Crackdown on television smut

Now the prudes are after television nudity! Why wont these people just leave others alone. How did it become their business to tell me what I should watch on TV? I don't care what they think. If they don't want to watch a show, change the fucking channel. Mind your own damn business.

Where will I be able to complain about stuff being cut out of TV shows? Is there a complaint form that I can fill out about their hacking of the groin feeling scene from Crocodile Dundee?


Herald article:

Censorship, where will it stop?

Once censorship gets a bit of momentum one never knows where it will end.

Wikipedia page on the most challenged books in USA.

File Sharing Case

Before we hear the excited "See, I told you the internet was full of child porn" calls from the "moral majority", let's look closely as what the police found and how they found it. This guy was using a file sharing program to source and redistribute illegal, child abuse material and he was caught by old fashioned policing.

Bear in mind too that his is child abuse material, not normal porn which is consenting adult people shagging with a camera in the room. Predominantly, Conroy's filter will block normal porn.

Conroy's filter will not block the layer that file sharing software runs on. It's a program not a website. Conroy's filter can only hamper good old fashioned police stings. So, don't chalk this up to the need to filter, chalk this up to the need to not filter.

Before we start stacking up the wood for a burning at the stake (I'm looking at you fundamentalist christians) let's look at what happened here. Is this guy going to get any help to bring his sexual orientation under control? How can anyone do that anyway? Sure, he's got his punishment but where is his help now? What are we going to do to help him avoid the crime that he is headed for? Does the court imagine that a penalty is going to cause his sexual orientation to go away? What psychiatric help and tools does he have to divert him away from these thoughts just as an alcoholic is forever diverting himself away from thoughts of drinking alcohol? For his jail term he cannot come into contact with children but he can't be jailed for ever. Many people want paedophiles jailed forever but the idea is not gaining traction with law makers. We need a holistic solution not more knee jerk reactions.


Article:

Ask Conroy

From:

At what point does internet filtering become censorship?

Access could be denied to sites on which victims of sexual abuse detail their experiences, sites that provide educational information about drug use and academic sites that describe the motivation and behaviour of terrorists.

Perhaps that's a price the Government is willing to pay in order to - as its spinmeisters put it - "improve the safety of the internet for families". But at what point does "filtering" undesirable content to protect families become censorship that undermines free speech?

Link:

Internet filter laws need urgent public debate. SMH Article

The report that underpins the government's decision to legislate did not offer any new ammunition to the proponents of the scheme. But, although not obvious at first sight, the report is actually a positive outcome for the schme's critics.

The report's findings reinforce that dynamic content filtering - or inspection of data as it passes through the system without any prior knowledge about the content - is not viable.

SMH Link:

SMH Letters 17th December 2009 on internet censorship.

Link:

Net filters 'thin end of the wedge': Kirby

Former High Court judge Michael Kirby has criticised the Federal Government's internet censorship agenda, saying it could stop the "Berlin Walls of the future" from being knocked down.

On Tuesday afternoon, the Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, announced he would introduce legislation before next year's elections forcing ISPs to block a secret blacklist of "refused classification" (RC) websites for all Australian internet users.

Most experts agree that Conroy's policy will not result in any meaningful dent in the availability of harmful internet content, will create significant freedom of speech issues and will be prone to abuse by politicians.

SMH Link:

Has a video too.

Senator Kate Lundy's thoughts on the filter

The Senator tries to sell the filter. The comments indicate that the sales pitch didn't work.

Link:

Commentary: Why we don't need a filter. ITWire

Mark Newton tells us about the conflation of RC and Illegal Material with the help of a Gladys.

I swear, if I see one more commentator buying-in to Senator Conroy's spin about child pornography on the Internet I'm going to pop an artery.

There are plenty of other places where you can read all about how the Enex Testlab report released by the Minister on Tuesday decimates the case for the Government's policy, so I'm not going to rehash that here.

Link to ITWire

If anything comes out of this discussion, I'd like to see Australian media commentators (who are more affected by censorship than virtually any other segment of the Australian population) understand that "RC" is not the same as "illegal" or "child pornography." Joining the two concepts together is a manipulative rhetorical tactic the Minister is using to garner support for his obnoxious policy, and I'm sure that the protectors of the Fourth Estate are clever enough to avoid being drawn in to it.

Evidence-based policy? Not on this filter!

For politicians, "evidence" isn't something to be gathered with forensic precision and preserved through a documented chain of custody. Nor it is something to be compiled transparently, justified through meticulous research and refined in the purifying fire of peer review.

No. For politicians, "evidence" is something to be plucked from wherever it can be found and sprinkled to justify a previously-chosen policy like so much magic fairy dust.

The Rudd government's internet censorship proposal is not about protecting the children. It's about politics.

ABC article:

Yes! Where's the evidence, Conroy. Your unfounded assertions, ad hominem attacks on anyone who dares oppose your filter, and beliefs are not evidence for the existence of massive social harm requiring expensive and ineffective solutions.

Produce your evidence and you can have your filter.

Produce your evidence that the current censorship system has merit while you are at it.

I just wanted to look up the name of a drug

What is the name of the date rape drug?

That was the question in my mind. So, I typed "date rape drug" into google. There it is. I've broken Conroy's thought crime law. I have wanted to look up the name of a drug that can be used in date rape. WTF!?

Anyway, the wikipedia article on date rape drugs mentions Rohypnol. That was the word I was looking for. According to Conroy's thought crime laws looking this up is looking up instructions on how to commit a crime so it should be filtered out. WTF!?

Metamagician and the Hellfire Club's post "What about the children?"

Extract:

I suggest that, if the state seriously wished to protect children from harm that results merely from being exposed to certain kinds of communications, rather than responding to ill-informed moral panic about the Internet, it would need to conduct extensive psychological and sociological research. Even then, it would have a great deal of difficulty determining an objective standard of "harm" - and if it somehow succeeded, the product of its investigations might well be surprising.

Link:

Russell brings up a strong point here. Before we pay extra for our internet and pay for more rigged computer tests, let's see the figures on children that have been harmed by porn. I don't know any. Why aren't the psychologists clambering to say "Yes! I see dozens of children a week who are mentally damaged by porn."

