No Internet Censorship for Australia
Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA) has launched nocleanfeed.com as part of the campaign against Labors planed compulsory Internet censorship for all Australian homes and schools. The censorship plans are shrouded in secrecy but will involve a massive federal government blacklist of website (both legal and illegal) that Internet Service Providers (eg Telstra, Optus and iiNet) would be forced to block Australian Internet users from accessing. The proposed system has been compared to the Great Firewall of China used by the communist government to track users and prevent them from accessing news site such as bbc news, wikipedia and websites of human rights and religious organisations.
NoCleanFeed.com | Electronic Frontiers Australia | ISP content filtering still on the agenda (whirlpool.net.au) | Tor: anonymity online | The Freenet Project | Digg It
This weeks federal budget allocated about $150m to "cyber-safety", a lot of it for more sensible measures such as education and policing of illegal material. However, there is an ominous chunk of $32.5 million allocated to the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy that has the right amount and timing (next year) to be pretty worrying.
The filtering would require many 10's millions of dollars in infrastructure and setup costs and will require ongoing maintenance, management and blacklist expansion costs that will inevitable be added to Australia's comparatively very expensive Internet bills. According to a Government reports filtering will slow Internet access down by up to 78%. The overhead costs will present a hefty disincentive for anyone wanting to invest in Australia's broadband infrastructure and has been repeatedly criticised by the industry.
There are also serious question marks over the effectiveness of centralised government censorship as no technology currently exists to accomplish what the Government is trying to do. On many technical and practical grounds centralised censorship of the Internet is vastly inferior to personal web filtering software. When users are in control of their own web filter sites can be added and removed by a parent to suit their circumstances and beliefs, the centralised system will rely on an army of bureaucrats to decide what is and is not appropriate for Australians to read. Any parent relying on the government to protect their children on the Internet is being grossly misled and this false sense of security will only make Australians more vulnerable.
No information is currently available on what and what type of websites will be blocked. The target age and demographic for the clean Internet has not been released. No commitment to allow users to opt-out has been made. No information is available on how sites mistakenly added to the list will be removed and compensated.
IF THEY CAN CENSOR THE WA SUNDAY TIMES !!! they can do anything
People in this country should really be worried about this - this is an invasion of everyone's privacy - surely something has to be done about this - it's nothing worse - there are cases now being illegally terminated by fake documents stating that you are no longer able to do your job by Healthquest or Comcare on the direction of State Government department or Federal Government Department. What does one do when there's no freedom of speech or freedom to choose, or freedom to fight for your job when you have been illegally terminated - this is not democracy and that is something we should all be afraid of.
IF they can censor anything
The badge says it all .
Where does allowing those holding state power to censor , begin and end ,under cover of “good “ reasons ?
I myself regularly visit a mostly anti imperialist website.
http://iraqwar.mirror-world.ru/home/
As a source of reprints of world news and analysis .
Now this apparently open publishing Russian website, might re- publish articles from say Hezbollah ,that I myself consider to be a Lebanese Muslim patriotic organisation –but is declared to be ‘Terrorist” organisation like Hamas by many imperialist countries.
The drawback is that this website being “open” can attract racist and even fascist articles and even ratbag comments ,where the ‘Jew” or some other conspiratorial group is seen as the conspiring “enemy”.
Even the holocaust might be questioned there.
But if holocaust questioning or denial is outlawed, how will scientific truth of history be known to future generations. IF doubt or questioning is not to be permitted as “anti-semitic” ?
Do such doubts and questionings arise only in the minds of irrational racists?
Consider the Wikipedia entry on the well known Zionist and author of “Night “, Elie Weisel .
Should the following from the Wikipedia enty be “blocked” as leading to questioning or even to the denial of the Holocaust?
Wiesel tells a story about a visit to a Rebbe, or Hasidic rabbi, he hadn't seen for 20 years. The Rebbe is upset to learn that Wiesel has become a writer, and wants to know what kind of material he writes.
"Stories," Wiesel replies, "... true stories."
"About people you knew?" Yes, about people I might have known.
"About things that happened?" Yes, about things that happened
or could have happened.
"But they did not?"
No, not all of them did.
In fact, some were invented from almost the
beginning to almost the end.
The Rebbe leaned forward as if to
measure me up and said with more sorrow than anger: "That
means you are writing lies!"
I did not answer immediately. The scolded child within me had nothing to say in his defense. Yet, I had to justify myself.
"Things are not that simple, Rebbe. Some events do take place but are not true; others are, although they never occurred.[59]
The truth and questioning of accepted truth must be able to stand the light of day ,otherwise even the very real holocaust of Gypsies,(Roma) Jews, and Slavs , for racial reasons, will enter the realm of an apparent fairy tale with evidence that cannot be questioned.
The good thing is that paedophilia and porn don’t seem to get a run on this website.
However such a website is a suitable candidate for blocking (along with Wikipedia as above) if only acceptable main stream views can be published or accessed..
All we would then get is Murdoch and US CNN world views on such events as 9/11 or the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Re: No Internet Censorship for Australia
censorship in Australia has been the norm in imperialist australia for generations .
so it did not just gegin with the recent events in WA.
What can ,or can not be talked ,about used to be called official "D"notices.
including the subjects covered by the 'D' notices themselves.
