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Internet Censorship Back On Australian Agenda
New submitter aberglas writes "The conservative government's George Brandis wants to force ISPs to block sites that might infringe copyright. Brandis said he stood firmly on the side of content creators (a.k.a. Hollywood). Ban gross violators today, obscure ones tomorrow, porn sites, far left sites the day after..." From the article, too, this snippet: "The federal government is also considering implementing a "graduated response scheme" that could lead to consumers' internet accounts being temporarily suspended if they ignore notifications to stop downloading illegal content." Shades of the Copyright Alert System.
What have we done! We've created a monster (aka Tony Abbott). I voted the Pirate Party, myself. /Stolzy
And since all sites 'might' or 'could' infringe copyright, the demand is only to get to an approved list operated by the media companies for everything, but further entrenching their revenue stream -- because then they'll know all ad content and subscription services belong to them.
These clowns are destroying the internet, and the rights of everyone in order to ensure their rights could never possibly be violated.
And I fear there's no sign of governments pushing back and telling them to piss up a rope.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
My gut instinct says that very rarely do people in the public eye follow totally altruistic agendas, particularly when it comes to issues like this that have little to do with the common good. If you dig deep enough you can find special interest trails that more often than not uncover these people's true motivators. Just follow the money.
I was never at all fond of Tony Abbott, but since he's come into power I've come to fucking detest him and everything he stands for. I hope he gets knifed for the Liberal leadership before long.
That's not censorship !! THIS is censorship !!
http://goat.cx/
!!
What does a page full of adorable puppies have to do with censorship?
For those of you not familiar with Aus politics...
A mainstream conspiracy theory is that News Corp promoted regime change at last year's federal election due to the previous policy on a National Broadband Network. Conservatives successfully argued that the only people needing the bandwidth of a fibre-optic network would be downloaders of illegally-sourced movies. So with ageing copper ADSL, the only hope of accessing 2160i content in the next two decades would be through Murdoch's cable service.
We're going to try it again even though anyone who knows about IT has said the internet is designed to route around exactly this sort of problem. But, there is money to be spent on it, so that counts as job creation.
What will Clarke and Dawe say?
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
Come on Aussies! Your ancestors fought Crocodiles, Spiders, and Aboriginals so that you would have a reasonable amount of "freedom" on your prison continent. What would Mel Gibson think of you now? Now imagine Mel with his face painted blue, and he's riding around on a Wallaby, and he's instructing you to march to Sydney, your capital.
Mel (with an Irish accent):
"You are not slaves to the American media machine! You are better than that! Hollywood doesn't benefit us! We gave them Mad Max, and they gave us Spring Breakers! We gave them Crocodile Dundee, Yahoo Serious, They take everything from Australia, and in return you get to see the Transformers in 3D. Well I'm not going to take it anymore. You can stay and you can vote, but your votes won't be counted. I'm heading to Hollywood to meet the King of the MPAA, and I'm going to tell him 'SOD OFF!'. Who's with me?!?!?"
My Dear Antipodean Friends,
Please stop taking advice from Americans, or that horrible cable lich of yours, and try electing somewhat less dangerous animals to office. Maybe one of your horrid spiders, with the lethal venom and all the hideous staring eyes. It may have somewhat draconian positions on voter envenomation; but I assure you that it will be substantially stronger on civil liberties and copyright issues.
Murdoch is nothing like our Tea Party. The TP has no economic sense whatsoever and are willing to cut off their nose to spite their face. Murdoch is a businessman. Possibly crooked, but at least you can figure out his motives by watching the money.
Have gnu, will travel.
So you folks down under don't have anything akin to our First Amendment? You could borrow our Constitution. We're not using it.
Have gnu, will travel.
Why is everyone in such a rush to spend huge wads of money and violate privacy to protect American Copyright industry interests? When will the world stand up to the US?
Seems to me that simple proxy or encryption usage will prevent this anyways. Don't the Aussies have better things to spend money on, like sourcing more fresh water or expanding internet coverage? Seems priorities are screwy if they are willing to go through all of this effort. I guess the corruption knows no boarders.
I'm a self-employed fiction writer, and an Australian, my answer to this is:
No. Fuck off.
My longer answer is:
Why copyright infringement, and why Hollywood? Why do they deserve protection?
I'm David Adams. I've written and published 30+ books across various pen names and platforms, including compendiums, omnibuses, etc. I self-publish and it's been my livelihood for 17 months. I'm no Hugh Howey but I do okay.
