The Federal Government is planning to force all Australian servers to filter internet traffic and block any material the Government deems ‘inappropriate’. This internet censorship goes further than any other democracy in the world.
Current testing shows it will make the internet up to 87% slower, more expensive, accidentally block up to one in 12 legitimate sites, will miss the vast majority of inappropriate content and is very easily sidestepped. The government of the day may add any ‘unwanted’ site to a secret blacklist under the scheme.
absolutely. there is no way in hell they can hope to enforce this properly. I can’t help but feel that the real reason is because the movie/tv/music industries are lobbying them to do something about piracy. kiddie pron doesn’t really seem big enough (don’t get me wrong, it’s an important issue) to warrant crippling the nation’s already woeful internet.
When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.
When crypto is outlawed, only gargle*neep@wook#aglagl.
Does anyone else think ‘online petitions’ aren’t treated with much respect by the people they’re presented to? A bit like facebook ‘strikes’ about layout, or ‘Age’ or ‘Herald Sun’ push-polls. Politicians only take notice when the mob storms the gates with burning torches and pitchforks.
not even then: remember the anti-war rallies prior to the invasion of iraq, the ones where hundreds of thousand of apathetic suburbanites got off their arses to protest? neither does john howard… or wait, am i thinking of the reconciliation march? either way, pollies dont give a shit.
watched some of the howard years doco the other night. interviews with GW, Blair and Howard made it very clear that the discussion on the war in Iraq was a moot point: the powers that be had decided it would go ahead and no amount of protest would change that. what a pack of undemocratic arseholes.
Anyone with any kind of technical aptitude knows that this cannot work… If it is pushed through, then everyone will just get more technically adept and start running encrypted tunnels to gateways in other countries etc. Or TOR networks will suddenly become cooler than HED wheels.
I think the real issue here is that the very idea was even conceived in the first place. The blacklist of sites will not be publicly available, and Stephen (fucking) Conroy would would love to see euthanasia & gambling sites added to it - It’s tantamount to book burning, and frankly it’s embarrassing being Australian right now. Every little political group will soon start wanting to get their pet-peeve blocked - Family first will no doubt be the first to jump up and request the abolishment of non pro-life websites, etc etc.
I think this might be one issue you can’t be paranoid enough about.
I don’t understand why governments / people feel the need to stick there noses into what others would like to see? What ever happened to view / reader discretion? If you don’t like it, don’t look at it, it’s not hard…
Everyone just loves locking… Don’t they. Imagine if forum locks existed in real life: You’d be having a conversation with some friends, and all of a sudden the person who started the topic would declare it locked, and everyone would just stand around mute, looking at each other.
The power makes me giddy.