Mr Mahar, Conroy's worst nightmare

Just when you think that nitwits are in control, Mr Mahar is working hard to connect poor people by providing access to basis computers and internet. All the while Conroy is trying to kill the internet.

World News

The Toronto Star has reported, not favourably, on Australia's compulsary internet censorship.

Conroy is still trying to sell ISP filtering.

Conroy is flogging his dead horse in a pseudo-blog blurb about protecting children.

This how out of step Conroy is with society. What about the many people who really don't find the level of censorship applied by the Classification Board (previously know, and still functioning, as the Censorship Board) appropriate or relivant to their lives, say, for example, all the people who didn't want the government telling them what to do online with their net filter.

A red future for Skype users

Skype users in China are being spyed on by their government. This is where Chairman Rudd wants us to be.

ABC Online

Fat lot of good ABC Online will be if Conroy slows the internet to a crawl.

Clive Hamilton is doing to Netizens what he fought against in his youth.

Clive Hamilton is doing to Netizens what he fought against in his youth. SMH story: The Great Porn Wars has the details.

Conroy, reported as a conservative Catholic, continues to cower in his ivory tower, refusing several SMH requests for comments. As a Catholic he should clean up his own social group before coming after Nitizens.

Witch hunt cancelled

The online witch hunt wont be required any longer. All you need to do is check in the Faith schools for the sexual predators.

Go Mr Illingworth!!!

Mr Illingworth is going to defend the charges vigorously and online donations have given him the $500k to do just that. This is why the government wants the internet controlled. It gives people the power to say: 'No, that is a stupid waste of time and money and we wont stand for it, you silly fu(#3rs!'

Yay Mr Illingworth!!

The case was adjourned to the 19th of Feb, 09 at the Maroochydore Magistrates Court so that the prosecution could 'gather' more evidence. Where from? Uranus?

Kids will go straight around it

If you need to get around the filter just ask the kids that it is supposed to protect.

Mark Newton

Mark Newton gives his opinion on the ABC news site. He is frustrated by the mis-information being put about.

Another petition

Hey :)
Here's another petition to sign.

The Porn Report

True or false?
o Most porn users are uneducated, lonely and sad old men.
o All porn is violent.
o Pornography turns people into rapists and/or paedophiles.
o Pornography uniformly portrays women as passive objects of men's sexual urges.

The Porn Report debunks these and many other misconceptions about porn consumers, producers and the industry at large.

Reviews: SMH, Weekend Australia and The Age

Something even an ultra-conservative politician can't stomache.

Asher Moses' article of 12 Dec says that even South Australian Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi, known for his pro-censorship stance, thinks this is a bad idea. Senator Bernardi has personal experience of filtered internet: "Already we have a filter on the internet for all parliament house computers. It blocks some political sites, alternative lifestyle sites and other sites that, while not to my personal taste, are hardly grounds for censorship."

Unlike TV, which is a push media, the internet is a pull media. It rarely gives what wasn't looked for. So, if you don't want your kids to look at porn, supervise them so they don't search for it.

Film consorship in Australia

Refused Classification lists some films that the censors would not allow in Australia. Why don't we just dump it now? Or, have the classifications then have another catagory: 'Unclassified'. Classification is for kids. I'm an adult! I tell the government what to think, not the other way around. That's democracy, Rudd. You're my Prime Minister, not my nanny.

Banks

I sent this to my bank:
I'm concerned about the govt plan to look at encrypted internet connections. Isn't my connection to the bank an encrypted connection? Will they have access to my financial info? Is this a risk? What if someone dishonest in a govt dept steals my money? Will the bank guarantee my money? If this internet filter thing comes in will I be able to change scheduled transfers at the branch or will I have to go back to over the counter transacting to know that my info is secure? Thanks in advance.

Let's see if we can't get banks breathing down the government's neck about ISP filtering. The last thing they want is me coming in with a dozen paper transfers a week?

Government Hypocracy

Rudd was into the Chinese and now he's following their lead.

Take a quiz about child abuse

The Australian Childhood Foundation has a quiz to test your general knowledge about child abuse.

machinegun keyboard

Blogger, machinegun keyboard, argues the case against silly, hysterical policing and judicial decisions regarding Chris Illingworth and Alan McEwan respectively.

Geoff Holland goes further to say that describing cartoon characters as real victims of child abuse trivialises child abuse. If judicial decisions are not in line with community standards then the judiciary loses the respect it needs to function. If the judiciary is enforsing laws we don't want or need we aren't in a democracy.

