Note that 12 Mbps is considered to be the absolute minimum for the other disastrous policy our embattled Senator Conroy is implementing (the National Broadband Network).
Even if that 12 Mbps is per user, under their own guidelines, it's practically obsolete already.
People actually did this in Finland, and managed to find all the content on the blacklist. They also showed that only about 1% of the blacklist was actually illegal.
A university researcher also reverse-engineered the British filter. Because greylisted (sites subject to further review - e.g. all of wikipedia for the blacklisted album cover) sites are run through a proxy, you can check thousands of sites every second by checking whether or not the reply is coming from the proxy or the website.
Presto - free list of child porn (assuming the filters are accurate).
As a taxpayer, you're not one of the "a lot people on both sides of the law". Doesn't mean they don't exist, or that they don't have an enormous vested interest in keeping drugs illegal.
Think of it like the broken window fallacy. It's a fallacy that smashing a shopkeeper's window is doing a good thing for the economy, but it's not a fallacy to suggest that there are some people who would benefit from smashing the window.
Labor last year defeated a long-serving right-wing socially-conservative member of the Liberal party (just to confuse things further - the Liberals are the traditionally right-wing party in Australia), after the public was really starting to turn on the government at the time.
The did this by... nominating a right-wing socially conservative member of the Labor party. He even looks close enough to our old PM to be convincing. Australians aren't generally comfortable with too much change at once.
The strange thing is that the Liberals are learning from their mistakes - almost all of the cabinet members in the previous government have retreated to the backbench, and the party is trying to reinvent itself, but their far-right policies continue with the Labor party cloning the previous government.
You'll be put on it by default, and if you want to access something that has been deemed inappropriate for children, you'll have to ring your ISP to change from the default filter.
Don't quote me on this, but as far as I'm aware, only iiNet and Optus are participating.
I wouldn't be in a rush to leave if you're with them, though. The head of iiNet said that Conroy was the worst Comms. minister in the 15 years the internet industry has existed, and is only participating because it's the only way to show the government how stupid it is.
If we don't show them how stupid it is, showing them exactly what sites are blocked by mistake, how much it will slow the internet, how easy it is to break, how much porn will get through anyway, etc... we'll be stuck with it. Labor isn't backing down, so the only option left is making sure the filter goes down in flames so spectacularly that no-one will even dare touch the issue again in the near future.
They made the election promise without investigating whether or not it was possible. So the only result they will accept is one that confirms their beliefs.
Well actually, the election promise was to "provide" filtering, but not "mandate" it, but a censor-happy government with the need to satisfy fundamentalist third-parties wasn't going to stop there once the technology exists.
They did some preliminary testing back in June - the results showed an average speed reduction of 30% between filters (5/6 were over 20% - one was 87%), overblocking was between 2% and 8% of the internet, underblocking was usually around 10%, p2p wasn't addressed, and every filter was trivial to break.
These trials were hailed as an overwhelming success by the government because they were a slight improvement on even more woeful tests a few years ago... hence the live trials.
No matter what the results are, they will be a "success".
Unfortunately that couldn't be further from the truth.
First of all, the filter's scope is definitely beyond illegal material. See here for a legal explanation of the terms - most RC and prohibited content is actually perfectly legal to possess.
Secondly, the minister has actually confirmed that sites such as pro-euthanasia websites will be banned. Drug use is also enough to get material put on the list. We're consistently told that the worst material on the list is child pornography, but that's beside the point - we need to know what the least harmful material on the blacklist is to make an informed decision. But we won't - the list is a government secret, and you will be jailed for revealing it.
And these "lobby groups" trying to add whatever the fuck they want to the filter? They hold the balance of power in the senate... in fact it seems that a major motivation behind the Government's plan is to buy their votes. Those lobby groups want all pornography banned outright, others want gambling websites blocked. The filter will in no way stop at "illegal" material.
MPAA ratings are purely voluntary, though. In Australia, the Classifications are legally enforced.
