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Australia now has Net Censorship
Foley writes "The Australian Senate passed legislation today that requires ISPs to block any web site in the world that is classified as offensive by an Australian film board. The law is set to go into effect January 2000.
Check out
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even more news. "
Actually, England does have a constitution; it's
...
just not as formally presented as the USA's
constitution. It's largely in the form of
ordinary laws and customary ways of doing things
which are recognised in common law.
Then of course there are a few significant
documents. Magna Carta springs to mind
It's the sites that the film board says are offensive, not the sites the ISPs think might be offensive. I think it's the film board that will be overloaded, not the ISPs.
Seems funny to all u American people that such a law would be past in a democratic country? Yeah well unfortunately us Ozzies are DUMB as and our constitution does not set the PEOPLES rights just unfortunately what the government can do to us.
So that mean through our inablity to represent ourselves to the government (IE lack of money) we get draconian laws.
That's right we all just shove our heads in the sand and hope the US will protect us.
"Beware of he who would restrict your from information, for in his heart he thinks he is your master"
Alpha Centauri
I guess they will have to filter out geocities and tripod and all the other free web hosting sites. its just to easy to throw up "offending" stuff on these sites and they are to big to monitor.
As I read it, ISPs just have to put filtering in place and wait to be told what to block. That should be the easy part.
The Board that has to figure out *what* gets blocked is going to have the hard part of the deal. How big a department will that become?? Yes, I think it'll be quite unworkable *and* I think it'll be fun to watch!
This is especially so if it truly applies to *web*-protocol data only. What an unbelievable demonstration of ignorance if true. No, wait, it's politicians, so I guess it's a *believable* display...
None of that, however, should detract from any demonstration of disagreement with the effort. When's the next election???
(This is also the country that is/was federally trying to pass a law to ban internet-based gambling while at least one of the states was trying to put up the biggest gambling-based web site in the country, as I remember it. And yes, I'm an Aussie although I've been living overseas for the last few years.)
Actually, I find a LOT of offensive content on the 'net without really trying. The porn sites are garish and commercial, and do offend me. But offensiveness is somewhat relative (what is deemed over-the-line in rural Arkansas is different from what is over-the-line in San Fransisco). I'd like to introduce my nephews to more of the 'net, for example, but I can understand my sister's reluctance in letting them browse Usenet and such. Censorship is not automatically and always wrong. If you think so, please enumerate how many issues of "Hustler" magazine you've given to your children. Do you allow your children to witness every activity you and your spouse engage in?
Australia's net censorship might have less to
do with porn and more to do with the
redefinition of "offensive".
From what I've read on the net, the US helped
Australia do a door-to-door search and
confiscation of guns.
"Offensive" can be later redefined as anything
that critisizes the government (i.e. due to
future *real* freedoms which may have been
lost by then...).
Perhaps that's the way the New Age (of slavery)
will be accomplished... Pretend to be moral but
take away other (much more important) rights in
the process... Interesting how the year 2000
comes into play... I once watched avowed
Satanists on some talk show on TV saying that
they were preparing the next century to be
controlled or ruled by Satan... (Maybe that's why
the UN has that agenda to have control by
2000.... and what was referenced by Pres. Bush
mentioning "a thousand points of light" which
is a reference to the rule of the world by the
(Judeo/Masonic/Luciferian) New World Order...
Oh... by the way, Lucif Press [the UN publishing
house] used to be Lucifer Press... ahem...
time to get a clue.... )
Maybe the Australian government can buy Internet thought control technology from the likes of China and Singapore?
Zeig Heil, Mein Furer Howard!!!!!!!!
So we should all become pornographers? Do you also propose we spam people's e-mail and Usenet the way some of the pornographers do?
Yep, silly idea.
Of course it won't endanger Democracy in Australia. The whole Internet could be taken down and Democracy would not cease to exist. Let's get real here. Just because we have grown somewhat dependent on the 'net does not mean all of society has.
A little common sense would go a long way in some of these discussions. Particularly when people start flinging around big words like 'Democracy' as if it depends on our ability to send and receive spam. (much objectionable content on the 'net is delivered in such a fashion that it constitutes spam)
I don't know how this is going to be implimented, but if I'm right, there is a very easy way to get into certain banned sites.
... like a charm.
First of all, they can't ever cencore everything they concider offensive. They have to find the site first. And for every site they ban, 10 new ones are created on the net. Plus, they only have control over the web. Can't tell you what to do on IRC or who you can communicate with through email (which means if you really need something, someone can email it to you instead).
Now, here's a little trick that most people don't think of. If a site is being blocked, try accessing it through its IP instead. Sometimes it works
The Cult of the Dead Cow or some group like that is working on a way to have a webpage you're trying to access emailed to your, through some kind of special client. This is supposed to be for us in China, but I guess it can be used elsewhere as well.
It's impossible to controll the net access of a knowledgable user.
Glad to see somebody has a sense of humour left ;-) You caught me
Apache has a proxy mode... What if we all turn it on for any clients coming for .au? Then they'd have to block any hosts that have open proxies too. Especially interesting if you get some big sites that run Apache to open up for proxying, so that they'd have to block the rest of the site too, to avoid having it used as a proxy.
Only 1 person here got it right...China controls a big part of what they see via anything.
Basically, you just cut all comms between Austrailia and the rest of the world. Turn it all off, then turn on the things that get approved...
Now if you people had some fu*king GUNS, you might have a chance.
Welcome to the real world...
Tank, I need an exit.
jmr
As an ISP staffer I dread to think of the support calls I'll get "i cant connect to [site]"...
Where is the filtering, whatever, when does it change, by whom? and how can the frontline support staff deal with that?
This only serves to piss off customers and people working in this industry.
Draconian is one word for it. Butt-munching is my favourite.
I don't know how this is going to be implimented, but if I'm right, there is a very easy way to get into certain banned sites.
... like a charm.
First of all, they can't ever cencore everything they concider offensive. They have to find the site first. And for every site they ban, 10 new ones are created on the net. Plus, they only have control over the web. Can't tell you what to do on IRC or who you can communicate with through email (which means if you really need something, someone can email it to you instead).
Now, here's a little trick that most people don't think of. If a site is being blocked, try accessing it through its IP instead. Sometimes it works
The Cult of the Dead Cow or some group like that is working on a way to have a webpage you're trying to access emailed to your, through some kind of special client. This is supposed to be for us in China, but I guess it can be used elsewhere as well.
It's impossible to controll the net access of a knowledgable user.
- SOME_GUY_WHOS_SLASHDOT_ACCOUNT_HAS_DISAPPEARED
Nice to see Oz joining such enlightened cultures as China and Singapore. Why not drop all pretense of being a democracy and be done with it?
Ok, recent developments have lost most of the world to be oh-so-smug when talking about American crypto policies. From the censorship in Oz (Which I submitted a couple of weeks back when it was still under consideration) to the European resolution to require ISP's and other network providers to provide methods of tapping their users' communication streams, your governments all have their heads up their asses as much as any American administration.
I think every Austrailian ISP should shut down for a week in protest of this legislation. As it will put a good number of them out of business, some may opt not to open their doors again when the week is done.
Bypassing this should be relatively easy -- you Linux users can set up some VPN software to establish an encrypted pipeline out of the country. Or use that ISP that put all those satellites into low earth orbit (name escapes me.) Might be cheaper for you guys anyway.
The proposed Clairview technology apparantly works dynamically by identifying links to other banned sites in a requested page. The PDF has more info.
So, revolution anyone?
33-1/3 Revolutions Per Minute.
But you look silly standing there spinning in the air.
Fun to talk about it, though.
YET another illusory argument; and, btw, I _am_ fairly obsessive about history and news.
FYI, with the exception of South Africa, firearms proliferation within those areas you mention is relatively low. South Africa has a wide disparity in that certain groups have mostly indigenous and other primitive weapons (such as spears and machetes), while others have profited from the AK-47 clones that have proliferated through Africa during the Cold War. Their main issue is not oppression, but crime and corruption -- a legacy of a remarkably ill-educated majority population, tribal divisions, and many decades of resentment.
Eastern Europe happens to be quite free, for the most part; while the return of the Communist party in certain states is perhaps an ill omen, most members are quite happy to embrace a Western-style economy and political system that is much freer than the colonial, imperialist old empire of Russia. If you believe they were truly Communist, then clearly you've never read Marx.
India happens to have democratic elections, in case you were unaware of them. The Congress Party and the BJP and allies have been vying for control; this, in fact, may be more healthy than the hard-wired benefits for two major parties within my own apathetic nation, where third parties have fairly limited impact.
Ditto for the Phillipines, or did you think Estrada is leading a military junta?
So, where among those was your point?
Why not call ISP's in near by countries?
How expensive are phone calls from Australia to eg. New Zealand?
Do you have any really cheap international call services?
From the UK I can phone the USA for 4p per minute (using cheap international calling cards) - about the same price as local daytime calls. Not sure what modem speeds I be able to get via this route, but its somthing I'd look in to if the UK government started banning stuff.
Wow.
I do a bit of complaining myself about the problems of the U.S. govt, but this incident gives me new appreciation of the stuff that some extremely farsighted "founding fathers" thought of here a couple centuries ago... like the Bill of Rights.
>
Really? What if you miss your assailant the first time? A semi-automatic (a gun where you can fire againw without reloading, etc.) would come in pretty handy.
(Hopefully you meant "fully automatic")
Yes. My point is that those places all recently (yes I know India was 50 years ago) became free with out the dubious benefit of an armed population fighting their oppressors, even in brutal dictatorships governing cannot be done in the loing term with out the consent of the governed. Sooner or later it all falls apart, guns or no guns.
There is no proof that pornography would be harmfull even to minors. I can easily imagine that it is actually usefull - at least I read porno with my friends and at least I found it very usefull.
Of course, a couple years back, the Australian government forcibly disarmed the people under the guise of a "buyback" program. (Hmmmm, first guns, now free speech.....)
In my opinion parents don't have the moral nor ethical right to prohibit their children seeing pornography. Do you also object your children reading about Darwin and do support spanking children?
I'd rather not have to apply a corrective, eh? The purpose is that an armed populace is a deterrent, and that a popular uprising should not ever have to happen. I'm of the opinion that, in the case of the United States, it won't -- but still, lowering the probability of a leader considering turning tyrant sounds good to me; that way, indiscretions are limited to only somewhat extralegal executive orders and so forth, and generally nothing that would forcefully tear the nation apart. That, plus it helps to safeguard the 1st.
Tyrannry does not _necessarily_ fall apart; I don't believe China has had anything approaching democracy in its history _ever_, and they're not alone. For now, that's a stable system and quite possibly there is no viable replacement. It's not likely they're going to restore the KMT veterans, even given the death of and associated lack of power of Chiang Kai-shek.
They have gun control and so it is clear that they should have censorship too. That is what Big goverment does to/for you. The time to complain about your rights is not when you have given them away. For the United States that time is NOW.
...so I didn't mind. I'm not a right wing wacko.
Next they came for out 'net connection...
But I didn't mind. I'm not a leftist commie pinko radical.
It's called "the slippery slope" and it leads to the erosion of all freedoms and liberties, and it's why you you should stick up and defend issues even if they're issues you may oppose for personal reasons, i.e., even non-gun owners should defend gun rights. Anti-abortionists should support choice, etc.
Your idea of depravity is anothers harmless fun.
What is the big deal about porn anyway? Are we
so afraid of our own human nakedness? We were not
born with clothes you know. I would draw
the line at child porn though. We should not
assume that our own morals are the gold standard
for the entire world.
