No opt-out web filtering

[apothecary]

On it goes

Please do not let this issue fall by the way side

http://www.rustylime.com/show_article.php?id=2929

Australian government pushes on with 'ridiculous' ISP filter

The Australian Federal Government is pushing forward with plans to force Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to filter all Internet traffic within Australia. This proposal, which the government says is non-negotiable, will be mandatory for all people inside Australia. Making matters significantly worse, communications minister Senator Conroy, refuses to even discuss the issue in parliament or with the press. As such, the only details available are those being leaked by concerned ISPs.

When the Labour party came to power in 2007, one of their election promises was to do away with the previous government's plan to filter the Internet, however, as they failed to gain a majority in the Senate, they have been forced to partner with the Family First and Christian Democrat parties, both of whom represent the right-wing Christian vote. In so doing, they are now pushing the pet projects of those parties, in return for votes on their big ticket items, such as their environmental policies. So now we see the return of Internet filtering to the agenda.

The filter is being pushed to "protect children" from pornography, online gambling and paedophilia. Of course, the filter assumes that every single Internet user is a child, as, being ISP based, there is no way to turn it off. If it goes ahead, the filter will be more restrictive than those in either Iran or China.

What makes this situation so sinister is that Senator Conroy is actively refusing to discuss the issue. Even in Question Time, in parliament, he is simply ignoring questions being directed to him on the topic and has only stated that "people who are against the bill are for paedophilia". He has also tried legal action to silence critics of the plan. So we are now dangerously close to having mandatory Internet filtering introduced in this country and many people either don't care (understand) or simply don't even know.

However the ISPs being forced to get involved are not staying silent. Here's a little bit of what we now know about the proposed filter:

* It will be mandatory. No one will be able to opt out.

* Tests so far show almost 86% reduction in speed. Home ADSL accounts perform at worse than dial up performance.

* Initial testing showed tens of thousands of false positive sites. False positives sites that users cannot access include youtube, slashdot and MySpace. Additionally, countless innocent Blogs and newsites were banned.

* The filter will also ban sites with "key words". Sites such as RustyLime are likely to therefore be banned, as they may include the word "sex" or "kiddie porn" in user comments.

* Almost all actual porn sites were still available.

* Once a site is banned there is no know way to have it "unbanned".

* Sites that share a server with banned hosts will also be banned. As some servers host thousands of web pages, this will cause massive outages.

So in effect, this idiotic proposal will reduce the Australian Internet to a barely functioning, circa 1990's speed pile of junk... while leaving the porn freely available. Additionally, Australians will never be allowed to see what is on the list or what the criteria for blocking is.

iiNet's Mike Malone, CEO of Australia's second largest ISP has referred to Senator Conroy as "...the worst Communications Minister we've had in the 15 years since the [internet] industry has existed...". Considering his predecessor tried to "make email forwarding illegal", that should tell you something about this man's credentials. He stated that:

"...They're not listening to the experts, they're not listening to the industry, they're not listening to consumers..."

Australia's largest ISP, Telstra has likewise made several statements that this proposal will never achieve its goal and will only damage the Internet. Initial testing by Telstra found that not only did the filtering massively degrade performance but it also caused the service to completely fail regularly:

"...Anything you are going to put in the end-to-end data path that actually does blocking can be invasive. It's invasive meaning it is expensive [to implement], and invasive in the sense that installing it in our network is complicated and may in fact cause outages..."

Conroy doesn't plan to stop there, however. He also plans to filter:

* MSN chats.

* Email.

* Secure web traffic, including banking transactions.

And hopes to eliminate P2P traffic altogether. When questioned about the legitimate use of torrents, for example obtaining Linux, Conroy typically had no response.

This means the government will be reading your email and online chats and deciding what you can and cannot say in them. Strangely enough - no one seems to care about this. The TV media is barely touching the topic and while print press is all over it, Joe Public doesn't care about something until his TV tells him to. Of course, the large media companies stand to gain a lot out of this, as they are the ones pushing the inclusion of the ban on P2P and torrents.

The Internet filter is now in its final stage of testing and despite a complete and utter failure in all previous stages, Conroy intends to press on and sort out the details once it is in place. The filter is planned to be introduced to all Australian's in 2009.

When we have absolute luddites in charge of our technology, who are completely at the whim of even more luddite Christian groups and if there is no public outrage, then this filter is virtually assured to go ahead. None of the decision makers in this process have even the slightest understanding of the technologies involved and despite every single committee and working group reporting back that it is destined to seriously damage the internet, while failing to achieve it's objectives, they're just pressing forward.

