Australia's Internet Filter Switches On In July

[Eggsnham]

Thank goodness.

After a while I hope we can get this in the U.S. too so that we can phase out internet pornography and piracy.

Piracy isn't an inherently bad thing, as it can promote new business ventures and is generally doing less damage than the entertainment industry lets on.

And porno, well come on.

Unless you're spending all of your time and money on it, it's not really a problem.

It's more or less a sexual release for most. Seeing that most people don't get laid everyday, and horny teenagers are on sexual overdrive, porn isn't that big of a deal.

You probably won't agree with me, but I honestly don't see a problem with pictures and video of two people having sex. After all, sex is the basis for our existence, and pretty much everything we do is somehow linked to sex.

And to touch on piracy again, it's costing businesses a loss of millions. Which sounds like a lot, but keep in mind that these business are worth billions. This is just cutting out executive folks' vacations and personal jets. It's not like it's draining the actual working part of the company.

 

[Minigrinch]

And to touch on piracy again, it's costing businesses a loss of millions.

To be honest i doubt it would be anywhere near millions in losses for companies, they tend to calculate piracy as lost sales, when they are for the most part sales they wouldnt have gotten anyway. They also don't calculate the increase in advertising it can have, and as someone who has lived small towns with barely any access to retail games or reliable internet connections, that would make them quite a bit.

 

[Traskelion]

Seems all fine to me. There's no reason for them to be enforced to provide you with specific services. Their choice to provide you with internet access in return for compensation. And the filter is for a benevolent cause. Probably an ineffective waste of their time, but if you're going to jump at their throats with "censorship", you're not catching on to what the word actually means.

 

[faceless chick]

more nanny state action from australia.

anyone surprised raise your hand.

if you do raise your hand, i will assume you're 5 and call your parents.

 

[maninahat]

In defence of that guy, too many people seem to think that just really wanting freedom will be enough to defeat a far greater opressive enemy. America was a success story for freedom fighters, but it is fairly exceptional (and largely down to having the right allies - other big oppressive regimes like France and Spain). Most attempts at revolution can be easily quashed just so long as the opressing force is ruthless and competant enough to prevent uprisings early on. Seems to me that if a drug cartel had my family at gunpoint, it wouldn't matter how inpassioned I was about beating the gun men, they would still kill me and my family in an instant if I was stupid enough to resist them openly. That is the problem for many people in opressive societies. It is the reason why many strong people will still resign themselves to a life of servitude. It is easy to talk about being brave and fighting for freedom when a gangster isn't pointing a gun at you and your family.

Coincidentally I am pondering this issue these days. Still, if everyone resisted then I do not think that the guys bearing the guns would shoot EVERYONE. Still, it is true that our system is fucked up and no one tries to change that. The more I start to grasp that, the more I am filled with despair.

There is another complication: There will never be a case where EVERYONE will be willing to fight for freedom. Even in these recent cases with the Arab spring, many of these regimes have a bulk of loyalists and supporters. Discluding them, you still have people refusing to act (for reasons previously suggested), people who try to cut and run, and people who just want to batton down and not get involved. There is no situation in which everyone is uniformingly against the opressors, or all equally willing to fight. They are all just doing what they think is best, and there is no way to convince everyone otherwise.

 

[maninahat]

*snip*

I'm not defending the right to see child abuse online. If the act is illegal then the site that hosts it and the people behind it should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. The fact is that if a law gets put into place allowing the government to censor anything then they will slowly add to that power.

I do understand that this is being done by private entities, but I do not believe that it is an ISPs job to do anything beyond provide access to the internet.

I understand the want to remove unwanted filth from the internet, but it's not going to happen simply due to the nature of how the internet operates. I mean, hell, even if you take the internet down completely then we're just going to see shadownets pop up with people posting whatever the hell they want with no real way to stop them. I say use the internet to track down people doing illegal shit and throw the book at them, but censoring it will simply put people who have no interest in doing illicit things online in a lurch. Criminals have their methods of bypassing governmental restrictions already (I mean hell I posted one of the most popular ways in this thread). I feel that the fight against filth online is pretty well the same loosing battle that developers have against DRM, the tighter things get locked down the more inventive criminals become. With that in mind, why not destroy censorship online completely and cast the net wide, with the blacklists non-existent catching careless idiots would be cake.