Calm down people, don't panic. They're only doing this to keep that Amish nut from Tasmania happy (who I can only assume is an only child, coz it's obvious he's not gettin' any). The little garden gnome that thinks he's the Prime Minister of Australia is yet to keep a political promise, I reckon he'll suddenly pay attention to the experts once he gets his goddamn GST, and abandon it as unworkable.
As opposed, one assumes, to a nation of racist gun kooks.
The Net may be subject to no government, but the computer you use to connect to it certainly is.
(What's wrong with believing God created the earth as described in Genesis, anyway? We do still have freedom of religion, don't we?)
There's a big difference there. In China, the government was able to grasp a market which had not matured yet (relative to other countries). In Australia, the Internet has already come to the stage of maturity that we Americans recognize. If a government wants control over the Internet, they'd better start early, and even then their power will degrade over time (as is happening in China). Initially, this announcement is a shock, but it will obviously be difficult (read: impossible) to implement.
However, that is almost beside the point-the point is that governments are actively trying to obtain rights into the personal lives of every citizen with a Net connection through the computer. Scary, to say the least.
moeller@NABISCOnetworksplus.net
(Remove the consumable goods company from the address to respond.)
Being from Australia and working for one of the much talked about ISP's..
Apparantly all transmissions are to go through one mother proxy cluster.. I'm not to sure as to how they are going to control this with Sattelite transmissions which are already starting to become commonplace here. At the proxy certain domains and words will be filtered..
Connections to international news servers will be banned, more than likley by killing tcp22 and ensuring that local ISP's regulate alt.binaries.* groups on local newsservers..
That is not necessary. What is practical, and can be done, is to eliminate access to the high profile Porn sites. Get rid of the big money makers, make it impossible for them to collect credit-card payments, and they'll fold up the table and leave. They aren't spamming Usenet and shoving their advertising in our faces out of enlightened charity, mind you.
If you get rid of the high profile Porn sites, the low profile Porn sites will just take their place and open up room for new Porn sites to open up. This is called supply and demand.
I'm sure there are "enforcers" in power in parts of Austrialia who would like to exterminate and eliminate each and every "objectionable" website in existence, but for the most part getting rid of most of them, and driving it underground (who in their right mind would broadcast sexually explicit spam to alert the authorities) will "protect" the people they feel need protecting. It'll be "Good Enough Censorship" and that's really all they are after.
So you're basically stating the facts: Politicians have enacted a law to make themselves feel better even though the law is unrealistic.
I can't blame people who are tired of having porn shoved in their face every time they visit a newgroup or check their email from wanting some measures to cut back on the spam. Where I object will be when they actively are out there trying to eraticate each and every bit of it on the entire net.
I can't blame you for agreeing with the politicians in this case. Where I object will be when they actively are out there trying to eraticate each and every bit of it on the entire net.
For the people who will (obviously) object to the thoughts being expressed here, because it isn't the pure "freedom" they demand on the 'net: get real. There is no such thing as absolute freedom. If you insist on pure freedom you better log off and unplug that machine, because you're tethered to a couple of pretty big wires right now. Also you'd better start de-conditioning yourself, because all sorts of thoughts and ideas you had no freedom to resist were programmed into you as a child. The concept of "Born Free" is easily debunked just by looking at a helpless infant. We're all trapped in this web called "civilisation" no matter how many abstract concepts like "freedom" we bandy around.
duh.
If I'm not mistaken, the ABA are the same people who for the last 5? 6? 7? years have been sitting on the issue of giving out a radio licence to several new radio stations in Melbourne, but after all this time, they still haven't decided anything, and these radio stations are still sitting around waiting for some answers, putting up with sharing temporary frequencies and temporary broadcasts. Now, this same ABA gets to decide what we can and can't view on the Internet? This is sad. This sucks. Oh wait, am I allowed to say that?
Keep your guns, get shot at school.
Arrogant american dickheah.
Keep your guns, get shot at school.
Arrogant american dickhead.
> No, it has no equivalent of the American Bill
> of Rights (e.g. the freedom of speech for
> ordinary citizens is *NOT* guaranteed by the
> constitution).
To a certain extent the rights of citizens are (supposed to be) protected by the constitution. You are correct in statting that there is no Bill of Rights; however, since the constitution does set down the system of government, it is considered by the courts to guarantee the rights of the citizens necessary for that system of government to function.
For example, since the constitution describes a parliamentary democracy, and freedom of (political) speech is necessary for a democracy, freedom of speech is considered by the courts to be protected by the constitution.
Recent rulings by the high court, however, have been somewhat selective in their interpretation of these rights. "Freedom of political speech" might be guaranteed by the constitution, but how do you differentiate between "political" and "non-political" speech? Apparently the courts consider the encouragement of civil disobedience (as in the editors of the Rabelais student magazine, charged for publishing an article on shoplifting) to be "non-political", and therefore not a protected form of speech.
There were Senate committee hearings for a period of time where interested parties could give evidence. I'm pretty sure that the government has a reasonable technical knowledge of how the internet works and it knows that most of the objectionable material is on sites that are outside of Australia where it has no conrtol. Most opponents are saying that it won't work and is technically infeasible. The government's response it that it is going to give it it's best shot at controlling the local scene. They know that they can't be fully sucessful, but they want to make it harder to access censored material and probably also to be seen to be taking a moral stand. I suspect that the long term goal is to get recipricol agreements with other countries so that the internet is controlled co-operatively with each country policing it's own part of the internet. You can get information from Electronic Frontiers Australia which is an Australian lobby group for this kind of thing. http://www.efa.org.au/ Chris
If any of you have anything to do with
the Australian government, in terms of contracts
or whatever - then MAKE YOUR FEELINGS ABOUT CENSORSHIP CLEAR TO THEM.
Directly. Where it hurts.
Grr. This makes me so mad.
I agree completely, the way this is all going it won't be long before I start looking around for another country to call home.
Seems like too many under informed Australians are presenting only part of the picture.
:(
The reason that this legislation has been passed is to buy the not so esteemed Harradines vote, but not in the GST bills case but rather in the on-going privatisation of Telstra ( our in-effect monopoly telco).
If you follow the reasoning behind this, it is actually advantageous to the government to as current 2/3rds owner of telstra to make the legislation as difficult as possible for the small-mid sized isps to apply as this means they cannot offer services legally to their users. This should in effect drive customers to big-pond ( telstras own isp service ) and Optus( the other big telco player, which has been given preferential government support). It's no coincidence that these are the only two isps to support this legislation.
This is not really a moral issue, it's a money issue.
The Australian government has been at the forefront of "economic rationalism" and this sort of garbage should really come as no surprise.
It's not a conspiracy as it's all been done out in the open.
at work with my password at home
I wonder how enthusiastic the Liberal Party would be if http://www.liberal.org.au/ appeared on a list of blocked sites? Or what about .gov.au?
It doesn't need to always be enforced. It's just a nice club to have to slug annoying "offenders" with. Think of the headlines: XXXXX of YYYYYY ISP was arrested today for embezzlement. It was also found that he was failing to censor web sites! (some 40,000 counts).
Yeah, but I rather suspect that it was never meant to be implemented (pols aren't *that* stupid, surely). However, any son-in-law of a politician can doubtlessly get a job on the massive Australian review board required to try to rate the entire Web. Besides, the whole scene is just too funny for words -- "Wait...just a sec...hmm, still not sure about this Playboy place...give me a couple more hours of examination, okay?"
Film review boards probably see more smut in a year than the rest of us do in a lifetime...and they're the ones that set our moral standards for us? Heh.
Yeah, like you can smoke pot in front of a cop an not get arrested, like here on Holland. You can view practically any material you like that the US would class as indecent (if that's what gets you going, but at least you have the choice), free to bu cuban cigars or visit any country you want, belong to any political groups without be hassled, and free to vote with a choice of more than two....I'm also free to walk around without getting shot by some nutter
The Philippines people managed to overthrow their US supported corrupt president without resorting to armed struggle. They then voted to kick the US miltary out.
Someone based in Norfolk Island or in NZ should setup an ISP that is based off-shore. If they got a reasonable pipe, with local access numbers that were then routed off-shore, what could the Aus govt do - after all, the ISP is based off-shore, just their phone numbers are local. There are many ways around this, maybe even using some sort of off-shore secondary proxy (not sure quite how this would work, but I'm sure it would), which would go to all the "illegal" sites for you.
Isn't it strange that here in Holland, you can watch or get just about any type of explicit stuff , even having xxx cd-roms in record shops, and yet they are not all crazed (the drivers maybe!), slobering child molestors
My british license doesn't have a photo, and neither does my NZ one (although they have just changed that).
hey give us some time - we only found out about it today
Why would private ISPs need to add filters ? Surely they're hanging off public ISPs, who have already filtered the connection for them ?
mandatory proxy will prolly be the go, BUT the bill has not passed the final level of parliament, so it is not yet "law" but will be in a matter of days unless some polititions are shot very very soon.
GT
Well at least this legislation will keep austrailian citizens mind pure and clean. This will be a good thing for the citizens, because it's better to let a higher authority or governing body decide what is bad, rather than individuals choose on their own.
Maybe in the future other governments will also see the light and we can rid the net of the filth and garbage. Hopefully the Film Board will recognize that it doesnt just have to be pornographic in nature, but political as well, etc.
- animated gifs
- MSHTML (and non-compliant HTML in general)
- JavaScript
- poor grammar, bad punctuation, and spelling errors
The sheep of Australia are no different than any other country; since they've abdicated personal and parental responsibility, they're demanding their own government do the dirty work. What a bunch of lamers.Australia is not alone in its obvious stupidity: this type of behaviour has been seen in Germany, the US, France, Singapore, and elsewhere.
One workable tactic would be to get the Bible classified as indecent. There are some very erotic passages in parts of the bible. There is also a lot of gratuitous violence. To say nothing of the homoerotic image of Christ's tortured body hanging on a cross. (Very S&M)
It certainly violates some community standards. If it gets dragged into the censorship, I suspect someone would relent.
I am not a patriot, infact I hate the concept, but these posts show that nobody outside of Aust seems to know anything about it.
Notroious for our sexual content on TV? In my single teenage days I would stay up all night to watch some porn and all but 2 scenes are usually edited out.
Not much porn on our tv I'm afraid.
That's why we NEED net porn.
Yes, it has a constitution.
No, it has no equivalent of the American Bill of Rights (e.g. the freedom of speech for ordinary citizens is *NOT* guaranteed by the constitution).
Yes, there is a constitutional court (the High Court).
The current balance of power in the Australian Senate (upper house; due to change in about 5 weeks time, as the result of an election held *last year*) is held by Mal Colston of Queensland (formerly a backbencher of the Labor Party, who resigned from the party when he didn't get something-or-other he wanted; he's dying of cancer) and Brian Harradine of Tasmania (an independent, and well known wacko; this present bill was widely viewed as a ploy by the Coalition government to appease him in exchange for his support of a Goods and Services Tax; He witdrew support for the GST about 1.5 weeks ago, but the net.censorship bill appears to have taken on a life of its own).
>The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ)
l ... that allow critical information to be shared among law
>are working together to regulate the Internet. Ultimately, they want to
>link up with governments throughout the world in an international
>policing effort.
>On June 8 and 9, 1999, the FTC will host a workshop with the innocent
>title "U.S. Perspectives on Consumer Protection in the Global Electronic
>Marketplace."
>
>As preparation for this workshop, the DOJ has already given us a glimpse
>of its approach.
