Australia to censor AppStore etc.? | Hacker News Reader

Australia to censor AppStore etc.?

zdnet.com.au

9 pointsastrec7 comments

There has been a lot of censorship lately in Australia, I wouldn't be surprised if they do this too.

Disclaimer: I'm from Italy and my country is not that better.

Although that may appear to be the case, the reality is that censorship has remain unchanged in Australia for a quite a long time.

If you're referring to video game censorship, that's not a recent problem, but something that's existed for a couple of decades now.

If you're talking about the internet filter, that's just the pet project of the Minister for Communications. He has yet to receive the support of the Government to introduce the legislation into parliament, so it'll be interesting to see what happens over the next six months or so (if he manages to introduce legislation into parliament, and if he does, how the opposing parties will react).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_australi... reports that the Government has been supporting and implementing degrees of Internet censorship for some time now. While the latest effort by Conroy has yet to get Government support it is hard to imagine the opposition Liberal Party (the conservative party - they have attempted to introduce the same thing in the past) opposing it.

>it is hard to imagine the opposition Liberal Party ... opposing it.

My understanding is that they opposed ISP level filtering while in government.

Here are some comments made by Senior Opposition Frontbencher Joe Hockey a few days ago:

“What we have in the government’s Internet filtering proposals is a scheme that is likely to be unworkable in practice. But more perniciously it is a scheme that will create the infrastructure for government censorship on a broader scale,” said Hockey in a wide-ranging speech on freedom to the Grattan Institute last night.

Hockey said that “of course” people wanted to stop unlawful material being viewed on the internet, and that there were appropriate protections that are in place for that. “But I have personal responsibility as a parent,” he added. “If I want to stop my children from viewing other material that I feel is inappropriate then that is my responsibility to do something about it – not that of the government.”

“Protecting liberty is about protecting freedoms against both known and future threats. Some may argue that we can surely trust a democratically-elected government in Australia to never try to introduce more wide-spread censorship. I am not so sure!”

http://www.itwire.com/it-industry-news/strategy/37527-hockey...

Nick Minchin, the former Opposition Communications Minister, was also strongly against the Internet filter. Here's an opinion piece he wrote for the SMH.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/big-brother-filter-plan-i...

    My understanding is that they opposed ISP level
    filtering while in government.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Coonan#Internet_Filtering

That government had some crazy ideas in the late 90s, but between 2000 and loss of government in 2007 they encouraged parental supervision through opt-in filtering software, and opposed ISP-level filtering.

    Nick Minchin, the former Opposition Communications Minister

Minchin wasn't communications minister in government, but became shadow communications minister in opposition. This doesn't detract from the link you sent.

I see your point but Minchin has retired and the opposition that the Libs have isn't ideological - it's largely "it won't work". My concern is that their opposition is simply because "we have to oppose them".

Hockey's comments are refreshing but my experience is that he plays populist/party-line politics so it has little bearing on how he would actually vote at the time.

I guess the upcoming election will probably decide how this plays down anyway.

If it weren't for the fact that virtually all apps are available from (and only from) a single centralized location, you'd think that actually doing this would be non-trivial.

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