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Net censorship and its impact on our community
With Amanda’s recent post on Hotmail rejecting TR digests reminded me of a recent turn of event’s in Australia that if it comes to pass would be far more serious for our comuunity, here is an extract from the Get Up! campaign website an link:
The Federal Government is planning to force all Australian servers to filter internet traffic and block any material the Government deems ‘inappropriate’. Under the plan, the Government can add any ‘unwanted’ site to a secret blacklist.
Testing has already begun on systems that will slow our internet by up to 87%, make it more expensive, miss the vast majority of inappropriate content and accidentally block up to 1 in 12 legitimate sites. Our children deserve better protection – and that won’t be achieved by wasting millions on this deeply flawed system.
http://www.getup.org.au/campaign/SaveTheNet/442
cheers
Rhi
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11 Replies
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Quote:Sadly this is a steam train coming down the tracks no one can stop. I am not sure how it will pan out for goups like our own here at TR in the future but we must hope for the best.
I think it’s more like a home-made jumbo jet hurtling down the runway at full throttle. Nobody knows whether it’s going to get off the ground but drop bits everywhere or whether it will crash and burn at the end of the runway. One thing for sure is that it cannot ever hope to work in the way that Senator Conroy apparently believes.
As far as I can work out, the greens and coalition are aware that it’s technically impossible and even attempting it would be seriously damaging to the nation. I expect that it will be blocked in the senate.
Alice
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hey, if china with its vast resources has difficulty containing internet access, then the meagre resources available to the australian government, together with what seems to be a certain level of ineptitude and complete misunderstanding of the technology means that this whole exercise is likely to be a failure both in terms of achieving what the australian government intends to achieve. and even if it thinks it has achieved what it is setting out to do, it will be a failure because it just will not work. the internet is essentially a nation-less medium that is pretty well much beyond the control of governments. anyway, why should the government say what we should be able to read? i don’t remember the labor government or any coalition partner stating in their election campaigning that they wanted to be totalitarian dictators. or maybe i’m missing something here … (not unusual)
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like many things the government would like to do this may be just outside their capability. Unlike the Chinese government with its control over all aspects of life in China, the one great thing we had educated people have is the ability to protest. This is why we live in a democracy people can say as they wish with in boundaries, the boundaries are set by society not a government.
yes there are some things that should be removed from the Internet but once you start dictating what is sustaining and what is to go freedom of choice and the truth will also be lost. I guess as the Americans always say right to your local congressman or in our case your local member, freedom is a gift that is given it is something that must be earned so let’s stand up and make our voices heard.
Penny
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I disagree we can do nothing. Write letters, contact our Federal Member
and make our feelings known. ask our friends to also do the same.the problem is business uses the same internet to conduct business on a day to day business. If this comes in, the cost of doing business will skyrocket, so forcing businesses offshore. I know several companies that use the internet for ordering, confirming delivery and then paying the account for said materials.
Regards.
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Hi Rhiannon, thanks for being vigilant and reminding us that we have to fight for freedom of speech. I have also been reading and keeping an eye on this very topic. As things had gone very quiet, I thought it had slipped into the filing cabinet under the desk, the large round one.
One of the platforms the government stood on was the one about increasing the net speed to bring us up to speed, (sorry) with most other countries in the developed world.
Evidently Australia is supposed to have one of the slower speeds which is hampering businesses.
As you say the filters will hamper the speed, be unworkable and cause the speed to reduce which will defeat the purpose.
On that basis I imagine the business lobby groups will object and defeat the proposals.
HelenRhiannonn
Quote:The Federal Government is planning to force all Australian servers to filter internet traffic
Testing has already begun on systems that will slow our internet by up to 87%, make it more expensive, miss the vast majority of inappropriate content and accidentally block up to 1 in 12 legitimate sites. Our children deserve better protection – and that won’t be achieved by wasting millions on this deeply flawed system.
cheers
Rhi -
The list of already filtered sites appeared on an overseas website today. The Government denied it was from the ACMA list. The Herald Sun story link is below … Also in the Federal Government arena there are public hearings currently being held into a Bill of Rights for Australia. They were in the Illawarra / Sutherland areas this week. I’ll try & post something more on this.
xxx Debbie
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,25210319-11869,00.html?from=public_rss
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Alleged list of banned sites can be found at link below if anyone’s interested.
DebsI’m not sure that publishing the list without a warning is a good idea.
99% of the sites on the list will land you in court if you are curious and try
loading them… and I don’t want TR mentioned in court as where you found the list !!URL deleted
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Quote:Alleged list of banned sites can be found at link below if anyone’s interested.
DebsI’m not sure that publishing the list without a warning is a good idea.
99% of the sites on the list will land you in court if you are curious and try
loading them… and I don’t want TR mentioned in court as where you found the list !!URL deleted
This list is supposed to be a copy of a copy from some subcontractor, and it may have some errors. While many of those sites are probably quite nasty, there are a bunch that must have been put on the list by accident. Abby Winters, for example, is totally legal Australian softcore porn; it has no sexual violence and there are way too many hairy armpits for it to be a child porn site.
The danger is that similar errors are likely to end up in whatever list is used for the big govt firewall. People are only human, and they make mistakes, especially if you ask them to do something that’s technically impossible like eliminating all the bad porn on the net.
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While not condoning some of the content on the net the government’s answer is heavy-handed and flawed. As always, it seems to me, that once again a tiny minority, elected by a fraction of Australians, are dictating policy and getting their way and setting themselves up as the moral guardians of society. I imagine that their decisions on which sites to ban will be secretive, unable to be challenged and often dictated by their personal preferences.
In the 15 years or so the net has been widely available I’m unaware of any deterioration of the nation’s morality…nor do I hear anyone saying that parents should be taking more responsibility for what their kids access.
Apart from banning child pornography, which has no place in any society, the goverment and the do-gooders should keep their hands out of it…censorship is always a dangerous path to take and the government cannot be relied upon to do it properly.
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We really are becoming a nation of wowsers. Next we will be as bad as the seppos and have born again fundamentalist christians telling us what we can do.
I really think that KRudd is a modern day King Canute, he will not stop the tide.
June
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On the issuue of Web Censorship, I submitted a letter to a national newspaper: “If web censorship is introduced in Australia does that mean we will no longer be able to criticise other countries that practice censorship” Alas they didn’t publish it.
Hugs Janet
