Hacktivists Force Pause in Australian Net Censorship

[Pat8u]

OH yea does bigpond come under telstra because then Im in the clear

 

[Tentickles]

I'm all for freedom of speech and being able to gain information from any means but i see no problem with them blocking child porn sites. Sure if they start saying other sites are evil and need to be blocked then there is a problem. But if they are blocking sites connected to terrorism and child pornography and human mutilation...I'm okay with it.

Absolute power, absolutely corrupts.

When has anyone (person or company) just stopped at one thing?
What's to stop them when they say that S&M porn is abuse and they block those sites?
How about Hentai sites? (you know some of that stuff is weird!)
Rival company sites? Rival political sites?

If this goes into effect a company will have control over what its customers can see on their internet. That scares me a lot more than I wish to admit.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

OH yea does bigpond come under telstra because then Im in the clear

Bigpond is Telstra's ISP service.

 

[Warped_Ghost]

Isn't this whole business to stop child porn sites? If so, what the flying fuck are people complaining about?

Because some of the bans are completely unrelated to child porn. That with no type of appeal system planned is what is making a lot of people mad.

 

[gellert1984]

So wait....Stopping people from looking up child porn is bad? Now i may not be a genius but last i checked child porn is a horrible thing and if that is what they are blocking i am all for it.

The problem isnt so much that they're blocking child porn sites its the lack of transparency.

When the Australian government tried to pull the same thing some of the sites on the blacklist included opposition party websites. They were cought out because they had to be transparent about their activities but a privatly owned company doesn't have to, so they could block their competition, or be paid to block, say, any newspaper except xxxxx and get away with it.

 

[Thaluikhain]

It should be remembered that Australia is a democracy, with a very active and vocal opposition. Should the government impose draconian rules, the opposition will make rescinding them part of their election campaign and get the next 4 odd years in power. The slippery slope argument doesn't hold much water. (Plus, as mentioned several times, it was an opt in system for several of the available ISPs, not a federally mandated law. Which it was intended to stop anyway.)

Secondly, child pornography, as defined by Australian Federal is freely available on plenty of normal websites around. For example, if you were to take a picture of a 15 year old girl, and photoedit her into a sexual situation, and it will count as child pornography according to Australian law, if not neccesarily the law of the nation that hosts it. Therefore, the site can't always be simply dealt with by the police because it's not always technically illegal, or enforced even if it is. Hell, ED used to (still does, for all I know) like that sort of thing, and that's illegal in the US and UK as well.

Images of non-sexual child abuse are also lumped in with child pornography.

 

[RicoADF]

I'm not saying that countries shouldn't have the power to block websites, but just that that power should be extremely limited and with many checks and balances.

For example each site blocked on a site-by-site basis by a court, with a full appeals processes and NO POLITICAL INFLUENCE! A lot of people poo-poo America's bill-of-rights (usually the liberal gun-hating types who dislike the 2nd amendment) but this is enshrined in the 5th Amendment that guarantees Due Process. In other words the leaders cannot be a tyrant ruling by whim, but rule by law.

At the moment this "blacklist" clearly has a LOT of political meddling and even if it doesn't at the moment it will in the future. It doesn't matter if this blacklist is enforced by law or if the government abuses it's position of controlling taxations/licensing to force ISPs to enforce the blacklist.

If there is child abuse online, then the police and the courts deal with that. NOT legislators with special interests, NOT executives (Premier/President) on a vendetta. The courts should go through all the motions of valuing pros and cons of the censorship, and keep front and foremost their aim is to PROTECT CHILDREN, not act as morality police. A good measure would be if they aren't going to prosecute people for owning the content on the site, what justification is there for blocking the site?

What we are seeing in Australia is terribly bad governance, the way they slap-dash these measures together, they do nothing to satisfy the concerns of their critics.

This isn't Australian government, they gave up on it when the public went against it, these are private companies.

 

[Treblaine]

The only things that are allowed is "Content which is classified R 18+*". Not "would be" but "which is". That means THE ENTIRE INTERNET would have to be vetted by censors!!! How do Australians put up with this shit? What do they have to do to get ACMA's fingers out of the internet.

As for how Australians put up with this sort of shit, we're a very laid back people (unless it comes to sport). Frankly, unless it starts blocking facebook, youtube, various tv show torrent sites, sports news and various classified and auction sites, most Australians aren't going to give a fuck.

First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

-Pastor Martin Niemöller

He was happy to see the Nazis come to power, then they came for him. He spent 1937 to 1945 in Sachsenhausen then Dachau Concentration Camp. Many more like him did not survive to give this warning from history.

Australia seems to fundamentally lack a passion for freedom or genuine concern for minority causes. The majority utterly selfish to their own interests, failing to realise how this is just the thin end of the wedge, refusing to acknowledge how explicit these people are how they are not going to stop at child abuse by anything these moral-conservatives want to destroy.

There is a HUGE difference between 'laid back' and apathetic, I hope the Australian people in the long run stand up to this trampling of freedoms. They have had it so good for so long - economically speaking - they seem to delude themselves that all is well.

"Fine, be that way (and don't come here). It's not like we made a cake for you or anything."

You've got a bloody great country and I'd like to move there if your government weren't such freedom-fearing control freaks. Aren't you kind of ashamed that to spite all you have so many would dread to live in your country? Americans are ashamed when things like this happen and they move mountains to reverse a bad course.