>
>To consult the full text, see
>http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/icpw/comments/index.htm
>
>A few excerpts from the DOJ report:
>
>"One approach would be to begin with small groups of similarly-minded
>countries, and ultimately expand the outreach to a larger group of
>nations. Starting with a smaller group of countries has been useful in
>other areas -- including, for example, computer crime -- because these
>countries often have a similar balance of law enforcement, privacy, and
>commercial concerns as the United States, making it easier to reach
>consensus and develop initial solutions."
>
>"Thus, in December 1997, the G8 Ministers met and agreed upon ten
>principles and ten action items in the high-tech crime area, copies of
>which are enclosed as Appendix A to these comments. Indeed, several of
>the principles -- particularly those dealing with expedited preservation
>and sharing of data -- are directly applicable to the problem of
>combating consumer fraud in the electronic marketplace."
>
>"... there is a need for further development, in multilateral fora, of
>mechanisms
>enforcement agencies."
>
>"Nations must also recognize that anonymity... may make consumer
>protection and criminal prosecution difficult or impossible, and
>encourage the market to develop solutions that satisfy the needs of both
>governments..."
>
>Interesting to note: the DOJ proposes limiting the discussion of
>internet e-commerce policies to law enforcement and a few big businesses.
>Not a single consumer group or citizens' rights group was suggested.
>
>The FTC is now the US Government's wedge-opening agency in a broad
>attempt to regulate the internet. The DOJ is providing the excuse, and
>FTC will wield the power.
Is the "Anarchist's Cookbook/Porno" portion of the network truly only 1%? Where did you arrive at that figure? I would question those numbers, as it seems like no matter where I go in Usenet there's always a spammer there thrusting porn in my face. It makes it impossible to introduce children to some of the discussions, which they would be quite able to participate in if it wasn't laced with pornographic spam.
What's the Australian government's position on cryptography? I'm curious, because if one encrypted 'offensive' material, such can be darn near indistinguishable from perfectly legitimate byte streams of binary data. An image I send might just be a normal photo of a weevil; or, the B (in RGB) values might conceal a coded message. I defy them to come up with an automatic 'offensiveness detector' that
1. Runs in real-time. Unless they want to
increase packet latency to hours...
2. Breaks all known codes. If the ciphertext is
published, followed a week later by the
decoding method, haven't I made offensive
material publicly available? But it's too
late to tell then.
3. Can monitor every packet and every protocol.
Data can be transmitted in any form; on the
wire, it is just 1's and 0's. Frankly, it's
easier for me to be offended by a blind, knee-
jerk response than by a binary stream.
4. Can buffer and sequence packets to detect
offensive material.
5. Even given that it can determine the TRUE
(client-view) interpretation of said 1's and
0's, it needs to decide:
Is this offensive?
_People_ disagree on that one.
You fail to grasp the purpose of a coup d'etat, or, for that matter, most 'Evil Governments' as you label them. That purpose is power. Power does not come from _destroying_ your country's resources and people; it comes from _controlling_ them. Not that you're the only one to make this pathetically weak argument against the Second...
Tanks, surface vessels, and aircraft are all extremely poor at occupying urban areas and forcing a populace to do their bidding; for that, only infantry on the ground works. To dominate a people, without destroying the industrial base that feeds your forces, you must _be_ there. In the case of the United States, a leader would be forced to take control of the Armed Forces (many of which would not cooperate); various media outlets, such as the network studious; heavy industry; and so forth. However, conquest of a hostile, armed populace that was determined to defend its freedom cannot be done from afar; you may anger them, and you may hurt them, but you may never defeat them short of annihilating the very land around them -- and that would defeat the whole point.
Frankly, I'd die to protect my freedom, and that includes the _option_ to do so. Would you?
Fine
You continue to shoot each other over footware and percieved insults on the freeway while clinging to the twisted fantasy that the proliferation of guns somehow gaurentees your freedom ignoring the multitude of examples where freedom was gained without widespread armed resistance. As you're an American you are probably only dimly aware of the existance of the rest of the world so Ill give you the hints of "India, South Africa, Eastern Europe and the Phillipenes" IN places where the resistance is armed, the oppression gets worse and the coming of freedom takes alot longer, try reading history books instead of NRA propaganda.
A number of respondants have brought up the unavailability of guns in this context. What the fuck do guns have to do with it? Was it because of a well-armed populace that the CDA in the US was defeated? Duh, of course not.
Is it expected that gun-toting Australians full of righteous indignation would march upon parliment, holding the pollies hostage until the bill is repealed? Don't be silly. Leave the whole gun thing out of it.
And to those complaining about compulsory voting, can I direct them to Stewart Fist's comments in the The Australian, 25th May? He explains why it's so important much better than I could, and describes why the voting system we have is pretty damn fine.
People here keep bringing up that it will be impossible to filter out all the Porn sites on the WWW.
That is not necessary. What is practical, and can be done, is to eliminate access to the high profile Porn sites. Get rid of the big money makers, make it impossible for them to collect credit-card payments, and they'll fold up the table and leave. They aren't spamming Usenet and shoving their advertising in our faces out of enlightened charity, mind you.
I'm sure there are "enforcers" in power in parts of Austrialia who would like to exterminate and eliminate each and every "objectionable" website in existence, but for the most part getting rid of most of them, and driving it underground (who in their right mind would broadcast sexually explicit spam to alert the authorities) will "protect" the people they feel need protecting. It'll be "Good Enough Censorship" and that's really all they are after.
I can't blame people who are tired of having porn shoved in their face every time they visit a newgroup or check their email from wanting some measures to cut back on the spam. Where I object will be when they actively are out there trying to eraticate each and every bit of it on the entire net.
For the people who will (obviously) object to the thoughts being expressed here, because it isn't the pure "freedom" they demand on the 'net: get real. There is no such thing as absolute freedom. If you insist on pure freedom you better log off and unplug that machine, because you're tethered to a couple of pretty big wires right now. Also you'd better start de-conditioning yourself, because all sorts of thoughts and ideas you had no freedom to resist were programmed into you as a child. The concept of "Born Free" is easily debunked just by looking at a helpless infant. We're all trapped in this web called "civilisation" no matter how many abstract concepts like "freedom" we bandy around.
All the ISP's have to do, is make it so that when someone requests a "forbidden" page, the proxy sends them a page which says something like:
This page has been forbidden by the government. The politicians who voted for this law are:
Politician Name -- Politician phone number
The ones who voted for the law should get enough phone calls from irate citizens that they'll be forced to take another look at the issue.
Does your employer, country, or program (net nanny, etc), track, or prohibit your free use of the
web? The Net Connection Radio Show is conducting a trail run on an answer... Get your web page
via email. It is simple. Send an email message (net nanny, your employer, or country doesn't
intercept outgoing email do they?) to:
web@glr.com
as the first line of the message, simple put in the url of the web page you want: ie:
http://pages.ripco.com:8080/~glr/net.html
The subject line will be ignored. By return email you will receive the web page's html code.
More info at:
http://www.glr.com/web.html
This is an email I posted to my local Linux user group (Perth linux user group)...
p erspective1.html...
-----Original Message-----
From: Buddrige, David
Sent: Wednesday, May 26, 1999 11:59 AM
To: 'plug@linux.org.au'
Subject: [plug] what we need is a good (generic) document describing why the legislated ISP requirements cannot 'reasonably' be implemented...
As you are aware, our clue-challenged government has decided to pass legislation making ISP's responsible for content on their servers and (more
importantly) to take _resonable_ steps to block porn sites...
However a clause which (might) be the saviour of the internet in australia is this (as understood from article --> http://www.afr.com.au/content/990508/perspective/
"We are only requiring ISPs to take reasonable steps. We are setting up a framework that allows regulation of the internet to be tested on an ongoing basis. It will be organic. It will evolve."
Ok, so if we are required to use "reasonable" steps, if we can (corporately) produce an on-line document that explains adequately why basically there are no reasonable steps to be taken, then no steps need be taken...
I suggest that the document should be Open content licensed or somesuch to avoid any problem with maximum number of ISP's simply posting the page (modified to suit their own needs) and be done with this stupidity.... what says everyone?
cheers
David... 8-)
If Aussie content is restricted to G-rated stuff, we might as well forget it. The whole thing is ridiculously unworkable, and only highlights
... of course, this opens a whole bag of worms over GST (balance of power? what balance of power?)
..........
the supreme ineptitude of our politicians. Don't blame me, I voted Labor.
it's the political *system* to blame. when was the last time Labor didn't vote against the Liberals on any issue?
I reckon Aussie elected representatives should be free to vote their conscience instead of along party lines all the time
hmmm
Aside from the generally outrageous nature of this legislation, a more serious concern should be how easy it was for a relatively minor industry to seize control of the Internet for all Australians.
Who's to say that the mining industry won't make the same move in Australia? What about the port operators (esp. after the big strikes last year)?
Before you know it, Australia will be the land of zero net usage.
Be worried. Be VERY worried. Every lobbying group you've ever heard of will be coming out of the woodwork if this legislation holds up.
Australia doesn't have a Bill of Rights. Parliament is charged with protecting the rights of the citizenry. If Parliament abuses those rights, there isn't much that can be done. (Under Australian law, Parliament can *and did a few years ago!* imprison a citizen without trial.) All we can hope is that either the highest court finds some obscure reference in the constitution that nullifies it (unlikely; need a case first) or that the despots get thrown out at the next election.
The Bill was rushed through Parliament with a special Senate research committee investigating the technical feasibility of the whole thing for all of a week.
- it.htm
You can read a PDF transcript of the Committee minutes - the technical presentations to them are HIGHLY interesting. The most alarming is the last - or second last: the CEO of some setup called Clairview presents a new advanced "dynamic filtering" technology. Lord save us! Of course, it's supposed to be flawless like all this crap.
Anyone who can set up a service for Australians to overcome this fascism will be a hero. I suggest the url www.alston-harradine.org - that's the names of the two Senators who rammed the Bill through.
Now: the Committee PDF file you need to read is at the Australian Parliament House website at:
http://www.aph.gov.au/hansard/senate/commttee/s
This is a list of files.
The actual file you want is:
Broadcasting Services Amendment (Online Services) Bill 1999 03/05/99 Canberra
n.b. there is an error a third of the way through the file of a lot of blank pages. Just keep scrolling.
Cheers!
The entire idea is absurd, but that makes sense, considering that it's coming from a group of people who don't even understand how the internet works. ... This will be short lived.
----------------- ------------ ---- --- - - - -
----------------- ------------ ---- --- - - - -
Your honor is perfectly understandishable.
SHHH!
Don't tell politions that! Right now their understanding of the internet is so low that they only know about censoring the WWW, I'd rather like to keep it that way. Remember, the web used to be regulation free because nobody bothered to tell the lawyors, activists ("Moral" majority), and lawmakers about it.
--
The Moral Majority is a lot like the Holy Roman Empire, which was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.
I read the internet for the articles.
So, the realy question we ought to be asking is: how do we help our good friends down under look at things their government doesn't want them to look at? Will mirror sites be enough? How about a http-relay type of deal? Any better ideas?
OFFTOPIC: Does anyone know where I can get b&w
photos of some of the greats in computing (Turing,
Von Neumann, Steve Jobs, etc)? I'm decorating my
bar, and I thought it'd be a cool theme, but I
can't find pics of anyone except the one guy I
don't want down there (Gates).
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Posted by Jesse Duke, CA, USA:
You may have heard of the CDA. It is a form of net censorship, which was law in the US until it was declared unconstitutional. A modified version of the CDA may soon become law. To help prevent this, I am trying to get 1,000,000 "vitrual signatures." Please sign your real name at the bottom of this list [reply to this message] if you support not regulating the internet in the US.
