Australia's Internet Filter Switches On In July

[notyouraveragejoe]

Well i can see the next annon target.

Yup. And despite the noble intentions this has so much potential for evil. Using a specific internet provider but planning on switching? Their site is blocked to stop competition. And thats just my first fear of this. I'm just waiting for members of the government starting to add the sites of their rivals to this. Then eventually any possible hotbeds for discontent (such as the pro-Mature Games Rating sites) and then eventually the iron grip closes. Least thats my sleep deprived paranoid view. And also...No appeals? Seriously? That'll go great...

 

[Cpu46]

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.

Ok, I can understand this line of thought... to a point. Piracy, Child porn, and sites like the ones that are being targeted need to disappear. However this loosely regulated filter is not the way to do it, there are too many flaws in the system as the article pointed out.

I for one hope that this horribly designed and implemented system NEVER comes over to the U.S. There are too many people in government that would twist it to their own ideals, blocking sites that go against their personal ideology instead of things that deserve to be blocked. Also, blocking a site will not remove the problem and there will always be someone who finds a way to work around it. It would just cause more harm than good.

There is also the argument that, when someone is unable to find their 'fix' online that they will try and find it in real life. But that is a separate topic altogether.

 

[spectrenihlus]

Easy solution. Get an ISP that doesn't do this sort of this. Yea the two largest might but if enough people unsubscribe to their services well they would have to change their business plan.

 

[Kinguendo]

Hey lulzsec, I got one last job for you.

No, this has meaning Lulzec have never done anything that matters. Anon are the ones who would tackle this.

Yea anon does soooo much, seriously they could'nt DDOS my freaking wordpress.

That being said lulzsec isn't exactly the more effective group, but they do get shit done.

I am talking about that small part of Anon that actually does something... not those people who claim to be part of Anon who just sit there in their pants "trolling".

Lulzsec apparently arent even proper hackers, they just use scripts and bots. Team Poison are attacking them for it... gonna release the info of every member of Lulzsec. Sooooo... probably wouldnt be all "Wooo, Lulzsec. You attack people for no reason!".

 

[Merkavar]

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?

I think I would rather get rid of the source rather than punish the guys that enjoy it... yeah, they deserve punishment, but just putting them in jail rather than blocking access seems a bit sadistic...

well im guessing that if they block the child porn sites that people will access it somewhere else. like in the article it mentions peer to peer networks.

so if you leave the sites up and track everyone who access it and then 6 months later pounce and arrest all of them in one go you would break up some pedo rings and shock others into thinking twice about accessing child porn.

 

[Ldude893]

Lulzsec and Anonymous are aiming their crosshairs at that filter as we speak.

 

[Super Toast]

I hate this piece of shit country.

 

[kael013]

You know what, fuck this censorship thing. I'm not even Australian and this pisses me off. To any Aussies that are getting hit with this crap I have something for you:

The Tor Project [http://www.torproject.org/]

For those unfamiliar think of it as an uber-proxy, it takes a bit of TLC to get running quite right, and it's slower then regular internet, but it pretty well unblocks anything that you want once you've gotten it down.

For those that do know about Tor, well, I guess I needn't tell you about it.

They really should make this kind of thing illegal if it isn't already.

The government(And organizations like this) should have every right to block websites from user access.

Did you know that it's a fact that videogames increase the chances that a kid will grow up to become a violent murderer and a rapist? That's HORRIBLE! This website (The Escapist) advocates that videogames are good. Therefore, to protect the citizenry from things we, the government, believe are bad, we have decided to block user access to this website.

That is what you are arguing FOR.

EDIT: yes, I know that that first paragragh is complete BS, but some people believe it and I needed a decent example of how this could be abused.

 

[octafish]

snip
Is there another Green party I?m not aware of? Because our Green's are just a more liberal version of the Labor party.

Yeah that version of the Greens is if you happen to be a conservative, if you are a liberal (small l) then the Greens are just a party on the left of politics that have an environmental and social emphasis.

The Greens, the Nationals and the Liberal Party all oppose the Mandatory Internet Filter. So there is no chance of Conroy getting the Filter through the Senate anymore. It should be noted that the Nationals and the Liberal Party don't oppose the filter or censorship on principle, they just recognize that it won't work and is a waste of money.

Anyway I'm sure that this screws over anyone who has a contract with a fixed term with Optus Telstra or iPrimus, I'm sure they have the right to do this without voiding your contract. They are tricky bastards like that. However iiNet, internode, TPG and the other small ISPs should do great business if only through people protesting this move.