I urge all Australians to care about this. Get involved. If you don't the Internet you know and love is about to go away for ever and you will only have yourselves to blame. If you don't ordinarily get involved then this is the one thing you should get involved in.

Sites to visit:

http://www.efa.org.au/censorship/mandatory-isp-blocking/

http://www.somebodythinkofthechildren.com/

Also visit www.getup.org.au

[Yeti101]

On it goes

Please do not let this issue fall by the way side

Agreed. I lost my ability to express how very, very bad this is some time ago.

The 'trial' is pushing ahead. The initial round of ISPs are Primus Telecommunications, Tech 2U, Webshield, OMNIconnect, Netforce and Highway 1.

This is doubly fucked because only Primus is a major supplier (and even then only just). Webshield already offers a filtered feed and have a vested interest in filtering products. Netforce apparently have connections to at least one filter vendor, and mainly does business services. OMNIconnect has a very small customer base and is mainly non-residential. Highway 1 does no residential. Tech 2U is tiny.

These ISP's have been chosen so that the results of the trial will be severely skewed. As I have said previously, we are in deep, deep shit.

Please write to your federal MPs and Senators. in fact, write to any politician that you can think of. Write to papers. Hand out leaflets. Collect signatures. Become politically active. And plan on how to deal with a worst case scenario.

Perhaps send you thoughts to the Senator himself: [email protected] , though sending a real paper letter to him or your MP instructing them to take you concerns to him is considered to be more effective.

[MindExpansion]

This has gone so far past the point of being acceptable, I think we now need to seriously consider how to cause public outrage and to me a protest or demonstration really seems like a suitable option, if it drew enough attention it could perhaps make it onto the news and then they would not be able to avoid talking about the issue any more. A march down the middle of the main street of sydney would surely draw some attention...but how do you organise something like that? Any old demonstrators from the golden age of public outrage care to lend an expert hand?

This bullshit cannot be allowed to continue.

Peace, after the war

[JDanger]

These ISP's have been chosen so that the results of the trial will be severely skewed. As I have said previously, we are in deep, deep shit.

Please write to your federal MPs and Senators. in fact, write to any politician that you can think of. Write to papers. Hand out leaflets. Collect signatures. Become politically active. And plan on how to deal with a worst case scenario.

Perhaps send you thoughts to the Senator himself: [email protected] , though sending a real paper letter to him or your MP instructing them to take you concerns to him is considered to be more effective.

How'd you lose your ability to express how bad this is?

I wrote to the senator and in response I was thanked for my interest in the trial and given a PDF giving me more information on how good this is for our kids.

Talk about feeling helpless.

[edit] Mandatory Filtering Won't Slow Web Access - Anthony Pillion, Webshield Internet Services managing director

Mmmmmm... vested interest...

Edited February 12, 2009 by JDanger

[MindExpansion]

JD, why did you have to post that article, now im going to be clenching with rage all day, what a piece of fucking shit that douchebag is, aside from the obvious conflict of interest, he makes points that are totally irrelevant:

Approximately 118 million web site requests were handled and there was no evidence of any web sites being blocked that were not on the block list. This equates to a false positive rate of zero.

I have less issue with false positives, than I do with the size of the blacklist and the gov's ability to blacklist anything they want. Who needs false positives when everything is on the black list... Not to mention the fact that he is talkin about a university network, hardly a general population user base there ey?

Some filtering commentators have suggested that mandatory filtering removes the parents’ discretion to make decisions about what is best for their children.

The opposite is in fact true; it provides an array of additional tools that puts control of internet content with the end user.

ISP level filtering has the added strength of applying more sophisticated technology, makes circumvention harder, and leaves parents and carers free of requiring specialist knowledge to install and maintain PC based filters.

HAH, parents need to stop being lazy if they want their kids to be safe online, net nanny etc are well designed programs aimed at the layperson end user, not IT professionals, if that was their target audience or they were so hard to 'install and maintain' they would already be out of business. Not to mention that I for one already have my circumnavigation tools installed and ready to go.

Oh and I love this comment someone left:

LOL. kids know how to get round these filters, they will always, know and if not they will find a way. Judging by your pathetic data allowances, it does cost a bit.1500/256, 30 gig for $90?? Yeah it doesnt cost much at all.

Heheh, FUCK.

[JDanger]

My bad. This one should make you feel a wee bit better. If not, grab your guns.