Note: this does not include such things as HTML tags with violence/sex/etc ratings, or copywright violations, or child pornography. "Regulation" refers to making the storing/downloading of meterial legal in book, video, audio, or spoken form illegal.
Once finals are over I will try to set up a decent web site for this list.
Thank you for your time.
Virtual signature #1:
Jesse Duke,
13554 Chaparral Tr.
Yucaipa, CA, USA.
b92399@yahoo.com.
Posted by AnnoyingMouseCoward:
Ok, first of, I'll admit that there is a need to provide monitoring of Internet material for young children.
As a certifiable, card carrying member of the "I love smut club!", I am well aware of the amount of adult material out there on the net. I have no objections to such material as such ( being rather partial to it myself! ).
However, I do acknolege the need to provide some kind of monitoring system that will prevent young children from viewing such material.
The problem here though is one of censorship. In all cases to date, monitoring systems have eventually abused the poweres placed in them either as a result of personal bias or reaction from pressure groups ( such as fundementalist christians ).
While it is acceptable for the legislature to define minimum standards of behaviour on the Internet ( hey, you walk up to some babe and ask her for sex, you have to take the chanch that's she is going to slap you in the face. Just the way it is, ok...), what is important is that the public is directly involved in the descision making process.
In short, what I am suggesting to all of you is that rather than regard this is a threat to our freedom of speach, let us use this as an opportunity to send to our political representatives a clear and unambiguous message.
That while we are prepared to accept certain things in the name of basic decency, there is a limit to which we will accept the tyranny of the "moral minority".
To all Australian citizens who feel that they should become involved, check out
http://www.efa.org.au/Campaigns/may28/
and see what you can do to effect the outcome.
The idiots who make this kind of software don't realize that there is nothing sacred in the use of port 80 - you don't *have* to use port 80 to be a web server, and you can't very well censor every single port number without disabling the whole net.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Think about it. It is nearly impossible to block every site with questionable materal. So every ISP could get sued. First the little guys will end up going out of business, then the larger ones will start feeling the heat. Eventually Austrailia will be without internet access because nobody can afford to block every naughty site out there.
Sounds like a case of shooting one's self in the foot. Pretty sad for country that has had a major presence on the internet for as long as I've known.
?
Maybe it is an effort to clear out all the little ISPs. They won't be able to afford to spend the time and money blocking every offensive site, and pay for the lawsuits/fines when one slips through. Only the major ISPs will be able to withstand this.
Does Telstra (the Aussie Telco) provide ISP services? Do they have the power and money AT&T used to have in the states? Maybe they are funding this in an attempt to become the one and only Austrailian ISP.
BTW, I'm not being serious.
?
and you think they have any right to protest this even in a peaceful manner without fear of being clubbed, gassed or imprisoned? the only reason cencorship 'works' there is because they people have no choice and are basically mind-slaves to the government (not all, just most)
"There is no spoon" - Neo, The Matrix
What do they plan to do about things like foreign proxy servers with SSL connections? If you have to add those to the lists of banned sites, you will easily fill massive databases with vorboten addresses. I'd hate to see the size of the DB server needed to handle all of those lookups.
Of course, that assumes they can hire enough people to actually catalog dis-approved sites in the first place. Considering the dynamic nature of the web, they'll end up like Stazi, 1/3 of the population watching the other 2/3. Ironically, that 1/3 will be exposed to exactly the content that the law aims to prevent.
They should also keep in mind that there will be sites designed to make classification difficult. For example, scenes of extreme violence with bogus descriptions claiming the site is a tutorial on forensics and detective work. Or nude pictures claiming to be an effort to catalog human proportions and variations. Where there's a will, there's a way.
It is my sincere hope that the Austrailian people will manage to oust the idiots that passed that law.
How often have you typed www.yahoo.com into your browser and ended up with hardcore porn?
Never directly, but search on any female name, X protocol specs, etc, etc, and you'll find plenty.
I believe that the poster was obliquely calling for a FREE list of sites that might be better to avoid if you don't want to be offended.
If the pro censorship people really believed the people wanted to block sites, they'd spend their money and time on creating such a list, and free filter software. I notice that none of these groups or lawmakers are going that route.
Actually, sometimes I deliberatly DON'T use the NOT operators. It's funny to see the proportion of pr0n to other topics for any given keyword.
Others fail to see the humor. The real point is that the various 'Mothers of Prevention' should spend the lobbying funds to provide some free software and blacklists for those who are offended, and quit trying to censor the world.
a) (for example) - i have an image involving sodomy and a goat on my personal page called bleh.jpg. how is this found and censored?
:P can you say *performance hit* (even assuming it was possible)
:P
;P)
b) as I understand it, most ISPs (like us for example) in Australia require you to be 18 to sign up. if a kids parents lets him/her browse unsupervised, its their problem.
c) as someone above mentioned, most australian ISPs use proxy servers already (bandwidth is a killer here). how is the banned list going to keep up with web site development? how is it to be updated? or is some magic image recognition meant to scan every image (and every yet to be implemented file format) for porn?
i had more to say, but pizza turned up
smash (aussie ISP tech
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
prohibition was not an interesting idea.
It was a FUCKING STUPID idea.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
-jafac's law
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
what about Hotline?
Cockroacho?
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
-jafac's law
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
... on the contrary, the US govt. HAS pushed it's citizens to their breaking point (a few extremist wackos anyway).
The crater where the govt. used to be - was the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City.
The wackos that did this were of the attitude that they were in a civil war with the US govt. Of course the pussies turned around and denied it when they were caught, so they really weren't much in the way of revolutionaries anyway.
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
-jafac's law
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I'll be checking how the people of Oz could be helped with this issue, but I hope something will be done.
"Ten years from now, they could do it in a few seconds." -- The Racketeer of the Hellfire Club, 1993, Phrack 42
I have an idea on how to avoid all of that depravity on the net...
Don't go there.
Seems pretty easy to me. How often have you typed www.yahoo.com into your browser and ended up with hardcore porn?
Statements like the above post still make people who aren't net savvy think that all you have to do is be logged in to your ISP and then you are bombarded with porn. That's what the authors of the CDA thought actually happened and that is why they thought they needed to "protect" children.
If you can't take responsibility for yourself, your children, your businesses (and churches) then why should the government do it for you?
Chris
What an utterly rubbish. That explains a lot why so large majority of english speaking persons seem to be whackos. It's ridiculous that it's illegal to give pornographic material to your children. Somehow it's still OK to circimcise the helpless baby boys but it's still illegal for years to give them access to pornographic material. That is really sick and unnatural.
And I strongly suspect that you have something agains Darwin and practise spanking.
In my opinion it is wrong that a religious parent denies information from his/hers children. The parent should be able to hold his/hers own opinion about everything but it is totally different thing to deny childrens from having more balanced information.
If your ability to use a free and public resource is taken away by a governing body over which you have no control, are you still living in a Democracy? I think that equating the Net and Democracy makes perfect sense in this context.
Head over to http://ians.978.org/ and grab yourself a copy of the Anti-Censorware Proxy. Set up as many mirrors as possible, and share them with friends who suffer from censorship.
What about if the ISPs, the backbone providers, or whoever buys this filtering software at $x million dollars, but charge a penalty payment of, say, $100 for every page let through when it shouldn't be, or not let through when it should be.
If no company accepts this, then the ISPs, by putting out this tender without getting responses, have undertaken the reasonable means requires.
If they _do_ get a response, the company they bought it from would go broke in about two weeks.
Who wants to go searching for things to break this system (Everything from Dick Smith electronics, to pages in other languages..., SSL, etc)
I could see this being a good thing.
Basically, right now it's very difficult to filter web content unless you want to pay out the wazoo to companies that provide site lists.
With any luck, the Aussie gov't list will be publically available. So, we would at last have a good, public list of objectionable sites.
Do I believe in censorship? No. But I do wish that there was some easy way to avoid depravity on the net for me and my children and the businesses (and churches) I serve without spending thousands a year on server side proxy software.
-- Slashdot sucks.
Well, when the laws of your land do not guarantee free speech, this is what inevitably happens, eventually. Worse, it's only the first step.
But enough with that. What we need to work on are solutions to this problem. What I think would work well is what I call a "reverse proxy."
Basically it works like this. Proxies like the Anonymizer work such that all outgoing traffic from your site seems to come from the proxy, not from you. What I propose is the reverse: a person can log into the proxy, and then all Net traffic coming in to the user appears to come from that proxy server. Front it with a clearly nonoffensive Web page (for this to work, of course, the proxy aspect of the site would have to be covert), and voila: all of your Web traffic appears to be coming from a nonoffensive site, even though it does not (which would be next to impossible to prove). Since it appears to come from a nonoffensive site, none of it is blocked.
Even better would be a "meta-reverse-proxy" which juggled a user between different proxies. That would make it harder to detect, since any site caught doing this would likely be blocked. It also would lighten the load on each individual proxy, since the load could be spread between them.
Anyone know of current software that might be able to do something like this?
Uhhh, excuse me, but in America (and on the Internet) we have the right to espouse our views whatever they may be. Aren't you being just a bit hypocritical?
----------------
"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." - Albert Einstein
Co-founder and designer at Music Nearby: http://musicnearby.com
Ooooo, touchy aren't we? We'll keep our guns and stay FREE. Getting shot a school is an unfortunate part of reality. It is the price we pay for our freedom. I'm willing to accept that. By the way, inherently, guns themselves do not kill. People do. If we didn't have guns, I'm sure that as industrious as our society is, we'd find another way to kill each other. Sticks, knives, plastic forks, etc. So we are screwed up a bit in America. That's what makes it the best country (arguably?) in the world. Arrogant? Maybe just a little. However, I'm not going to apologize for where I was born.
----------------
"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." - Albert Einstein
Co-founder and designer at Music Nearby: http://musicnearby.com
I'm surprised that no one has mentioned that the bill, according to Senator Alston (who herded the bill thought the Senate), applies to some forms of E-mail as well. In particular to list mail and so will be subject to scrutiny and censorship. See here for more detail
Censoring films is one thing, I don't agree with it, but its feasible. There's a finite number of movies produced that need to be examined and a whole industry that can just be disallowed based on the genre (the hardcore porn genre, or maybe even soft core, I have no idea what the Australian censorship board views as offensive)
Censoring web sites is pretty close to impossible. There are the obvious ones, I would expect that Hustler and any page attached to that domain would be blocked for instance. What about individual pages though? I can set up a page on a free web server such as Tripod or GeoCities with objectionable content. GeoCities would eventually yank it, but Tripod seems to not care. Personal web pages with material they would find offensive probably numbers in the millions. For an ISP to selectively block these pages isn't feasible, so their only choice would be to block sites that have one or more user pages with objectionable material. I.e. block GeoCities, Tripod, AOL and a large number of other providers. Great, except for the small fraction of objectionable pages on these servers there is a large number of non-objectional pages. A few of these even have useful material.
Basically the end result would be that a site such as slashdot could be censored from all Australian internet users if it ever were to fail Australia's movie screening process. Oh yeah, there's a small box on slashdot which contains the latest image from JenniCam as well as links to Rotten.com and so on.
Meanwhile, join in protest actions around the nation on May 28. If you can ring your local member this week to express your concerns about the Bill, that may also be effective.
Danny.
I have written over 900 book reviews
Already friends who run private non-profit "virtual ISPs" for friends are talking about shutting down; rumour has it that the law will require them to buy special routers to implement the censorship scheme.
