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Australian ISPs Will Be Forced To Block (Some) Pirate Websites
angry tapir writes: Senators representing Australia's two main political blocs have issued a report backing a bill that will allow copyright holders to apply for a court order forcing ISPs to block access to piracy-linked websites. The proposed law has met with a less-than-enthusiastic from anti-censorship activists and consumer advocates. Even the federal parliament's human rights committee has been concerned about whether the law is a proportionate response to piracy.
Anyone know why I can't get to any search engine now?
The headline seems to have a typo, it shouldn't be Australian ISPs Will Be Forced To Block (Some) Pirate Websites, but rather Australian ISPs Will Be Unable To Block (Any) Pirate Websites
Resolving the domain name to an internal warning page isn't "blocking".
That's just a minor inconvenience while people just use a different DNS.
Even if they decide to actively block the traffic originated to and from those IP addresses people will just use a tunnel.
So by all means, "block" it and say you did to get the government of your back.
In real life it has no meaning.
- Don't do what I do, it's probably not healthy nor safe. -
Yahoo Serious is a bigger crime than any of those things.
It's the way of politics...
Tell me, how many members of congress know anything about health care insurance? Maybe one or two, but that doesn't stop them from passing comprehensive changes to the whole system and disrupting 14% of the economy...
So who's surprised that the people writing laws in Australia don't know what they are doing? Not me..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
TOR.... You forgot Tor!
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Do they not realize that this stuff is both continuously evolving and is also like water. When I was a kid people copied software by handing each other floppies. Each kid would amass as large a collection as they could afford floppies for in order to always have something that would interest others in a trade.
Then kids moved onto BBSs and in the very early 90s I could see kids stuffing those same floppies into machines connected to the internet. About the same time people would collect and share FTP sites some of which had over 100Mb of storage.
Since then it has been one technology after another ranging from Usenet, Kazaa, Mega, to Torrents. And those are just the sharing technologies. Then there is the data itself. It can be manipulated, streamed, encrypted, stenoed and so on. So while torrents seem to be a pretty good technology right now the only thing that having a government ban websites will do is to speed up the next evolution of the technology. In modern terms torrents are getting long in the tooth so, if anything, there are probably some superior contenders waiting in the wings right now.
But where this really stings is with legitimate traffic. For instance I had an old ISP that began "traffic shaping" to try and stop torrents. Except that a product I build used UDP streams which much have looked like torrents because suddenly they got very slow on my ISP. Plus I use a VPN for working from home and am not switching to the competitor (Bell Canada) because their leader just blah blahed about how evil VPNs are. If for some odd reason Canada banned VPNs I would literally have to move from the country.
If the second-biggest ISP in the UK can't manage to block the biggest and most publicly-known pirate site in the world, what hope is there of this working?
Maybe they can torrent a copy of whatever China uses. It still won't work, but it's the best there is.
Nice off-topic method of crow-barring in your opposition to the ACA, troll. No one cares.
I wouldn't say nobody cares... You apparently care enough to respond.... Badum tssssss
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Nothing Malcolm Turnbull says should be believed. There have been calls by this same government that using a VPN should be illegal, and it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if they tried to get legislation to that effect passed.
Go read up on exactly what Turnbull (and the current government) promised about the NBN prior to the last election and everything that has gone on since.
Not only has he broken every promise or implied promise that he made before the election, but he's then gone on to make further promises that he's continued to break. Is a country using FTTN? Point at them as a shining example. Does that same country then switch away from FTTN? Either misrepresent what they're doing, or never mention them again!
The man is a consumate politician - never answers a question; immediately attacks all critics; and both claims credit for everything the previous government did (or set up and couldn't be stopped) and blames them for all the failings of the current government in the same breath. And somehow manages to keep a lot of people believing that he actually knows what he's talking about and should be believed.
The only thing he's kept to has been Tony Abbot's directive to "destroy the NBN".
Only getting fixed wireless to your house, huh?
I'm in the same boat, only I've too many trees in the way, and I'm not about to cut them down.
OTOH, I saw a fiber conduit being installed only a few streets away - for FTTN/VDSL. I'll still get high-speed internet, it just won't be FTTH, or fixed wireless.
BTW, Malcolm Turnbull is just about the only politician in the current lot with even an ounce of brains. Yes, he's toeing the party line, but he's the only one that understands even the basics of the technology.
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
Yes you did. And we appear as always to be a few years behind, but we are following the same path to nowhere.
The man is a consumate politician...
You are describing Tony, Malcolm has two things the rest of the LNP ministers lack, a brain and a heart.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
If you accept that a policy like this was inevitable, which honestly it was, then the small line that says rights holders should be liable for the costs of the blocks is a massive win.
The various **AA groups won't pay for enforcement because they know there is no link to making more money. So when iiNet or Telstra say yes we will block your address and it requires x number of servers and $x for electricity it will die a quick death.
Yes, we have always been one election cycle behind you, for example, the current PM and most of his cabinet can be accurately described as tea baggers.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Due to its relative isolation Australians pay significantly higher prices than their overseas brethren for a variety of goods and services. These prices have nothing to do with costs and everything to do with a market that has been geographically isolated from a historical perspective. What I find incongruous is that politicians do nothing to overcome these rigged markets. For example an xbox game is significantly cheaper in the US however it won't play on an Australian console, a home theatre amplifier costs more than twice the US price. A kindle book priced in American dollars is blocked from sale from Australian Internet addresses. Recently I could buy two of the same model Dell computer in the US, ship it to Australia for less than the price of the Australian channel. When Dell were contacted about this they said that they would refuse to support such a purchase (Initially they claimed the costs were import duties etc until I pointed out the actual duties). It is ironic that implementing these anti-piracy is not in the public or government interest from an economic perspective given the current budget problems and ensuring that purchasing parity would create a more efficient market enabling the Australian economy to complete more effectively. Australia is a net importer of entertainment goods and propping up distribution channels is in no-ones interest bar the owners of those channels. (Who incidentally donate to the political parties involved)
What I'm getting is actually irrelevant to how Turnbull has acted, but for full disclosure, I was due to have had FTTP build in progress by now. I'm currently slated to have FTTN build started sometime in the 12 months. And I will be paying the money to apply for FoD and we'll see just how eager they are to follow up with that ...
If I had been in a fixed wireless area I'd have been pretty happy - I probably would have had it by now, and could have been on the 50/20 trial (my ISP is part of the trial).
What difference would it make if members of Congress knew a lot about health care insurance? They had to pass the law before seeing it.