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Australia May Introduce Site Blocking To Prevent Copyright Infringement
Bismillah writes: The conservative Coalition government in Australia is on the verge of introducing legislation requiring ISPs to block sites alleged of copyright infringement. Details of the bill have not yet been published, but it is expected to be sent to Parliament this week.
Isn't that the entire point? They just help people find other people who are infringing copyright.
The first lawyer with a pair of balls is going to have a field day with this.
I was having breakfast at my local cafe w/ my partner last weekend, next to us a group of 4 normal aussies sit down at the table and after ordering start talking about this situation.
They clearly weren't in IT, not overly tech literate, and in fact like most typical aussies were pretty "anti-big-brother" by the sounds of it... However while discussing this topic of 3 strikes laws and nation-wide blocking of sites, etc - one of them brought up the concept of VPNs and how they could be used to work around all of this for $5-$10 a month, seemingly a tech literate friend must have told them about it - and now it's spreading to his friends via word of mouth.
A lot of people here are probably already using VPNs for work or to avoid surveillance, and some of you might think that this is the solution to the problem but "most people" won't know about VPNs or know how to set it up.
But the fact of the matter, where there's a will there's a way, and word of mouth is very effective at spreading information to all types of people from all walks of life - no matter how hard the government try, every day ordinary australians - be they house wives, kids, grandparents, or the tradie down the road - they're simply going to end up using a VPN to work around this.
Try as you might Abbott, you can't do shit. I suggest you put our money somewhere worth while, say, into science and education, this thing you don't believe in but manages to thwart everything you've been trying to shove down our throats all this time.
They've also tried this in Finland.
How effective is it? Two words: Mirror and Proxy. It literally has no effect on piracy. It's a waste of resources legislated in by people with no handle on the situation.
G'day,
This is the kind of bollocks that the government has been talking about since day one. Mostly driven by the deplorable ACT Attourney General, George Brandis.
The first thing I should point out is that it's just talk. They're talking about introducing legislation to parliment. They haven't done anything but talk.
The second thing is, the Libs face a hostile senate. The Liberal party are our conservatives BTW. Whilst they can pass it in the lower house, it will fail in the upper house.
The third thing is, they will face a revolt from their back bench, many of whom are facing re-election in the next 18 months in an environment where the Liberal party is losing almost every election they're coming up against. So a lot of them are thinking of their own good over the parties.
Finally, ISP's are a powerful lobby over here and you can bet they dont want to turn customers to smaller ISP's who will skirt the laws.
So I'm not worried. the LNP (Liberal/National Party) haven't been able to do much of anything and what they have done has earned them a severe backlash.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Again, this imbecile government bungles another one of their policies. They have no subtlety. If you want to implement an unpopular law, blame it on the terrorists.
Tell the people the laws are necessary to prevent The Children radicalizing. Then once you've created the regulating mechanism, increase it's scope outside Parliament. (preferably through carefully vague mandates). Salami slicing.
They've stuffed it in their collective haste to please Rupert Murdoch. It's a good thing our government is incompetent.