And the Australian Classifications are pretty draconian - if a video game is unsuitable for children it's banned outright (GTA, Fallout 3, F.E.A.R. 2, Silent Hill, Singles: Flirt Up Your Life, Manhunt have all been banned in Australia). Every state in Australia has all X-rated material on the RC list. Even fairly tame Penthouse-level material is banned if they don't verify the user's age using a credit card or other equivalent.
Until now, though, it's been impossible to enforce for overseas websites.
If we were part of the EU, what makes you think we wouldn't get the worst of both worlds?
An Aussie was arrested and jailed in London recently on a German warrant for denying the holocaust. I'm not too comfortable exposing ourselves to those laws whilst having a secretive internet blacklist.
I think it's worse than that, most information these days is transferred over the internet.
It would be the same as prohibiting someone who made a bomb threat from ever possessing a phone or a pen again. Freedom of expression is not something that should be so trivially and easily revoked.
Well sort of... Labor + Greens are still a minority, so the opposition can sink any legislation with either Family First or Xenephon.
Sure, the Greens oppose this legislation, but it's more about getting support for future legislation. Although Conroy is hungry for censorship, most of the Labor party is going along for the ride because they don't see it as a very big deal.
The simple answer is that it isn't about kiddie porn, it's just the rhetoric that is about kiddie porn. There's actually very little kiddie porn out there floating around on HTTP (just about the only thing that the filter will block), because no-one is stupid enough to host it when it's highly illegal pretty much everywhere. Really, if they wanted to actually remove the kiddie porn, they'd cut it off at the source - the only way that it is even possible to do. Instead, we have to wait for the content to be classified, then listed on an updated blacklist, then we have to wait for the updated blacklist to filter through to all the ISPs in the country.
It's a complex situation, but there are a few points:
The balance of power in the Australian Senate is held by a Senator from a party called "Family First". That party pioneered the concept of mandatory filtering of internet pornography, and the current government needs this one Senator's support in the Senate to get any legislation through. So it definitely wants to be on friendly terms with said Senator.
Originally it was going to be a filter at the ISP level that every ISP had to offer, but that adults could opt out of. Unfortunately the idiot in charge of telecommunications in Australia decided that the technology could also be used to ban "unwanted" content (his words) for everyone. He's confirmed that unwanted content would include topics such as euthanasia, and other politicians have been pushing for gambling and anorexia websites to be added to the mandatory filter.
The severe technological obstacles that would be obvious to over 99% of the posters here at slashdot are being repeatedly ignored, and opponents are being accused of peddling child pornography (I wish I was joking, this is literally what the minister is saying to his opponents). Never before have I seen a minister and his industry have such a fundamental contempt for one another.
I'm with iiNet and I fully support Malone's plan to continue with the trial. Reading his comments, it's perfectly clear that he is opposed to the filter and that he doesn't think Senator Conroy is playing with a full deck. The internet industry has been telling him all year that his plan will never work, and he continues to ignore and harass them. The only way to bury the plan once and for all is to get it out in the open and let the spectacular failure of the filter be visible to all.
At the moment, 90% of the politicians don't understand the issue (clearly including Senator Conroy), 90% of the public hasn't heard of it, and the Labor party just keeps parroting the same bullshit about protecting children whenever someone objects to the filter on technical or censorship grounds. Nevermind the fact that even if the filter is a perfect list of kiddy-porn websites, when it leaks, they've just provided the most comprehensive list of such websites to the entire online community.
When the test goes live, I'll opt-in to the kiddy filter and complain when I still see some naughty bits. I'll find the sites that have been accidentally blocked (there is no doubt that there will be some, the government's own tests showed that between 2% and 8% of the internet will be accidentally blocked), and complain when I can't reach them. I'll complain when the ~30% speed penalty hits. I'll find every flaw that everyone in the industry is predicting, and complain at every step.
The government is conducting a test, and we need to let them know it failed by demonstrating the failure ourselves. If the only people participating in the test are people naive enough to want ISP-level filtering to begin with, the problems won't be revealed and Conroy gets his pet censorship project through.