This could be a clever job-creation scheme; create a world-leading Australian industry in creating Internet censorship technology, and export it. The Chinese and Saudis, to name two, will probably be eager customers. Afterwards, once the industry is established as a major Australian export earner, Australia can set up pro-censorship lobbies elsewhere (the US, Europe, Britain, Canada, &c.), funnel funds to religious-right groups, and attempt to export censorship in the same way the Soviet Union attempted to export revolution.
I have objectionable content at work. Dejanews among other things was blocked for about a year. You know the usenet newsgroups where people can say anything and it might offend... Meanwhile, it just encouraged others to hunt for sites that would make it through the blocking software. So, in reality, having access blocked made it worse. It all came to an end when the plant manager (a woman) with a few customers entered a department manager's office and saw an animated lewd screensaver. The internet was to blame and there it went (for about a week.)
You might not believe this, but when the blocking software was removed, those naughty people started moving on to other challenges, like trolling the NRA chatrooms. I guess some people are determined to eternally rebel.
If you are worried about having access blocked, there are ways to circumvent the problem. People get creative.
When it comes to banning things, I'd have to say that this is the work of polititions at its finest. Its going to get ugly, but that is the way they like it.
As I understand, polititions are lawyers. Their friends are lawyers. Who benefits from stupid laws passed by polititions? Polititions! Even these bad ones are the experts in the field and will refer cases to friends.
When the internet exploded here in the USA, porn became controversial. A once tame internet with a few juicy pictures tucked away in the newsgroups were brought to public attention. The next thing I knew, porn was everywhere. It was popular. Every spectator trying to make a buck had to test the laws and put up a porno webpage. Porn was spammed. It was no longer hidden, but it would find you, and on a daily basis even if you just had email. All thanks to the religious and political nuts who brought this "evil" to our attention.
So, Australia is going to get a lot of porn. Most of it will be coming from within. Brace for it! You asked for it!
Can someone provide details on Australia's legal system? I.e. does Australia have a constitution (I know England hasn't) and a constitutional court which might provide a means of getting this law killed?
The failure of the government to see the correct path has nothing to do with guns.
The next time you feel like your precious gun is protecting you from your government, try this little test. Get as many of your friends that have weapons together and march on city hall, take it over, and make your own country. I think you'll find that you won't last long against the government. You'd need to have as big a budget as the Pentagon to compete, and I don't think anyone but Gates has it.
The right to bear arms is a hold over from Militia America, back in the early days of the country, when an army was just as much a bunch of men with guns as anything else. The Americans even succeeded because their militia tactics were new to the british. But the days of the need or the effectiveness of militia are long over. Now all that guns provide is an easy way to kill someone on the street or to hold up a liquor store. How many more kids are killed each year than militia men? Think about it.
Why do you call yourself Thornae and then sign your post "ÐÆ"?
--
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
I wonder how much it costs to put a satellite in the sky?
Trick is, the Govt controls the Radio Spectrum as well.
I can't believe I voted for these dickheads. Labor want to run people's lives too. ARRGGH
I'm not coherant but I am really annoyed.
Slashdot: Where nerds gather to pool their ignorance
Contact Sen Richard Alston.
Polite but firm works best.
Slashdot: Where nerds gather to pool their ignorance
It's the 'film board' that's going to do all the work. It sounds like the ISP's will only be responsible for blocking sites as directed specifically by the film board. It's an occasional batch load for the isp's but an endless wild goose chase for the film board.
Ho ho!
**>>BELCH
Free Speech issues aside, how can anyone possibly know of every web site in the world that is deemed "offensive"??? And the ISPs are gonna be held accountable for that? It looks like those politicians got their heads firmly implanted up their asses.
There has already been said enough about the Free Speech implications of this law, so I will not repeat it here.
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
I feel guilty about living in Canada where the CRTC recently decided to not regulate the Internet. (I know it's well-nigh impossible, but it's the principal of the thing.) Sometimes I wish I could just walk up to a politician and beat him/her with a clue stick.
.au friends, best of luck.
I'm going to turn my webpage black, even though it's not my home country. To our
A lot of people here always have said that the Internet routes around censorship and problems like this. We should try and find some technical way to allow those in Australia that need to access web content a way to do it.
I'm thinking of something along the lines of mailing lists with listings of redirectors for web traffic. Surely the censors couldn't keep up if these change every day.
How about some sort of client that, once connected to an ISP, connects through another protocol to a site abroad, which will somehow reroute their network connection through there and allow web surfing?
Maybe make postings on newsgroups for the Australian folks with redirectors for web traffic.
Are there enough people out there who would try and circumvent the laws somehow? I don't see how any of it could be illegal, at least the way the law stands.
Does anyone have any other ideas on how Australians could circumvent these laws?
Also, another question I have that I couldn't really answer right now is whether or not this would hurt the cause. I certainly would want a way to bypass these draconian laws if the U.S. were to pass laws like that.
What kind of approaches do we have in case governments try to regulate sites like that? Will the Internet just shrivel up and die if enough countries censor content?
I think these are questions we need to start looking at if we want the Internet to remain free. So we can at least have these 'solutions' available as a last resort.
Losing the freedom of the Internet would be one of the worst things that could happen in the information age.
A representative is quoted as saying that this is
.. there go a lot of problems...
"unworkable". I'd go so far as to say impossible.
I dont think that it is impossible.. Isn't it the Chinese who do something simular to this already? I've heard that its pie to bypass their proxies though.. dunno
Sites that are possibly "offensive" can popup faster than an ISP, even using all their resources and time, can block it out.
What stops them from blocking entire domains, ip classes? *.geocities.com
I feel for the Australia ISPs, they have their work cut out for them.
As for the government, they will need to patrol full time simply to check if all "naughty" sites are blocked or not (which would be quite an interesting job).
Seems to me, the Australian government has just created the biggest national waste of time and energy with one vote. Why do I have the feeling the US government will try to follow suit?
Kinda pathetic if you ask me.. obviously the people don't want this, how can they claim its a democracy.. and all with one vote..
Im assuming the proxy will have set domains etc.. that it will filter out.. what stops people from using something like WinGate or another proxy on a machine in say, the united states and getting stuff unfiltered?
Stan "Myconid" Brinkerhoff
SB.
Australians are under the illusion that they're living in the free-est of democracies, whereas they are one of the most dominated of the western nations. The Aus government continues to treat its citizens as "naughty children", or dare I say convicts.
... treat your citizens as idiots and you end up with idiots for citizens.
Guns wasn't too bad, the dangerous signs were compulsory tax-file numbers, compulsory voting, compulsory carrying of drivers licenses (with photos)
Read John Pilger's A Secret Country for background...
Tim (trying hard not to go back there...)
I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered. - George Best
...because, as a .au resident, I know that our politicans (yes, i do know that isn't spelled correctly :) are prone to knee jerk reactions, and eventually that knee is gonna ban something otherwise perfectly legal that I want/need to access.
See also: Bad Thing(tm)
Commodore 64, Loading up the dance floor!
You may be interested to know that the satellite service used by many OZ providers is (IIRC) actually run by a .nz ISP called IHUG (known as TIG in .au). They will most certainly not filter the content, IIRC they don't even restrict usenet unlike some _other_ .nz ISPs.
Pretend that something especially witty is here. Thanks.
The PRC has lots of experience in censoring the net....maybe Australia can get some advice from them. Ahhh....life in the Land of the Lucky.
It works pretty well in Singapore and the "Peoples Republic of China".
At the end of the of the Aerican Revoluton, the British had 60,000 troops in North America. The Americans had about 8,000. The Royal Navy had the largest fleet on earth....the Americans had several merchantmen they had managed to arm. Please tell me, how many B-52's did the Viet Cong have in 1970?
?????? Your point? I'm saying that there's less and less difference between "democracies" and the totalitarian states. If the Chinese and Singaporean people had weapons maybe the governments would be a little more careful. Ever think maybe that's why the US is so anxious to disarm the public? If they really wanted to protect the people, drunk drivers would 20 years in the slammer. Get a clue.
In none of the places you mentioned were arms ever allowed to the general population. The ways the people were able to get weapons was either to smuggle them in or kill a soldier/cop/oppressor and TAKE them.
FYI, I am in Asia and have lived in China, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. "Rights" are NOT Rights when they're simply tossed to the People like a bone to a dog. But then, you Aussies have been getting used to that for some time,right?
Which is why in the Bill of Rights, Freedom of Speech/Freedom of the Press is backed up with the Right to Bear Arms. Being able to talk is great until somebody decides to run over you with a tank....just ask the people at Tiananmen Square. My wife was there.
Actually, I do. Have you ever studied ANY history? Ever heard of a place called Somalia? Gee, I don't think those guys fighting graduated from Sandhurst. How about the KLA? They're going up against the Serb's with (in many cases) just days of training. Think about it....the reason the Sebs have the power is because THEY'VE got the guns! Chairman Mao said it best, nice and simple, "Political power grows from the barrel of a gun". FYI, there are LOTS of trained civilians, ex-military, etc in the US. I know PLENTY of people who can easily take someone out at 400 meters. Think of how things might be different if some pissed off kulak had popped Stalin in 1930 (20,000,000 kulaks were murdered by Stalin in the 1930s). Regardless, people can learn fast under pressure.
As far as comparing America's problems with those of the UK, Australia and Canada...if it had been economically advantageous for the Brits to use slaves to brew beer, skin beavers, or molest kangaroos, I imagine their crime rates would be slightly different.
Does this mean they say the govt goes after the hosts while the local and "state" go after everybody else?
I suspect it's probably due to the constitution not actually giving the federal government the power to impose this law, so it needs the cooperation of the states. Existing censorship of other media relies on State laws too.
I miss Meept.
The sheep of Australia are no different than any other country; since they've abdicated personal and parental responsibility, they're demanding their own government do the dirty work. What a bunch of lamers.
It has absolutely nothing to do with what we want. This survey shows that less than 3% of Australian net users are worried about indecent content. What this is really about is the government trying to get the support of a single senator who happens to be very morally conservative.
I miss Meept.
So does this mean that all .au ISPs will have to implement either a mandatory proxy server or packet filters?
Probably. The government, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to remain "technology neutral" - in other words, to ignore that their proposal is unworkable and expect the ISPs to implement it anyway.
If you have a look at the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts web site and follow to the "Newsroom" link, you find such brilliant statements as:
This, of course, conveniently ignores that most Australian citizens don't want to be protected.
I miss Meept.
"This is a very dark day in Australian history. "
There's no escaping the roots, mate.
Think about the foundations of Australia.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
The committee has been told, many times, in many ways, that this is technically impossible and that trying will cost heaps as people start using https: and such technologies by default. This seems to imply checking against an address list; let's run a sweepstake on how long it takes the first cracker to post the censorship site's own URL/IP on its list, plus a few others like *.gov.au.
You can't scan SSL and friends for content! Picture this:
This web page is being checked.
Please click on this link in approximately fifteen years after our server farm has broken your SSL key to ensure that what you're trying to fetch isn't naughty. We apologise for the inconvenience.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...not by far. Just the biggest case, so far.
Think about it: How many corporations, libraries, parents etc.pp. have started filtering already? Censorship all around... Time to get those Anti-Censorship-Proxies a bit more organised (well, maybe better *disorganised*), it seems...
Argathin
So does this mean that all .au ISPs will have to implement either a mandatory proxy server or packet filters?
As long as it remains that access is barred to site which the film board declares offensive than it is at least semui-workable. However, if it was turned around and made that access is only allowed to sites which the film has passed as acceptable, then it would open a much larger can of worms.