But that seems to promote a philosphy of "The world can't stop abuse on the internet, so they shouldn't bother trying." I understand the sheer magnitude of the task of trying to prevent internet crimes, but rather than let all fish swim through the net, I think a government should try to patch up whatever holes they can. A criminal will always find a way through, but the least the police should do is try to reduce the number of opportunities and avenues a criminal may take. That way you might at least deter the casual opportunist.

 

[Fayathon]

*snip*

You're either reading me wrong or I'm failing to put what I think to word properly. I'm not saying "We can't fix this, so we shouldn't do anything". I'm trying to say that allowing censorship in any form is potentially more harmful to the average end user than anything else. Using the tools and laws that are current, in this case the fact that child abuse is illegal, and having that pave the way for criminal activities to be properly taken care of is far more palatable. Granted some laws are lacking and need to be updated, but I feel that there are much better alternatives to allowing censorship. I'm honestly surprised that they don't honeypot these sites, grabbing people's MAC addresses (seeing how IPs aren't really reliable anymore for prosecution) and using that to track them down.

 

[maninahat]

*snip*

You're either reading me wrong or I'm failing to put what I think to word properly. I'm not saying "We can't fix this, so we shouldn't do anything". I'm trying to say that allowing censorship in any form is potentially more harmful to the average end user than anything else. Using the tools and laws that are current, in this case the fact that child abuse is illegal, and having that pave the way for criminal activities to be properly taken care of is far more palatable. Granted some laws are lacking and need to be updated, but I feel that there are much better alternatives to allowing censorship. I'm honestly surprised that they don't honeypot these sites, grabbing people's MAC addresses (seeing how IPs aren't really reliable anymore for prosecution) and using that to track them down.

They probably don't track IPs down because:
a) it is too expensive and time consuming to go after everyone and
b) they'd rather go after the sources of kiddy porn than the random vox populi perverts who just take a look because it is easily accessible.

Internet censorship might at least deal with problem b) to some extent. It won't solve a), which as you say, can only be solved with the government properly enforcing laws and taking care of it, but it does go to provide a potential solution to casual opportunists (who make up the majority of people carrying out these online transgressions).

I don't have an issue with censorship in general. I think people have a kneejerk reaction in which any censorship is seen as a grotesque impingement on free speech, regardless of of the kind of speech which is being censored. Excessive censorship could be a problem, but I think that as long as this kind of censorship is limited to subjects that receive universal condemnation (e.g: child porn), it needn't ever be an issue to users.

 

[Fayathon]

*snipped again*

Actually, they can't use IPs anymore, at least not to my understanding, seeing how there are so many people with unsecured wireless networks and shit like that. It's too easy for people to spoof their IPs as other users, which is why I suggested using MAC addresses, those are specific to computers, and a bit harder to spoof.

My problem isn't inherent to censorship itself, it's in a grotesque lack of trust with those that want to use it. In a perfect world I'd be all for the censorship of horrible things on the internet, and in a perfect world it wouldn't be needed. My issue lies in the fact that it is people that are going to be putting the censorship in place, and people are prone to doing things that are beneficial to themselves first. If we had someone who was in control of what was censored online and was completely incorruptible and held true to the very bases of freedom I'd be more than happy to give them control on this kind of thing, but there aren't so I'm not willing to trust the powers that be to keep my best interests in mind, regardless of how they handle things initially.

 

[Flaming Narwhal]

I believe that all Australians opposed to this should stage a protest outside of parliament. France has labor protests all the time and they GET SHIT DONE. If I had the funds I would fly to Australia from America and participate.

 

[JET1971]

I wonder how Google will feel. This is obviously not to the same extent as the Chinese censorship, but it's still censorship.

http://www.news.com.au/technology/internet-filtering-scope-is-too-broad-says-google/story-e6frfro0-1225860541640 and http://www.news.com.au/technology/internet-filter/isp-filter-may-put-google-tv-on-backburner/story-fn5j66db-1225871635563

Publicly, they are saying its bad for business but will comply if its made into law. I didnt bother looking any further, the message is there pretty much saying a filter sucks and will hurt Google finacialy alongside many other legitimate business.

good reading on the filter: http://www.overclockers.com.au/wiki/Australian_Internet_Filtering

*edit
was going over some of the old news and noticed this bit on the leaked blacklist....
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/web-blacklists-innocent-victims/story-e6freon6-1225698047112

As well as links to child pornography, rape, incest and bestiality websites, up to half of the sites on the list are believed to be legal content, including a tour operator's website, links to online encyclopedia Wikipedia, legal adult material, online gambling sites, even a page with images of cats accompanied by amusing phrases, colloquially known as "LOL cats".