I don't like how other English speaking countries are going to take this as a precedent. We already came THIIIIS close to having AV (the "proportional" voting system) before the referendum cut it down, so many politicians were if favour of it with the:

"well if it works in Australia... THEY DIDN'T MAKE A FUSS!"

 

[Treblaine]

At the moment this "blacklist" clearly has a LOT of political meddling and even if it doesn't at the moment it will in the future. It doesn't matter if this blacklist is enforced by law or if the government abuses it's position of controlling taxations/licensing to force ISPs to enforce the blacklist.

This isn't Australian government, they gave up on it when the public went against it, these are private companies.

Just because these measures failed in legislation doesn't mean it's OK for the government to bully through the same measure via back room intimidation. I'm not convinced these ISPs have suddenly changed their mind right after the government failed to enforce this censorship legally. They have a LOT of way they can put pressure on these companies secretly, unaccountably and with even more political prejudice.

This is still all the evils of government censorship, only under the guise of self-censorship.

This is NOT as you would depict it, these private businesses exercising their own moral compulsions to block content. This is the government writing up a blacklist and getting them to block these sites one way or another. It has already been revealed by Wikileaks this "Blacklist" uses child abuse as a pretext for far reaching political censorship against an incredibly broad range of subjects that have nothing to do with protecting children.

There is even less accountability and transparency here, and I can't believe more people aren't standing up to this.

This is the same as the NOTORIOUS Hays Codes in America that bypassed the 1st Amendment with a tirade of political threats of restrictions Hollywood was forced into many dark days of censorship in the most vibrant parts of Cinema.

 

[Not G. Ivingname]

Ahhh Censorship....

If you like censorship someone would like to welcome you to the party!

Spoiler: Fixed for you.

Though either would work...

 

[neolithic]

Until politicians and elected officials can prove with a long track record beyond a shadow of a doubt that they can not let power over something go to their heads, then you can't even let them get their foot in the door.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

"Fine, be that way (and don't come here). It's not like we made a cake for you or anything."

You've got a bloody great country and I'd like to move there if your government weren't such freedom-fearing control freaks. Aren't you kind of ashamed that to spite all you have so many would dread to live in your country?

No, not ashamed at all. If people are afraid to move here because of a bunch of bullshit laws and regulations that are easily bypassed that's their look out not mine.

I don't like how other English speaking countries are going to take this as a precedent. We already came THIIIIS close to having AV (the "proportional" voting system) before the referendum cut it down, so many politicians were if favour of it with the:

"well if it works in Australia... THEY DIDN'T MAKE A FUSS!"

Proportional voting? We only use that for the Senate and the upper houses of those state parliaments that are bicameral. It'd be a fucking nightmare to use for lower houses... unless you were against because it also uses preferential voting, which has always made more sense to me than FPTP voting because it doesn't allow 'ABTC' votes (Anyone But That ****) which is a type of protest vote that gives the erring party a wake up call without having to vote for their dickbag opponents or wasting your vote entirely by going with a minor party.


Plus it's not like we're to blame if other governments take the shit our government does far more seriously than we ever have.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

It should be remembered that Australia is a democracy, with a very active and vocal opposition. Should the government impose draconian rules, the opposition will make rescinding them part of their election campaign and get the next 4 odd years in power.

Except that almost every political campaign in Australia based on rescinding some unpopular law or regulation has then gone back on it's promises.

 

[FuktLogik]

It's also pretty worrying though... what if groups with more questionable ideals start doing the same thing?

You mean, like, real terrorists? It's been done, man.

 

[DEAD34345]

It's also pretty worrying though... what if groups with more questionable ideals start doing the same thing?

You mean, like, real terrorists? It's been done, man.

A couple of people have said the same sort of thing now, but I've never actually heard of it. Have these hacker terrorist actually had a real effect on things? In fact, which terrorists are being talked about here?

I don't mean this in a "I don't believe you" kind of way, I'm just genuinely curious (and a little worried) now.

 

[FuktLogik]

It's also pretty worrying though... what if groups with more questionable ideals start doing the same thing?

You mean, like, real terrorists? It's been done, man.

A couple of people have said the same sort of thing now, but I've never actually heard of it. Have these hacker terrorist actually had a real effect on things? In fact, which terrorists are being talked about here?

I don't mean this in a "I don't believe you" kind of way, I'm just genuinely curious (and a little worried) now.

I had assumed you meant in general, and not limited to online. I was of course referring to real terrorists, or anyone else that uses power and fear as a deterrent (i.e the government/law enforcement/forum mods...).

 

[TerribleAssassin]

I saw Anonymous' reaction coming from a mile away. It's surprising that Telstra did too.

Seconded, it's obvious that if something censored, Anon will attack.

Well, looks like another Anonymous war is about to kick off, we might as well:

 

[DEAD34345]

I had assumed you meant in general, and not limited to online. I was of course referring to real terrorists, or anyone else that uses power and fear as a deterrent (i.e the government/law enforcement/forum mods...).

Ah, maybe I worded it badly then. What worried me was that completely anonymous people could actually have a real effect on things through "hacktivism".

If Anonymous can do it then why can't Al-Qaeda or any other actual terrorist group?

 

[Tdc2182]

It's just the internet, which isn't the most important thing in the world might I add.

Yet again, it's the last truly free "place" in the world.

You most likely have pretty much only used it as an entertainment medium, so I'm not surprised that people would think that. People seem to forget there are other things on it than porn and Facebook.