The Australian Government has greenlighted compulsory internet filtering
abc.net.au
abc.net.au
As an Aussie, I am disgusted that this is seen as a viable solution for an advanced democracy. It riles me on all sorts of censorship levels, even before it pisses me off as a taxpayer that a system so readily circumvented will be the subject of public spending.
I honestly thought the 'trial' was going to be used to demonstrate what a pathetic and short-minded idea this was, so that it could be quietly swept under the carpet. Instead, I can only assume the trial was always intended to arrive at a foregone conclusion.
Extreme conservatives - who won't ever support the current Labor government - must be delighted. And there will be a whole swathe of middle-class, swing-voting families relieved that their children will be protected, until they discover their 12 year old surfing the net around the filter just to see what sites like donkeyporn.com and ruddisacommunist.org (sites I probably made up) are all about. At that point they'll be wondering why the government couldn't spend $125.8 million over four years on reducing the massive deficit or stimulating jobs.
Edit: The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away - the government has also communicated today that they plan to open discussion for an R Rating on video games - http://www.news.com.au/technology/australians-get-their-say-... I doubt it's a timing coincidence.
From the tv debate held here a while back, it all seems to be based on the ridiculous agrument that we have to try something...anything...for the children's sake.
No, you really don't have to try things we know will fail. That's just pure idiocy.
This seems to be an instance of a type of reasoning known as the Politician's Syllogism:
Premise: Something must be done.
Premise: This is something.
Conclusion: We must do this.Imagine how many child abusing monsters could be brought before the law for that kind of money, instead of just using it to close our eyes and pretending that nothing is happening!
Absurd.
That always amuses me too; because it doesn't protect them at all (do Children really browse CP sites? no, they get caught in MSN or other chat rooms.... are they going to block all them ;))
It might limit the CP being viewed; but I highly doubt that will have an appreciable impact in the # of children abused.
I registered this one-off account to respond to this point: yes, they do. Or rather, I did, so there exists at least one :)
When I was 11, even 18-year-olds tended to look ridiculously alien, anatomically, and were not something I would really consider myself aroused by. Instead, I tried to find porn of girls closer to my age, preferably ones I could fantasize were classmates or somesuch. I was much too introverted to strike up a conversation in a chat room; I just browsed websites until some random server somewhere transmitted the bits I wanted to see.
Totally agree that it won't impact abuse, though—the Australians seem to have never heard of Tor.
the Government will not determine what is blacklisted on the internet in Australia, rather an independent body will determine what sites are rated as RC for refused classification.
This will turn into a convenient way to let lobbyists ("Block the hate speech!" "Block the anticompetitive corporations" and ultimately "Block those who would weaken our country") hide behind a separate entity, giving the politicians a screen to hide behind while continuing to support the overall concept.
will require all ISPs to block material which has been refused classification in other countries
Umm... who is in charge of classifying the content on the Internet? I know of no one doing so (let alone someone who can be trusted by all interested parties). I think this statement is 100% BS.
The report claims no degredation of speed, however it says that about 1 in 30 legitimate sites will be blocked.
When they tested the filters they reported "less than 3.4%" of innocuous URLs were mistakenly blocked. They say this is too high (no kidding!), but that "blocking rates of below 2 percent would be considered low" and thus acceptable.
They also considered performance degradation of 0-10% to be "negligible", and 10-20% to be "minimal". The performance results looked incredibly noisy to me, but they don't report variance or any kind of statistical significance, so I don't think their results mean much.
I'm not adverse to interventions that will keep children safer (although I think their vulnerability is overplayed) but it'd be nice to see useless proposals get shot down at least once in a while.
Yes and no ... just as the filter is ineffective for someone who knows a bit about how stuff works, there always was the 'black market' in the SU where one could find books, movies, music etc. that were not supposed to be available to Soviet people.
Ineffective as it is, it may be just the first step towards a certain direction ...
you can openly call K-Rudd a bloody idiot on national television for trying to implement this, and nothing will happen to you
Reminds me of a popular joke from Soviet times: American: In the USA you can go to the central square of your town, and shout out "Reagan is a bloody idiot" and nothing will happen to you! Soviet replied: Big deal! In the Soviet Union you, too, can go to the central square of your town, and shout out "Reagan is a bloody idiot" and nothing will happen to you.
So, basically, everyone is calling K-Rudd a bloody idiot about the filter, but still it gets implemented.
I will admit that a large part of my satisfaction comes from the fact that I no longer have to be involved. I am not on the electoral roll in Australia (where voting is mandatory) and I can't vote in Canada... I guess I'm taking a 'hands-off' approach...
It's not just this, it's a pattern of behavior in general by the Australian government. It's not even a single action, I don't play games that often anymore and the lack of an R18+ classification has almost no effect on me, there are many data points in Australian political actions though which reflect a deeply troubling underlying truth, the government perceives it's citizens as children.
My reasons for leaving are many, but the two big ones; primarily the above, but secondarily that I can't help thinking in a large amount of cases with regards to aforementioned citizens, the government is not entirely wrong.
So long Australia, and thanks for all the fish.
I dislike;
1) Very high cost of living.
2) Very high tax rate.
3) Poor quality of internet access.
4) Lack of R18+ rating for games.
5) Conroy's clean feed nonsense.
6) Quality of technological innovation in Australia in general.
7) General contempt for civil rights displayed by political parties in Australia.
8) Apathy disguised as being laid back.
9) Hot weather.
10) Sun.
I like;
1) Low cost of living.
2) Very low marginal tax rate.
3) High quality of internet access, almost ubiquitous wifi access.
4) One of the highest populations of atheist people in Europe.
5) Largest political party majority ideology is classical liberalism.
6) One of the most advanced technological infrastructure programs in Europe.
7) Straightforward no bullshit populace.
8) Very cold weather.
9) Very little sun.
All of that said, you can never really know until you've actually tried it a while, so start February I'm moving to Tallinn for a three month trial, in the event that it wasn't for me was planning on coming back to Sydney but in light of these new developments and a continuing frustration / annoyance with associated events, I think if Tallinn doesn't work out I'll just pick some place else, I have a pretty big laundry list to go through. :)
Might even give me some time to actually build something of my own if I can outsource the sales / marketing aspects I'm not so hot at.
Time will tell I guess.
Or is there already a website that specifically aggregates reports of the form "I moved from <X> to <Y> and found <Z1><Z2>...<Zn>"?
What a waste of money.
Can anyone think of a way to make it fail loudly, rather than quietly?
1) Setup a site that the government would want to block.
2) Make sure it gets blocked.
3) Have the site track whenever an aussie logs onto it.
4) Send out an email with statistics on a regular basis to someone.
You may want more than one site or find a way to use existing sites, etc...
You need to make sure your okay with posting whatever material would qualify though. That might be tough.
Family First love it. Xenophon has only gradually shrunk away. I think only the Greens have consistently opposed it. Very frustrating situation.
The Greens lost a whole lot of credibility after they ran Clive Hamilton in the Higgins bielection. Clive Hamilton, for those who don't know, is a strident supporter of the content filter and has penned such dreadful op-ed pieces as:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/web-doesnt-belong-to-ne...
I was really disappointed to see the ALP pushing this.
[1]: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/internet-ce...
and you know, where they burn books...
Also we shouldn't be wasting tax dollars on a boondoggle that achieves nothing.
Finally, it's a bit embarrassing to be a citizen of an educated first world nation that is actually implementing something so ill advised.