Internet Censorship - again

Over the weekend there was a very significant development on the internet censorship front .

The National Party has passed a motion opposing any mandatory internet censorship.

It is worth pausing to consider this for a moment - the most conservative mainstream political party in Australia has decided that this is not a policy they should support.

It is now up to the Liberal party - or perhaps a backbench revolt in Labor - but certainly it does put pressure on the Liberals to make clear their stance on the subject. The result from the Nationals almost certainly reflects their constituents writing clear and well reasoned letters to their representatives. If your member is Labor or Liberal ..........

John

more here--
Australian firewall wobbles under pressure from all sides ? The Register

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Pedro_The_Swift

more here--
Australian firewall wobbles under pressure from all sides ? The Register

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I hope that's the case Pedro.

Which reminds me, I must write a letter to my Federal member ;)

BTW, have a read of this Aussies face 10 year browsing lock-up ? The Register
and this
Oz Attorney-General wants ISPs to hold data for 2 years ? The Register

This government has gone nuts.:twisted:

Here is two further articles which just shows how out of touch they are.

No anti-virus software? No internet connection | News.com.au

Labor elusive on web history collection | The Australian

Any use for you guys - works in most communist territories?

openDNS

Quote:

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Originally Posted by disco2hse

Any use for you guys - works in most communist territories?

openDNS

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Think yourself lucky. I really am in a "less liberal" country (3 weeks working in China again :() and the most bizarre websites are unavailable.

The funniest blocked page so far has to be Yellow Pages. I mean, why??
I can almost understand blocking sites that are related to political or anti-government protests, but I only wanted to find a phone number!

Of course, what the situation is now with a new PM is quite unclear. I suppose it all depends on to what extent the whole scheme was a Rudd idea, which has never been at all clear. Some indication may come with the cabinet reshuffle, when we see who the new Minister for BCDE is. Conroy has taken most of the heat on this but it is really unknown to whether it is his idea, Rudd's or the party as a whole.

And remember - many people said it was impossible to get a worse Communications Minister than Alston - Conroy showed just how unfounded this assumption was. So don't assume that because things are so bad at present the they can't get worse. Or stay the same - Conroy is the chief Victorian Right head kicker in the ALP, and presumably the new PM owes him something. This may be a freer reign or perhaps a more senior ministry (in which case heaven help whichever Department gets him!).

John

It seems the "policy" has been put on hold---

someone must have told conroy just how many people signed that petition!:p

Well it would appear that it's not just enough for them to want to censor it.. now they want to monitor everything you do as well.

I'm not sure why they are pushing all this. I don't have anything to hide but none the less I do feel somewhat uneasy about it...

As most are probably aware, the internet censorship plan has been put on hold until after the election and pending a review of the "refused classification" classification. It is worth noting that last time classification was reviewed, there were exactly 147 submissions made to the process. More than a third of these submissions were may by two fundamentalist letter writing groups in two NSW country towns. And the changes made then to the classification rules bore no relation to the recommendations coming out of the review, being significantly more restrictive.

Also, announced at the same time was that three of the largest ISPs Telstra, Optus, iPrimus) have agreed to voluntarily censor their customers using a list of child pornography web pages supplied by the government. According to a statement by one of the other ISPs which has declined to join this group, they do not expect it to happen soon, due to the fact that the mechanism to either filter or to supply the list does not exist and the cost of equipment, estimated to run into millions. A further problem is that Telstra has specified that they will need legal protection before starting to do this. This protection probably would include amendments to the Telecommunication Interception Act, and it seems very unlikely that the required amendments would pass the Senate.

It seems likely that the announcement was only a bit of pro-Labor electioneering by the companies in response to some sort of secret deal. In any case, it should be noted that blocking CP web pages is supporting CP. They should be referred to the police who, liaising with international colleagues, can get the material removed quite quickly, and possibly even manage some arrests. Most informed observers believe that there is a vanishingly small amount of CP on the web anyway, and its lifetime before being removed is in most cases shorter than the time taken to get onto the list.

(This of course excludes "CP" which is only identified as such in Australia).

John