Every single time that copyright infringement comes up, it's always in the context of Hollywood. Indie writers, singers, artists, producers... we never get a single mention. It's always all about Hollywood. Every time a tariff is discussed, a new law is proposed, it's always protecting a US industry explicitly. I would never see any money from any of the protection schemes suggested by my elected representatives, and if there's not direct funding involved, the suggested courses of action would only ever hurt me.
My questions for Mr. Brandis, not that he gives a flying fuck about me, are:
- Why Hollywood? Why are you not helping out our local artists? Is it because we don't donate flaming dump-trucks full of money to your re-election campaigns, and if so, don't you feel that you're actively selling out your local entertainment industries? Shouldn't you be representing *my* interests?
- Why are you focusing on copyright infringement, something I give zero fucks about and even actively encourage? if you don't buy my book, I'd rather you got it from The Pirate Bay than passed on it, and I make lots of books free to encourage their proliferation anyway. Why fix something that's not broken?
- As TFS and TFA indicate, this power is sweeping and applies to a lot more than just copyright. The last time the Federal Government tried this, under the banner of child pornography, it was shown (when the list was inevitably leaked) that many more websites were being blocked than simply child fiddling. Innocuous, offensive (but legal), personal grudges... the works. I struggle to believe that this time would be any different, and such blocks are trivial to bypass anyway. Why would you support a system that's fundamentally broken?
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
Is any part of this effort to censor the Internet driven by the will of a majority of citizens? How about the effort to create massive surveillance regimes? Is that supported by the consent of the governed?
Make no mistake, censorship is a mechanism for redistributing wealth and power upward. That seems to be the reason the governments of superpowers do anything these days.
And also, be aware that if the merger of Comcast and Time Warner goes through, it will have the same effect. For the same reasons.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Labor proposed to ban sites while keeping the reason and the site address secret, it also proposed government regulation of the free press and the ability to control the contents of blogs with readership of a few thousand hits a month.
And I thought that was wrong to do too. Plus I should note that Tony Abbott isn't exactly championing free press now that he's the one in government...
Brandis is proposing being able to shut down sites that illegally share copyrighted material. It's hardly in the same league.
Ultimately, same thing, different justification. Remember, according to Labor the internet filter was all about stopping child porn and protecting the children. No-one thought that would stop at what they claimed it's for, and you can't honestly believe this would.
Because the ".cx" domain was under the control of the Australian government when the Liberal party were last in charge of the country.
Why would a prison camp need its own top-level domain? :)
Murdoch is nothing like our Tea Party. The TP has no economic sense whatsoever and are willing to cut off their nose to spite their face. Murdoch is a businessman. Possibly crooked, but at least you can figure out his motives by watching the money.
Murdoch's businesses are losing money hand over fist in Australia at the moment. He might have more in common with the Tea Party than you think.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
... there is considerable debate as to whether a $1.2B a year public media organisation operating across all media channels and not having to produce a profit is actually stifling any commercial competitors.
You gotta be kidding, right? I mean... what do you see as interesting to watch on other than ABC and, sometimes, SBS channels? No seriously, my interest is genuine.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
I can never imagine a day where voting in a Liberal government will be a good idea. Just thinking about the proportion of Australians who could actually bring themselves to do so makes me sick. Friends don't let friends vote Liberal.
That's the only part of their comment that you're going to respond to? Really?
Damn, I have mod points but have already posted on this story.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
We need to keep in contact with Murdoch, there's still a few of you on the outside listening to BBC, et-al.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
The TP has no economic sense whatsoever and are willing to cut off their nose to spite their face.
Apparently fiscal responsibility is no economic sense. That doesn't even compute man.
Car analogy, fiscal responsibility is not cutting down on oil changes, putting off the tune up and still buying a nice pair of fuzzy dice to impress someone even though you are saving money.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
That's the only part of their comment that you're going to respond to? Really?
I'm old and knowledgeable enough to get around their punny attempts of censorship. /. is the most appropiate place to do something about censorship in Australia? Wouldn't doing it be a waste of time vis-a-vis the desired result?
Other than that... you think
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
There is criticism of the government owned and financed ABC and its balance, particularly since it has a charter that requires it to be balanced. This is difficult given that there are no identifiable conservatives involved in any of its prime-time news and opinion programs. A free press does not require a government funded organisation, there is considerable debate as to whether a $1.2B a year public media organisation operating across all media channels and not having to produce a profit is actually stifling any commercial competitors.
