The Great Australian Internet Blackout

[LuckyLove8]

The Australian federal government intends to begin pushing through the net filtering legislation next month.

1. It won’t protect children: The filter isn’t a “cyber safety” measure to stop kids seeing inappropriate content such as R and X rated websites. It is not even designed to prevent the spread of illegal material where it is most often found (chat rooms, peer-to-peer file sharing).

2. We will all pay for this ineffective solution: Under this policy, ISPs will be forced to charge more for consumer and business broadband. Several hundred thousand dollars has already been spent to test the filter – without considering high-speed services such as the National Broadband Network!

3. A dangerous precedent: We stand to join a small club of countries which impose centralised Internet censorship such as China, Iran and Saudi Arabia. The secret blacklist may be limited to “Refused Classification” content for now, but what might a future Australian Government choose to block?

Please join the Australia Day campaign against the government censorship. The Great Australian Internet Blackout involves aussies blacking out their facebook, twitter avatars and blacking out their websites in protest.

My humble websites have joined the cause and I urge webmasters with larger traffic bases to join in as well.

Once the filtering system is in place, it will become easy for self-righteous politicians to add whatever websites to the black list. This will inevitably affect our gambling industry eventually. Don't wait to complain after the fact, please join the action now!

[pgaming]

Interesting, government censorship of the internet would most certainly be impossible. If protesters in Iran can get their message out with the internet infrastructure absolutely shut off I highly doubt the Australian Government would fare better.

Australia may also run the risk of major web/ internet based corporations running out of the country. Google is threatening to pull out of China because of censorship related issues. The Chinese Foreign Minister as are the citizens are begging Google not to leave “China’s Internet is open”.

If the Australian Government proceeds with internet censorship there will be a black lash they never anticipated IMO. Most politicians carry a very weak understanding World Wide Web and even weaker understanding of the Internet. It does appear since the beginning World’s Governments discounted the Internet as simply nothing.

After all there is always freenet for uncensored web surfing and plenty others.

pgaming/shaddy

[LuckyLove8]

Interesting, government censorship of the internet would most certainly be impossible. If protesters in Iran can get their message out with the internet infrastructure absolutely shut off I highly doubt the Australian Government would fare better.

Australia may also run the risk of major web/ internet based corporations running out of the country. Google is threatening to pull out of China because of censorship related issues. The Chinese Foreign Minister as are the citizens are begging Google not to leave “China’s Internet is open”.

If the Australian Government proceeds with internet censorship there will be a black lash they never anticipated IMO. Most politicians carry a very weak understanding World Wide Web and even weaker understanding of the Internet. It does appear since the beginning World’s Governments discounted the Internet as simply nothing.

After all there is always freenet for uncensored web surfing and plenty others.

pgaming/shaddy

first.. im not sure who keeps circulating that google has un-filtered its searches in china. you can check the google.cn search for tiananmen square compared to google.com.au search for tiananmen square.

second.. i dont think you can depend on a public backlash. citizen rights took a squashing during the whole post 9-11 thing and we had our own version of the patriot act. Theres every chance that itll be a case of boiling the frog alive slowly. It will just start with filtering of hardcore racist and pedo sites that everyone agrees should be banned then itll go downhill slowly but surely.

Last year I went to South Korea where I was hoping to be awe inspired by the cutting edge net culture they have there. While it is technically sophisticated, it is a very controlled web culture. The police have the right to ban any site that they deem unsafe.

This includes Full Tilt Poker, I remember because I tried to show my friend how online poker works and found the full tilt site redirected to a helpful police website.

What I also discovered in korea is that there is in fact a large online gambling industry. But it is nothing like you guys are used to. Because the police ban sites so easily, there are no established major brand names. Without being able to build a brand name and site its not worth the high investment of starting a proper online casino with all the licensing and software associated. Instead, it is the local korean mafia that sets up hit and run casino sites. These, like live triad casinos, are totally crooked. The software is very dubious and I am uncertain about the withdrawl options. It was totally a case of prohibition hurting people more than regulation would.

I would hate to see a similar situation occur across the west.

[Anthony]

I would hate to see a similar situation occur across the west.

Internet freedom must be preserved.
http://www.savetheinternet.com/

[pgaming]

Pretty sad state of affairs the Internet/Web in China, another reason Google is considering pulling out is the Chinese Government continues to crack their citizens’ gmail accounts.

My personal view is I think the Australian Government would be denying their citizens of some Natural Rights which any democracy should uphold and cherish.

If I were in South Korea connected to the web and found out some sites are filtered I would get around it. Truly amazing the amount of tools and resources readily available geared towards fighting censorship.

As many of peers often say, either you for censorship or against it. There is no middle ground and if we truly live in a free society censorship is not an option IMO.

In any case the Australian Government will fail in their endeavor. The citizens will always find a way to exercise their freedom. Governments can’t even stop the occasional Taliban youtube weekly installment lol.

Freenet is amongst thousands or perhaps hundreds of thousands of agencies that provide uncensored access to the Web. Here is part of their Philosophy.