Seriously banned LOL Cats??? I missed that when i looked through the list. but thats hilarious and yet shows just why this is a bad idea.

 

[Phoenixlight]

If they block porn as you say, there will be mass rioting, Australia would turn into an anarchism, destroyed buildings etc.

I hope you meant to say 'child porn'

EDIT: Oh, and in case others don't know, in the Aus state I live in, you can be find a hefty sum on the spot for swearing in public.

No I just meant regular porn in general. And there wouldn't be any rioting about it, the few individuals that might stand against it would just be labelled as perverts and looked down upon by everyone else.

 

[Tax_Document]

I'm asking my mummy to move us to Iceland!





EDIT: She said no...

 

[Booze Zombie]

"The government dropped funding, it isn't going to work very at actually stopping what we want it to stop... in other news, we've invented a cure for cancer that has received no funding and doesn't cure cancer very well."

 

[KezzieZ]

The Australian government probably has noble intentions with this law, but I fear that this whole censorship crusade could go very bad very quickly, whether from citizens against the censorship or by the government getting too censor-happy.

 

[ElNeroDiablo]

Actually, they can't use IPs anymore, at least not to my understanding, seeing how there are so many people with unsecured wireless networks and shit like that. It's too easy for people to spoof their IPs as other users, which is why I suggested using MAC addresses, those are specific to computers, and a bit harder to spoof.

The MAC address of a person's modem/router is shielded from the World Wide Web in the fact it is only known to 2 sources - the OWNER of said modem/router and their network and the ISP who that person is connected to.
If you tried tracing something through MAC addresses over the WWW you'd end up at the ISP and NOT directly at the end user's system, Providing the ISP has a reasonable firewall that masks it's consumers data such as the user's router MAC address.

However, I do agree with you about the filter, and the lack of trust on the companies/govo trying to push it.

Edit: Fscking Quote systems...

 

[Ninjat_126]

so its just stopping child porn? thats good so it wont affect me and like everyone else in the country.

wouldnt it be a better idea to not block the websites and just monitor who accesses the site?

Bravo! Give the man a job in government, because he's obviously smarter than the fuckwits we've got in there at the moment.

Since expressing the rest of my opinions would probably violate a few forum rules and international laws, I'm just going to leave it here.

PS: FUCK YOU YOU [REDACTED] SHITFACES TRYING TO HERD US INTO A DICTATORSHIP. FUCK YOU SO VERY MUCH.

 

[beefpelican]

I wonder how Google will feel. This is obviously not to the same extent as the Chinese censorship, but it's still censorship.

http://www.news.com.au/technology/internet-filtering-scope-is-too-broad-says-google/story-e6frfro0-1225860541640 and http://www.news.com.au/technology/internet-filter/isp-filter-may-put-google-tv-on-backburner/story-fn5j66db-1225871635563

Publicly, they are saying its bad for business but will comply if its made into law. I didnt bother looking any further, the message is there pretty much saying a filter sucks and will hurt Google finacialy alongside many other legitimate business.

good reading on the filter: http://www.overclockers.com.au/wiki/Australian_Internet_Filtering

*edit
was going over some of the old news and noticed this bit on the leaked blacklist....
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/web-blacklists-innocent-victims/story-e6freon6-1225698047112

As well as links to child pornography, rape, incest and bestiality websites, up to half of the sites on the list are believed to be legal content, including a tour operator's website, links to online encyclopedia Wikipedia, legal adult material, online gambling sites, even a page with images of cats accompanied by amusing phrases, colloquially known as "LOL cats".

Seriously banned LOL Cats??? I missed that when i looked through the list. but thats hilarious and yet shows just why this is a bad idea.

Thanks for looking that up. "We'll wait and see what this actually means" is a very reasonable response from Google.