Children who are forced or tricked into sex with adults are damaged but this is predominantly coming from non-porn activities (I'm looking at the Anglicans and the Catholics here). Don't try shifting the blame for aberrant, abhorrent behaviour in clergy onto the porn industry. Show me a single man who has just watched a porno and spanked himself who is looking for a child to have sex with. Conflating these two activities to muddy the waters is useful cover for the church generated paedophiles but it does nothing to protect children.

Australia Continues Quest To Purge Internet Of Naughty Bits

Filter tests with no standards unsurprisingly found '100% successful'

The Australian government has been sinking millions of dollars into ISP Internet filters, conducting trials with a handful of ISPs, many of whom have been very vocal in their beliefs that the filters won't technically work. Australian political leaders in favor of the filters don't seem to care -- the government admitting the ongoing trials have no quantifiable metric to determine whether the trials were a success or failure

Link:

Net filter that helps no-one

Every proposal has costs as well as benefits and these have to be weighed. If the filter merely gives parents a false sense of security, by lessening oversight it may actually worsen the experience of children online.

Link:

ACL is on the move.

In Brief:

* Government moves to filter porn from internet.
* Sex trade and civil libertarians violently oppose this.
* Please write to Communications Minister Stephen Conroy to thank him for protecting kids.

Dear ACL Supporter

It is important Governments don't just hear from us when we want something. It is vital we thank them when they announce good policy.

Yesterday the Communications Minister Stephen Conroy announced that the Rudd Government will make it compulsory for Internet Service Providers to filter the worst of the worst pornography and violence from the internet.

This means that child porn, rape porn, bestiality and anything else judged as Refused Classification (RC) under Australia's classification laws, such as instruction in crime and drug use, will be blocked.

This is a great first step in protecting children from the harms of pornography online.

Legislation is to be introduced next year giving effect to this policy. In addition, ISPs will be encouraged, and given incentives, to offer optional filtering of X and R rated pornography on a voluntary basis.

No one argues that books, films and magazines should not be subject to this form of appropriate censorship. Now this is beginning to be extended to the internet, where of course children are particularly susceptible to being exposed to harmful content.

Trials have shown RC content from overseas websites can be effectively blocked with negligible impact on internet speed.

Sadly, the sex trade, and some internet civil libertarians who believe there should be no control over the internet, are violently opposed and are putting out much misinformation in the media.

It is important that the Communications Minister Stephen Conroy hears from us - real people with real concerns for the safety of kids online. Please take a moment to write to Senator Conroy and thank him. A personal letter would be most effective, but we also understand this is a busy time of year and an email may be more convenient. His contact details are:

Senator Stephen Conroy
Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy
Level 4, 4 Treasury Place
Melbourne Vic 3002

His e-mail address is senator.conroy@aph.gov.au.

Thanks in anticipation of your response. May I take this opportunity to wish you and your family a blessed Christmas.

God bless

Jim Wallace AM
Managing Director

You heard the man. Start writing!

Link:

Forth article

The Australian government released a report today about trials it had carried out to see if Internet censorship was viable. The report concludes that internet censorship is possible (although it calls it 'filtering'), and the government plans to pass legislation in 2010 to force Australian ISPs to block material that has been refused classification by Australia's censorship officials. (1) The list of sites to be censored will be secret and unaccountable, although earlier this year the Wikileaks site published a leaked version of a then-current list of sites (2) which Australian-based websites may not link to, at the risk of an A$11 000 fine - which an Australian website was threatened with earlier this year after linking to an anti-abortion site. (3) Despite this, Senator Conroy claimed "It is completely untrue that the leaked blacklist contains political content. This is a list which contains sites that promote incest, rape, child pornography and child abuse", and was further embarrassed when the leaked list revealed that an innocent dentists' site had been placed on the list of banned sites.

Link:

Brisbane Action Meeting

There will be a meeting of people from all walks of life this Monday 21st December at 7:30pm to discuss the Federal Government's plans to introduce mandatory Internet filtering. This will be held at the Brisbane Square Library.

Link:

It was moved cause the original place was too small.

ABC article:

Criticism

But Electronic Frontiers Australia, which monitors online freedoms and rights, says the Government's plan is flawed.

"Although it may address some technical issues, what it leaves out is far more important," Electronic Frontiers Australia vice chair Colin Jacobs said.

"Exactly what will be blocked? Who will decide and why is it being attempted in the first place?"

Mr Jacobs says the ease with which users can circumvent the filtering raises questions about what it is actually trying to accomplish.

"What we're talking about is a filter that can only intercept accidental access to prohibited material," he said.

"Any motivated user will be able to get around it, it will be quite easy, so who is this being targeted at?

"If it's targeted at the people who traffic in illegal material, well, then clearly it's going to be worthless because they'll be able to get around it any time they want to.

"If it's teenagers the same is true unfortunately, and given the types of material that are going to be on the blacklist, younger children are unlikely to be affected one way or the other."

Link:

Australian government to introduce Internet filter

AP article via Yahoo

Adopting a mandatory screening system would make Australia one of the strictest Internet regulators among the world's democracies. Authoritarian regimes commonly impose controls. China drew international criticism earlier this year with plans to install filtering software on all PCs sold in the country.

Link:

Aussie content filters "work" (not counting IM, P2P, FTP...)

Results of a public trial have bolstered the Australian government's plan to implement both mandatory and optional ISP filtering in 2010. For the moment, though, violent video games are safe.

Ah, the Internet, defier of governments and slough of offshore porn-how can any country hope to control what is hosted beyond its borders? Actually, Australia has discovered an old Chinese remedy that just might do the trick: mandatory ISP filtering using a secret government blacklist.

Link:

Internet Service Provider (ISP) Filtering 'Live' Pilot

Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy:

As part of its commitment to examine the introduction of ISP-level filtering, the Australian Government conducted a live ISP filtering pilot in 2009 to provide valuable information on the effectiveness and efficiency of filters installed in 'real world' ISP networks.

The pilot was managed by Enex Testlab, an independent testing laboratory.

Link:

Jim Wallace (Aust Christian Lobby) vs Mark Newton (IT Professional)

Radio interview from about 10 months ago:

Mark Newton, Jim Wallace, and Clowns (not Jim Wallace, actual Clowns) from Geordie Guy on Vimeo.