We're getting a bit off-topic here, but the Greens have had a social conscience for quite some time. Part of the reason the Democrats imploded was because they tried to pass themselves off as a left-wing clone of the Greens instead of the watchdog party they were traditionally known as. Of course, after getting into bed with the government (as you say), their role as a watchdog wasn't taken too seriously to begin with.
There's a fairly good chance that this will be scrapped, but I wouldn't be too comfortable.
On whirlpool (www.whirlpool.net.au, a broadband discussion forum in Australia), people have been posting the canned responses they've been receiving from politicians after writing to them.
The Greens seem to have a lukewarm opposition to the plan (I received a letter from Bob Brown's office implying that they would go for it if a full opt-out was available... better than what they have now, but still an idiotic plan), and the Liberals are taking a "wait and see" approach, i.e. if it is technically possible, they'll go for it. Remember, it was the Liberals that tried to get filters in first, they just dropped the idea when they realised it wouldn't work. Although everyone in the industry, and I assume almost everyone here on slashdot, knows it will fail, if Labor can spin any of the trials as a victory, there's a remote chance it will stick if we don't make our opposition known.
It's a touchy issue for Labor, and I wouldn't be surprised if they're looking for an excuse to drop it. For those who aren't intimately aware of Australian politics, our current government is in a minority position in the Senate - to pass legislation, they need the support of the main opposition party (the Liberal/National coalition), or ALL of the minor party senators. This includes the Greens, but more importantly "Family First", a fundamentalist Christian party who have been the strongest advocates for a filter, and who want to use the filter to ban pornography outright. So to get legislation through the Senate, the government needs to bribe Family First, and they're doing that with this filter. If it doesn't look like Labor is trying to ban pornography, they'll be blocked in the Senate for the next three years.
Senator the Hon. Stephen Conroy Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy Suite 1B, 494 High Street Epping Vic 3076
I'm not normally one to write to politicians on issues, but I did so for the first time regarding the filter because of the grave privacy and censorship implications. I encourage everyone else in Australia to do the same.
It's potentially worse than this - one of the state health departments in Australia (Queensland health) recently had to modify it's filters because anatomical and gynecological material could not be accessed by medical students or doctors.
We know there is going to be an enormous problem with overblocking (between 2% and 8% from government tests), but exactly what will end up as collateral damage remains to be seen. It's reasonable to assume that the average person will have access to medical advice impeded, at the very least.
I'm not sure why you think we're immune from this stupidity in Australia, or why Labor would be any better in this regard. Australia's censorship laws are some of the worst in the Western world.
For one thing, "reminding people that voter fraud is a felony" doesn't even come close to describing what the "Ballot Security Task Force" did. After investigations into their conduct, the GOP had to promise such conduct would not occur again.
I was referring more to this, though:
In 2006, voters in Virginia reportedly received fake voicemail messages from the state elections commission claiming that the voters were registered in another state and could be criminally charged if they cast their vote in Virginia.
If there is any sort of verification at the polls, making an error about which state you can vote in will be picked up and you won't be able to vote. This doesn't even remotely qualify as voter fraud, and lying about someone's registration status and threatening them with arrest and criminal charges is undoubtedly intimidation.
IC production facilities are expensive to build and maintain. Unless they can be kept at nearly full utilization, they will become a drain on the finances of the company that owns them. The foundry model uses two methods to avoid these costs: Fabless companies avoid costs by not owning such facilities. Merchant foundries, on the other hand, find work from the worldwide pool of fabless companies, and by careful scheduling, pricing, and contracting keep their plants at full utilization.
Slashdot Mirror
Note that 12 Mbps is considered to be the absolute minimum for the other disastrous policy our embattled Senator Conroy is implementing (the National Broadband Network).
Even if that 12 Mbps is per user, under their own guidelines, it's practically obsolete already.
People actually did this in Finland, and managed to find all the content on the blacklist. They also showed that only about 1% of the blacklist was actually illegal.