Education, Not Filtering, The Answer: iiNet

[Yeti101]

How'd you lose your ability to express how bad this is?

There are only so many expletives you can pack into one sentence. On the other hand I could try some novel combinations: Sen C0nroy is a McCluster-Knuckle-motherfucker and so on. That does make me feel better (briefly), but contributes little to the overall debate.

As for protests, there are people (apparently) working on it. But if the ALP are anything like other parties, they would ignore any number of people protesting on the street. I'm honestly not sure what will work. How do you convince a government that thinks its position is unassailable to change what it is doing? I can see that we are going to end up with a lot of agitation, public ridicule and minor civil disobedience going on - but will it help?

What we need is a really good t-shirt.

[MindExpansion]

Yeti, the idea of a protest is not necessarily to directly sway the government, but to force the issue into the spotlight so more public interest is generated. That's my take on it anyway.

Peace

[Yeti101]

I this context I think you are correct, Mind.

[Chiral]

How many people die or are injured as a result of alcohol and tobacco...THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS..how many kids are lured away to their deaths by pedophiles..?

Words cannot express how fucking outraged at this we should be...how are we supposed to educate ourselves with harm minimization without the freedom of information...?

All porn sites will still exist.. slow bandwidth speeds...does that mean they reduce our costs as we be not be accessing the speeds we are accustomed to..therefore net package prices would tumble..can you see Telstra and Optus taking a huge cut in profits..

Sounds like this...>>> Conroy is Christian Fundamentalist and needs his head cracked open..police state here we come..FUCK THAT...but at the end of the day I am no one and they don't give a shit as these are just words on a site that will be a ghost town very soon and shut down....

Count me in on a mass demo..I've got a pair of 700 dollar cowboy boots I wanna wear and get blood all over them.

H.

[Neoshaman]

Yeti, the idea of a protest is not necessarily to directly sway the government, but to force the issue into the spotlight so more public interest is generated. That's my take on it anyway.

Peace

ALP & Stephen Conroy ,

Family's fucked ..ohhh i mean family first and the

christian Dumbshits party ..... aren'tt these 5the same pricks that wanted to ban boobs at the beach

dEMOCRACY : 1 a: government by the people ; especially : rule of the majority b: a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections : oBVIOUSLY NOT IN THIS FUCKING COUNTRY

"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." THOMAS JEFFERSON

"Relying on the government to protect your privacy is like asking a peeping tom to install your window blinds." ~John Perry Barlow

"The plague of government is senile delinquency. " ~Mignon McLaughlin

"A Conservative government is an organised hypocrisy. " ~Benjamin Disraeli

When is this brainless fucking looser Stephen Conroy wake the fuck up maybe he needs to be trapped in his office by a protest for 48hours to so realise He is regarded as one of the biggest wankers in politics and that we aren't going to stand by and let this blatant invasion on our rights happen, come on people how many times has the piss weak like fucks running the country backed down on the whole Australia Card Issue ( national id card ) Surely we can stop this too .

Its useless to hate the media for not reporting it how many are run by neo-con freaks that couldn't give a fuck about mine and your rights stokes , packeras , murdochs when was the last time we saw any of these pricks standing up for anybodies rights except their own. Become the media print flyers spend a few hours putting them in peoples letter boxes do up a nice email to circulate regarding it we all know how quick they can make the rounds , mail bomb Stephen Conroy ( thats email bomb no getting to carried awayy guys ) GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

RR Blood Boiling going to find a more relaxing thread

Edited February 12, 2009 by neoshaman

[OD1TechKnowBee]

-

Freedoms should be universal for those who strive for them

Yeh, that's a more convincing way of putting things.

I like the striving aspect, nice emotive word that.

There exists rumors that often increased freedoms require increased responsibility. Further, being able to realize such freedoms, seems to require a certain degree of competency.

Such rumors began surfacing after a certain incident involving ever familiar, and also ever useful, pieces of rope. It was observed that when freely giving out as much rope as anyone might request, without responsibly giving advice on how to competently deal with so much rope, some people inadvertently found themselves getting tied up into all sorts of knots. Many of these knots caused great distress, and some even proved lethal.

Such distress and death, being the tragic and highly emotive things they are and all, obviously gave the keepers of the rope great cause for concern. What to do? In competent hands, rope had proven itself to be quite useful, yet in less than competent hands, it seemed a proven scourge on humanity.

And so it came to pass...