Warning, there are tremendously annoying honking over the top of Jim Wallace's errors.

Not all Christians want it:

Link:

Crikey's coverage

Great Firewall of Australia

ISPs will pay = ISPs will charge

ISPs will be required to pay for the installation and maintenance of filter hardware for a mandatory filter service, with the threat of $27,500 fines per day for non-compliance. The federal government plans to introduce legislative amendments to the Broadcasting Services Act requiring mandatory filtering in 2010, and "ISPs will be required to begin filtering within 12 months of the passage of the legislation," according to the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy.

Link:

The Crickey guide to writing to politicians.

Link:

If your first instinct upon hearing about the Rudd-Conroy plan to censor the internet is to email Stephen Conroy, your local member and Labor senators from your state to protest, wait up.

Or, in fact, do it anyway, then read this.

Let me explain some facts about writing to ministers, drawn from my sordid, blood-soaked and adventure-filled time as a public servant.

Untangling the Net - The Scope of Content Caught by Mandatory Internet Filtering

The following report considers a number of key challenges the Australian Federal Government faces in designing the regulatory framework and the reach of its planned mandatory internet filter. Previous reports on the mandatory filtering scheme have concentrated on the filtering technologies, their efficacy, their cost and their likely impact on the broadband environment. This report focuses on the scope and the nature of content that is likely to be caught by the proposed filter and on identifying associated public policy implications.

We recognise that the Federal Government faces real challenges in balancing the risks posed by the online media environment with the opportunities that environment presents. In preparing this report, the authors acknowledge that the Federal Government is still considering the detail of how mandatory filtering will be implemented and how classification will work under the scheme. Our research is not intended to pre-empt those decisions but to offer constructive input, to highlight key public policy challenges and to inform public dialogue.

This report was prepared by three senior academics in the media studies field, Professor Catharine Lumby, Professor Lelia Green and Professor John Hartley. We have all published extensively on the issues of online media, media content regulation, young people and media consumption, and public policy. As members of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation, we are currently collaborating on a large research project that considers the risks and opportunities for children in the online and mobile media era. The research on which this report is based was supported by the Internet Industry Association and we acknowledge their assistance. We would also like to acknowledge the input of Professor Stuart Cunningham, Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation at QUT, and the research assistance of Paul Taylor.

Link:


Untangling the Net - The Scope of Content Caught by Mandatory Internet Filtering

Today's SMH Article

One of Australia's top communications experts says the Government's internet censorship trials were designed to succeed from the outset, presented no new information and are now being used by the Government to further its political agenda.

Link:

I commented:

The only expert that Conroy will listen to is Jim Wallace with his instructions on how best to get to heaven. The moderate and cultural christians need to stand up and tell Wallace that they do not want this filter and that they want him to stop egging Conroy on. Talking to Conroy is talking to the puppet, not the puppeteer.

Gamblers 'may get a high' from web auctions

Australians with gambling problems have been warned they could become addicted to a global reverse auction website that last month launched its "fun" buying portal in Australia.

Link:

Quick! Start a moral panic! People are buying something and having fun at the same time. Someone has to stop this before people start smiling at random all over the place.

BAAAANNNN IIIIT!!!!!!!!!!!

Sen. Lundy saying nothing

My response:

There is much talk about the gov being open to consultation. Yet the "open to ideas" link brings up a 404 error - "open to idea" cannot be found. How can people with so little understanding of the internet as to have a broken link above the fold on their lead page presume to tell anyone about the digital economy. You haven't lost any credibility with me as you never had any. I don't expect Sen. Lundy to respond, just another pacifying? double-speak from a staffer. Why bother.

Politicians!

The net shows the changeability of politicians. The make a statement and link to a wiki. You get to the wiki, run by the government, it's closed. You see a youtube statement by Conroy embedded so you click on it. It's been removed by the user. No wonder everything they say is written down in parliament. The next day they would be saying something different.

I suppose this is why we should not let them make decisions, why we need to tell them what to do, they have no idea what they should think of what they should be doing. They are a blank canvas.

ABC coverage

Link:

This opens a page with the ABC's first reaction to Conroy's announcement that the filter had passed the test and was going ahead.

People surrender to rubbish like this because:

Google's view on the ISP level censorship

Link:

Wednesday, December 16, 2009 at 10:02 AM
At Google we are concerned by the Government's plans to introduce a mandatory filtering regime for Internet Service Providers (ISP) in Australia, the first of its kind amongst western democracies. Our primary concern is that the scope of content to be filtered is too wide.

Democracy and censorship By Margo Kingston

Here's a piece on the censorship debate Labor's shadow minister for the arts and information technology, Senator Kate Lundy, wrote for Webdiary. It's got resonance with Howard's refusal to tell us the truth about why he wanted to invade Iraq and what that momentous decision means for our foreign policy direction and our security in the region. What I like about the piece is that Kate is not afraid to discuss what democracy means, and to apply her concept of it to the case in hand. Isn't that what we'd love our pollies to do more of?

Link to 2003 article by the then communications shadow minister

Whirlpool discussion forum and wiki

The Filtering thread on the whirlpool discussion forum is still going strong.

Link:

The wiki

Greens still oppose the filter

"We're very, very concerned that there's going to be a unnecessary clamp down on the internet and it has to be watched," Greens leader Bob Brown told the ABC today.

Link:

The Greens insist that they still oppose the filter despite fielding Clive Hamilton, the co-writer of the report that set this whole mess into motion.

My post to the SMH article:

Conroy just said on ABC's Lateline: "it's important that all Australians, not just young children, be protected from this material". From RC and X rated material? Why are Australians special? If this stuff does so much harm why aren't the Americans all totally disabled by this material? Are the hospitals full of people broken by watching porn? Show me the numbers.

Are we talking about teenagers 'accidentally' finding porn? Come now? Teenage boys don't accidentally find porn. They use accidentally as an excuse. They went looking for it. Parents who can't teach their teenagers about sex and porn shouldn't have kids. Parents who can't see this as an opportunity aren't good parents.

How many little kids have ever accidentally found porn? The parents out there need to be honest and get a computer that is only for the kids so that the kids don't see what Mum and Dad looked at to get the bed sports moving the night before.

