'but I can’t for the life of me see how anyone can argue a valid case for being allowed to break the law'

its not the fact that i can't access illegal material that bothers me its the fact that australia's internet speed is going to completely die. As a gamer i don't want to have my right to play online games taken away because the internet is too slow because of this ridiculous filter

I left Australia 4 years ago, I never released how many crazy laws there are there. 

I cant even go to a pub and get drunk their any more.Its not responsable. 

When/Where does it all end! 

What a waste of $120 mil


"You'd think filtering garbage out of society would be appreciated by all except the lowlifes, and it is. Now we need to eliminate the lowlifes."

So Paul, I guess you're one those "if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about" types.

Well guess what Paul.... Today being you might be fine, tomorrow being you might be illegal.

I hope someone protects us from morons that think we need to be protected from ourselves.

At first glance, it seems to be quite sensible to censor "illegal" stuff.

But, WHAT is "illegal" ? ...ANYTHING that has been MADE illegal by a government or a parliament. 
To be "legal" is not a God given property. Humans make something to be "legal" or "illegal" ...and to err is human.

So, who protects us against erring humans? Nobody except we ourselves - assuming that we are well informed (e.g. by an uncensored internet).

Fred Snark writes: "I can see why people would want to opt out of value-based censorship, but I can’t for the life of me see how anyone can argue a valid case for being allowed to break the law."

In Australia Fred pornography that contains something as simple as spanking can be illegal. This is the type of content that can be blocked if the filter is put in place. Content about euthanasia and suicide methods would also be blocked. Should Australian adults be banned from reading material online that they can read in a library?

Child pornography is already illegal in Australia and law enforcement actively combat it. Nevertheless, when the current Australian Government came into power they cut over 2 million dollars off the Australian Federal Police budget for their child exploitation investigation team. Does that sound like a party who is doing this to protect children?

Yes and how anyone can vote for a party that can't even spell its own name correctly is beyond me. We don't need to worry about the firewall as inevitably they will screw this up as well!

I don't know where your from, John, but the political party in power in Australia is called the Australian Labor Party.
Paul

As a person who would be directly affected by the filter...I have to say that nothing of the sort has happened yet. What the government has done (or more to the point, one senator and his right-wing mob) is put together a plan on how they 'could' censor the internet. This involves the two tier black list system at the ISP level. What they havn't thought of is the practicallity of this system: the upfront capital to install and the ever increasing processing capability to DPI every single subscriber's connection is absolutly ludicrous, the Tasmanian test results show that such a system is very much less than optimal as filtering solution. Throw this in with the fact that the same government is trying to revamp our crappy infrastrucutre so that 98% of Aussie households would have access to 12Mbps downstram internet...well...obviously these 'Save the children!' nuts havn't thought things through.

Concerned Aussie netizens are advised to go http://nocleanfeed.com/
and the whirlpool thread where other users as well as ISP representatives are discussing this mess http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=967413 

So to sum up, the great firewall of Oz DOES NOT EXIST at the moment, its technically impossible to effectivly deploy nationwide with our crap infrastructure. However the ambition for such a system is there. Now is the time to act to make sure this doesn't become a reality.

There are 2 levels of filtering:

1. Inappropriate material
This is material that should not be made available to connections where children may have unsupervised access... e.g. Schools, Libraries, etc. This is value-based censorship, and this filter level can be opted out of.

2. Illegal Material.
Illegal is Illegal... end of story... and you can’t opt out of this filter. The only way to deal with this is to have the material made legal.

I can see why people would want to opt out of value-based censorship, but I can’t for the life of me see how anyone can argue a valid case for being allowed to break the law.

I think that the 'lowlifes' deserve a voice too... If that means that they only have the internet, and that gets censored, then it's a lose, lose situation for all... there are more lowlifes than people realise, and they DO vote.... they will lose their rights to 'free speech', and then the govenment will lose power. 
the labor government is very liberal now, so kevin747 and his god-bothering monkeys here in australia will probably do all the things little johnny and his capitalist pigs would have done anyway.

The internet here is slow enough, but not real expensive. QOS is crap though... (quality of service) the ISP's dont really offer any real support, when their product/service fails...

all i can say is 'viva la freedom....'

Do it for the children.

Only perverts want unfettered access to the internet. 

Oh, and since blacklists don't work, it's only a matter of time before they switch to a whitelist of government approved sites.