Yeh, I'm sorry,

I'm just dribbling,

I don't really know how this story ends...

But then you can probably tell that by the fact that I've just replied to a rather long post pretty much just where I left off,

totally lacking the courtesy to acknowledge much that went on inbetween then and now.

(Note: That was dribble and not drivel, 'cos I know how that's not allowed and all).

Hang on,

Maybe i can fix this,

Or am i just making it worse?

I did read more of the inbetween bits, but it kept going round in circles often enough that I arrogantly assumed it might keep doing that. And the thing about circles is that they don't really seem to go anywhere. Got to say though, I so totally love them hurricane rides that i sometimes go on at The Royal Show. It's kinda like it takes me to another place, even though I know I haven't really gone anywhere. Circles certainly aren't all bad then.

I guess if we all understood stuff the first time round,

Well, what would we do with all that time on our hands anyway?

Newton said, (the guy in the original article, not the gravity dude)

"Illegal is illegal and if there is infrastructure in place to block it, then it will be required to be blocked—end of story."

Oh, so that's how the story ends..

Illegal is indeed Illegal

But that definition doesn't really seem to go anywhere.

'Scuse me while I go find myself a piece of rope to go make a circle out of!!!

 

Consider this: fighting for civil liberties by the means known to that person.

Indeed.

[JDanger]

Good news, friends.

The Government's plan to introduce mandatory internet censorship has effectively been scuttled, following an independent senator's decision to join the Greens and Opposition in blocking any legislation required to get the scheme started.

The Opposition's communications spokesman Nick Minchin has this week obtained independent legal advice saying that if the Government is to pursue a mandatory filtering regime "legislation of some sort will almost certainly be required".

Senator Nick Xenophon previously indicated he may support a filter that blocks online gambling websites but in a phone interview today he withdrew all support, saying "the more evidence that's come out, the more questions there are on this".

The Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, has consistently ignored advice from a host of technical experts saying the filters would slow the internet, block legitimate sites, be easily bypassed and fall short of capturing all of the nasty content available online.

Despite this, he is pushing ahead with trials of the scheme using six ISPs - Primus, Tech 2U, Webshield, OMNIconnect, Netforce and Highway 1.

But even the trials have been heavily discredited, with experts saying the lack of involvement from the three largest ISPs, Telstra, Optus and iiNet, means the trials will not provide much useful data on the effects of internet filtering in the real-world.

Senator Conroy originally pitched the filters as a way to block child porn but - as ISPs, technical experts and many web users feared - the targets have been broadened significantly since then.

ACMA's secret blacklist, which will form the basis of the mandatory censorship regime, contains 1370 sites, only 674 of which relate to depictions of children under 18. A significant portion - 506 sites - would be classified R18+ and X18+, which is legal to view but would be blocked for everyone under the proposal.

This week Senator Conroy said there was "a very strong case for blocking" other legal content that has been "refused classification". According to the classification code, this includes sites depicting drug use, crime, sex, cruelty, violence or "revolting and abhorrent phenomena" that "offend against the standards of morality".

And last month, ACMA added an anti-abortion website to its blacklist because it showed photographs of what appears to be aborted foetuses. The Government has said it was considering expanding the blacklist to 10,000 sites and beyond.

Xenophon said instead of implementing a blanket mandatory censorship regime the Government should instead put the money towards educating parents on how to supervise their kids online and tackling "pedophiles through cracking open those peer-to-peer groups".

Technical experts have said the filters proposed by the Government would do nothing to block child porn being transferred on encrypted peer-to-peer networks.

"I'm very skeptical that the Government is going down the best path on this," said Xenophon.

"I commend their intentions but I think the implementation of this could almost be counter-productive and I think the money could be better spent."

The policy has attracted opposition from online consumers, lobby groups, ISPs, network administrators, some children's welfare groups, the Opposition, the Greens, NSW Young Labor and even the conservative Liberal senator Cory Bernardi, who famously tried to censor the chef Gordon Ramsay's swearing on television.

This week, a national telephone poll of 1100 people, conducted by Galaxy and commissioned by online activist group GetUp, found that only 5 per cent of Australians want ISPs to be responsible for protecting children online and only 4 per cent want Government to have this responsibility.

A recent survey by Netspace of 10,000 of the ISP's customers found 61 per cent strongly opposed mandatory internet filtering with only 6.3 per cent strongly agreeing with the policy.

An expert report, handed to the Government last February but kept secret until December after it was uncovered by the Herald, concluded the proposed scheme was fundamentally flawed.