This is Conroy and co. trying to foist their anti-sex, religious views onto everyone. I don't see any problem with adults looking at porn. A lot of porn is being made with respect for the actors. This old chestnut about how all women in porn are victims is a nonsense.

I don't want to just talk about not filtering the net. I want to talk about dismantling the stupid complaints driven attitude of the law makers. A few noisy wheels can have anything banned. I want to talk about dismantling censorship in Australia all together. People who are in a moral panic about porn don't have to watch it just like I don't have to do what ever they are doing. Mind your own business.

Wander over and comment if it you can:

Compalints driven system.

Because this is to be a complaints driven system we can expect the internet to be reduced to the level of A Current Affair and Today Tonight moral panic. As Metamagician and the Hellfire Club blog mentions, remember the hysteria over Henson's photography? Also, Mr Illingworth's legal troubles over a video of the child of a circus family. I don't want unthinking, hysterical people determining where I surf when I am in the privacy of my own home. If they don't want to go to porn site, don't go. The absence of a filter doesn't mean you have to go to sites. If you have children, install a PC based filter. The kind of money we are talking about to roll this nonsense out could have bought every household a computer with a PC based net filter pre-installed. Who do people screeching for net filters pays for this bullshit? This is paid for by tax payers. It's not for free, people. This kind of money could be used to reduce surgery waiting lists or pay for more teachers. Something of use to society.

Metamagician and the Hellfire Club's post

Australia's federal government has decided to introduce legislation that will give it potentially sweeping control of information available to Australians via the Internet, using a system of technologically-based censorship. As announced, the legislation will require all ISPs to block material that has been refused classification in other countries (one might ask exactly which countries the government has in mind here). An "independent" body, so we are told, will determine which sites are rated as RC for "refused classification".

Continues:

Another petition

Say no to the net filter via this petition:

Brilliant blog post from Téa Brennan

In the name of MY children.

Link:

I have a rule that if a Facebook status or Tweet is too long, it should go on the blog, so here goes:

You know, I wish that politicians would stop using MY children, and their so-called protection, as an excuse for pandering to the religious right. You know what? My kids surf Youtube. Unsupervised. Because I have TAUGHT THEM to have a fucking brain and know how to use the internet responsibly.

It's this little thing called parenting - you know, where you need to make HARD DECISIONS about morality. HARD DECISIONS about education. HARD DECISIONS about how to turn them into decent, sensible & functional human beings.

IT'S HARD.

That's why it's called parenting and not "sitting idly".

I am getting shitted off with this generation of parents - who paradoxically, on one hand, thrust their neurotically over-parented, micromanaged, over-extra-curricularised precocious little turds into society with no social skills, thinking that they are so much more important than other people, unable to do anything without it being part of a program, or a structured activity… where, these batshit crazy people have somehow become NORMAL in the name of "protecting the children".

These idiots purchase devices like wipe warmers, designer organic t-shirts for $200 and Mensa tests for their 2 year olds (who, by virtue of learning to sit up a whole month early, is the next Albert fucking Einstein)…

And then, on the other hand, also fail to do the basic stuff like, you know, teaching their kids manners, self respect and basic protective behaviours.

Because parenting is more than just veneers, gimmicks & products. It actually takes effort.

And our politicians have co-opted this idea in order to push through policies that pander to the smallest percentage of God bothering, anti-woman, anti-sex religious zealots whose immediate impulse is to kill anything they don't understand, all the while slashing the real child protection funding and funding for domestic violence programs, you know the stuff where kids ACTUALLY GET RAPED & BEATEN ON A DAILY BASIS… putting greater and greater burdens on the teaching profession, the health department & the police force who deal with actual, real harm to children on a daily basis.

Ask any welfare worker how long their case queues are. In busy Department for Community centres, there are children that are at risk every day that have been queued for other children, who are at more immediate risk, because the Department can't keep up with its caseload.

And then they use the protection of children as an argument for the filter? Are you fucking KIDDING me? I parent my children. I nurture my children. I love them. But you don't trust me enough to make the right decisions for my children's upbringing?

The internet filter is just more cotton wool for a generation of professional overparenting cunts, who use "for the children" as a catch-all excuse to police other people. It's just another gadget, another smokescreen, to distract the dumb consumer yuppies from the real harm that this government does to children every day from it's inaction and lack of funding.

ACL already wants to extent the list

IT Wire article:

Internet censorship plan gets the green light

The Federal Government has announced it will proceed with controversial plans to censor the internet after Government-commissioned trials found filtering a blacklist of banned sites was accurate and would not slow down the internet.

SMH:

Conroy must explain why Christian lobby gets net filtering trial update: Greens

The Australian Greens are calling on the Communications Minister Stephen Conroy to explain who else besides the Christian Lobby will be given a background briefing on the net filtering proposal.

"The head of the Australian Christian Lobby, Jim Wallace, met with communications minister Senator Conroy late last week," Greens Spokesperson on Communications, Senator Scott Ludlam said today.

"Mr Wallace says he has not received any information on the trial results, but is reported to have told the Christian Lobby's national conference that he had "found out" enough on the ISP-level filtering trial to believe that ISP-level filtering worked."

Link to Greens site:

People like this think net filteringis a great idea:

CANBERRA - PARLIAMENT HOUSE GETS A MASS EXORCISM

Conroy must explain why Christian lobby gets net filtering trial update: Greens

The Australian Greens are calling on the Communications Minister Stephen Conroy to explain who else besides the Christian Lobby will be given a background briefing on the net filtering proposal.

"The head of the Australian Christian Lobby, Jim Wallace, met with communications minister Senator Conroy late last week," Greens Spokesperson on Communications, Senator Scott Ludlam said today.

"Mr Wallace says he has not received any information on the trial results, but is reported to have told the Christian Lobby's national conference that he had "found out" enough on the ISP-level filtering trial to believe that ISP-level filtering worked."

Story Continues:

How does Sen. Conroy honestly expect us to believe that this is not just legislating religion if Mr Wallace is privy to inside information before the general public?

Crikey blogged about it:

The whirlpool forum is buzzing:

I particularly liked this comment:

An Onymous Lefty discusses Clive Hamilton's candidature for the Greens and how, despite his masterminding of the whole netfilter fiasco, the Greens are still our best chance at no net filter.

When blocking sites starts, it'shard to know when to stop.

