'Net filters "required" for all Australians, no opt-out

[George P Burdell]

Australians may not be able to opt out of the government's Internet filtering initiative like they were originally led to believe. Details have begun to come out about Australia's Cyber-Safety Plan, which aims to block "illegal" content from being accessed within the country, as well as pornographic material inappropriate for children. Right now, the system is in the testing stages, but network engineers are now saying that there's no way to opt out entirely from content filtering.

continued...

Australia continues to ignore its own government-funded studies from 2006 that show ISP-level filtering to be ineffective and costly. The Australian government's disregard for those prior studies suggests that the driving force behind the current plan is more political than technical.

What a bunch of idiots, thinking they can censor the internet completely. Wasn't this the same system that was cracked by a teenager in less than a day?

 

[ric1287]

where's the aussie who was ripping the U.S. because Aus is soooooooooo much better?

 

[JasonCoder]

Originally posted by: ric1287
where's the aussie who was ripping the U.S. because Aus is soooooooooo much better?

I don't know but this is exactly what I thought when I read this.

 

[paulney]

Originally posted by: ric1287
where's the aussie who was ripping the U.S. because Aus is soooooooooo much better?

He was from New Zealand, and I wonder the same thing. "Iamaelephant" or smth like that was his nick.

 

[Newbian]

Well they are the fattest country in the world so maybe the officials figure they are to winded to try to do anything about it.

 

[Shawn]

yikes.

 

[Newbian]

So when they say:

pornographic material inappropriate for children

Doesn't that mean pretty much all of it?

 

[dighn]

Originally posted by: ric1287
where's the aussie who was ripping the U.S. because Aus is soooooooooo much better?

they turned on the great firewall already

 

[DangerAardvark]

Originally posted by: dighn

Originally posted by: ric1287
where's the aussie who was ripping the U.S. because Aus is soooooooooo much better?

they turned on the great firewall already

Mr. Dundee, tear down this wall!

 

[fleabag]

Originally posted by: Newbian
So when they say:

phonographic material inappropriate for children

fixed?

 

[IEC]

I'm opposed to censorship on principle.

 

[OCGuy]

That is just sad.

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: DangerAardvark

Originally posted by: dighn

Originally posted by: ric1287
where's the aussie who was ripping the U.S. because Aus is soooooooooo much better?

they turned on the great firewall already

Mr. Dundee, tear down this wall!

:laugh:

 

[OFFascist]

So Australia is trying to be like China?

 

[RocksteadyDotNet]

WHAT!

It was bad enough with an opt-out system. This is total bullshit!

And this is a left wing goverment doing this crap. So voting for the Liberal Party (Right wing party) aint gonna help.

 

[Sc4freak]

The filtering you can't opt-out of is the filtering of illegal material such as child pornography. I believe we can still opt out of the "family safety" filtering, though.

 

[Newbian]

The problem is what is a list of the illegal material other then child pornography?

Does that mean they will block torrents and such?

 

[DainBramaged]

Originally posted by: Newbian
The problem is what is a list of the illegal material other then child pornography?

Does that mean they will block torrents and such?

:Q

 

[Double Trouble]

Welcome to China....errrrr... Australia. Sad that Australians allow this to happen. But it's not that far off from being a reality here in the US either, US ISP's are being tasked with watching for certain content as well, and I'm sure that trend will only continue as governments all around the world try to get a tight grip on the internet....

 

[Bateluer]

I hope there is an uproar over this in Australia and I very sincerely hope there would be an even larger uproar in the US if they tried to push this.

 

[George P Burdell]

Originally posted by: Newbian
The problem is what is a list of the illegal material other then child pornography?

The government could be total douchebags about this. Have a blog that is critical of Her Majesty? BAN. Criticize the ruling political party? CENSORED. Welcome to the Great Barrier Firewall. This isn't exactly what one expects in a Western country.

I remember reading how India tried to ban a few blogs but ended up blocking everything ending in blogspot.com, typepad.com and geocities.com for a few weeks. One could say that the Indian government doesn't know jackshit about technology, but then we have Ted Stevens. I guess government everywhere is techretarded.

 

[sdifox]

don't they have more important thing to do, like save the corals?

 

[Red Squirrel]

This is very scary..... it's only a matter of time till it goes to US, and then probably Canada. Well the US controls most of the internet, so just having it in US alone would affect more then just the US. So much for freedom of speech. Then again, that freedom was taken away a long time ago.

 

[Linflas]

Originally posted by: RedSquirrel
This is very scary..... it's only a matter of time till it goes to US, and then probably Canada. Well the US controls most of the internet, so just having it in US alone would affect more then just the US. So much for freedom of speech. Then again, that freedom was taken away a long time ago.

No it is not just a matter of time before this "goes to US". It would be very difficult to craft legislation to implement this in the US in such a way as it would pass constitutional muster. Commonwealth countries may be democracies but they do not have anything close to the blanket prohibition against government censorship like the 1st ammendment of the US Constitution.

 

[Darwin333]

Originally posted by: Linflas

Originally posted by: RedSquirrel
This is very scary..... it's only a matter of time till it goes to US, and then probably Canada. Well the US controls most of the internet, so just having it in US alone would affect more then just the US. So much for freedom of speech. Then again, that freedom was taken away a long time ago.

No it is not just a matter of time before this "goes to US". It would be very difficult to craft legislation to implement this in the US in such a way as it would pass constitutional muster. Commonwealth countries may be democracies but they do not have anything close to the blanket prohibition against government censorship like the 1st ammendment of the US Constitution.

I wouldn't be so sure about that. They just threw a guy in jail for selling material that some town here in the good ole US considered "obscene".