Our Beloved (cough) Prime minister can speak Mandarin, and now he is acting like one.

I don't know where you're from Lindsay but in countries that speak English there is no such word as Labor. Perhaps you're thinking of French, La bor, although I don't know if that means anything in French either.

I am of course against all the trash on the net that comes with "free speech" internet e.g. child porn, how to make bombs, racism propaganda...

BUT... (i love that unapropiate word)

What about all the good it gives us to have free net?!

Think about all the facts that get out to the open world through the web.
Politicians (corporations puppets) would maybe still deny global warming as a "Conspiracy theory" scare if it wasnt for the internet.
(Gore is really just cashing in on the subject, or so i would think... thanks through multiple net sources)

I could rant on forever to try to get even the most conservative to see the big picture but i hope i don´t have to.

Bit** about hope is, it´s often not enough. Action please. Now!

Phew ... that sounds too dramatic for my personal taste but i think bold words are only fitting this time.

Yours conservative,
Jörg A. Königseder

Have you not heard of cleanfeed?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleanfeed_(content_blocking_system)

Yup, watch out Great Britain your next. We need to fear too in the USA with liberal socialist wannabes about to take over.

I never thought it would happen to you guys :(

I'll miss chatting with the few Aussies during a game of BF2, since now your ping will keep you all out of international servers. 
I wish you luck trying to get your rights to information back, ours have been vanishing also here in the US.

(if I was in China and posted this, it would be jail. How much longer can we talk about censorship before that's a crime too?)

Looks like it was the Libs who were looking at implementing it first...

http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,22218715-15306,00.html

My kid can look at porn from 16 onwards (he'll be finding elsewhere at lot younger than that). Any younger than that, he'll just get a clip around the ear if he's caught.

Rolf'll have to add a new line to his song: "Tie your Internet down, clown, tie your internet down..."

Thought that Finland started censoring the Internet (read child porn) before Australians... but then again, not sure if Finland is classified as a western country... (nor Australia?)

You'd think filtering garbage out of society would be appreciated by all except the lowlifes, and it is. Now we need to eliminate the lowlifes.




"Internet Service Providers have warned that the glorious filter will slow Australian internet speeds down to that of a three-legged dingo dragging a baby up Ayers’ Rock."

what can i say, its gonna take me an hour to clean me screen after blurtin coffee all over it, nice one nick lol :O)

Governments once used the army to control the plebs.

Then they got smart and used religion.

Then they tried the medical system.

Now its the Internet.

Marx would have made all of this into something cool to read but you should get the gist of it.

Controlling information is the only means left to them to control the masses.

Commercial TV can't compete with the Internet ... except for the dumb meatheads who are already under control.

Controlling the Internet effectively shuts us off from sharing ideas and information on a global level.

But you know that right ??


"clean feed Internet service to all homes, schools and public Internet points accessible by children."
Can't help notice the absence of government buildings and businesses in that list.

I can't believe the aussies let them, they aren't know as the meek wimps some other nations are know as, and yet it seems their government can get away with this? Peculiar.

Meanwhile we in the EU also suffer a certain amount of censorship, we just aren't told in what areas, but it is at least avoidable with enough effort in finding the right ISP and some doable tricks, still, it's nasty how people in various EU countries (and america) don't even realise their google results are filtered and usenet and sometimes sites, and more of such things.

Please tell me this phrase - which means nothing more in this context than 'what a government considers suitable for viewing' - has not now become so ubiquitous as to be written without quotes around it.

China 2.0 here we come!

Once again our prime minister Kevin Rudd is on a wholly mission from god to save us from wicked ways by taking alcohol even more and censoring out materials he deems sinful. I am sick of these god nutters stemming from the assumption they have the right to tell everyone what to do, and keep shoving their imaginary friends down everyone's throats! 

If broadband speeds over here are not bad enough as it is! 


As far as I know, we, which means: Germany, have done this since some years...blocking nazi sites, not so well known criticising sites and some other stuff for german IPs...

greetings,
observer

Well the interwibble in OZ is horrible slow and ridiculous expensive anyway. Can't get worse anyway. I guess what that means is it aint get better either...
No worries,
M.

Please don't associate them with the labour movement.

This better be a bleedin' joke... Since it's not april 1st, I think I am going to be severely disappointed. :[