Indianapolis Schools Block Atheist Sites

"Sites that promote and provide information on religions such as Wicca, Witchcraft or Satanism. Occult practices, atheistic views, vodoo rituals or any form of mysticism are represented here. Includes sites that endorse or offer methods, means of instruction, or other resources to affect or influence real events through the use of spells, incantations, curses and magic powers. This category includes sites which discuss or deal with paranormal or unexplained events."

Link:

Real police work - not a filter.

Spy software, then police, swoop on child porn file sharers.

POLICE have secretly identified thousands of suspects who are allegedly trading child pornography images through online networks. Detectives expect to make hundreds of arrests, having used a breakthrough software program to spy on files held in private computers.

Designed in the US to pinpoint computers holding known child pornographic images, the software has been used in Queensland for six months.

Link:

Is Conroy's filter going to stop the police from being able to find and act on this information.

Aussie Pirate Party plans election onslaught

After winning 7.1 per cent of Swedish votes in this year's European Parliament elections, The Pirate Party has opened up a branch in Australia and plans to contest the next federal election.

The party, which will campaign on a platform of anti-internet censorship and the decriminalisation of non-commercial file sharing, has already signed up 550 members, enough for it to register as a party with the Australian Electoral Commission.

Pirate Party Site:

SMH Article:

File sharing is a grey area. The idea that people would have no right to protect their work is not fair. Artists need to eat too. But the idea that a person can be sued by a record company for hundreds of thousands of dollars for having a hand full of mp3s on their computer is simply absurd.

So, as system where artists are rewarded and record companies are destroyed... don't know how but I think it could fly. :)

Then we more to internet censorship. I care more about this than pirating so I find myself agreeing with the Pirate Party. Also, pirates are on FSM's side and it is blasphemy day.

Turkey's YouTube blackout enters year two

Much ado about Ataturk

Turkey is getting a dressing-down today from free press organization Reporters Without Borders, as the country's blockage of YouTube enters year two.

Google's video-sharing site has been banned a number of times in Turkey since early 2007, in most cases because of videos deemed insulting to the country's founding father, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who died over eight decades ago.

Turkey's fourth and most recent YouTube banning was hammered down on 5 May 2008.

The Register:

Does Turkey's government imagine that Ataturk set up a secular democracy so that the government could suppress free speech over a stupid, childish insult traded between football fans?

As usual, the net filter was proposed on the back of moral panic thus:

Turkish law lets prosecutors seek a court-ordered shutdown of any website deemed liable to incite suicide, paedophilia, drug usage, obscenity, prostitution, or attacking the memory of the republic's founding father.

Critics note the law opens the door to many abuses — such as letting a couple soccer fans effectively shut down an entire country's access to the world's most popular video-sharing website.

Sound familiar? Drop the "republic's founding father" and this statement could have come straight from Senator Conroy's mouth.

What's government's role in making the web secure?

There is no kill switch for the internet, no secret on-off button in an Oval Office drawer.

Yet when a US Senate committee was exploring ways to secure computer networks, a provision to give the US president the power to shut down internet traffic to compromised websites in an emergency set off alarms.

Link:

Lots of juicy what-if style ticking time bombs here. These what-ifs don't happen in the real world or cyberspace. Saying, what-if hackers infiltrate a nuclear power station is a reason not to have nuclear power stations, for me, rather than a reason not to have freely operating internet. If hackers get in and know that they could be cut off at any time they will simply design their attacks around the knowledge that they have to get in, set the computers to destroy stuff autonomously, and get out before they are detected. Not safer, just different.

Lookout! More moral panic coming... so to speak.

A study from the Swinburne University of Technology of 1325 internet users found more than half of those who engaged in cybersex were married or in a serious relationship.

SMH article:

Note that the article mentions that 40% of people stumbled across illegal material.
1) This doesn't have to be child abuse material. This could be any sexually explicit material cause Australians aren't allowed to see pictures of real sex that might cause titillation.
2) This isn't kids accidentally stumbling across illegal material. These are adults looking for sexual material or encounters. They went looking for material and found it. I am still yet to stumble across sexually explicit material by accident, even though I'm on line 15hours a day.

Watching Crocodile Dundee

Well half watching it. So, Paul Hogan grabs the transvestite on the groin after the cab driver tells him that she is a man, not a woman. We all remember this. This scene has been hacked out. WTF?! Who cares about this? Yet, hacking someone's jacket to bits with a huge knife is fine. Being beaten up in an alley, that's fine. We can have all the violence we want but nothing sexual.

Wikipedia article

Internet censorship in Australia primarily refers to the proposed banning of certain Internet materials by the Australian Federal Government, through restriction of site access on all Australian Internet Service Providers.

Internet censorship in Australia

Link:

How the Web Prevents Rape

All that Internet porn reduces sex crimes. Really.

Does pornography breed rape? Do violent movies breed violent crime? Quite the opposite, it seems.

First, porn. What happens when more people view more of it? The rise of the Internet offers a gigantic natural experiment. Better yet, because Internet usage caught on at different times in different states, it offers 50 natural experiments.

Slate Article:

I like this so much it's going up again!

Statistics Laundering: false and fantastic figures

This research paper contains information about various alarming and sensational, but out-of-date, false and/or misleading 'statistics' concerning the prevalence of 'child pornography' material on Internet Web sites, etc., which appeared in Australian media reports/articles, government agency reports, etc., in 2008 and 2009.

Link to libertus.net:

This is an important fight because conservatives are making laws that affect the net based on the fear that these false statistics create in people.

Protect children while near churches.

A site listing church sexual abuse.

Broken Rites:

Senators Ludlam and Conroy on the net filter.

This debate in the Senate between Ludlam and Conroy end in Conroy's admission that filtering will not be able to block peer to peer traffic.

Peer to peer traffic is said to be the best way to share child abuse material.

Police busts are often through police infiltrating boards who share material this way. This means that the government is attacking normal porn, not child abuse material.

Open Australia copy of the Senate Question Time debate.

Chinese schools ditch controversial web filter

Schools in Beijing are quietly removing the Green Dam filter, which was required for all school computers in July, due to complaints over problems with the software.

China last month formally backed down on a plan to preinstall the internet filter software on all new computers sold in the country after July 1 after an international and domestic outcry.