A university researcher also reverse-engineered the British filter. Because greylisted (sites subject to further review - e.g. all of wikipedia for the blacklisted album cover) sites are run through a proxy, you can check thousands of sites every second by checking whether or not the reply is coming from the proxy or the website.
Presto - free list of child porn (assuming the filters are accurate).
As a taxpayer, you're not one of the "a lot people on both sides of the law". Doesn't mean they don't exist, or that they don't have an enormous vested interest in keeping drugs illegal.
Think of it like the broken window fallacy. It's a fallacy that smashing a shopkeeper's window is doing a good thing for the economy, but it's not a fallacy to suggest that there are some people who would benefit from smashing the window.
It's a really bizarre situation, I must admit.
Labor last year defeated a long-serving right-wing socially-conservative member of the Liberal party (just to confuse things further - the Liberals are the traditionally right-wing party in Australia), after the public was really starting to turn on the government at the time.
The did this by... nominating a right-wing socially conservative member of the Labor party. He even looks close enough to our old PM to be convincing. Australians aren't generally comfortable with too much change at once.
The strange thing is that the Liberals are learning from their mistakes - almost all of the cabinet members in the previous government have retreated to the backbench, and the party is trying to reinvent itself, but their far-right policies continue with the Labor party cloning the previous government.
Yeah, it might vary between states, but it's definitely legal.
In fact there was even a brothel on the stock exchange a few years ago, but I don't think it's still listed.
Close - the clean feed will be opt-out.
You'll be put on it by default, and if you want to access something that has been deemed inappropriate for children, you'll have to ring your ISP to change from the default filter.
Don't quote me on this, but as far as I'm aware, only iiNet and Optus are participating.
I wouldn't be in a rush to leave if you're with them, though. The head of iiNet said that Conroy was the worst Comms. minister in the 15 years the internet industry has existed, and is only participating because it's the only way to show the government how stupid it is.
If we don't show them how stupid it is, showing them exactly what sites are blocked by mistake, how much it will slow the internet, how easy it is to break, how much porn will get through anyway, etc... we'll be stuck with it. Labor isn't backing down, so the only option left is making sure the filter goes down in flames so spectacularly that no-one will even dare touch the issue again in the near future.
They made the election promise without investigating whether or not it was possible. So the only result they will accept is one that confirms their beliefs.
Well actually, the election promise was to "provide" filtering, but not "mandate" it, but a censor-happy government with the need to satisfy fundamentalist third-parties wasn't going to stop there once the technology exists.
They did some preliminary testing back in June - the results showed an average speed reduction of 30% between filters (5/6 were over 20% - one was 87%), overblocking was between 2% and 8% of the internet, underblocking was usually around 10%, p2p wasn't addressed, and every filter was trivial to break.
These trials were hailed as an overwhelming success by the government because they were a slight improvement on even more woeful tests a few years ago... hence the live trials.
No matter what the results are, they will be a "success".
Unfortunately that couldn't be further from the truth.
First of all, the filter's scope is definitely beyond illegal material. See here for a legal explanation of the terms - most RC and prohibited content is actually perfectly legal to possess.
Secondly, the minister has actually confirmed that sites such as pro-euthanasia websites will be banned. Drug use is also enough to get material put on the list. We're consistently told that the worst material on the list is child pornography, but that's beside the point - we need to know what the least harmful material on the blacklist is to make an informed decision. But we won't - the list is a government secret, and you will be jailed for revealing it.
And these "lobby groups" trying to add whatever the fuck they want to the filter? They hold the balance of power in the senate... in fact it seems that a major motivation behind the Government's plan is to buy their votes. Those lobby groups want all pornography banned outright, others want gambling websites blocked. The filter will in no way stop at "illegal" material.
MPAA ratings are purely voluntary, though. In Australia, the Classifications are legally enforced.
