Attention Aussie FFers...
 

http://www.infoworld.com/news/feeds/...html?source=gs

Why are you here? You should be forming pitchfork brigades over this nonsense.

According to preliminary trials, the best Internet content filters would incorrectly block about 10,0000 Web pages from one million.

(from that article, last sentence) ^

Epic number fail.

i guarantee within minutes of it going live, there will be hotfixes and bypasses circulating the usual hacker hotspots.

Exactly. Once this is in place, it'll be too easy to make different classes of information "illegal", and that'll be intentionally blocking...no telling what else would be accidentally blocked. Things that might be illegal in Australia might be depicted on YouTube...well, that would make it an illegal site. Time to block it! Seriously. How the hell did this even get passed the planning stages without a riot?

Maybe one of those things that sounded good?

Or maybe these politicians are just illiterate with computers.....

I can see why the political class would favor it. Control information and you control the people. Can't stop the signal, Mal.

Wow. Speeding right down the road to "Nineteen Eighty-Four". Don't worry, Big Brother will welcome you warmly.

ROW ROW FIGHT THE POWA

Oh god... :zzz:

OK i didnt understand 100% of that article.. so its saying that they'll implement some filter that will block certain sites from Australia...? Are they blocking stuff for EVERYONE to protect our children or this filter only applies to people with children? =/

Either way... 1) our internet is crappy enough... i cant believe they want to slow it down even more..

2) There isnt really much political things that are allowed overseas and not allowed here in Aussie.. maybe except for an occasional graffiti game >.> I think Aussie is quite a free country, they would never (or should i say, have never) stop us from buying a book called "Rudd Sux" or anything like that...

3) Schools, block enough sites as it is... apart from the intranet you can hardly have access to ANYTHING at most schools, one of the principal tried to book some plane tickets and all her sites were blocked...

So.. has this filter thing been around for other countries?

The government never learns. This won't even hinder the stuff I download off of utorrent though.

Australians are known to be sly at times. Proxies are a persons best friend. They allow you to bypass any silly country filter and school filter. Oh boy it brings back memories of school. They had a bunch of game websites blocked off but I was told by a friend of how to bypass those stupid school filters with a simple web based proxy. I even caught a classmate browsing a porn site in school with that web proxy. >_>

http://alp.net.au/media/1107/mscoit190.php

Information from the Australian Labor Party website about the plan. How they present it is thus:

"Providing a mandatory ‘clean feed’ internet service for all homes, schools and public computers that are used by Australian children, so that ISPs will filter out content identified as prohibited by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA). The ACMA ‘blacklist’ will also be made more comprehensive to ensure that children are protected from harmful and inappropriate online material;"

What they're not saying is by putting this filter in place, the only way to "opt-out" of it is to have a different blacklist, only those sites deemed "illegal."

that site's not loading for me..

Hmm so... people without children should technically be excempted... =/

@Hessah - According to that article the child protective censoring will be optional, but the other blacklist is mandatory. You have to accept it or choose to break the law and go around it. That's what I get out of it anyway. It's likely that the stuff being blocked isn't something most people would care to see anyway, but that's not the point.

I don't have a problem with schools blocking things since that's a public place, but they're talking about forcing blocks on you in your private homes and that's just not cool to me. It slowing down the network is just the turd cherry on top of a mud sundae.

Lots of countries employ certain degrees of internet censorship. Most like the US and (formerly?) Australia aren't really mandatory or very strict. Some, like China, Iran, N. Korea, etc... enforce much greater controls.

List of countries with internet censorship. What this article proposes could bump Australia up from the Nominal category to the Substantial one.