SMH article:

Senator Conroy.

Even the Chinese are finding the filtering idea unpalatable, and yet you persist.

Tell Mr Rudd that you don't want this:

Email Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to tell him that you don't want net filtering.

http://www.pm.gov.au/PM_Connect/contact_your_pm_form

Nine news poll on net censorship.

Nine is running a net poll on net censorship on their website.

http://ninemsn.com.au/

Baby-swinging video charges dropped

All charges have been dropped against Chris Illingworth, the man who was charged for republishing on a video-sharing site a video of a man swinging a baby by its arms like a rag doll.

SMH Article:

This utter waste of police time and resources will be repeated again and again as long as we are allowing hysterical child protection agencies to dictate public policy on what constitutes child abuse. The time that the police wasted on this nonsense could have resulted in the arrest of a few more Catholic priest pedophile rings.

When will this nonsense stop? When people stop voting chronically ignorant, witch hunters into parliament.

Congratulations Mr Illingworth. You stuck it to the man. I hope you are compensated to the tune of millions so that they think next time. Well done EFA for backing him up. I'm on my way with another donation.

Hard police work, not majic bullets.

A SEVEN-MONTH operation tracking international predators on the internet has culminated in the arrest of a 44-year-old father of three in rural Queensland.

Canadian detective Mike MacFarlane, posing as a 14-year-old girl on an internet chat room, was contacted by the Queensland man in February, police allege.

Link:

This is how crimes are solved. Useful police investigations, such as this one, would be hampered by the internet filter.

Mormons on pornography.

This is the kind of nonsense, unsupported by research, religions go on about when porn comes up.

[Pornography] is like a raging storm, destroying individuals and families, utterly ruining what was once wholesome and beautiful.

I do feel sorry for the wife who outlines her upset at her husbands use of porn. However, I feel sorry for her because she has been mislead about what porn use means. If she'd been told that pornography was just a form of literature that her husband liked and that it was a private thing that he liked to do then she would have had a chance of coming to terms with it.

This is the kind of nonsensical rubbish that churches are putting out. This is steering the government's internet policies.

Link:

Ten Qld men charged for child porn

Police have charged ten Queensland men for trading and possessing child pornography.

The charges were laid today following a three-month operation by Taskforce Argos targeting the trade of child exploitation material via the internet.

Link:

This is policing, Senator Conroy. This will be more difficult with your filtering in place.

Censorship's goals...

Two Azerbaijani bloggers face up to five years jail for posting a video of a donkey giving a press conference, the latest crackdown on the vibrant Internet of the ex-Soviet Union.

SMH Link:

SMH: Conroy urged to 'end net censorship farce'

The Federal Government's internet censorship trials have been repeatedly delayed over the past nine months, leading to claims from the Opposition that the Government is deliberately withholding the results to avoid embarrassment.

SMH Article:

Give it up Conroy. It's a dead duck.

Mr Illingworth's case gets weirder...

It is not often that I agree with the ACMA:

"[T]he Australian Communications and Media Authority, responding to a complaint about the video on July 9, sent the clip to the Classification Board, which classified the content MA15+"

Where is the case now? If it is classified as M15+ why does Mr Illingworth have to answer any qustions?

This is a death sentence for this man. This case will kill him. All of this tax money wasted on killing an innocent man. WTF!?

I cannot praise Asher Moses enough for standing up for Mr Illingworth and standing up to the government interfering with normal Australian socialising innocently with friends online.

SMH Article >

Filtering Wrap Up: Of Swallows and Silver Bullets

From Sean the Blogonaut

Senator Conroy has again fired off another of the 'no silver bullet'lines in relation to ISP filtering - a phrase so prevalent that should a pack of werewolves cross over 'a bridge too far' and wander down a 'fork in the road' our kiddies will be well protected.

Sexual Predators: NOT an Internet Threat to Kids

Last year, the attorneys general of 49 states created the Internet Safety Technical Task Force to investigate sexual solicitation of children by molesters who troll for targets using sites popular with kids, among them, MySpace and Facebook. The 278-page report concluded that there's no real problem.

Psychology Today article:

Now, Senator Conroy, enough is enough. The main driver of your plan to filter the net is to protect children. That idea fails with this report.

Kids' top searches include 'porn' (BBC)

A survey of children's web habits shows that "sex" and "porn" are among the top 10 most-searched terms.

BBC Story

Kids: Sometimes they need help, sometimes they need guidance, sometimes you've just gotta get the hell out of the way.

Parents, the kids know what they're doing.

Parents might be frightened of the internet but the kids know what they are doing.

SMH Article:

China backs down on net filter plan

A top Beijing official said that a controversial internet filter software was optional for all users after plans to install it on computers sold in China triggered a storm of protest

.

Link:

Come on Chairman Rudd, your very good friends have come to their senses. Will you follow their excellent lead.

Sydney priest 'groomer' caught on webcam, court told

Catholicism fails the morality test again. The article doesn't clearly state that Father Fuller is facing excommunication. He may be punished in this world but, according to Catholicism, further punishment wont be necessary.

Link:

Banning football!!!

A football coach is on child porn charges. Obviously, in Conroy-logic, this makes football "gateway child abuse". I'll start the chorus off. Now, on my hand flapping:
Wont somebody think of the children!!

Link:

DPP blasts net censor plan

The NSW Director of Public Prosecutions has slammed the Federal Government's internet censorship policy, saying it will have very limited, if any, success in achieving its aims.

Asher Moses' SMH Article:

ITWire Article:

Chinese hack into film festival site

CHINESE hackers have attacked the Melbourne International Film Festival website in an intensifying campaign against the screening of a documentary about exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer.

This is what the Chinese have done to silence us here. This is the same sort of thing as Conroy wants to introduce. He wants this kind of control over the net.

Article in The Age:

Thai net filter

Wanna see what Australia's net filter will look like in a few years. Thailand is a few steps further along this path than us.

There is all the emotive talk of child protection and terrorism.

Wikileaks:

It probably started with a public morality issue...

It probably started with a public morality issue but Iran's internet is now going to be used to stop any nasty little outbreaks of democracy such as the one we saw lately.

SMH article:

Iran has passed a new internet law that experts fear will make information on internet users more readily available to the authorities.