4. Censorship and freedom

Everyone values their freedom, in fact, many consider it so important that they will die for it. People like to think that they are free to form and hold whatever opinions they like, particularly in western countries. Consider now that someone had the ability to control the information you have access to. This would give them the ability to manipulate your opinions by hiding some facts from you, by presenting you with lies and censoring anything that contradicted those lies. This is not some Orwellian fiction, it is standard practice for most western governments to lie to their populations, so much so, that people now take it for granted, despite the fact that this undermines the very democratic principles which justify the government's existence in the first place.
5. The solution

The only way to ensure that a democracy will remain effective is to ensure that the government cannot control its population's ability to share information, to communicate. So long as everything we see and hear is filtered, we are not truly free. Freenet's aim is to allow two or more people who wish to share information, to do so.
6. Isn't censorship sometimes necessary?

Of course no issue is black and white, and there are many who feel that censorship is a good thing in some circumstances. For example, in some European countries propagating information deemed to be racist is illegal. Governments seek to prevent people from advocating ideas which are deemed damaging to society. There are two answers to this however. The first is that you can't allow those in power to impose "good" censorship, without also enabling them to impose "bad" censorship. To impose any form of censorship a government must have the ability to monitor and thus restrict communication. There are already criticisms that the anti-racism censorship in many European countries is hampering legitimate historical analysis of events such as the second world war.
The second argument is that this "good" censorship is counter-productive even when it does not leak into other areas. For example, it is generally more effective when trying to persuade someone of something to present them with the arguments against it, and then answer those arguments. Unfortunately, preventing people from being aware of the often sophisticated arguments used by racists, makes them vulnerable to those arguments when they do eventually encounter them.
Of course the first argument is the stronger one, and would still hold-true even if you didn't accept the second. Basically, you either have censorship, or you don't. There is no middle-ground.



source: http://freenetproject.org/philosophy.html

pgaming/shaddy

[universal4]

I haven't had time to look deeper into what kinds of filters will be in place, but does anyone know, are they planning to only filter port 80 right now or is it more ip based?

Any government considering this kind of full scale filtering could easily just about cripple their entire business infrastructure if not planned properly....let alone the kind of public backlash that will ensue after it is in place.

Rick
Universal4

[casinojack]

Man the world gets scarier everyday.

[pgaming]

Rick,

The Australian Government like in the past uses ISP-level filtering. So it is up to the service provider to block/filter what Australia citizens are allowed to view on the web. The ISP’s in Australia were given a blacklist that was leaked out earlier last year.

This would include child porn, online poker sites, YouTube links, regular gay and straight porn sites, Wikipedia entries, euthanasia sites, websites of fringe religions such as satanic sites, fetish sites, Christian sites, website of a tour operator and even a Queensland dentist.

All mostly in the pursuit of protecting children I suppose adults pay the price as well. Rather than the Australian Government providing tools and education for weary parents ISP’s will now do the parenting.

I suppose some ISP’s providers will close their doors unable to implement such policies. Adults lose out because the filter blacklist is not available to the public. So who knows what will be blocked?

One of those nonsense moves on the part of Governments.

Pgaming /shaddy

[TheGooner]

Country bans at ISP level are not as uncommon as you might think. As I understand it as many as 30 countries have ISP level filtering in place, including many of the middle east.

Try to access any major gambling site from UAE's Dubai (and even it's business class international airport lounge) and you'll find that most everything gambling related is blocked.

The blocks went in in 2004 or 2005 I think.

Of course you can get around it with specialist tools and proxies, but most of the population will not bother to do so.

[Muppet]

Most people in the online industry thought this filter was the usual political joke that they would never go through with, but it is sad how wrong we were. Luckily the kids will be protected from all that kiddie porn they are accidentally exposed to every day while surfing the net... oh wait, never mind.

I would have thought that if you had a confirmed list of illegal sites that instead of blocking them you would monitor access to them and make some arrests instead of just driving it underground. Even worse the blacklist is secret, so a site can be blocked without recourse.

I believe full tilt, pokerstars, william hill, party poker, betfair among others were on the original leaked list - interesting because it is not illegal for an Australian citizen to gamble online.

Yet another reason why virtually nobody in Australia likes politicians.

[pgaming]

On the lighter side I ran across this youtube video. It really stuck a nerve LMAO!

youtube hilter gets banned from xbox

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfkDxF2kn1I

pgaming/shaddy

[LuckyLove8]

On the lighter side I ran across this youtube video. It really stuck a nerve LMAO!

youtube hilter gets banned from xbox

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfkDxF2kn1I

pgaming/shaddy

ROFL the Downfall memes make some of my favourite youtube vids.

here are some of the anti-conroy comics doing the rounds

[pgaming]

your website has already been deleted

Too funny I hope Canada does not try and pull one of these stunts.

pgaming/shaddy

[Puma]

3. A dangerous precedent: We stand to join a small club of countries which impose centralised Internet censorship such as China, Iran and Saudi Arabia. The secret blacklist may be limited to “Refused Classification” content for now, but what might a future Australian Government choose to block?

Ya lets be like these countries !

What a joke

[Anthony]

It really is a joke.

Not as funny as Hitler getting banned or anti-conroy comics.

Still a joke.

The only way to ensure that a democracy will remain effective is to ensure that the government cannot control its population's ability to share information, to communicate.

I like this a lot. I am amazed at the lack of common sense these politicians have, they are functioning idiots.

[LuckyLove8]

For those interested, the blackout protest did hit mainstream media ^^

- Websites fade to black in censorship protest
- Internet filter 'poses threat to freedom'

And you know you when an idea is hitting momentum when you get a Hitler Downfall video
- Hitler - Internet Censorship Australia

[Anthony]

I am glad it is getting press.