And the Australian Classifications are pretty draconian - if a video game is unsuitable for children it's banned outright (GTA, Fallout 3, F.E.A.R. 2, Silent Hill, Singles: Flirt Up Your Life, Manhunt have all been banned in Australia). Every state in Australia has all X-rated material on the RC list. Even fairly tame Penthouse-level material is banned if they don't verify the user's age using a credit card or other equivalent.
Until now, though, it's been impossible to enforce for overseas websites.
If we were part of the EU, what makes you think we wouldn't get the worst of both worlds?
An Aussie was arrested and jailed in London recently on a German warrant for denying the holocaust. I'm not too comfortable exposing ourselves to those laws whilst having a secretive internet blacklist.
I think it's worse than that, most information these days is transferred over the internet.
It would be the same as prohibiting someone who made a bomb threat from ever possessing a phone or a pen again. Freedom of expression is not something that should be so trivially and easily revoked.
Touche.
Well sort of... Labor + Greens are still a minority, so the opposition can sink any legislation with either Family First or Xenephon.
Sure, the Greens oppose this legislation, but it's more about getting support for future legislation. Although Conroy is hungry for censorship, most of the Labor party is going along for the ride because they don't see it as a very big deal.
The simple answer is that it isn't about kiddie porn, it's just the rhetoric that is about kiddie porn. There's actually very little kiddie porn out there floating around on HTTP (just about the only thing that the filter will block), because no-one is stupid enough to host it when it's highly illegal pretty much everywhere. Really, if they wanted to actually remove the kiddie porn, they'd cut it off at the source - the only way that it is even possible to do. Instead, we have to wait for the content to be classified, then listed on an updated blacklist, then we have to wait for the updated blacklist to filter through to all the ISPs in the country.
It's a complex situation, but there are a few points:
The balance of power in the Australian Senate is held by a Senator from a party called "Family First". That party pioneered the concept of mandatory filtering of internet pornography, and the current government needs this one Senator's support in the Senate to get any legislation through. So it definitely wants to be on friendly terms with said Senator.
Originally it was going to be a filter at the ISP level that every ISP had to offer, but that adults could opt out of. Unfortunately the idiot in charge of telecommunications in Australia decided that the technology could also be used to ban "unwanted" content (his words) for everyone. He's confirmed that unwanted content would include topics such as euthanasia, and other politicians have been pushing for gambling and anorexia websites to be added to the mandatory filter.
The severe technological obstacles that would be obvious to over 99% of the posters here at slashdot are being repeatedly ignored, and opponents are being accused of peddling child pornography (I wish I was joking, this is literally what the minister is saying to his opponents). Never before have I seen a minister and his industry have such a fundamental contempt for one another.
I'm with iiNet and I fully support Malone's plan to continue with the trial. Reading his comments, it's perfectly clear that he is opposed to the filter and that he doesn't think Senator Conroy is playing with a full deck. The internet industry has been telling him all year that his plan will never work, and he continues to ignore and harass them. The only way to bury the plan once and for all is to get it out in the open and let the spectacular failure of the filter be visible to all.
At the moment, 90% of the politicians don't understand the issue (clearly including Senator Conroy), 90% of the public hasn't heard of it, and the Labor party just keeps parroting the same bullshit about protecting children whenever someone objects to the filter on technical or censorship grounds. Nevermind the fact that even if the filter is a perfect list of kiddy-porn websites, when it leaks, they've just provided the most comprehensive list of such websites to the entire online community.
When the test goes live, I'll opt-in to the kiddy filter and complain when I still see some naughty bits. I'll find the sites that have been accidentally blocked (there is no doubt that there will be some, the government's own tests showed that between 2% and 8% of the internet will be accidentally blocked), and complain when I can't reach them. I'll complain when the ~30% speed penalty hits. I'll find every flaw that everyone in the industry is predicting, and complain at every step.
The government is conducting a test, and we need to let them know it failed by demonstrating the failure ourselves. If the only people participating in the test are people naive enough to want ISP-level filtering to begin with, the problems won't be revealed and Conroy gets his pet censorship project through.