It wasn't gamers, it was a devout christian

Conroy wants to block gamers from accessing games rated above M 15+ because there might be violence. Perhaps he should be looking at what the fundamentalists are telling people about possession by demons to stop violence.

All the moderate christians out there who say that this isn't your christianity doing this should look closely at what you did to stop this sort of nonsense from gaining traction in the world. It has traction right now. What are you doing to stop this rubbish because I don't want the demons shot out of me.

Article >

We don't need a filter, we need a reality check.

Looking for the corrupting influences on children? Look no further than the High School Mathematic teaching Christian Album releasing minivan owning mother's of three.

Qantas wont have it

Qantas have refused the ad, despite giving a quote to show it. But censorship ads censored by big business are better than ads shown.

Conroy responds to GetUp ad

Conroy has denied the accusation that his net filter will stuff the internet.

Conroy's fame has spread to the UK.

Stephen Conroy's mandatory internet filtering plans have earned him the title of Internet Villain of the Year

The UK Internet Industry Awards

Conroy's fame has spread to the UK.

Mansfield man, 75, sued for sex abuse

David Harvey of 2061 Ranchwood Drive is named in the suit, along with the Rev. Sonny Thayer, 2878 Millsboro Road; Dianna Kochheiser, 1109 W. Hanley Road; and Russ Harvey of Galion. Grace Brethren Church, 531 Marion Ave., also is named.

Article

Once again, religion shows that it is incapable of forming a good society that protects children.

While governments and churches are busy deriding the internet as a terribly dangerous place for children the pedophiles are grooming the church kids. Kids who are taught that people in their church are inherently trustworthy simply because they are members of their church are left very open to abuse.

Children need to learn early that their bodies belong to them. Children have to know that they get to decide who touches them and they are allowed to say no to wrong or uncomfortable things regardless of who is doing it. That's what I taught young people in karate lessons. It doesn't take much to push an adult away. Pedophiles need quiet compliant children. They will run a mile if a child shows that he or she will fight, kick, bite and scream (yes, I gave bitting lessons). It takes 5 minutes to teach the average child to drop down in their stance (or sit down) and twist out of a wrist hold (being dragged by the hand). If they could break the hold, attack the groin. If you get away, run as fast as you can. I never got complaints from parents that the lessons caused negative behaviour.

This old guy in the church was probably trusted by all of the parents and he used this trust to get access to the children. This shows again that the church model of community is inherently flawed.

But, that aside, adults that were abused as children probably tithe more than non-abused so it's good for business. To be so damaged and confused would probably make them cling to the church.

Australian Institute of Criminology's report.

Online child grooming: a literature review on the misuse of social networking sites for grooming children for sexual offences.

ICANN says Web filters will "embarrass" Aussie govt

An Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) chief has said the Australian government will "embarrass itself" if it pushes ahead with plans to install a national Internet content filter.

ComputerWorld Article

Censordyne - Web Filter Parody

SMH Article:



Censordyne - cleaning the internet Conroy style.

GetUp Campaign - flick them a few bucks to get this ad in front of politicians.

Chinese Govt. Vs Google

On Thursday, a Chinese official accused Google of spreading obscene content over the internet. The comments came a day after Google.com, Gmail and other Google online services abruptly became inaccessible to many users in China.

SMH Article

This is the kind of crap that Conroy will be going on with once his filter is in place.

Chinese netizens.

Chinese netizens are fighting back.

China's filter isn't to US taste. Conroy's at it again.

US asks China to drop their filter.


And gamers find out that 15+ games are on Conroy's chopping block too. Despite almost everyone not wanting this Conroy forges on ahead.

There are two types of people in this debate: people who want a filter and people who know that it is an unworkable idea which is pushing against the censorship tide.

People want less censorship. We have tasted a world without the government telling us what to do. Toto has pulled back the curtain. Saying "Ignore the little man behind the curtain" isn't gonna work.

People don't just want Porn

Despite what the religious right would have us believe, the internet isn't awash with porn and people use it to socialise and research.

Much of this functionality will be damaged by the government's attempts to dumb down the internet to a G-Rating.

If people are seeking porn, they aren't seeking it because of the internet, they are seeking it because it is part of their sexual orientation.

Even China is ahead of Conroy

Even the Chinese Communist Party is more liberal minded and democratic than Conroy the puppet of the religious right.

SMH Article >

The Chinese government still has a problem with google allowing the Chinese to find porn.

SMH article >

Those wacky chinese

I think the picture really sums it up. The internet is full of evil, black... spikey... thingoes that will un-happi-er-fy children.

Riiiiiight.

SMH Link:

China's compulsory filtering software.

China's filtering, in the same guise of protecting children as the Australian government's, will be just as easily abused to block anti-government content such as pictures of Garfield.

SMH Article:

The software has glitches and the communist party doesn't care what it's critics think and is going ahead with it's plan to implement the software regardless... sound familiar (I'm looking at you Conroy).

Another SMH Article:

Better filter this Conroy

Mr Illingworth retains Michael Byrne, QC

Mr Illingworth has retained Michael Byrne, QC to represent him in Maroochydore court this July. This is a hearing to determine whether the case will go to trial.

Byrne indicated that they will argue that the video is of a Russian circus family. He has similar videos to support this claim.

If Mr Illingworth is committed to trial none of us will be able to safely surf the net. As it is we could be charged for watching the video. With so many blind links on the net who knows what site we are off to next. Mr Illingworth did what most of us would naturally do, ask our peers whether the video was acceptable. It is just that his peers were a group on LiveLeek. As a community they didn't think there was much wrong with it but the police had to come in with their MeatWorld interpretation. Why can't they just leave us the hell alone?

SMH Article:

Finally, they admit they don't know what they are doing.

They don't have a defined outcome. They are just hoping that the technology reveals what is possible and that might be enough. Hopeless!

SMH Article

Conroy's sex education

This is how he would have all sexual topic presented.

Australian Christian Lobby squarks

Wallace from the Australian Christian Lobby is carrying on about Labor's betrayal.

I like this article. It ties this stupid policy to its source, fundamentalist religion. This is an attempt by religious groups to get their religious views legislated.

They do not have to show causality. They do not have to show that people have been harmed by adult material they can just claim it and that is enough for them to get a say. Religion gives ignorance power and credibility that they have not earned and do not deserve.

