Internet Censorship

[fraser_john]

I bet they said mandatory seat belt laws would never pass back in the late 60's too.....yet here we are.....

 

[manticle]

I hope it doesn't happen but a couple of successive governments have tried to float the idea. Just because it's completely ridiculous and unworkable doesn't mean there won't be pressure under the guise of "protect the children AT ALL COSTS"

I went to a protest for this some time last year and despite not being much of a protest man, will go again if it continues to be pushed. Astoundingly idiotic idea.

 

[DiscoStu]

guh this is so old now. This is the Family First anti pornography idea. The only reason this idea saw the light was because Rudd told the FF party he'd put it forward in exchange for FF giving preference to ALP, it will never actually happen.

Well if this is never going to actually happen I wish they stop pissing away millions of my tax dollars pretending it will :angry:

 

[fraser_john]

I hope it doesn't happen but a couple of successive governments have tried to float the idea. Just because it's completely ridiculous and unworkable doesn't mean there won't be pressure under the guise of "protect the children AT ALL COSTS"

I went to a protest for this some time last year and despite not being much of a protest man, will go again if it continues to be pushed. Astoundingly idiotic idea.

Yeah, this kind of legislation is amazingly insidious, like a bloody trojan or something, it keeps popping up and being reworked until it passes. Needs to be squashed now.

 

[tcraig20]

Doesn't matter who's in power. If the government proposes tramping on our freedoms they'll call 'em out for it.

I think it was Regean who said something along the lines of 'left' and 'right' are false choices. The real choices are between freedom and slavery.

There's some merit to that argument.

 

[Sammus]

Well if this is never going to actually happen I wish they stop pissing away millions of my tax dollars pretending it will :angry:

millions of your tax dollars? How much tax do you pay?!

no but seriously, I agree, complete waste of time and money.

 

[jonocarroll]

While the subject itself has been done to death, I'll play devil's advocate for just a moment and reveal my small amount of sympathy for Stephen Conroy on this one -

I watched the episode of Insight where Stephen Conroy tried to defend the scheme. Now don't get me wrong, I'm against it, and he gave no good justification for the scheme on the program, but my sympathy is for the number of times that people said that Stephen (or the Government or ACMA) would be implementing 'the blacklist'. Stephen was reduced to facepalms trying to tell people that the list will be controlled by the Classification Review Board - a third party, and a completely separate entity - based on submissions, rather than a blanket list of 'naughty stuff'.

The scheme is bad. It's a stupid thing to do, and worthless to boot. But FFS people - there are better flaws than the list to argue. A perfect list and list-committee wouldn't make this a good idea. I really don't blame Senator Conroy for not listening anymore - it's bad enough from the sidelines.

 

[beerDingo]

Don't just sit on your a$$e$, and hope that this will not pass. If enough of us do that, then it will get through (even though it wont work)! Although, he claims that the list will be handled by other's, the current list got leaked a month or so ago. It was punishable by $11,000 a day if you linked to this list under current Australian law! This list IS and will be secret, with no way to know if a site is blacklisted or not, with no re-course to get of this secret list!

The list that got leaked, had many sites that do not actually contain ANY illegal material! Does that give you any confidence?? One was a pro-abortion site!

Why don't they just charge the owners of the sites, and get them shut down?? Doing this with a secret block-list will just push it further under-ground, and make it harder to catch the actually perpetrators!

 

[bum]

I think it was Regean who said something along the lines of 'left' and 'right' are false choices. The real choices are between freedom and slavery.

There's some merit to that argument.

I disagree in just about the strongest way imaginable. This is rhetoric that makes those who do nothing feel as though they are empowered - "Well, if I disagree with the current system my only alternatives are much worse. But if I do nothing then I'll be in a better position. Carry on, boys!"

There are not only two options (no matter what you call them). There are a great many choices available and just as many ways available to us to influence those who we choose to make those decisions for us.

 

[Tony M]

Couldnt sleep last night so I got up at 4.30am and thought I'd bake some sweet buns for breakfast, being retired and all that. I fired up the computer and googled "cinnamon buns". The link below was the result.
So dont send your 12 year old budding chefs off to the net without a quick look. I have to add that by the time I checked this out a couple or three times, I forgot about the baking.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6677625594873714619

 

[bum]

...and was suddenly able to sleep again.

 

[blackbock]

I object to the idea, it's dumb, won't work properly, and would negatively impact on us all if it did go ahead. Get up are up themselves, but they do know how to make the Govt listen, and for that reason I voted with my keyboard as well.

Once the idea of this kind of censorship gets accepted by people, it's only a short hop to the next level of control.

:angry: :angry: :angry:

 

[Bribie G]

Cinnamon buns? cream pies are a worry as well. A female co worker is interested in new age shyte and apparently there's an occult tradition of "The Black Virgin". After surfing on Black Virgin she was a somewhat chastened woman :lol:

Anyway I've clicked and voted

 

[tcraig20]

I disagree in just about the strongest way imaginable. This is rhetoric that makes those who do nothing feel as though they are empowered - "Well, if I disagree with the current system my only alternatives are much worse. But if I do nothing then I'll be in a better position. Carry on, boys!"

There are not only two options (no matter what you call them). There are a great many choices available and just as many ways available to us to influence those who we choose to make those decisions for us.