Even Dr Clayton Forrester would have thought it's stupid and wrong...
At any rate, it's almost comforting (in a rather perverse fashion, granted) to have a demonstration that our good ol' US of A Gummint doesn't have a monopoly on Net cluelessness.
--Z.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
...then again, I wouldn't like it if the USA was judged entirely based on how the morons in our Senate and House vote.
What recourse do our Aussie friends have to fight this law? In the US, we fought the CDA in the courts with the First Amendment to our Constitution. And with phone calls to our local Congressmoron and ribbons on web pages, of course.
--JT
Well mate, you have now.
We don't have shrimps, we have prawns. We rarely bbq them, that was a US tv ad.
btw , "not once have I called or been called mate" sounds like BS to me, either that or you are deaf and dumb.
> Or have SSL proxies in other nations? Running on port 25/21/20/anything else innocuous?
It's easy for ISP's to block ports. For example, in Canada The Bell Canada Sympatico *DSL service prevents home subscribers from running HTTP servers. A more expensive business line is required for that.
If this law passes and is promulgated, it will be "successful". While some people will be able to work around it, the vast majority of users will be fully censored.
> It's hard to imagine that 30 or so people can :-)
> review the entire internet. And think of all the
> movies they have to review when they're not
> surfing. Poor sods
Don't you ever use a search engine? Look at Google... A Web site trying to attract visitors must advertise itself, which means it must be accessible by context. I argue that it would be easy for Web crawlers and search engines to quickly find sites with specified content, and for those sites to be rather quickly added to the "verboten" database.
This proposed law is very dangerous because its success will prompt other jurisdictions to try the same thing.
It seems that the bureaucrats in charge have become a bit more pointy-haired than it originally seemed. So now, a 35 year old professional adult isn't even allowed the respect to choose what he or she WANTS to view.
Hmmm, maybe on second thought, it's BillGa~1's minions at Micros~1 who has taken over. "Here's where you want to go today."
Take these gifs, stick them on your website somewhere, and make my government look like the drongos they are. Oh. and link'em to
b lack.gif w hite.gif
http://www.efa.org.au/Campaigns/stop.html
http://usrwww.mpx.com.au/~gths/freespeech/auban
http://usrwww.mpx.com.au/~gths/freespeech/auban
P.S. John Pilger is a moron.
... so sprach Graham the Happy Scum
No kidding. Customary law is a simple, yet brilliant concept.
The method by which the US dispenses justice, was designed with good purpose. However, over the years, the US Courts system, has ended up building a set of rigid, yet purely semantical, code of law. This can in turn, be partially blamed on our adversarial method of courtroom procedure. But that's a whole different thread...
...in any case, it's Australia who now has the troubles, let's hope the lawmakers in Australia remove their heads from their posteriors and rescinds this silly legislation.
The difference between a "democracy" and a totaltarian state is that while they can both try to implement censorship, it will only work in the totaltarian state because the people have no voice. while guns maybe helpful in a full scale revolution, words are much more powerful on a day to day basis.
...compulsory tax-file numbers, compulsory voting, compulsory carrying of drivers licenses (with photos)
Australians are under no obligation to disclose their tax file numbers to any organization. They
just get taxed more if they don't.
There is no obligation to carry a driver's licence. You don't even have to carry it to drive a car, though you must be able to show it within 24 hours if you are stopped while driving by the police (it is an offence to drive unlicenced on public roads).
Voting has been compulsory all along. Or rather, turning up at a polling place and getting your name crossed off is. There is no obligation to put a valid paper in the box.
But you know all that.
J
No kidding.
According to http://www.domainstats.com at this moment there are 8,114,014 domains registered worldwide.
In comparison, the Internet Movie Database contains 170,479 titles. Even counting all the porn, there can't be more than 500,000 movies that are censored.
Sounds like a nice government make-work project. It takes months to make a movie, but only days to build a new web site. It's going to be a joke, or a nightmare, depending on which side of the fence you're on.
Thanks to the public knee-jerk reactions to Littleton we can expect more of this net.censorship. The internet isn't just a pipeline for porno and bomb-making instructions. If it was then there'd be pictures of naked ladies building bombs all over /. - give me a break...
The reason why the EFF et al. were so succesful in defeating the CDA was because it was a grassroots effort to protect free speech. The problem was though was that it only happened when that free speech was already threatened.
We need to send the message to Washington now about the way we stand. We need to tell them about the true merits of the Internet that outweigh the 1% or so that consists of Anarchists' Cookbook and porno. Don't wait until some bill has been already passed, let's raise hell right now. If we don't tell them the truth, they'll get their ideas from the media.
A representative is quoted as saying that this is
"unworkable". I'd go so far as to say impossible. Sites that are possibly "offensive" can popup faster than an ISP, even using all their resources and time, can block it out. I feel for the Australia ISPs, they have their work cut out for them.
As for the government, they will need to patrol full time simply to check if all "naughty" sites are blocked or not (which would be quite an interesting job).
Seems to me, the Australian government has just created the biggest national waste of time and energy with one vote. Why do I have the feeling the US government will try to follow suit?
FinkPloyd
Isn't that near impossible? It means creating a lot of work. I know that if I was an ISP down there I'd consider shuting down.
Is there really any way to control ALL of the content that passes thru a web server? In doing this don't you infringe on basic human rights of privacy issues? (I'm in the US not sure about other countries.)
Does anyone else see this as a potential problem? Obviously there will have to be software written to do this. People to monitor this. Many other potential issues. This is ludicris!
Only 'flamers' flame!
Tommorow there is a planned protest in Sydney, Hyde Park at 12. We've got a sound system... and i'm going to tell Senator Alston where to stick his bill.
RIGHT UP HIS PRIEST-RAPED ASS.
This shit frustrates me to no end. Sysadmin's of the world should unite.. in 5 years we will hold more power than we imagine - WE ARE THE GATEKEEPERS!
.PsyMonger.
Of course, I'd like to know how a web site will be nominated for review, and exactly how much time the censo--I mean, film board will have to make their decision. If they're planning on reviewing the entire Web, they'd better get started now. And the manpower requirements would pretty much deplete the entire Australian legislature, including aides, security guards, secretaries and janitors.
:-)
Which brings to mind a good counterstrike to this law. What if Australians started complaining about every web site that's even marginal? The film board would be swamped, unable to cope with the huge number of sites to review.
Now, if they'd decide that any site which uses popup windows is "offensive", I might be able to support the law...
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
This is great, firstly, it's not in my country
(the UK), secondly, it's not in the USA, thirdly
it's going to be a great example and warning to
the UK and USA politicians when they are hit by
the explosion that is coming...
So no more worries (mate) about net censorship for
the rest of us...
--------------------------------------------
There's a storm a-comin'....
This is off-topic, but I had to reply.
I say 'mate' all the time.
As far as I know, it's a very British thing.
I was echoing the cronically corny use of
that popular Ozzie phrase, 'no worries'.
You missed that one!
Thing about all you Australians (and all
Americans, too, of course), is that when
you miss the irony, the standard prejudices
and stereotypes about people's standard
prejudices and stereotypes come right out...
Now, back to the rights of citizens in the
Western World...
--------------------------------------------
There's a storm a-comin'....
Actually, this sounds worse than the USA plan, possibly. The US CDA only outlawed "Obscenity" transmitted to minors or to people who weren't expecting obscenity. Indecency (hazy legal area I know) was never prohibited. And the stated intent of the law wasn't to prohibit adults from accessing obscenity (though I'm sure Strom Thurmond would want to prohibit adults too...)
Photos of bits of the past hiding in the present: afiler.com
The Australian net censorship legislation had nothing to do with Littleton. Please stop assuming that everyone else in the world dances to the tunes played in the United States.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
Oh hell yeah. Even the newsreaders go nude on Australia day. It's a tradition, like wombat-riding and playing the didgeridoo on Bondi Beach.
(Duh, That was a joke...)
I've never come across this show you're talking about. I have cable as well as free-to-air. Most nudity on Aussie TV comes from Hollywood.
Please make sure you are spouting fact rather than half-assed hearsay before posting in future.
The Australian Broadcasting Authority does govern TV as well. I think they are actually reasonably fair and open-minded; However, TV is easier to administer by restricting the timeslots shows are aired. This is of course impossible on the Internet, which makes the whole thing unworkable. If Aussie content is restricted to G-rated stuff, we might as well forget it. The whole thing is ridiculously unworkable, and only highlights the supreme ineptitude of our politicians. Don't blame me, I voted Labor.
It IS interesting that Alston, the communications minister behind this bill, complained to the ABA regarding what he perceived as journalistic bias against the government by government-sponsored TV during the last Australian Federal election. His complaint was proven to be groundless when the statitics were published. So the pollies can try to coopt the system, but the system doesn't always play along.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
There's no such thing as separate culture anymore, if ever.
Speak for yourself.
Or have you forgotten the fact that your upright govt banned Phantasmagoria when in fact they never played the game to see what it's about(this was admitted). Had they played the game they would have seen the option to turn of the violent cut-scenes.
I'm not an apologist for the Australian Government. I think this legislation is asinine. I haven't played the game you talk about. In any case, censorship of game content is not the same as Internet content regulation, except where game downloads are concerned. Frankly, that (P-Goria) particular infringement of civil liberties is somewhat low on my list of things to get upset about.
Where are YOU from, Mr Coward? U.S.? Australia? If the former, don't presume to assume you have the right to lecture me.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
Since when have politicians let "unworkable" policy stop them from passing bad laws? If anything, claiming that it is unworkable makes things *worse*, because people will focus on the techical side, not the actual problem!. Focusing on the technical side is like saying the law is O.K. in priciple, but technically not feasible. Please fight this, but fight the real problem, not the symptom.
"Those who would give up essential liberty for temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" - Benjamin Franklin,
This is just one more step in the long road to complete govt. control of peoples lives in au. First it was the guns, now it's information. Next, who knows? I'm not sure how books and magazines are treated there in Australia, but seeing as the content will be controlled on their Internet connections, just changing the law to include all media types wouldn't be a big stretch. I hope that this serves as a wake-up call to people in the U.S.A., who currently have protection via the bill of rights, but whose protection is being chipped away every day in the name of safety. I think it was Hume that said "It is not often that liberty (freedom) is lost all at once."
"Those who would give up essential liberty for temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" - Benjamin Franklin,
Well, on the one hand this is very scary in theory. I suspect though, that it will be less of something which endangers Democracy in Australia, and more of something which crashes and burns. Unfortunately, there'll probably be a large number of individuals / ISP's who are going to get crucified under this law :(
chris
San Francisco values: compassion, tolerance, respect, intelligence
Does this mean the film board has to review each site, then decide to block it or not ? Or does this mean the film board gets to set the rules for what is offensive and what is not, and that each ISP is responsible for blocking out every "offensive" site ? For example :
:-)
-Sites on which instructions to make explosives can be obtained.
-Every site on which female nipples are visible
-Sites that contain the word "hack"
-Sites which contain anti-government statements
-...
(where will they stop ?)
It's hard to imagine that 30 or so people can review the entire internet. And think of all the movies they have to review when they're not surfing. Poor sods
Another idea : maybe someone outside of Australia can set up a server which sends "banned" pages to users who request them by mail. Let's see them block that...
superblog.org: all your favourite blogs on o
Hmm... This looks like a defeat for the internet community, or does it...
To be honest, I doubt it. The idea is not only a proof that the politicians are not completely up-to-date with the current technology but it's also a proof that they have absolutely no idea what the internet is about or how an ISP works.