Webshield

Websheild is filtered internet. If people want this then can just go and buy it. I don't mind if people want filtered internet so why should they mind if I don't?

Government sponsors opiate for the masses

The same government that is trying to kill the internet is busily making sure everyone gets more TV by giving digital set top boxes to the poor.

NSW E-Brief

Internet Censorship and Mandatory Filtering
by Tom Edwards and Gareth Griffith

Guide for internet users:

Internet Industry Association Home Page

SBS Story

For my taste they gave the "Wont somebody think of the children" brigade too much time, but that is just my bias.

Brett Carnes Opinion

Brett Carnes is an IT professional with 7 years experience. He gives a rundown on aspects of the ISP filter that wont work.

Brisbane Rally

The reporter says: "at least one Australian study has shown significant community support for an internet filtering system". That was fairly sloppy journalism. What study? Who was polled? Was it a poll of Christian groups? Who funded the study?

This is the usual perpetual motion machine that instills ideas that are unproven into the public's psyche.

The Government pretends to be listening

The government started a blog to try to ramp up some support for their ISP level filtering. Go and get stuck into them. :)

SMH Article:

China's blacklist grows.

China has added 74 websites to their blaklist. Who decides which sites are blacklisted? If you are looking for medicine online you are, perhaps, not very bright. Does the internet have to be safe for the lowest common denominator?

Policing, not spin, please.

Stuart Corner discusses the difference between spin and policing in fighting child abuse.

Indonesian Anti Porn Laws

Did the governments of the world all get together and decide to do this all at once or is it just my imagination? Indonesia signs in a law making anything that titterlates illegal.

They're on a slipery slope here. One that ISP filtering puts us on. Fundementalist religious minorities in Australia want to forse their beliefs onto others. Claims that child molestation spring from porn need to be supported by imperical data. Prove it with science, not noisy hysteria, before making it law.

Works of art, obscene "bodily movements" (Muslims don't dance), or material that can "arouse sexuality.’" may now be illegal. This is fundamentalist wedge strategy at work. Next there will be a Taliban style requirement for women to wear tents in public.

They say porn hurts children. I'd say that being married to an adult man at the age of 12 would do a great deal more harm. Muslim clerics are pretending that they can advise the world on issues of morality.

Women's groups don't like it. Islam will stamp them out though. "Women? Thinking? In a group!?"

The governor of Bali says he will not inforse the laws. Balanese threaten civil disobedience.

Papuan traditions threatened.

Protests:

Jakarta Post Opinions

Protesters are being "questioned" after attempting to protest the laws.

Look before it's banned

This is the Wikipedia entry that the UK filters have banned. Check it out while you still can. Scorpians' album Virgin Killer

Conroy

If you're not fir us, yir agin us!

It's a crime to even watch this video

Queensland Police have advised that it is a crime to even watch this video! They aren't required to prove that the child has been hurt. This is under the guise of protecting children.

This is where money would be better spent

The Australian Federal Police have arrested 19 people for possesion of child pornography. This wasn't done with filtering. This was done with real policing not feel-good firewalls.

How kids can be safe online

Parents are struggling to cope with the online world. Their kids know more about it than they do. Parents, arm yourself with information.

Virtual Global Taskforce

Cybersmart Kids

Netty's World

Government provided net filter

SMH Letters Page

These letters were on the SMH letters page. I couln't work out how to permanently link to just this section. I wanted to put this up to show I wasn't the only person online who didn't like what I was seeing.

Oh my God! You laughed when they killed Kenny?

I am astounded that our legal system can convict someone of child pornography when the "people" involved are cartoon characters ("Internet parody of Simpsons is child porn: judge", December 9). If the point of these laws is to protect children from exploitation and abuse, how is that served by this ruling?

The judge said that, "had the images involved real children, McEwan would have been jailed". Certainly, but surely the point is they were not real children. Will we, the audience, now be prosecuted for watching child abuse when Homer grabs Bart by the neck?

This ruling in effect says people can be liable for crimes against imaginary victims. It would be laughable were the implications not so sinister.

Victor Peroni Bondi

Justice Adams's decision shows more of the attitudes that halt progress in this area by labelling everything child porn, instead of looking at the defendant's intent. Does he get off on child porn? Or is he just another bored kid on the internet looking for some shock humour?

It's time we stopped giving in to mass hysteria over child porn and looked at the issue with logic and common sense.