Re: No Internet Censorship for Australia
so yr not happy with 'have your say' on the beebeecee world service if ya can't sleep at night aye?
SMS.....Anoyingmouse
from Australia says "CENSORSHIP MUST BE APPOSED unless we all become
accustomed to believeing averything we read and hear and see."
now let me get back to the archives of "Slave Revlolt Radio" fucken.
undies
BURN' 'EM
Re: No Internet Censorship for Australia
How internet free speech works in the monarchical US gag orders etc.Of course any body who even accesses an international website could be described as making a foreign communication. FBI Gag order against the Internet Archive is rescinded
http://www.archive.org/iathreads/post-view.php?id=192021
Re: Censorship in Australia?
For more than five years Ed O'Loughlin was Fairfax's Middle East
Correspondent, filing for both The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald. His
farewell piece appeared in The Age but was missing from the pages of the
Sydney Morning Herald. Why?
The article you were never meant to read.
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/156870-Australia-Wars-Between-Worlds-The-article-you-were-never-meant-to-read
Re: No Internet Censorship for Australia
Another blog has recently been taken down by MD Webhosting.
Re: No Internet Censorship for Australia
You censor people here all the time. The closure of MIM was an act of censorship by a religious/racial minority who don't like to be criticised or have their dirty laundry aired in public. The spam was subterfuge for the real goal.
You're hypocritical bullshit artists.
Re: No Internet Censorship for Australia
This really sucks for internet marketers as well. I make a living making websites that sell other peoples products. The threat of being censored without a clear indication of what is acceptable and what is not, is a debarcle. Its like telling the auto industry you are going to ban unsafe cars, without offering them the safety guidelines
And I don't even run porn sites, I feel sorry for those guys
Re: No Internet Censorship for Australia
Censor the internets? I'd love to see them try! Check the links up top - Tor and similar clients allow you limited anonymity *and* the capacity, under some circumstances, to bypass webfiltering. And that's only the start; short of making Australia a totalitarian state, or at *least* taking steps to emulate China's quasi-Maoist censorship enforcement policies, they haven't a prayer of keeping this thing up. If they think Australia's computer literate population are going to take speeds reductions of up to 78%, 'for their own safety and protection', they've got another thing coming. Different people have different reasons for detesting censorship (as we've seen here from Mr Hezbollah etc), but the internet poses all sorts of possibilities for its users; different motivations, as we've learned, pale into insignificance when confronted by a common threat. The Anonymous protestors demonstrated the net's potential as a catalyst for democratic activism. That was because a *single video* was removed from Youtube by the Co$! Think about it; that's one video. In the face of *total government censorship*? Sure, the video may have been the tip of the iceberg (read wikipedia's section on, 'scientology and the internet', it's very long lulz), but if that video were the equivalent of a spark in a fireworks factory... then censorship would be a fireworks factory, inside an oil tanker that was smuggling munitions for a bit of extra profit, hit by a meteor made of aids. The government would face the possibility of a digital insurgency if you ask me. The quintessential Australian contempt for Authority, unless Ruddkips primes us with this Pedo Art scandal etc, will rear its great grinning mug from the depths of spritus mundi, and the online hordes of script kiddies, raging nerds, anarchists and trolls will doubtless ravage the government's servers, and the servers of the hapless company commissioned to produce the, 'as yet non-existent' technology.
I hope they have a 32,000,000 budget. They'll need every cent of it to, 'censor' the outrage of the Australian public, lawl.
Re: No Internet Censorship for Australia
the internet never hurt, killed, ate, fucked, licked, stabed, boned, molested or decared war on any one... yet...
Re: No Internet Censorship for Australia
You got to have it [ the net] first, before you can block us un - under - connected connected folks.
Re: No Internet Censorship for Australia
I THINK IT SHOULD BE CENSORED TO SOME EXTENT
Re: No Internet Censorship for Australia
I think the most rage inspiring thing about this entire mess is that jerk Conroy stating that he makes no apology to people who compare this to the great firewall of China. Last time I'd checked the pretense of democracy was still in place, so how the hell can he justify writing off the concerns of the voting public. Basically the government line of explanation seems to be something like this;
Chinese Firewall = Bad
Australian Firewall = Good
Why?
Because its AUSTRALIA doing it.
I can't say I'm surprised, there was no way Rudd was going to be a less socially conservative neofacist than Howard.
Re: No Internet Censorship for Australia
I suggest doing the "Zieg Hiel", including arm movement, to every Labor member at every possible opportunity, if it happens enough it will be picked up by the world press. Once it becomes enough of an embarrassment then they will have to back down. i.e. Zieg Hiel, Zieg Hiel, Zieg Hiel, Zieg Hiel, Zieg Hiel, Zieg Hiel, Zieg Hiel, Zieg Hiel, Zieg Hiel"
Re: No Internet Censorship for Australia
The Australian government will move ahead to establish, in partnership with the private sector, a company that will build and operate a fibre-to-the-home national broadband network. Australia have taken a huge step forward technologically. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has announced that they will create a huge broadband infrastructure from shore to shore, from Melbourne to Bondi which will no doubt have some people running for payday cash advance loans for computers. Many will now be able to stream and download at incredible speed, and watch ARL and Bledisloe Cup matches live on the computer. (Broadband – something to rub in to the Kiwis!) You have to get payday cash advance loans to get broadband in places other than Australia.