Having managed a setup for an ISP I doubt it that the plans the gevernment has have the faintest chance of being implemented.
The problem lays in the fact that first you need very nice hardware to be able to monitor the traffic that has to be monitored. Secondly you need very good software to limit the correct pages. (note, just filtering on XXX won't work, as you have pages 'without XXX-rated junk' or tricks like that)
Most software that could sort of do the trick which are currently sized for home use on a single pc with only one user. They are still having some problems with these packages as ther don't block all the correct pages.
When the government inforces these changes I also see some big bills going their way as it won't be cheap to implement it.
So on the software and/or hardware part I see no hope for the Australian government at this moment. Then we have a small problem with the ISPs. I doubt it that they are waiting for the big investment that is needed to implement this policy. A big provider is already offering global roaming to their costumers to allow them to dialin with their account in any country they're having a pop in. It's a small step to a global access number (think of 00800 numbers which are available in europe) so the costumers don't dialin to a australian provder but to a european or american provider.
As for Orwells 1984, it can be here when the government gets away with this (it's a small step from regulating traffic to recording it).
At worst I see it as a very expensive demonstration to all other governments that regulation of the internet traffic is impossible (or way to expensive). (On the other hand, they didn't learn from the experiment of China)
... Wenn ist das Nunstruck git und Slotermeyer? Ja!... Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!
Senator Stott-Despoja pointed out in "The Australian" a few weeks back that there already exists legislation against activities that this bill is trying to stop. Paedophilia is illegal already. Providing pornography to minors is illegal already. She states, and I agree wholeheartedly, that what is necessary is not yet another piece of legislation, but simply the enforcement of the existing laws.
9 1
What I find most irritating is the fact that many (albeit clueless) people will be joining up with those so-called "Kidsafe" service providers. Doesn't sound so bad until you discover that many of the providers of those services are also the providers of the largest porn sites in the country. So the big winners with this new bill if it becomes law are the very people the law is trying to stop.
What I also find offensive is that this bill is _forcing_ ISP's (apart from the aforementioned of course who only have to block their own servers) to waste time searching for pornography to block before they are sued for three months income before tax/expenses, instead of simply doing their jobs providing internet access.
I don't think that's going to impress the many Christian system administrators at ISP's having to search for pornography by law.
Now, let me digress into some responses to the many posts here: Senator Brian Harradine for whom this bill was to appease is a former Labor Party member who was ejected from the Party for going against party lines back in the 70's with the Whitlam government. He founded the trade union movement in Tasmania before joining federal politics. The issue was not the GST, it was the sale of Telstra. Harradine was never going to be sold on the GST as his very strong Labor ties/beliefs are against it.
As for the idea to encrypt content, that's irrelevent as the bill is about the access to the content, it makes no difference if it is encrypted, should this bill be passed the encrypted stuff has to be blocked as well. I hope this scares you, because the next step of course is that since it it obviously impossible in any decent time frame to decrypt encrypted data to see if it is illegal content or not, ALL encrypted data will have to be blocked lest some of it be illegal. Goodbye E-commerce.
Finally, the US Government are supposed to be enforcing trade sanctions against Australia if this becomes law as the bill violates a treaty signed just 5 months ago by the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts (and other things he has no clue about) Senator Richard Alston (the main person responsible for this bill - that goes to show how competent he is).
The media contact at DCITA (notice how its phonetically "deceiter"?) is Terry O'Conner, you can reach him on 02 6277 7480 (place a +63 in front of that if you're overseas).
You can also see this web site:
http://www.dcita.gov.au/cgi-bin/trap.pl?path=38
Matt
...and then our elected morons in the Government pass this stupid law.
To understand why this law was passed, you have to understand how the Senate works in Australia.
It is a form of proportional representation. As a result, minor parties often get seats in the Senate. This means that the Government does not have a majority in the Senate, and so to pass legislation, someone who is not with the Government must also vote for it. To pass, legislation needs a majority of votes. With 66 senators, legislation therefore needs 34 votes to pass.
Until June 30, the Senate is made up of 32 Coalition, ~21 Labor, ~9 Democrat, 2 Green and 2 independents. To pass legislation, the Government must enlist the support of some other group.
Politics in Australia is a bit complex at the moment as a result. This is allowing one of the independent Senators to push his own agenda, which has a lot of extremely restrictive views similar to that which passed yesterday.
On July 1, the new senate elected last October take their seats. The balance of power shifts to the Democrats, so we won't see more tightassed legislation like that. But the damage is done.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
After a bit of research, I've failed to turn up any names, but this is how the law got passed:
One independent politician holds the balance of power in Australia. The governing party recently wanted a (totally different) piece of legislation passed, and this guy's vote was the decider. To keep him sweet, they promised that they'd vote for his Internet ban later on. (Sorry the names are missing, but I just couldn't find them.) Stepping out of character for a while, these other politicians kept their word. So there you have it. It had nothing to do with the Internet; it was just politicians being what they are - evil old men so arrogant they honestly believe they know what's best for us.
- Read fiction at www.espressostories.com
I think there's the same sort of regulation going on in Germany, or maybe they tried to apply it. I think it's just impossible. Who's going to filter ALL OF THE NET and rate it? Their 'film commition' will need a lot of people for that task. Wow. What I know about censorship is Quake is forbiden in Germany...
First they tell you what to read, then what to think.
-- It's always darker before it goes pitch black.
to be forced to read the bible.. The people should have the choice.. We are capible of making decisions on our own with out some 'governing' force making them for use. If they want to see porn, let them. They government should not have the right to censor like that... The net is another country in itself and has no governing force.
"Windows 98 Second Edition works and players better than ever." -Microsoft's Home page on Win98SE.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
Some useful Links:
Global Internet Liberty Campaign www.gilc.org
Electonic Frontiers Australia, www.efa.org.au
and of course
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, www.eff.org
The Electronic Privacy Information Center
And here's an idea: this sounds like a PERFECT reason to boycott the Sydney 2000 Olympics. After all, it always works best to get a country by the short-and-curlies if you REALLY want its' attention. . . .
Is anyone considering diddling their web server to provide special pages to any computer from .au? It would slow things down terribly; you would need to do a reverse-dns before sending the page.
Turn their web black.
Email: slashdot3@FreeMars.org (Address will be abandoned when it gets spam.)
Current balance of power in the Australian government is held by an independant politician, Senator Harradine. The government is currently pushing to sell of Telstra, a national telco, the sale of which is worth very large amounts of money.
Opposition to the sale of Telstra (who do ISP service stuff like Big Pond) is everywhere, and without Harradine's vote, the sale would be abandoned.
Harradine is a vocal opponent of the internet, a defender of traditional Christian values, and in many ways opposed to the principles of free speech. He has tried on many occasions to propose legislation to either prevent public access to "questionable" material, or to make it an offense to view it. Until now, his proposed legislation has always been thrown out.
Basically, it looks a whole lot like Harradine and the government got together and said "you pass my legislation and I'll pass yours."
The consultation for the feasibility of content blocking was carried out in 1 week, which is on the narrow side of legal, and could be stumbling block if the law is appealed. The legislation was passed against a national outcry from ISPs and internet users.
The law can be appealed, and I would imagine that this is pretty much underway right now. Although the law states that ISPs must block the illegal content, no suggestion is made of how to do so. It is quite possible that an ISP appealing the law could very easily say they carried out a 1 week feasibility study exceeding the government's efforts, and have found that implementing filtering would put them out of business.
One final point is that the law is effective as of 1 Jan 2000, and subject to a review that could last until 2003. Combined with the fact that it bans material that is legitimately available through other sources (video and print for example), it is more than likely to be trashed in the near future.
Check out http://www.efa.org.au/Campaigns/may28/ and http://www.bofh.net.au/~gimila/poster.jpg for details on the rallys.
Typically, Australia is mirroring USA quite horribly, with a moral minority running the country and forcing us to live to their ideals. And this is supposed to be a democracy.
What a crock.
Hmmm, indeedy. There is no way they could cope.
I sense the groundroots of a campaign here. It would be nice also if the ISP's could realise what thsi means to them and call for a one day net strike (hell, even 1 hour would be bad enough).
Actually, I wonder. What effect would a one day net strike have with our increased reliance on the internet? Anyway, I digress - some of you Aussie folks need to get a campaign to have as many sites submitted to the Film Board as possible. Creative protest has always been the most effective way of ridding dumb laws like this.
A little planning goes a long way...
This is interesting coming from a country who is notorious for the sexual content of their television broadcasting (unless this has changed recently without my knowledge)
This is a really bad decision for democracy in Australia. It all starts with censorship, then violation of human rights follows, etc, etc. In the 30th nazi started with burning books they didn't agree with, everyone knows what came after that. I hope that enough people will protest this law and have it overturned. And I hope no other country follows Australian example.
You honestly think a shotgun ensures your freedom?? Modern weaponry, tactics and training have made an untrained citizen with a gun obsolete in a revolution. But that's beside the point. Modern power-wielders know that their best weapons are information and disinformation.
Most people who want to ban guns look at other democracies like Canada, England, Australia and see that they're very similar -- just with far fewer murders and violent deaths by gunfire.
I want the list of banned sites.
It would be interesting to see what
scares them.
Maybe have a contest to create sites that
would offend the "film board".
Make a cool logo saying this site banned
in Australia.
Well under existing rules for classification of video content something like Jennicam would be classified at the 'highest possible classification' for possible content.. So it is possible that she will be naked at any time, therefore it will get a rating that reflects that 'possibility'. So Jennicam would definately be a 'prohibited' site. Bye bye slashdot.
-Brad
Continuing with questions, I'd like to know if there are any international organizations working to prevent this sort of thing? My instinct is that the people writing the laws have little to no idea what it is they are trying to control.
I do know that there were people trying to prevent this Australian bill from happening, and now I'm wondering if there could have been more done to help before this came to pass. And if we can prevent this from happening elsewhere.
*sigh* it seems govt everywhere is stupid..
Did they even consider how easy it is to, say, show one set of pages to *.gov.au, and another to everyone else?
Or have SSL proxies in other nations? Running on port 25/21/20/anything else innocuous?
Or will they restrict all net access to HTTP, and ban SSL? Incredibly stupid idea, but scary - given the pols have just proven themselves prone to being stupid.
How does that quote go? "The Internet treats censorship as damage, and routes around it." Even though we (or at least I) don't have all the details about the nature of the censorship, it is obvious that there will be legitimate sites that are blocked. And people who want to get around the censorship can easily do so. Such is the nature of online censorship. (Maybe the net effect is to make visiting a 'naughty site' a crime? Who knows.)
What is interesting is that a modern western nation of a significant size is doing this. It looks like it is going to be the experiment for the rest of the governments in the western world to witness. Here's hoping for miserable failure.
this is one for all you -1 cruisers out there
but it is argued in some places (fundy xians amongst others) that the books the nazi's burnt in the first instance were from a sexuality clinic that many homosexual members of the elite went to.
it is argued that it was an instance of self preservation . . .
This is going to have a few minor repercussions, but I predict it'll turn out a lot like American Prohibition - interesting idea, but almost impossible to implement, and even harder to justify.
I've been living in Australia for 19 years and not once have I called or been called mate, asked to have someone throw a shrip on the barby, or throw a boomerang. Ahh beloved steryotypes.
All English people are on a Red Dwarf sized startship and all Americans are yellow and animated.
It's turtles all the way down.
There is such thing as a revolution not using guns, it's called, voting for the other party at the next election.