Kieran Adair St Ives

Lawyers and journalists will be celebrating Justice Adams's decision to grant personhood to fictional and imaginary characters. Will the courts now deal with cases of fictional and imaginary theft and violence? Will South Park's Kenny seek justice in NSW? What a farce.

Eighty years ago Bertrand Russell said "in the practice of the courts" obscenity means "anything that shocks the magistrate". Justice Adams must be very easily shocked.

Patrick Spedding East Bentleigh (Vic)

Justice Adams's judgment has criminalised tens of thousands of Australians, many of them children, and many of them my friends. Who would have thought every one of them was a child pornographer?

Matthew Bennett Queanbeyan

It seems we no longer need to fear reds under the bed. It's the peds under the bed that are coming to

get our children, judging by three news stories.

The first told of a man being charged with publishing child-abuse material in Queensland, due to him republishing a video of a man swinging a baby ("Charge for sharing shaken baby video", December 9); the second of the Simpsons characters depicted in sexual acts being ruled as child pornography; and the third of Wikipedia being blacklisted by a British online child pornography watchdog because of an article that featured a 1976 album cover of a young girl with her genitalia obscured by a teardrop ("Wikipedia added to child pornography blacklist", smh.com.au, December 8).

I'd better find my copy of Nirvana's Nevermind, which features the famous photo of the naked baby in the swimming pool (no obscuring going on here), and burn it before the police come and arrest me, too.

Richard Bolt North Balgowlah

Perhaps Queensland police should consider charging Australia's Funniest Home Videos with child abuse violations. Not only does this show depict images of children slamming into brick walls and being bashed about the head by playground equipment, but it does so under the banner of comedy.

How far has our society sunk that we find children in pain a source of amusement?

Rebecca Cusack Woonona

Sunrise clip from Oct 08

Some ideas on fighting censorship

Danu Poyner give us a few pointers on defeating censorship.

SMH coverage so far

Children's welfare groups slam net filters.


Net filters may block porn and gambling sites.
The filtration is extended to gambling, regular porn and 'fetishes'. The latter might things like non-missionary position sex, perhaps.

Greens won't back gov't plans for internet filters. Good on ya Greens. Everyone knows that the internet is greener than the meat world.

Filtering out the fury: how government tried to gag web censor critics.

Net censorship plan backlash.

Activists target Rudd's net censorship plans.

Cash floods in for anti-censorship protests. I gave GetUp some money. GetUp really shows the power of the internet. They are almost up to $43,000.

SMH article

Asher Moses is up Labor again in the SMH.

Interestingly he has used the term 'regular pornography' again. It's a good term.
The anti-porn movement has spent years demonizing porn but this is 'regular porn' which is, of course, perfectly safe and friendly. Yay!

UK filtering

So it begins. Britain has ISP filtering. This filtering has found an album cover that is perfectly legal to sell in a record store but someone decided it was offencive so now the whole of Britain cannot edit the Wikipedia. I hope this false sense of security is worth it.

The filtering of UK's internet is held up as an example of how ISP filtering is working in other countries by Australia's government.

The fundies in the UK will be pleased. Wikipedia has never given an inch to fundies. Those terrible Wikipedia users unashamedly make the most outrageous claims like that the Earth is round (I know, it's shocking) and that it goes around the Sun. They even give credence to the "Theory of Gravity". Everyone knows that we are held on the Earth by God's love.

This is where the rally is in Brisbane

View Larger Map

The rally is from 11 until 3 this Saturday.
This is the facebook event for Brisbane with links to other Australian cities.

Electronic Freedom Project rally information.

Biggles9's reply to QLD Police

The video is fart humour. I'd imagine fart humour will be punishable under children protection laws too.


Sunshine Coast Daily have run the story. This one has a comments section.

Results at last!

Chris Illingworth of Maroochydore has been charged with accessing and publishing child abuse material for re-posting a video of a child being swung around by its father. Mr Illingworth had nothing to do with the production of the video in any way he simply re-posted it to an online community.

So this is the kind of human misery that authorities are trying to stamp out. Small, giggling children being swung around by their parents. I'll sleep soundly tonight knowing I am being saved from this. WTF!

Google will find it for you if you want to see it for yourself. To be honest, from the SMH report, the activity is not to my taste but the kid is not distressed. Boys (the baby looks like a boy) like playing rough and some babies are just little dare devils. There is discussions about it being a fake and some hysterical 'wont somebody think of the children' comments.

