Australia To Censor Internet

[atec77]

Originally Posted by tassiexr8

That maybe true. But has absolutely nothing to do with my statement.
Some people think Rudd is going to give us an choice as to whether we want to use this filter. All I said is there won't be this option. Don't get me wrong,
I'm dead against this form of censorship and will be interested to see how encompassing this filter is eg. will they try and stop the use of torrent sites?

"But has absolutely nothing to do with my statement." Actually it does , if I can work it out in seconds so can most anyone who wants to , once brought to the attention of the wowsers without actually informing them of how the whole scenario is defeated and no amount of face saving can or will help them look anything except ill educated and badly informed .
There must be choices as we all have rights which is clipped need to be emphasized at the poll both and by political agitation , I do my part so the question is do you ?

[blackers10]

plus we must remember that if the government implement stuff like this... as seen in WA... R rated porn is illegal over there.. they just turned a blind eye to it now as the people revolted and made a larger petition then the one that made it illegal and the govt said.. to bad... we cant reverse legislation

[StAndArdAU]

R rated porn is illegal here? if you're talking soft porn DVD's i dont think you're correct there. you can buy them at Servo's. Its the X rated stuff you cant buy from shops. you have to join mailing lists from places like adultshop.com

[blackers10]

some particular format was banned.. and i dont think its X as X is illegal aus wide..
it was a WA only thing (my dad was telling me about it .. coz he lived there when it happened)

[StAndArdAU]

well i'll tell ya now, you can get R rated soft porn at servo's and i think they have it at Video Ezy still too. i know last time i was in QLD i couldnt buy a stick mag taht showed more than boob (three weeks without the GF will do that to ya).

just some background info, the the $128 million isnt all being spent on the filter. $49 mill of this is going to the Cyber-police squad so they can keep catching kiddy fiddlers. another large portion is going towards the education portion of cyber safety ie. school roadshows and the like. the 128million was the allocated budget to cyber safety as a whole. also The previous Government issued ACMA with a Direction in June 2007 to conduct closed environment testing of ISP level content filters.

The laboratory trial looked specifically at the effect of a range of filter products on network performance, effectiveness in identifying and blocking illegal and inappropriate content, scope to filter non-web traffic and adaptability to differing requirements of end-users.

The report found:

The median network degradation of the tested filters dropped indicating a significant improvement since the previous trial. The performance or ‘network degradation’ for one of the tested products was less than 2%, whilst three products were less than 30% and two products were in excess of 75%.
Successful blocking (the proportion of illegal and inappropriate content that should have been blocked that was successfully blocked) was between 88% and 97% with most achieving over 92%. The median rate of successful blocking was improved from the previous trial.
Overblocking (the proportion of content that was blocked that should not have been blocked) was between 1% and 6%, with most falling under 3%. The median overblocking rate was significantly improved from the previous trial.
All filter products tested were able to block traffic entirely across a wide range of non-web protocols such as instant messaging and peer-to-peer protocols. However, most filters are not presently able to identify illegal content and content that may be regarded as inappropriate that is carried via the majority of non-web protocols.
All filter products tested allow for the customisation of filtering levels for groups of users, for individual customers of an ISP and for individual users.

So it looks like it was coming anyways, no matter who was leading the country.
the government is also pulling some of this money from the former goverments failed 'free internet filter' download scheme that became available a few yrs back, as it only recieved a 20% pickup. So some of the funding will be from money that was already allocated towards internet safety.

Anyways. Just thought people would like to hear a few more facts before going off on 'civil liberties' rants against a particular goverment. I agree though that the inability to 'opt out' of such a scheme is a taking away our freedom rights.

[bdave351]

Anything that may give me lag playing online (those evil FPS wargames), stop me looking at the poonyani or the burnouts must be stopped!

Hang Rudd from the clothes line and engage spin cycle!

[bloggs24]

Speaking of porn banned in WA, that must suck, the local Blockbuster here in dubbo has a full wall of porn dvds for rent in plain view for everyone including the little kiddies to see.

BTW im all for having an online police force working with messaging companies like msn and the like to stop pedaphiles and such from manipulating kids. But im for 1 against all this censorship stuff going on.

[Trek]

Just when people thought we were over-regulated, another new, much worse idea comes along.

No doubt they'll try to control and manipulate our thoughts with IC chips one day...

