Australia begins censoring internet in a month

http://www.news.com.au/technology/internet-filter/telstra-optus-to-begin-censoring-web-next-month/story-fn5j66db-1226079954138

Sigh. Will they never learn this is just a really bad Jurassic Park strategy*?

• Jurassic Park Strategy: Where an enterprise is begun, and the proprietor says "We spared no expense" only to find that the raptors can get through the fences pretty easy actually.

I expect the proxies to receive lots of Australian traffic then.

WHAT. THE. FU... I may be a Socialist, but that is waaayyy extreme. The Gov't don't need to be the police. The IS Ps have a thingy which flags the hell out of you if you so much as click a link to such sites.

Last I heard, Australia already had a horrific level of internet censorship.

Huh. And here I thought the world was heading for less censorship, not more.

It was rather ironic to see this, and then read an article in the Economist about how stable and relatively free Australia is. A lot changes in two weeks. (The article is two weeks old)

Where has censorship been declining? Seems to me it's been increasing in the English-speaking parts of the world, particularly due to this damn Think of the Children! business. Great way for censors to get a foot in the door.

Australia is probably the most authoritarian First World Anglophone nation, so this ain't a surprise.

And France is joining the club for the same pretext.

Its a good thing my government isn't censoring my internet....

Oh.

"Several IS Ps have signed up to a 'three strikes and you're out' system wherein, an IP adress is found illegally file-sharing, they will recieve three cease-and-desist notices until their internet service gets cut off."

Nice. Nice. I'm looking forward to spending 987 years in prison.

Thank Sarko for this, he's the one who gave them the idea.

Edit: See also this. Even the States are not immune.

edited 22nd Jun '11 4:04:05 AM by Medinoc

WTF?! It's like the OECD nations are NOW concerned about the internet.

I also disagree about #7. Clearly he hasn't been to an EU nation.

Also, what is it with foreign sites always linking to the Daily Mail? They're not the voice of Britain! They're trash.

edited 22nd Jun '11 4:13:43 AM by Inhopelessguy

I don't get what's the commotion about. They're trying to block child abuse sites, this shouldn't affect anyone who is not into child abuse. The chances of success may be small, but it won't hurt anyone either. It's not "OMG censorship" deserving in my opinion.

Two words: Trojan Horse.

Also, what exactly constitutes a "child abuse website", in their eyes? Might be different from, or more than, what you might think.

Because censorship is a bad idea, period. And because the might try to do something about peer-to-peer file sharing, which would definitely be disturbing

Censorship is a big deal, but it is not necessarily the biggest.

The biggest deal is traffic shaping, i.e. giving priority of some traffic over others. This could mean that some IS Ps slow down say, You Tube, to give way to their own TV or video portals. It also threatens Net Neutrality (NN). NN is there because no-one owns the internet. To disregard NN is like pissing on freedom of speech, in my opinion.

edited 22nd Jun '11 5:31:29 AM by Inhopelessguy

'If you are going to burn some books...you have to burn all the books!'

It's the same thing: Attacks on Net Neutrality are a form of censorship. So it's the same deal, now even bigger.

edited 22nd Jun '11 5:33:38 AM by Medinoc

I highly suspect that this measure is going to be abused to shut down other websites; particularly file trading ones. It's so simple: a website "probably" has child abuse content being shared in it, so it gets shut down - but the real reason was that they just want to launch an attack on a given website for whatever other reason.

It's a worldwide phenomenon... Governments don't like unmonitored, unrestricted speech all that much. Pretty much every government on Earth is enabling itself to shut down Internet sites, monitor traffic and generally censor content with one excuse or another.

In Australia (which already has censorship) the excuse is block child abuse. In Spain, the excuse is fight piracy. But it's the same process. Anyway, this can only end in one way... Encrypted communications, a mass jump to the darknets. It's time for it already, anyway.

Exactly

"There will be no appeals process" is the most worrying part, this means that they can eternally ban any website even if it clearly doesn't fit their criteria as a child abuse, call it a mistake, and not turn it back on anyways.

be you guys.Sucks to be you guys; wonder if people will start supporting child-abuse websites?

I don't like the precedent set. Sure, first you set up a big filter system that blocks certain websites that everybody can agree are bad.. But it makes it that much cheaper and easier when they decide to expand the categories of what they block.

What the fuck is with all this nanny state shit in Ausland? Do their people not vote? Are most of them completely apathetic to this issue? What's going on?

edited 22nd Jun '11 6:59:56 AM by Barkey

They have to vote. Its compulsory. (Source: The Economist)

One could view that as part of the same disease.

edited 22nd Jun '11 6:56:02 AM by MRDA1981