird.

[Anonymous Coward]

Still sounds like a mandatory internet filter to me. If anything, a worldwide blacklist of websites seems more troubling than an Australia-wide blacklist.

It wasn't just a an Australian Wide block of sites in Australia it was going to be a Block of any site worldwide deemed unsuitable by the ACMA (Australian Communications and Media Authority) from porn to torrents to radical politics anything they wanted and the blacklist was to be secret (well until wiki leaks got it) at least now it is only kiddie porn sites and not anything else they wanted to block. FWIW I am in Australia

Re:Difficult one

[TWX]

Don't worry, you're probably already labelled as some kind of pervert. But admitting that you have a problem is the first stage in dealing with it...

Re:Difficult one

[wonkey_monkey]

How can i make a first post

Well, you didn't, so why worry?

Re:Difficult one

[unix_core]

You insensitive clod! What makes you think I wasn't trying to say something funny? No one will ever take my perversion seriously now!

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Dont forget their plans for mandatory logging

[GiantRobotMonster]

While this seems like a small victory for common sense, don't forget that Conroy wants the ISPs to store years of traffic for every customer.
Rather than prevent a site from working (via blocking against a secret government list), they want to be silently collecting "evidence" instead.

Re:Dont forget their plans for mandatory logging

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Damn, just as I was feeling good free speech battles had been pushed back to where they should be, child porn, rather than something actually encroaching on freedom.

Re:Dont forget their plans for mandatory logging

[GumphMaster]

Turnbull is an idiot, he knows nothing about IT and tech, why is he the shadow communications minister? And people are voting for Abbott who supports him (and all the other shamed Coalition ministers), just because they want to vote for a man and feel justified in xenophobia.

Politics is a popularity contest, not a ministerial meritocracy. The options are generally equally poor but you have to work with the bunch that were popular enough to get elected. See the problem now?

Re:Dont forget their plans for mandatory logging

[Farmer Tim]

Turnbull is an idiot, he knows nothing about IT and tech, why is he the shadow communications minister?

Turnbull was the chairman of OzEmail and owns part of online CD retailer Chaos Music. He may not be an IT specialist, but he definitely knows more about the industry than Conroy. He also knows damn well how the NBN stands to hurt his current business interests (outside Goldman Sachs, that is). Thinking he's an idiot is a mistake...he is in fact quite clever and very, very dangerous.

+1 Australia

[kivig]

Ideally an illegal activity should be dealt with in person, not by any blacklist. Apart from that +1 Australia!

Re:+1 Australia

[SleazyRidr]

I get an Australia boner for Australian porn. (www.abbywinters.com)

Re:+1 Australia

[SleazyRidr]

Most boners are down under, so yes. You're not thinking of an Australian kiss are you?

Re:This is the case in the UK

[mrbester]

"there are sites where ISPs are ordered to block on copyright grounds, but that is usually the exception"

Now they are, but probably not for long.

Yeah, they just mandate it without legislation...

[Willbur]

Govt: "Give me all your URLs"
ISPs: "No"
Govt: "OK, will you give me half?"
ISPs: "OK"

This is not a win. It is true that the government is no longer proposing new legislation. This is because they seem to be getting much of what they want without new legislation. In particular, it appears there will be a new industry "Code of Practice" which will then have force under current legislation (think of it as like changing a regulation). There is also going to be a 'police request' to the ISPs. It isn't clear to me at this point which of these, or how the combination, leads to enforceability, but it seems all Aus ISPs are now going to be filtered.

Good:
    - The black-list will be the Interpol black-list, which I understand is at least reasonably well monitored and is quite small. It is also outside of political control in Australia.
    - I'm guessing the filtering will be DNS based for domains on the list, forwarding them to a proxy that checks the URL. This means it will not affect people not accessing those domains.

Bad:
    - We have a filter. This will have two effects: it will lead to worse enforcement of child abuse as people get complacent. It will cause the occasional problem like the Wikipedia/Scorpians cover (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Watch_Foundation_and_Wikipedia )

This is a shame. Child porn sites stay up longer than phishing sites because banks actually want the phishing sites down, not just covered up.

It will also be interesting to see what effect DNS-SEC has on this, but that is in the longer term.

Re:Yeah, they just mandate it without legislation.

[Crypto Gnome]

Seriously folks, filtering the internet is like trying to filter the air.

Are you absolutely certain that you filtered ALL of it, ALL the time, in EVERY circumstance?

It's also kinda like locking your door to prevent burglary. A skilled and determined burglar will find a way in, locks just keep only slightly dishonest people out.

For example: if this is based on DNS lookups then what happens when $USER runs a local caching DNS server rather than "pointing at their ISP"? What happens when $KIDDY_PORN_ADDICT simply turns up his VPN-TO-AMERICA and routes ALL his internet through there?