[winovin]

http://nocleanfeed.com/

[bob 351]

Originally Posted by 90sFTW

Ah well, looks like its back to the magazines and DVDs from the DVD shop boys :'(

if your head is real in your avatar it's no wonder you need porn mags and movies

[balthazarr]

http://www.theage.com.au/news/techno...955916155.html

'Family First Senator Steve Fielding wants hardcore pornography and fetish material blocked under the Government's plans to filter the internet, sparking renewed fears the censorship could be expanded well beyond "illegal material". ...'

[Daymoe]

Originally Posted by bob 351

if your head is real in your avatar it's no wonder you need porn mags and movies

Nah no way, if I looked like that i'd kill myself for the sake of my family and friends, not even Mrs Palmer and her 5 daughers deserves that!

[bob 351]

Originally Posted by 90sFTW

Nah no way, if I looked like that i'd kill myself for the sake of my family and friends, not even Mrs Palmer and her 5 daughers deserves that!

[bdave351]

Saw this on whirlpool and made me think of here!! Wonder if its from on of our members (or the darksides!)

• It is found that there is a minority of road users that drag race and generally hoon around, this is considered dangerous.
• Government decides to make everyone safer my reducing the speed limit by 80% on Freeways only. Speed limit is now 20kmh.
• The more knowledgeable hoons, the ones that know how to avoid the police are unaffected as they did not use the freeways to begin with. That is where the police patrol.
• The less knowledgeable hoons now hear about the drag meets that are run in secret, they move their activities off the freeway to the secret meets.
• The new law is declared a success because it has cut drag racing on freeways by 90%
• The secret drags meets grow in popularity now that the new recruits realise that they are less likely to be caught, more fun less risk.
• Average road users, while not into drag racing, avoid the freeways and use the side streets and highways.
As a result of the new measures it is observed:
• Drag racing on freeways is reduced by 90-95%, but still a small minority of hoons (the less informed) continue to use the freeways for drags.
• Safety on the freeways is improved by a small amount, but it is not 100% safe. There are still drink drivers, car jackers and road ragers to worry about.
• Everyone is frustrated by the new 20kmh speed limit, as it only slows the law abiding freeway drivers.
• Many people get lost when travelling on freeways as some road signs have been taken down.
• It seems that the missing signs may have pointed to a road that might be used for drag racing possibly. No one will say for sure, or if they even acknowledge they existed previously.
• Some businesses go broke as noone can find them due to the missing signs, florists wonder what they have done to support drag racing hoons.
Oh, and... Responsible parents still chauffeur their under 18 year children around on the freeways as they don't think the freeways are safe enough for them to be driving alone.

[sgt_doofey]

http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20081109

In all reality, it's probably similar to trying to reduce the road toll. In the long term, the money would be better off spent on education rather than draconian means of limiting certain activities.

[guzzis3]

I suppose it was inevitable this thread would become a discussion of pRon. To clear up the confusion here is my understanding of it:

About the only "right" we have specifically mentioned in the constitution is free trade across state lines. Thus if something is legal to own in one state it's legal everywhere. This is why the gun laws had to be agreed across the country. All the states outlawed X but not the territories. Technically anyone SELLING it in the states can be charged. Owning it your protected.

With regards to lesser classified material each state has a slightly different wording to the laws so a magazine that is regarded suitable for open display in NSW has to be in a bag in QLD or is only available legally by mailorder in WA. Penthouse is a good example. Back in the old days when people still bothered to enforce these stupid laws they were publishing something like 5 or 6 different versions of the magazine including the mail only black label. Each was suitably edited to exclude anything not allowed in this state or that.

Now of course no one but religeous fanatics care and the police have better things to do than bush servos and adult shops...until today tonight do an "expose" of course...

[Fev]

man you must have a huge collection! :P

i've got 2 boxes(apple boxes) of my dads vintage playboys at home, would be 3 but mum threw them in a fire lol man i love the comics!

yes yes off topic..

So with this who is to regulate the government when the government starts to regulate us on the internet?

[balthazarr]

Those of you that think this filter is just about porn, think again:

From http://www.acma.gov.au/webwr/_assets...ial-report.pdf, page 49:

"... content contained in 27 categories typical of those used in filter products—for example, categories such as abortion, racism, sexuality, terrorism, and violence."

And, if you think it's only about web content - from the same report, page 51:

"ACMA considers that, given the evolving nature of internet use, there would be benefit in manufacturers of ISP-level filter products addressing online risks associated with non-web content by developing methods of identifying and blocking illegal and inappropriate content that is carried via non-web protocols."

