The Start of Oz Stoners

[Home_Grown]

Breaking news!

 

http://www.theage.com.au/news/home/technol...ge#contentSwap1

 

Thank fuck.. this shit is worse then the liberals fucking Workchoices laws.

[pisspotgrower]

Yea and prolly cost tax payers a few hundred million to fuck up yet another thing

[Dragonfan]

Senator Conroy's office could not explain why it was telling people that the trials would not involve actual customers, which would give little indication of the real-world impact of the filtering plan . . .

[That's because Senator Conroy is suffering from an extreme case of Cranial Sphincter syndrome . . . ]

Senator Conroy himself has consistently dodged questions about his policy in Parliament.

How on earth could you conduct a 'live' trial if there are no customers to assess?" Opposition communications spokesman Nick Minchin said. "The minister also continues to be deliberately vague and cryptic about the definition of unwanted content and now he is unable to clarify how this so-called live trial will be conducted, even though he wants it to start before December 24."

The Greens today called on the Government to abandon its internet filtering trial, saying it was flawed and doomed to failure. The plan is opposed by the Greens, Opposition, the internet industry, some child welfare advocates, consumers and online rights groups. They fear the blacklist will be expanded to include the blocking of regular pornography, political views, gambling and pro-abortion sites. "This trial is simply all show. It won't give any meaningful indication of how mandatory internet filtering would work in practice," Senator Ludlam said. Colin Jacobs, vice-chairman of Electronic Frontiers Australia, said yesterday's incident in Britain, in which virtually the entire country was unable to edit Wikipedia because the country's Internet Watch Foundation had blacklisted a single image on the site, illustrated the pitfalls of mandatory ISP filtering.

This Saturday anti-censorship protesters are planning to picket in Australia's capital cities, including Sydney's Town Hall and Melbourne's State Library

[Pure]

knew the ISP's where not quite ready to start filtering content , people like Internode , and iinet in particular would stand to loose thousands of high end customers if they did and I think they are fully aware of that fact

 

Afterall ask yourself this , how often do you exceed your download limit WITHOUT downloading some sort of warez or movies etc.

[Dragonfan]

news.com.au

 

Digital Liberty Coalition protests against web filter held across Australia

By Andrew Ramadge, Technology Reporter

December 13, 2008

 

Hundreds of people attended rallies in Australian capital cities yesterday to voice their opposition to the Rudd Government's planned internet filtering scheme. The rallies, held in seven cities including Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney, were the first in a series of demonstrations organised by anti-censorship group Digital Liberty Coalition (DLC). In Sydney a crowd of up to 300 mostly young and tech-savvy protestors gathered at Town Hall to hear guest speakers including bloggers and musicians criticise the web filtering scheme.

 

IT worker Jon Seymour, who runs the blogs Broadbanned Revolution and Filtering Fallacies, said he was concerned the filter had the potential to be misused. "Even if there's no realistic scenario where it's going to be abused now, it's certainly possible that future governments might choose to use (it) to start frustrating political opinion," he said. "We have to resist this now, because once it's in place it will be very hard to dismantle."

 

UNSW computer science Dane Edwards said he attended the rally to voice concern over the effect the filter would have on people who were less technologically savvy. "For people who are technically skilled, people who know how to use computers properly, this censorship is going to be pathetically easy to defeat," he said. "(The fear is that) a lot of material that shouldn't be blocked will be."

 

Under the Government's current plan, all Australians will be served a "clean" internet feed with websites on a secret blacklist maintained by the communications watchdog blocked. A secondary filter to block material inappropriate for children will also be introduced, however users will be able to opt-out of this system by lodging a request with their internet service provider. Opponents to the plan are concerned the filter will slow internet connection speeds and accidentally prevent access to a large number of legitimate websites.

 

Studies cited by the Australian Communications and Media Authority this year found web filtering software blocked the wrong content in up to 25 per cent of test cases. Anti-censorship advocates are also concerned that the secret blacklist of websites to be blocked for all users could be misused or expanded for political reasons.

 

DLC Sydney rally coordinator Jerry Hutchinson said the low take-up of existing free web filtering software, introduced by the previous government, showed that parents were not interested in the concept. "The Howard government spent a lot of money on that and people aren't downloading it," Mr Hutchinson said. "Why? Because people can monitor their own children – they don't need censorship in their home."

 

A live trial of filtering software is scheduled to begin this month, with internet service providers Optus and iiNet taking part in the test. Australia's biggest ISP Telstra has refused to take part, with chief operating officer Greg Winn calling the Government's plan a "pipe dream".

 

DLC plans to hold anti-filter demonstrations in capital cities once a month until March, when it will promote a national protest in Canberra called March in March.

 

Digital Liberty Coalition – http://www.dlc.asn.au/

Broadbanned Revolution – http://broadbannedrevolution.blogspot.com/

Filtering Fallacies – http://filteringfallacies.wordpress.com/

[Rocker]

For once I have to say 'good on you Telstra.'

[Home_Grown]

knew the ISP's where not quite ready to start filtering content , people like Internode , and iinet in particular would stand to loose thousands of high end customers if they did and I think they are fully aware of that fact

 

Afterall ask yourself this , how often do you exceed your download limit WITHOUT downloading some sort of warez or movies etc.

 

Exactly. Why would an ISP give me 100GB Limit on a 1.2mb/s line. However, I am surprised Telstra are against this as there customer base would be rather ideal as opposed to say iiNet and Internode.

 

I'm just sick of the government wasting tax payers money on stupid things like this that will never make it and are just ridiculous.

[Wayne Smith]

Thats a relief. The computers at my local internet cafe are slow enough already without a half-assed filtering system that doesn't work slowing them down further. I used to think Kevin Rudd was sort of on the right track. Declaring an education revolution sounded like a step in the right direction. These endless populist strategies have really gotten up my nose. They are rarely thought out and often conflict. He claims to be supportive of the environment but won't even consider nuclear energy which is the only clean baseload power source ready to go. He'd rather watch us get swallowed up by the economic crisis than admit he has stuffed up.

 

I heard that he has an IQ of 130. All I can say is testing standards must have dropped off sharply in the last few years if thats the case. I met him once when I was a volunteer for the Liberals. He mistook me for a Labor canvasser. I gave him a streetie handshake and that really befuddled him. I don't believe in IQ tests personally but I confess it was rather nice to get a score of 149 in the Mensa test I took. I was more curious than anything else. My brother joined but I'm not into elitist groups. He told me that all they ever do is argue anyway.

 

If this censorship program had gone ahead we would have had the great honour of being members of a very select group of countries including communist china who employ thought police. Gee, what a shame!

[Dragonfan]

Maybe that's what's wrong with Kev, he let the thought Police loose with his own IQ and suffered for it? [aside from being the usual political flunky with no backbone to speak of and all talk and no action, he's no different from the bloody rest of 'em . . . sell outs to the almighty dollar, stuff the environment, stuff the will of the people, he's got the top job now and he feels like he has a mandate to do what he wants without really thinking anything through!]

 

My ex solicitor once told me just before we headed into court that honesty has nothing to do with the law . . . well, sadly, it's the same for pollies . . . honesty has sadly been the biggest casualty of our modern times . . . and it INFURIATES me that they lie and are shown to lie but get away with it!

 

MINOR RANT OVER!!