Even Labor has previously opposed ISP-level internet filtering when the Howard Government raised it as a method for protecting kids online.

"Unfortunately, such a short memory regarding the debate in 1999 about internet content has led the coalition to already offer support for greater censorship by actively considering proposals for unworkable, quick fixes that involve filtering the internet at the ISP level," Labor Senator Kate Lundy said in 2003.

Xenophon said instead of implementing a blanket mandatory censorship regime the Government should instead put the money towards educating parents on how to supervise their kids online and tackling "pedophiles through cracking open those peer-to-peer groups".

Technical experts have said the filters proposed by the Government would do nothing to block child porn being transferred on encrypted peer-to-peer networks.

"I'm very skeptical that the Government is going down the best path on this," said Xenophon.

"I commend their intentions but I think the implementation of this could almost be counter-productive and I think the money could be better spent."

The policy has attracted opposition from online consumers, lobby groups, ISPs, network administrators, some children's welfare groups, the Opposition, the Greens, NSW Young Labor and even the conservative Liberal senator Cory Bernardi, who famously tried to censor the chef Gordon Ramsay's swearing on television.

This week, a national telephone poll of 1100 people, conducted by Galaxy and commissioned by online activist group GetUp, found that only 5 per cent of Australians want ISPs to be responsible for protecting children online and only 4 per cent want Government to have this responsibility.

A recent survey by Netspace of 10,000 of the ISP's customers found 61 per cent strongly opposed mandatory internet filtering with only 6.3 per cent strongly agreeing with the policy.

An expert report, handed to the Government last February but kept secret until December after it was uncovered by the Herald, concluded the proposed scheme was fundamentally flawed.

Even Labor has previously opposed ISP-level internet filtering when the Howard Government raised it as a method for protecting kids online.

"Unfortunately, such a short memory regarding the debate in 1999 about internet content has led the coalition to already offer support for greater censorship by actively considering proposals for unworkable, quick fixes that involve filtering the internet at the ISP level," Labor Senator Kate Lundy said in 2003.

Link

[MindExpansion]

Oh thank god, I might suggest that everyone should take the time to send Senator Xenophon an email to thank him and congratulate him. Contact Form

Thanks for the link JD.

Peace

[Yeti101]

Good news, friends.

Link

Don't get over-excited or complacent. We are not even remotely out of the woods yet. How Nick X votes is likely to be irrelevant as we only need the Opposition and the greens to vote against the government to block any legislation. His vote will only hold the balance of power if some of the Opposition cross the floor (could happen) and none of the ALP cross the floor (probably not, but maybe). Have a look at the breakdown of senate numbers below.

Current seats in the Senate:

ALP 32

Coalition 37

Greens have 5

Family First (Fielding) 1

Independent (Xenophon) 1

So long as the Greens and the Coalition hold their position, no legislation will be passing. But if even a 5 Coalition senators cross the floor, and Nick scores some more money for the Murray, we are screwed. On top of that there is talk on Whirlpool of the use of non-legislative instruments to force this through - I don't think that this could happen, but you can't underestimate what zealots like Conroy and Rudd will do to get their way.

Again - write to your federal MP's and Senators telling then clearly and politely, that you oppose Internet Censorship/ISP Filtering.

This isn't the time to give up. Excessive re-tweeting that we are out of this situation makes me suspicious.

[Smiling Cloud]

Neoshaman- thanks for reminding me about the boobs on the beach episode, it brings a smile to my face. Adam and eve were kicked out of the garden of eden for covering themselves up/showing shame of gods creation!!

Its the same smile i get when I see anarchy symbols on a PUBLIC toilet wall, i always laugh my ass off at the irony of it.

Completely off topic i know, i'm sorry. But for the record i do think this non opt out isp filtering is a joke. When it was first proposed i saw a few letters to the editor about it in one of the 'big' papers but the issue has seemed to disappear from public eye.

I talked to my dad about it at christmas and he thought it was a great idea. He can't see that the individual still has a choice about what they choose to view. He kept ranting about 'the shit they show on the tv', apparently he feels powerless to change the channel or better yet turn it off. He seems to think that if you have the internet then images of violence, hard-core pornography and peadophilia will flash cross the screen when you turn the computer on. He doesn't realise you have to LOOK for it. THis is what we are against i think, people who have no idea about the internet and think that it is much like the tv in that you turn the internet on and watch whats on. I tried to explain to him that the internet is far better than tv in that YOU choose what to view, you can get the news without having to hear a story about a murder, and you can watch tv on there (i only just discovered this so its a big thing for me:) ) as well as a heap of other things. Dad really thinks that the internet can corrupt minds and drive people to commit rape and acts of extreme violence!!! According to him it is a direct cause of terrorism! Funny (or sad) what ignorance can do to a normally rational and sane person.