We're getting a bit off-topic here, but the Greens have had a social conscience for quite some time. Part of the reason the Democrats imploded was because they tried to pass themselves off as a left-wing clone of the Greens instead of the watchdog party they were traditionally known as. Of course, after getting into bed with the government (as you say), their role as a watchdog wasn't taken too seriously to begin with.
There's a fairly good chance that this will be scrapped, but I wouldn't be too comfortable.
On whirlpool (www.whirlpool.net.au, a broadband discussion forum in Australia), people have been posting the canned responses they've been receiving from politicians after writing to them.
The Greens seem to have a lukewarm opposition to the plan (I received a letter from Bob Brown's office implying that they would go for it if a full opt-out was available... better than what they have now, but still an idiotic plan), and the Liberals are taking a "wait and see" approach, i.e. if it is technically possible, they'll go for it. Remember, it was the Liberals that tried to get filters in first, they just dropped the idea when they realised it wouldn't work. Although everyone in the industry, and I assume almost everyone here on slashdot, knows it will fail, if Labor can spin any of the trials as a victory, there's a remote chance it will stick if we don't make our opposition known.
It's a touchy issue for Labor, and I wouldn't be surprised if they're looking for an excuse to drop it. For those who aren't intimately aware of Australian politics, our current government is in a minority position in the Senate - to pass legislation, they need the support of the main opposition party (the Liberal/National coalition), or ALL of the minor party senators. This includes the Greens, but more importantly "Family First", a fundamentalist Christian party who have been the strongest advocates for a filter, and who want to use the filter to ban pornography outright. So to get legislation through the Senate, the government needs to bribe Family First, and they're doing that with this filter. If it doesn't look like Labor is trying to ban pornography, they'll be blocked in the Senate for the next three years.
Senator the Hon. Stephen Conroy
Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy
Suite 1B, 494 High Street
Epping Vic 3076
I'm not normally one to write to politicians on issues, but I did so for the first time regarding the filter because of the grave privacy and censorship implications. I encourage everyone else in Australia to do the same.
It's potentially worse than this - one of the state health departments in Australia (Queensland health) recently had to modify it's filters because anatomical and gynecological material could not be accessed by medical students or doctors.
We know there is going to be an enormous problem with overblocking (between 2% and 8% from government tests), but exactly what will end up as collateral damage remains to be seen. It's reasonable to assume that the average person will have access to medical advice impeded, at the very least.
This is very real, and very scary.
http://nocleanfeed.com/
I'm not sure why you think we're immune from this stupidity in Australia, or why Labor would be any better in this regard. Australia's censorship laws are some of the worst in the Western world.
Some may, but don't misinterpret the substantial opposition here to the "War on Drugs" as glorification.
I don't glorify holocaust denial, but people have a right to say, and believe, stupid things.
They also tend not to award prizes so soon after the discoveries (the prize for medicine this year was for discovering HIV almost 30 years ago).
Part of the requirement of receiving a Nobel prize is living long enough after your work to be recognised for it (they are not awarded posthumously).
For one thing, "reminding people that voter fraud is a felony" doesn't even come close to describing what the "Ballot Security Task Force" did. After investigations into their conduct, the GOP had to promise such conduct would not occur again.
I was referring more to this, though:
In 2006, voters in Virginia reportedly received fake voicemail messages from the state elections commission claiming that the voters were registered in another state and could be criminally charged if they cast their vote in Virginia.
If there is any sort of verification at the polls, making an error about which state you can vote in will be picked up and you won't be able to vote. This doesn't even remotely qualify as voter fraud, and lying about someone's registration status and threatening them with arrest and criminal charges is undoubtedly intimidation.
There seems to be some good information here:
IC production facilities are expensive to build and maintain. Unless they can be kept at nearly full utilization, they will become a drain on the finances of the company that owns them. The foundry model uses two methods to avoid these costs: Fabless companies avoid costs by not owning such facilities. Merchant foundries, on the other hand, find work from the worldwide pool of fabless companies, and by careful scheduling, pricing, and contracting keep their plants at full utilization.