I'm all for this kind of censorship for Refused Classification content as long as it was an opt in/opt out voluntary system. It should be in place for schools and parents to take advantage of, but it shouldn't be mandatory.

 

[ninja51]

...And it begins. Well I look forward to seeing you all in our Nineteen Eighty-Four future

 

[gyroscopeboy]

Easy solution. Get an ISP that doesn't do this sort of this. Yea the two largest might but if enough people unsubscribe to their services well they would have to change their business plan.

The only problem is that Telstra actually own the backbone in Australia and sell dial-in ports, exchange space, and ADSL DSLAM ports wholesale to other smaller ISPs...

 

[gyroscopeboy]

Here's some other interesting info, sourced from http://blogs.news.com.au/couriermail/hitech/index.php/couriermail/comments/australian_internet_filter_incoming/

1. We won?t know why these sites have been blocked from view. The only thing we currently know is that 500 have been vetted by ACMA and more will come from ?international organisations?.

2. There will be no appeals process. You?d better hope your site doesn?t get swept up in it.

3. This filter will block URLs?website addresses?only. Change one character and the URL changes. Then we start all over again.

4. Child abuse material isn?t typically exchanged on the worldwide web. Criminals swap it over virtual private networks and peer-to-peer networks.

5. This is the job of law enforcement. Why isn?t filter funding headed to the Federal Police instead? Let them do their jobs.

6. It sets a bad precedent for ISP. It is not their job to step in and take responsibility for what?s on the web. It?d be like Australia Post scanning your snail mail for swear words.

7. Britain tried this. You might remember that British ISP blacklisted a Wikipedia entry based on an album cover by The Scorpions. Fail.

8. No ISP to add this filter has actually told their customers about it yet. In fact, the spokespeople I spoke to had trouble getting any details about it.

9. Add one filter and a second, more invasive, more censorious filter becomes an easier sell for the Government.

10. No user can opt out of this short of changing to a new ISP.

 

[martin's a madman]

They say this is to stop child abuse websites, but all it will do is force them into other places, or make them more angry and desperate for their kiddy fix. Take down one site like that and two more pop up.

As for the rest, its a crock of shit. At its most basic level, Australia is trying to turn into China regarding the net; first gaming freedom and now the net. I wouldn't be surprised if they reverted to using the stone wheel and burning books.

China doesn't use the stone wheel...

 

[Sixties Spidey]

snip

That's really a great tip and it's what I recommended to my girlfriend when she went to Dubai, but it does have problems with it.

It's actually traceable now, it's bloody hard and I think it was only proof of concept but someone ran a BitTorrent through TOR and tracked it in one end and out the other. I like TOR for bypassing what I think of as 'joke' restrictions; the kind no one seriously expects the moderately tech savvy to actually obey but I'd be leery about using it when your arse is on the line.

I guess it depends how seriously they take this filter, though with a name one letter away from 'ACME' I suspect the answer is 'not very'. But seriously this really sucks for our Australian users and the country at large. I can understand there's some scary shit online but if you feel the need to clean house then clean house, don't scoop the house up and push it into the sea!

Oh and for anyone considering TOR: it's a voluntary scheme set up for people to avoid real and unpleasant censorship and to get anonymous help. It's not designed to deal with large bandwidth stuff so they'd rather you didn't use it for anything like gaming or torrenting. There are alternative onion routing networks for that but TOR are very much against that.

It's called Hotspot Shield, guys.

Also, I can't wait till this Internet Filter thing falls flat on its face.

 

[starslasher]

I can't disagree with this since it's censorship is quite reasonable at this time. Unless anyone here wanted to go look at child abuse sites.

It's important to keep an eye out so that they don't go too far but this isn't too far. At all. With how lawless of internet has been getting out of control recently it really does need some regulation in small steps so that they don't drop the hammer all at once in an overreaction.

Well, to being with, this proposal to regulate the websites via Australian ISPs has been at Parliament for several years, as spearheaded by Stephen Conroy. One such measure has been to ban websites of women with small breasts as a means of fighting child pornography.

Let me reiterate in caps.

ADULT WOMEN SHOWING OFF SMALL TITS IS CONSIDERED KIDDY PORN as according to the advocates of this Internet censorship laws. Not joking. Look it up.

 

[BanicRhys]

I don't want to live in this country anymore.

The worst part is that I can't complain about it to my friends because they'll all just twist my words to make it look like I'm a pedophile.