Posted on 12/26/2008 11:28:28 AM PST by BGHater
A proposed Internet filter dubbed the "Great Aussie Firewall" is promising to make Australia one of the strictest Internet regulators among democratic countries.
Consumers, civil-rights activists, engineers, Internet providers and politicians from opposition parties are among the critics of a mandatory Internet filter that would block at least 1,300 Web sites prohibited by the government — mostly child pornography, excessive violence, instructions in crime or drug use and advocacy of terrorism.
Hundreds protested in state capitals earlier this month.
"This is obviously censorship," said Justin Pearson Smith, 29, organizer of protests in Melbourne and an officer of one of a dozen Facebook groups against the filter.
The list of prohibited sites, which the government isn't making public, is arbitrary and not subject to legal scrutiny, Smith said, leaving it to the government or lawmakers to pursue their own online agendas.
"I think the money would be better spent in investing in law enforcement and targeting producers of child porn," he said.
Internet providers say a filter could slow browsing speeds, and many question whether it would achieve its intended goals. Illegal material such as child pornography is often traded on peer-to-peer networks or chats, which would not be covered by the filter.
"People don't openly post child porn, the same way you can't walk into a store in Sydney and buy a machine gun," said Geordie Guy, spokesman for Electronic Frontiers Australia, an Internet advocacy organization. "A filter of this nature only blocks material on public Web sites. But illicit material ... is traded on the black market, through secret channels."
Communications Minister Stephen Conroy proposed the filter earlier this year, following up on a promise of the year-old Labor Party government to make the Internet cleaner and safer.
(Excerpt) Read more at tech.yahoo.com ...
So much for moving to Australia to escape American statism.
make the internet cleaner and safer, from what? From ourselves? These lousy excuse that government love to use.
If we want a filter to protect our own family we will install one ourself. We don’t need the government to act as our nanny
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
When idiots try to do good... they are still idiots.
It’s a biological law.
“If we want a filter to protect our own family we will install one ourself. We don’t need the government to act as our nanny”
So you don’t want to block child pornography sites? It’s not family men that are exploiting children
New Zealand would be much better, they have conservative government for the first time in years!
The problem is that if you give the Government power to block certain sites, then what makes you think won’t stop blocking porn or terrorism sites???
Liberalism is like tooth decay — you let it go unchecked, and it gets ugly. First they banned guns and their crime rates went out of sight — in spite of the early knowledge that criminals do not obey laws — now they want to ban porn and sex-crimes will go up too. Besides taking away “free speech” it one of its many forms.
You let in a little liberalism, and it ALWAYS GROWS into MAJOR ROT.
Censorship can come from the left in the form of political correctness, or from the right under the banner of preserving decency and protecting children. Either way it is totalitarian and dangerous, you are giving a government bureaucrat the power to decide what you can and cannot be exposed to.
That’s just it. They don’t want to do good. They want government nanny control.
But to them, government nanny control is GOOD.
What is your definition of “filth” and “violence”? You want to give a government censor the right to determine what speech should be free? That Mohammed quote in your signature can be labeled “offensive” and censored by the same bureaucrat.
Going to be a lot of angry Australian Arabs...
Like Socialism by bailout, censorship is a slippery slope.
This is just a test, the pretext will be used later to block “racist”, “sexist”, “homophobic”, “anti Islamist”, “nativist” etc. sites. We won’t be able to stop it because the rulingelites have already decided that only they know what is good for us. We are mere peasants and arrogant to think that we should have individua;l freedom when they know so much better.
I look for restrictions on political blogs in the US as part of an Obama campaign to reimpose the Fairness Doctrine.
Australia can’t get over the idea that it’s just an island, instead of a continent. This creates the same kind of intellectual morass you get from a monopoly, a single party state, a single TV channel or a single newspaper.
What would improve Australia immensely is if the country was divided in two, between the West and the East, or the North and the South. Even the smallest difference would be magnified, and they would be forced to confront the idea that a way wasn’t the only way.
I suggest one side wearing funny hats, and the other kilts.
The obvious question is how would they know? They have never been under Nanny government here.
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