[sgt_doofey]

Originally Posted by balthazarr

blocking illegal and inappropriate content that is carried via non-web protocols."

What, are they going to block faxes now as well?

[GORDZ]

the emails that go around this office are far worse than alot of stuff they're talking about blocking... the whole thing is just stupid.

[Tuddy200]

Nothing a simple VPN connection couldn't over-ride. They can't ban VPN connections either as that is the backbone of alot of companys networks.

Good Luck to them I say!

[ch33z1l]

I think they also plan to block online gambling sites that aren't australia specific...not sure about that one, it did mention something about gambling.

Someone asked how to get around the content filtering. I know the ToR project was mention, but a few other ways include...

free proxy servers..these work by creating a middle man between your PC and the ISP, allowing u to request a file/document from another server, without the knowledge of your ISP.

Using VPN tunnels to connect to the US, giving access to US-only content, bypassing any content filtering of your ISP.

[balthazarr]

Originally Posted by ch33z1l

I think they also plan to block online gambling sites that aren't australia specific...not sure about that one, it did mention something about gambling.

Someone asked how to get around the content filtering. I know the ToR project was mention, but a few other ways include...

free proxy servers..these work by creating a middle man between your PC and the ISP, allowing u to request a file/document from another server, without the knowledge of your ISP.

Using VPN tunnels to connect to the US, giving access to US-only content, bypassing any content filtering of your ISP.

A proxy server may or may not help... it depends on which point they 'attach' the filter... it's quite likely that the filtering will occur on packets just before they're routed to your modem, meaning any requests via proxy will also be filtered.

[DivHunter]

Originally Posted by balthazarr

A proxy server may or may not help... it depends on which point they 'attach' the filter... it's quite likely that the filtering will occur on packets just before they're routed to your modem, meaning any requests via proxy will also be filtered.

Not over an encrypted VPN/SSH/RDP. The filter cannot and will not work apart from seriously slowing down the entire Australian network.

[balthazarr]

Originally Posted by Fairmont99

Not over an encrypted VPN/SSH/RDP. The filter cannot and will not work apart from seriously slowing down the entire Australian network.

True.

Who would have thought Aussies would have to resort to encryption to freely access information?

[DivHunter]

It'll only catch the stupid and impede the honest.

[bdave351]

One thing I cant see a way around with this filter is for online gaming.

Given ping time is of huge importance for many games. Maybe a way on PC, but when your using your PS3 or Xpox360 then your up the duff Kev the red style.

[ch33z1l]

It's entirely legal in the use of VPN/SSH/RDP, and as balthazarr said...its encrypted. It's just a waste of money and bandwidth for something thats so easily bypassed.

IF the nation broadband scheme ever comes in, this filter will send us back to square one, reducing the internet to a slug.

It should be the choice of the individual to choose what they wish/wish not to see, not dictated by the government.

[balthazarr]

Originally Posted by ch33z1l

It's entirely legal in the use of VPN/SSH/RDP, and as balthazarr said...its encrypted. It's just a waste of money and bandwidth for something thats so easily bypassed.

IF the nation broadband scheme ever comes in, this filter will send us back to square one, reducing the internet to a slug.

It should be the choice of the individual to choose what they wish/wish not to see, not dictated by the government.

The worst part about all of this from my personal perspective is the slow down... Australia is already lagging behind the developed world in terms of online speeds.

The worst part about it from Australia's perspective - it will encourage parents to dump their kids in front of a computer, and not monitor what they are doing - why would they, it's "safe" now, right? Filtered, and all that?

Of course, the filters are only partially effective - even if they're 99.99% effective, that still means that 0.01% (1 in 10,000 hits) dodgy material that kids will be able to access.

People in general and, IMHO, parents especially, already palm off personal responsibility (and yes, parents should be personally responsible for their kids)... why should everyone suffer because a few parents are too lazy/stupid to monitor their kids use of the Internet?

:

[steamin63]

i personally feel very strongly about this invasion of my personal liberty and have emailed my local [labor] federal member and informed him how disgusted i am that this government would dare revoke one of my basic fundamental rights - freedom of speech. if every Australian who feels the same way spent 5 minutes doing the same as me and complained to their local member i doubt the government would carry out this truly fascist piece of legislation. don't whine about it , do something.