A few months ago I was swinging a friend's 4 or 5 year old up as high as I could reach. She was fully 8 feet in the air. I used to do this to my nieces until they got too big. My friend wasn't doing the swinging because he was taking the photos. The only harm she was done was shortness of breath from giggling and asking me to do it again at the same time. When can I expect the knock at the door? Will they be hooding and renditioning me or hasn't it quite got that far yet.

If this is what they are fighting then they are fighting the wrong fight. Poor Mr Illingworth, at 60 years of age, is being dragged in front of the courts for nothing. What could the police be thinking? Is Australia so totally crime free that the police have to scrape the bottom of the barrel for junk crime like this? These are my tax dollars that are being wasted here!

SMH comes out swinging

Article by Asher Moses
Political activists GetUp have raised over $30,000 in less than a day to support their fight against the Government's plan to censor the internet, a response the group has described as "unprecedented".

The money will be put towards an advertising blitz designed to inform the public of the consequences of the plan, which experts say include slower internet speeds, significant false positives, failure to stop people from subverting the filters and the risk that the blacklist will be expanded to include the blocking of regular pornography, political views, gambling and pro-abortion sites.

Meanwhile, as the Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, continued to dodge questions regarding the scheme in Senate question time, it emerged that protesters are planning anti-filtering marches for Saturday December 13 in Australia's capital cities.

Almost 500 people have signed up on Facebook to attend the protest at Sydney's Town Hall, while more than 1000 will picket at Melbourne's State Library. Thousands more are listed as "maybe attending".

Live trials of the controversial internet filters, which will block "illegal" content for all Australian internet users and "inappropriate" adult content on an opt-in basis, are slated to begin by Christmas, despite harsh opposition from the Greens, Opposition, the internet industry, some child welfare advocates, consumers and online rights groups.

Even NSW Young Labor has abandoned the Government's filtering plans, passing a motion last week rejecting the mandatory scheme and calling on Senator Conroy to adopt a voluntary opt-in system.

Ed Coper, campaigns director at GetUp, said the response to the anti-censorship campaign had been "astronomical" and "quite unprecedented".

Almost 80,000 people have signed GetUp's petition and the organisation has created a widget that website owners can embed on their sites, which allows their visitors to sign the petition and obtain more information about the filtering plans.

Mr Coper said GetUp's advertising blitz would begin next week, with the number of ads determined by how much money is raised.

"We're thinking about putting it [the ad] on high profile news websites but also on the websites that are trafficked by the more engaged internet users - the technological websites that the regular internet users visit a lot," he said.

Despite having yet to prove the viability of its filtering plan, the Government will by the end of the year shut down the existing NetAlert scheme, which was set up by the previous government and provides free software filters to all Australian families.

These are different to the filters proposed by Senator Conroy, which are mandatory and block sites from the ISP end.

In 1999, Foreign Minister Stephen Smith, then the Opposition communications spokesman, told Parliament that ISP filters were "largely ineffective", citing CSIRO research that found software filters were better because they were voluntary and the level of blocking could be customised by users.

Newer tests released by the Australian Communications and Media Authority in June found available ISP filters frequently let through content that should be blocked, incorrectly blocked harmless content and slowed down network speeds by up to 87 per cent.

Moreover, none of the filters will be capable of filtering non-web applications such as peer-to-peer file sharing programs. And the filters can easily be evaded by those set on accessing child pornography, using freely available tools.

During Senate question time this week, Senator Conroy refused to say how many customers an ISP would need to enlist for a trial to be credible or whether the results would be independently examined and verified.

He justified the closure of NetAlert by saying it was a "monumental failure of a policy" because the free voluntary filters had attracted "extraordinarily small usage".

Anti-filtering advocates have seized on those comments as a sign that there is little demand for internet filters in the first place.

Now we aren't getting a broadband upgrade.

The Senate has rejected the funding bill for broadband upgrades so, not only are we getting a massive load placed on existing infrastructure with the internet filtering but we are wasting precious funds on this fools errand.

A double blow for the internet. This seems to be a bi-lateral attack on the electorate by Australia's two major parties.

GetUp campaign

GetUp is asking for money to run online ads against the government's internet censorship plan.

Support wanes...

Even Holly Doel-Mackaway, advisor to Save the Children doesn't like this idea.

Age Article

That Gay Bloke is unhappy with net censorship

Lots of swearing. :)

Chinese internet filtering

Labor’s Plan for Cyber-safety

The working paper presented just before the 2007 election.

Sky Business News report