The thing with the ABC is a little tricky. Perhaps it does have a slight bias towards the left wing, largely because people on the right wing tend not to believe in the worth of a public broadcaster and therefore don't work for one. If there is a problem in balance of views at the ABC, I would say that the solution is not to cut funding/close it down/sell it off, but to encourage more journalists with right wing leanings to work there. And really, I don't think it's as bad as the right wing makes it out to be - presenters on shows like 7:30 haven't been known to pull their punches when interviewing Labor politicians.
Plus, I think it's important that there be a broadcaster who is able to show things that should be shown but don't make a compelling how-much-can-we-make-on-this argument for commercial broadcasters. And I really don't feel like the public broadcaster is stifling any commercial competitors when the volume of content on commercial broadcasters far outweighs the volume of content on the public one.
Labor claimed it was all about child porn, however, the method included total secrecy of what was being targeted, this meant that abuse of this power would be very difficult to control. You somehow missed commenting on Labor's attempts to regulate the press, completely outside of anything to do with child porn.
No matter what else happens, when you start getting into filtering the internet, abuses of that power would be very difficult to control. And since you want me to specifically comment on this, I think it is wrong for Labor to want to regulate the press. With that said, I also think that recent Labor leaderships have endured criticism of their government by the press a lot more gracefully than the current Liberal leadership has of theirs, and that Tony Abbott wanting to strike at the ABC has less to do with a concern for proper balance (I didn't see him criticise any Murdoch media for their blatant anti-Labor propaganda) and more to do with getting petty revenge on an organisation that dared to point out his government's shortcomings. But then maybe I'm biased. Who knows.
My preference is for a free internet, however, normally the courts could be used to effect orders against organisations that are breaking the law. With the internet, it is difficult for courts to extend their jurisdiction to the countries that are being used by organisations involved in the illegal distribution of materials. It's a tough problem, I'll wait for details on how they plan to enforce it.
I'll grant you that this is a bit of a difficult problem to face in the digital era, but for combating piracy, I feel the answer is to more effectively use the internet rather than restrict it. Piracy is, at its heart, a problem of service via legit channels being inadequate. While there will always be people who pirate because they're cheap bastards, for most people it's more a matter of how readily and conveniently available (and high quality) the legit thing is. When even paying for cable TV gets you the hot new TV shows a month later than the US and often edited, and bittorrent can get you it the next day and intact, this is why people pirate. Piracy is easily solved (easier than blocking all the avenues of piracy, anyway): be at least as quick and convenient as downloading.
Amazingly I was able to debate this without needing to evoke threats of violence or abus
Did the Australian government stop to ask why they might be pirating so much? Perhaps the country has gotten a little tired of paying $100 (AUS) a month watch American TV shows 6 months to a year after their release.
Lack of legal access to content at a fair price in this globalised world isn't working. Australia is a diverse nation, I have friends living there and I'm from Britain. I would imagine that they're getting annoyed having to wait all the time for new releases. I've heard of series being delayed for longer than a year before now and there's not even any translating to do. The video games market was at one time just as bad, games delayed by overly strict censorship, like having to remove all the gore from Left 4 Dead 2.
You are dreaming if you think censorship is not already happening. On return from another country a friend tried to access sites he routinely used in China and found they are blocked in Canada. Freedom of speech is dead.
To insure that people have access to great entertainment, we insure that the creators of great entertainment are fairly compensated - so we must destroy the greatest means of distributing content ever invented.
------
Or, we could design a system of tagging content that allows it's distribution to be monitored and recorded, making it easy for creators of edited content to incorporate a fair tagging of how much of others' content went into their work. Any new content for which the creator wishes to be paid would be submitted to a registration and review site, to be assigned a registered tag.
Any content for which the creator doesn't want to be paid could be uploaded, and the storage provider would be required to assign it an unregistered tag. If the unregistered content became popular enough, it would be reviewed to determine if it contained the untagged work of other creators - but only to insure fair distribution of fees. ALL content uploaded can be used by anyone. If you don't want everyone to get it, encrypt it.
Money would be collected as fees on internet users, at two levels: Full fee - no restrictions on content consumption, TBD whether paid in proportion to amount of content consumed or flat fee. No fee - all tagged content is stripped except tiny fragments considered "fair use" (such as quotes, links to content, maybe images shrunken to no more than 256x144 pixels, video represented as a single frame from the original, etc).
It's probably worth noting that at one point (and probably still), Australia was the number one downloader of TV shows in the world.
That being said, we're constantly delayed waiting for current seasons of shows to be played on our free-to-air stations.
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