Australia’s Net censorship plan
p2pnet news view | P2P | Politics:- Australia is starting to look a lot like China, Cuba, Iran and North Korea, say reports.
Under the Kevin Rudd government, a proposed Net censorship plan would ban “controversial websites,” says The Courier-Mail.
Australia would be in the same league as China and other repressive regimes, “and the Government will not let users opt out of the proposed national internet filter when it is introduced,” says the story.
The Rudd administration is, “investing millions of dollars on delivering faster broadband services to Australian homes at the same time it is investing millions of dollars to slow it down,” says Adelaide Now.
And, “The man with a finger on the mouse of this bizarre internet phenomenon is none other than Family First Senator, Steve Fielding,” it says, continuing, “Communications Minister Senator Stephen Conroy had explained this as a two-tier system which blocked pornography and ‘illegal material’.
“This was proposed by the Howard Government and is being implemented by the Rudd Labor Government which many had assumed never would sanction censorship, blacklisting or the erosion of the country’s civil liberties.”
Without Senator Fielding’s assent, “the Government is pretty much hamstrung,” it says, adding »»»
A spokesperson for Senator Fielding’s Family First suggested that the party would want anything stronger than R-Rating material to be banned – across the board.
This would include drug use and sexual fetish depictions – those things classified R18+ under the Broadcasting Services Act.
While nobody in their right mind would condone young children coming into contact with pornography, the mandatory screening of all internet content to censor out said pornography is seen as downright dangerous for the nation.
Meanwhile, John Lindsay, the Carrier Relations Manager of leading ISP, Internode, said his personal reservation was the screening at best was ineffective and at worst, threatened to “break the internet,” says Adelaide Now.
The Courier-Mail - Australia’s compulsory internet filtering ‘costly, ineffective’, October 29, 2008
Adelaide Now – Stranglehold on the internet, October 27, 2008
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October 29th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
There sure has been a lot of seriously F’ed up stuff coming out of the Australian guvment the past few years. What the hell is going on down there? And who are the Aussies voting in? Hey Aussies, here in the US we’ve been trying that flavor of governing for the last 8 years, and look what it’s gotten us! We are circling the bottom of the bowl. Try something different. The right wing nut-job “pro-corporate” thing is causing havoc and misery all around the world, unless you happen to be Ultra wealthy. Then it’s all good….
October 29th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
Wow. That is crazy.
October 29th, 2008 at 7:23 pm
<strong>censorship – is it always evil?…</strong>
I don’t mind that my children cannot view pornography in a library.I wouldn’t mind the US Government shutting down a terrorist website – via proper legal channels.I would however, be deeply disturbed to learn that my government or ISP was……
October 30th, 2008 at 2:02 am
Every landslide begins with one small pebble. Censorship is a very slippery slope and seems like quite the contradiction for any country claiming to also put freedom first. Everybody has a different idea as to what is socially acceptable and what is not. You can’t just decide one day to start dictating what others can and cannot do simply because you find something disagreeable. Remember, it doesn’t take long before things backfire and boomerang because if censorship is what you truly want, you better be prepared for the consequences. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
Humanity has been over this continually over the past 5000 years. Any reasonable educated person knows that one mans porn is another mans art and that simply calling it one or the other doesn’t necessarily make it so. Nothing is ever black and white. How can so many people still not grasp this most basic and fundamental of concepts?
I completely agree that there is indeed something rotting away family values, but it is most certainly not music, games, movies, or television. It’s bad parenting. If you truly care and really want to put families first, teach people how to be better parents. Bad parents beget bad parents, a vicious cycle that has spread like wild fire over the past century, if not longer. Nobody seems to understand the concept nor importance of responsibility anymore. We keep teaching our children that it is better to find a scapegoat than do the honorable thing, that the easy way out is preferable to putting in a real effort or admitting we’ve made a mistake. All these draconian laws we keep seeing are proof positive that I am dead right.
PS: Anyone know who I am and what I’m famous for?
October 30th, 2008 at 5:55 am
My hope as an Australian is that it wont last long.
Can you imagine the uproar that will come from an 86% slowdown?
and the possibility that the government could use its powers to block political rivals ect.
Conroy is treading on very thin ice, thin ice which I hope will break and swallow him and his career.
What a Joke.
October 30th, 2008 at 8:44 pm
Mostly Harmless – We know! Howard and Bush where best buddies, Rudd was supposed to be the answer to all that, he was anti-war and had some vaguely left-liberal policies (in US terms – like everything else, the political left/right thing is inverted in Australia). Like most politicians, he talked a lot of smack until he got elected, then it was just back to business as usual.
October 30th, 2008 at 9:22 pm
Anthony, most of those ‘bad parents’ out there are being created by conservative families, so please…. be quiet. The fact is that it is time to realize that there is nothing ‘harmful’ about children seeing porn (I saw my father’s Hustler’s for the first time at 6!), children seeing extreme violence in games or movies (unless their parents don’t sit down with them and tell them that the things that they are seeing are NOT acceptable in real life), etc.
In fact, some of the best adults were raised in families that were atheistic, only adhered to the ‘big 4′ of morality (do not steal, do not kill for ANY reason unless it is your absolute last choice to keep yourself or someone else from being killed, do not use physical force against anyone save if they attack you first, and do not force anyone into sexual situations with threats of force or actual physical force), and who didn’t buy the ‘morality of society’ (which most of the stuff that society tries to push on you is NOT very moral).
I taught the children around me that they only have responsibility for their own actions and inactions, and their inactions only come into play when their inactions involve THEMSELVES being hurt (mentally or physically). I’ve also taught them that if they are doing nothing that harms someone else physically without their permission, puts someone else in immediate, direct physical danger or causes damage to property that isn’t theirs….. they have the right to do whatever the hell they want, and NO ONE has the right to stop them.
October 31st, 2008 at 1:34 pm
I have just read about this and am outraged! If Australia goes down this path, the precedent will be set for other western liberal democracies to follow suit.
I would fear even more for freedoms in <a href=”http://curly15.wordpress.com/2008/10/31/australia-to-join-elite-censors/” rel=”nofollow”>”Big Brother” Britain</a>, and elsewhere.