Yes, we banned semi and automatic guns after a very bad gun masacre, and since semi automatics should have no place in hunting or protection, ban them.
On the other hand, I want my damn net porn!
It's turtles all the way down.
I hate to have to admit it, but my country sucks - big time!!!
We have an idiot for a prime minister who thinks that he has a "mandate from the people" for a GST purely because he got re-elected by our stupid preferential voting system, by people who thought they were voting for indepents, when in fact most of those votes were going to one of the two major political parties. This fool now has assisted in supporting this Draconian legislation in order to gain favour with some unreasonable moral crusader whose cause it was to try to force his view of moral standards on us, simply to garner his support for the GST - which backfired because Mr Morality told him in not so many words to shove the GST up his backside.
These are the same kneejerk idiots who took away all the rights of the people to bear arms, not just for self protection, but genuine sporting purposes too. I used to do a bit of hunting now and again, but these bastards took that away from me, now they are taking away my right to see the Internet through my own eyes, not just what they want me to see, I'm sorry - but that's not good enough!
They are real heroes when it comes to bullying the average man in the street, but look how spineless they are in the world stage, they fully intend to let 2 aussies fry in Belgrade, bloody aid workers for goodness sake, on some trumped up charge of spying for the US government. We might have a fairly weak defence budget - but I would spend a couple of bucks on a bomb or two to drop on those yugo pricks for this!
And on that subject, this is the same government who is doing nothing about the filthy kosovar refugee that tried to rape a bloody aussie girl who was doing volunteer work with the refugees *we* are sheltering, feeding and clothing. That sucks, something should be done, send that filthy prick back, the others may be ok, but that mongrel doesn't deserve to be here.
Australia sucks, I fully intend to get the hell out of here ASAP, time to start looking for that elusive greencard I suspect.
Yanks warning yanks concerning this type of nonsense, you dolt.
There's no such thing as separate culture anymore, if ever. News flies faster than we can handle it.
Politians do their best to use every crumb of information to get their way.
Or have you forgotten the fact that your upright govt banned Phantasmagoria when in fact they never played the game to see what it's about(this was admitted). Had they played the game they would have seen the option to turn of the violent cut-scenes.
The ship sank. Get over it. (This sig was cut out from another's shirt and painstakingly hand-posted)
That's is all.
The ship sank. Get over it. (This sig was cut out from another's shirt and painstakingly hand-posted)
The bill only regulates the "web" and usenet content. Email and other such services are unaffected. I posted a link to it a few posts
below.
RB
Here (I think) is the amendment that enables the .au govt to regulate the internet. Here is an ~summary~ of it. I don't have the time now to fully disseminate it or learn the ramifications of it but I will try later when I do have the time. Glancing through the summary, here is what I my take on it:
.au domain (As in where the .au govt has control).
-Purpose of the amendments to the Broadcast Services act is to enable regulation and control of the internet as it pertains to the
Amendment 5:
The first component of the proposed scheme is proposed Schedule 5 to the BSA contained in the Bill as proposed to be amended. Under this component, the Commonwealth will be responsible for regulating Internet content service providers and Internet content hosts. This component does not impose any obligations on producers of content on the Internet or persons who upload or access such content.
-It aims to go after the HOSTS of the content, rather than the PRODUCERS (I think that is totally wrong) or consumers.
The next line of the summary causes a mindpuck
The second component of the proposed scheme is proposed uniform State and Territory laws that will create offences for the publication and transmission of proscribed material by producers of content on the Internet or persons who upload or access such content. It is intended under the national scheme that the States and Territories will be primarily responsible for regulating the activities of persons who create, upload or access content.
-Does this mean they say the govt goes after the hosts while the local and "state" go after everybody else?
I will try to do a little more digging on this.
Enjoy
RB
I just hope it gets struck down or repealed. Otherwise I could easily see it getting used as a model for regulations in other countries. I can just hear it now: "It works in Austrailia..."
...from a father of 2, who doesn't *want* anyone removing his children's freedom in the name of "protecting" them.
Can't we Slashdotters talk about anything without bringing gun control into it?
I mean, what's next? Comparing the Aussie parliament to Hitler?
(oops...)
--
Heaven forbid that parents should monitor thier kids activities and rasie them the way they think is appropreate... It is far better that the more *enlightned* and *wise* government should do it for them.
After checking out all the other responses, I had a silly idea. We (Netizens) could provide mirrors and suchlike for the Aussie ISP's and stuff, but we could also erect a myriad of "offensive" sites to keep the film board swamped, and then shut those sites down as soon as they were banned.
Censorship is not automatically and always wrong. If you think so, please enumerate how many issues of "Hustler" magazine you've given to your children.
Parental control of net access, or of other objectionable material, is perfectly acceptable. Until a certain age, kids don't have the mental skills perfected to handle these things. Plus, they don't have the world experience to put these things in perspective. It is also in keeping with "what plays in Peoria"--those people who find things offensive have the right to not view those offensive things.
However, the straw man argument here is kinda lame. I can be against censorship (for those over the age of consent) without handing about porno mags. That's not the opposite of censorship; that's active distribition. If one of my kids found a porno mag, well, then it's incumbent upon me as a parent to make sure the child understands exactly what why where and how those things may be objectionable.
I think it's pretty damn funny that they'll be using the Australian film board to review the content of these web sites. Just think if Jack Valenti was in charge of rating /.
Of course, I'd like to know how a web site will be nominated for review, and exactly how much time the censo--I mean, film board will have to make their decision. If they're planning on reviewing the entire Web, they'd better get started now. And the manpower requirements would pretty much deplete the entire Australian legislature, including aides, security guards, secretaries and janitors.
"Jammer" complaints to the censorship board ought to slow them down a bit. In addition, I propose the following bit of Simon Jestering:
1. Find some sites with moderately entertaining material -- just enough that a neurotic with sexual hangups might be offended, but normal people would not. Use the typical sex-appeal advertisements in your area as a baseline of what to look for.
2. Send letters to the idiot senators responsible for this travesty, publications inclined to support censorship ("Do it to Julia!"), etc. Provide URLs of the "offensive" material as "evidence" of the need to Protect The Children[tm], but be vague about just exactly what is so dreadful.
3. Those people who actually investigate the "evidence" will be left with the impression that advocates of this law need to, in the immortal words of William Shatner, "Get A Life!"
4. (Optional) Explain that the whole thing was meant satirically. This avoids embarrassment if you had to put your name on the bogus "complaints" to get them published.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
of our own bodies - for some reason, for some people, seeing the human body - whether it be naked or chopped up, dead or alive - makes them think it is wrong, and no one should see such things.
Personally, I don't have a problem seeing any human body in any form. I can't say I have personally observed a dead, chopped up person "in the flesh" (and therefore, I may have a different reaction toward such a situation), but I know nakedness doesn't offend me, and sex (between consenting individuals) doesn't offend me either.
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
www.hideme.com supposedly does some sort of thing that loads a page through their server, at least it used to. I don't think it works right anymore.
try idzaip.com
I dont know if this IS a good idea or not, but...
why dont we all gather up and setup an alternative DNS server or something that all australians can connect to ??
would that help?
" Microsoft Integration = Inbread software! " SpIcEz
The only way to filter that kind of thing effectively is to filter all sites except those that are acceptable. And I am also reminded of the x-ray crystalographer who was unable to peruse professional sites becuase "x-ra" was enough to trip the [company|university] firewalls (appeared in the "Feedback" column of New Scientist in the last year).
I am amazed. I thought this sort of thing would always happen in the USA, not here.
Antti
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
How ironic, over the past two or so years, it's been "This `Y2K will be all hell!' is so much BS" -- how wrong Australians probably think we were. The perfect Y2K problem.
... that, once this all turns out to be unworkable by normal means (and it will!), Aussie ISPs and/or the government don't decide, say, to just install CyberSITTER and be done with it.
Especially not that particular program. Of course, just before the filters go up, everyone could go access PeaceFire first, which apparently breaks their software. *smirk*
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
Unless I'm horribly mistaken, doesn't Australia have all sorts of TV shows involving nudity? I remember watching some series on HBO a while ago with clips from game shows all around the world. The contestants on this particular .au show were all naked!
So, does the film commission not govern TV shows? If it does, then nudity must be acceptable, no? If nudity is ok, certainly websites that contain images of nudity should also be considered decent/acceptable in the same manner that the TV shows are.
Australians!!! Your government has gone against you...it is time to topple it and create a new one! Oh wait, you're not allowed to have guns, aren't you?
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
As a oz resident - i can tell you a bit aboutAustralian legal system. We are a parliamentary democracy based on the Westminster style of govt. We have a constitution but all that basically does is carve up responsibility for 'everything' between the Federal govt. and the States (6 of + 2 Territories). We dont have a 'bill of rights' as such, nothing that really comes close to it either.
This bill has basically been rammed home by two politicians, the two that control the balance of power in the senate (upper house), one of these two recently brought the proposed Goods & services tax to its knees (we are all waiting to see if it gets up or finally dies or what...
It will be interseting to see how it goes...
So, the upshot is that Aussie ISP's are going to get penalized for failing to do the impossible.
If I were an Aussie, and this rule were in effect, then I'd just buy an account from an ISP in a free country, and run an encrypted tunnel through my Aussie ISP.
Fucking Jackbooted Thugs. I'd thought that the USA was pretty bad with that asinine CDA idea, but this is just stupid.
-jcr
Anyone got an e-mail address for any of the dipshit MP's who voted for this turd?
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Kill the little bible-thumping pig-fucker. You can find out how on any number of web sites, or just by joining the army and having your sargeant explain what a trigger and a safety are.
The man is an enemy of liberty. Kill him now, and don't wait for him to burn the Reichstag.
Hell, be ironic about it: Nail him up to a cross and let him die of asphyxiation.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Hrm.. this reminds me of a certain Orwellian novel. (-; I've heard that there is only a 100M landline (~=100 T1's?) going into Australia, and other providers rely on sattelite service. I'm sure that if the ISPs are not willing to comply, the landline can be censored, but how could sattelite reception be monitored? Much more difficult. I forsee an onslought of All-Porn ISPs. Much more hardcore than the average Australian porn-viewer sees today.
Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." Impart information through any media regardless of frontiers.
And I thought the CRTC was going overboard... (-;
What if Australians started complaining about every web site that's even marginal?
:-)
:)
It's a great thought, but the Australian Broadcasting Authority can refuse submissions of an obviously frivolous nature. I'd thought of submitting the Yellow Pages for containing "escort services" (which are obviously unsuitable for kiddies) but it's probably not worth it.
Now, if they'd decide that any site which uses popup windows is "offensive", I might be able to support the law...
I don't think you'd be the only one there.
In this age of Information, our government proposes to sever our information sources... Considering that Interent Providers are pretty much the fastest growing industry on the planet, the government sure has chosen the worst bunch of people to "piss off" .. In truth IT professionals hold every country together, If every IT professional in Australia decided to go on strike for a week, the whole country would grind to a halt. Something of which should be proposed...
One of the scariest things is that nearly 50% of australia's population is the aged folk/pensioners. This is why we have to deal with so many conservative Politicians... The IT industry needs representation, we need people to take office as Politicians instead of Technical Support Officers... We need to have some technological Political power.
High Encryption which has been already banned, is a good medium to bring into play. If everyone started encrypting their data, filters would fail to find anything...
Act Now or forever be silenced... Back-up a hack site today...
The call to the world's hackers has already been made, and as soon as the House of Reps pass the bill, the Australian Governmental servers will begin to be assaulted.