No, thats not it at all Bum. The point is that presenting arguments in terms of political left and political right obscures and confuses the real issue in any debate about policy, law, or government.

That is, does it enhance our freedom, or curtail it?

 

[PostModern]

Stephen was reduced to facepalms trying to tell people that the list will be controlled by the Classification Review Board - a third party, and a completely separate entity - based on submissions, rather than a blanket list of 'naughty stuff'.

The very same board that bans video games when they should just be 18+ because there is no adult classification in video games? The same board that thinks all computer games are for kids and kids alone? Great, I'm sure they'll do a fine job controlling content on the internet.. Anything complained about by any interest group will get a ban slapped on it to prevent letters to the Minister. It'll be a debacle.

 

[jonocarroll]

Couldnt sleep last night so I got up at 4.30am and thought I'd bake some sweet buns for breakfast, being retired and all that. I fired up the computer and googled "cinnamon buns". The link below was the result.
So dont send your 12 year old budding chefs off to the net without a quick look. I have to add that by the time I checked this out a couple or three times, I forgot about the baking.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6677625594873714619

:icon_offtopic:

This is off-topic, since that has no relevance to the censorship that is proposed. Material like that will not even be considered for filtering (though it may not live out much of a life on AHB). Is it offensive? Does it display anything that someone of decent morals would find offensive? Or is it just something people don't want their kids to see?

As for "So dont send your 12 year old budding chefs off to the net without a quick look" that's pretty good advice in general. I'm fairly sure I can type just about any phrase into google, turn safe-search off and get some naughties. The proposed filter will do nothing to protect children stumbling across (legitimate) adult material, or even searching for it for that matter. If people are arguing that this will protect children in general from seeing acceptable but adult material, they're in for a rude shock.

If people don't want their children to see that stuff - don't let them. For those who say "I don't know how to stop them looking at that stuff"... find out. It's easy to set up a computer that doesn't have complete and full access. Set up a whitelist, rather than a blacklist. For the people who say "I can't watch my children's activities all the time" do you let your children use the phone to chat with paedofiles while you're out? Why is a computer any different?

Forget about the so-called list that got leaked. The Classification Board's plan is to block refused classification material (whatever that may be, not just everything that a nun would find offensive) with a submission based, and reviewed policy. The sites that were on the leaked list aren't necessarily going to be included. The list was a domain name list - it included the server domain name (e.g. aussiehomebrewer.com) not all of the daughter pages (e.g. aussiehomebrewer.com/forum/index.php), so yeah, some pages seem to have been included that were hosted on a server that was banned. From what I can tell, the people who are running this needed a testable list. I'm fairly sure you could find out that your (legit) site was on the list because it would get blocked. You could then have it unblocked and ask for an apology. I don't see why people need a list of the sites they would never visit.

People go off on all sorts of tangents, getting just as much misinformation as genuine information, then start babbling on about some wrong point. Rather than raving and ranting about the hundreds of itsy bitsy flaws that a proposed scheme might have if proposed in exactly one way - how about setting up cogent arguments about exactly why this concept in general won't work:

There is no way to filter everything that comes into our country via the internet. Dare I say it, "the internet is not like a truck, it's a series of tubes". Putting a filter at the ISP level for html traffic is tantamount to a 3m wide dam on a 10m wide river. If the purpose of this proposed scheme is to stop the flow of refused classification material into Australia, then it is doomed to failure. There are too many legal ways to circumvent such a filter for those who wish to do so, while the majority of the population remain disadvantaged. The core problem will be pushed to a new arena, one which the government has even less power over, and one in which the criminals become harder to find, and harder to catch.

Damn I need a beer.

 

[peas_and_corn]

The very same board that bans video games when they should just be 18+ because there is no adult classification in video games? The same board that thinks all computer games are for kids and kids alone? Great, I'm sure they'll do a fine job controlling content on the internet.. Anything complained about by any interest group will get a ban slapped on it to prevent letters to the Minister. It'll be a debacle.

No.

 

[jonocarroll]

The very same board that bans video games when they should just be 18+ because there is no adult classification in video games? The same board that thinks all computer games are for kids and kids alone? Great, I'm sure they'll do a fine job controlling content on the internet.. Anything complained about by any interest group will get a ban slapped on it to prevent letters to the Minister. It'll be a debacle.

This is one of the 'itsy bitsy points' I mentioned - if you're going to argue that 'X is bad', you need to be able to back it up with 'not X is good'. In this case, you are complaining that the having the Classification Board involved would be a bad thing. Would the problem be solved if it wasn't the Classification Board? What if it was a perfect system of accept/reject for refused classification material, or hell, some other criteria? No.

Arguing over this point is moot - The filter scheme won't get better if you fix this problem. We the public need to stop trying to push the point over the fine details, and attack the problem at it's root.

 

[beerDingo]

It does not work! And it slows your connection at best by 20%, and at worst, makes it 80% slower.

How do you get your site off a secret list? They have not given a way for people to get off the current ACMA list, that is also currently secret. Some people only found out that they were on this list after it was leaked.

 

[technocat]

perhaps getup could help out with a fair excise deal for microbreweries.

I will pay that, as a matter of fact there is a bit of pushing and shoving going on over this right now. The wine producers are getting the deals on excise so should the microbreweries.


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