After hearing dads rant i wanted to see if it was a generational thing and talked to my computer savvy aunty about it. She believed that isp filtering is a joke and that the money would be better used targeting peadophiles and making a 'net nanny' style program available for free download as this would achieve the governments aims (except keeping the masses blind of course) without restricting peoples freedom to think and find information.

So after talking to a few people at christmas i have formed the opinion that the people who are in favour of internt censorship are the people who DON'T use the internet or use it very little (people who use it for email, internet banking etc). So the whole thing is bollocks and it will be a very sad day if it ever happens, the box gets smaller and smaller every day...

But to put a smile on everyones face, go to a public toilet and look at the anarchy symbol that will undoubtedly be there.

[Chiral]

Whats most fucked about all this is that soooooooooooo many people have absolutely no idea that any of this is happening...it's almost cloak and dagger stuff...you can bet your balls if they asked the general public to vote on this the majority would kick this legislation to the kerb with a big roar of anger.

[botanicalSEEKER]

* Tests so far show almost 86% reduction in speed. Home ADSL accounts perform at worse than dial up performance.

Welcome to the stone ages, next stop Australia: the police state!

If this bullshit passes then my homepage will be a proxie, but i don't have 2 days to wait around for it to load ABCNews.

Word recognition and filtering of websites will initially cause a crushing halt to the net, no sites such as new sites will be accessible because they reports on events that may bee deemed unfit for our viewing pleasure by the government.

[MindExpansion]

Proxie's probably won't work as most of them will likely be added to the blacklist.

Overseas ISP is an option but a painful and probably expensive one, there are a few other programs that let you create a VPN with other people, so people in america or other countries can let you use their net connection over a virtual lan network (see hamachi).

Peace

[botanicalSEEKER]

Proxie's probably won't work as most of them will likely be added to the blacklist.

Overseas ISP is an option but a painful and probably expensive one, there are a few other programs that let you create a VPN with other people, so people in america or other countries can let you use their net connection over a virtual lan network (see hamachi).

Peace

TOR

Stop us bitches

pce and jah wisdom

[Sparkster]

Looks like the internet is trying to be curbed by more than just governments. The whole copyright sh*t can't be too far away if conroys ballsy filtering fails.

NZ is very closer to allowing companies to force ISPs to stop users or even block websites merely by being accused of breaking copyright rules.

Irish Internet Firm to shut off illegal music users

Protesters Say Copyright Law stripping rights

One of the legal approaches that has worked for studios or copyright holders is to not target the millions who download this material, but bring legal proceedings against the ISP (just beginning to happen) or against the p2p software provider (e.g: napster, kazaa) or search engines (pirate bay trial currently under way) because they are "knowingly allowing" these copyright breaches.

(what I would give to see someone try and sue Google for hosting copyrighted images in their image search....)

Unfortunately it tends to be technically illiterate politicians, judges and claimants worming these changes on a society that doesn't really understand what this is all about.

[MindExpansion]

iiNet is currently being sued I think, by a big group of film companies, and it seems likely that they will lose.

Link

Peace

[Yeti101]

I think it worth mentioning that today a list that is apparently the ACMA blacklist (which will make up the mandatory level of filtering) was leaked on Wikileaks. There are plenty of legit urls on there, including some well known (but completely legal) porn sites. I haven't gone through the list myself 'cause I'm at work, and I think it might be illegal, but I wonder what else is on there that should not be.....

[Torsten]

yes, had a look at the list myself and was surprised how many normal and legal porn sites are listed on there. The government wuld have known that this list would be scrutinised, so to think that they would risk putting so many legal sites on there and thus weaken their own position is a good indication of just where this list will head in the future.

gotta say that making such a list is probably the dumbest thing ACMA could have done in the fight against kiddie porn. now the pedos will have instant access to all the sites neatly provided in one list. or maybe that's why ACMA put heap sof legal sites on the list too, to confuse the pedos

[Yeti101]

It isn't the 'real' list, according to the Minister . However he did confirm that some of the links were common to the actual ACMA list - but would not say which ones (obviously).

On the up side, we didn't appear on there.