Asher Moses's SMH article:

We walk with Egypt in web filtering.

"Freedoms of expression and public rights should be restricted by maintaining the fundamentals of religion, morality and patriotism."

Another secret museum of porn

It's OK for Museum staff to see porn, they've got the magic porn proofing that means they can look at it without exploding.... or some shit like that.

Why is this journo so upset about this? Have they failed to notice that the porn is for sale where the politicians work? Who could have missed that one?

It is quite right and appropriate for a national film archive to be holding pornography. This sort of body is the best defense against the nonsense that porn was invented in the 70s and will destroy society. Every recording technology ever invented has been used to record sexual acts. Get over it. Imagine th last time you had sex. Imagine it right now. See, we even use our memory to make porn.

Ruugle. Conroy and Rudd's search engine.

Ruugle. Have a click around.

Ban the Catholic Church, I say

A Catholic Priest is on child porn charges now. Why are we destroying the internet when they are just standing around in religious robes.

Conroy scoffs at estimates of broadband network estimates but....

Conroy scoffs at estimates of broadband network estimates but refuses to give his price estimate.

Who is going to pay $200 plus for ADSL access. I need a good ADSL connection. My connection is better than most people I know at half that price. Is this how Conroy is going to bring Australia's internet access up to world standard? Who is going to pay $200 for a filtered internet connection?

This guy is so out of touch with what people want that it is not funny.

A taste of things to come:

SMH have an error on their HTML today but because the story is about the net filter it is funny. The ad wouldn't get out of the way so I couldn't read see the stroy without viewing the source.

After a while they fixed it so it stopped being funny.

Optus are participating in the net filter trial. I hope they haven't turned into government stooges. I'm sure Optus has some good techs who will be able to reveal the full depth of the flaws in Conroy's great wall.

French report on the Australian net filter

This is why governments are trying to put a lid on the internet.

Twitter activist is suprised when 20,000 instead of 200 people turn up to protest the Moldova's election as suspect. Organiser, Natalia Morar, has gone into hiding fearing arrest.

SMH article:

Conroy could spend his millions on this instead.

Police work done by a Qld police constable has broken a child abuse ring spanning the world. With Conroy's filters in place, our police force will be powerless to assist in the world wide fight against child exploitation material.

Brisbane times story:

Queenslanders show their prudish side again.

Two Queensland papers showed themselves to be pointlessly prudish today.

The Sunshine Coast Daily got up in arms about The Noosa Swingers Club's website and the Courier Mail got its knickers in a knot about a website designed for pre-teens by the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society, La Trobe University.

The Sunshine Coast Daily reporter went looking for something to be offended by and found it. The Noosa Swingers Club website had explicit pictures on it. Well duh! Your kidding! I thought that Swingers were a knitting circle! For f^(#s sake, if you don't want to see swinging, don't look at swingers club sites. And as for children finding it: 1) I don't care because I don't believe that it will substantially harm them and 2) why aren't their parents looking after them? I didn't ask for the job and I don't want it.

The Hormone Factory site for sex education for pre-teens is very tame. It talks about issues and gives them very sanitised information to let them have sufficient understanding of sex to know it is an issue that they will have to address soon but it's nothing to worry about at the moment. Do the bogan commenters really believe that they know more about this topic than a university sex research centre? Has the average person that much disdain for education and intellectuals? Wait... yes they have. Not all opinions are equal. Researched, considered opinions are worth more than bogan opinions, superstitions and death cults. I don't care if you are a parent, research pulls rank on being able to get sprogged up for the baby bonus.

I sent a email of support to the La Trobe University team in charge to let them know that not all people are ignorant fools.

So you want to monitor comuter use...

So you want to monitor comuter use in your home. x3watch will do this for you. It has even been created by a church so it must do the job.

Who needs the net filter?

The video:



The report:

Number of Australians: 21,542,500
Australians 0-14: 19.3% about half way down under "CHILDREN (UNDER 15 YEARS OF AGE)"
Give a figure of: 4,157,702 children 0-14.

At 15 you can leave school and get a job. This indicates to me that these people are old enough to make decisions for themselves to a great degree. There isn't much point in filtering the net with these people. They know how to dodge filters. They know more about computers than Conroy ever will.

To get an idea as to how many kids at each age I thought I'd just divide by 14. I couldn't find any raw data on each age. There may be more children of younger ages because of the introduction of the baby bonus scheme. If it is wrong in favour of younger kids (which I suspect it will be) that goes against my arguement so it wont invalidate my point.

The gives: 4157702 / 14 = 296979(rounded) per age.

Now, the idea that a child of 8 would be unattended online sounds like child neglect to me. Even with the Conroy filter in place the internet is a big place with adult concepts. Why isn't the computer in the lounge room or similar so that people can keep an eye on what kids are up to.

So six years at 296979 per year gives 1781874 or so.

Surveys are suggesting that 90% of people do not want this filter.
So: 90% of 1781874 is 178,187

So, 21 million people have to give up their right to a free internet because 178 thousand kids can't be looked aftr by their own parent.

WTF!

Who

Hitler and his net filter.

Ah commentors. One comment calls for this video to be removed because they found it offensive. You don't have a right not to be offended. I'm not making you watch this. If you don't like it, don't watch it. I'm offended by the stupid, pointless offense-taking, complaint driven culture we find ourselves in.

ASP petition

Conroy is flipflopping

Conroy is changing his mind about what the filter will do. Now, if he can't decide what it will do now do you imagine for a second that it will be easy to question the validity of the idea when it is up and running.

Freedom of expression includes the right to offend:

SMH's David Marr says it all for me.

Conroy admits that it wont block child porn

Conroy admits that his filter wont stop child porn... well what will it do? WTF!?

Conroy is making this s&)# up as he goes along.

ACMA Hacked

A screen shot of the ACMA hack.

They'd better get their security up to speed. I suspect there may be a lot of this mischief in the future. Wouldn't it be fun to be able to do stuff like this. :)

Q and A roundup

Conroy on Q and A

Conroy appeared on Q and A to discuss his filter. Asher Moses gives us a rundown for the SMH.

SMH Article

The article sites a caching error for the inclusion of Henson's photos. If the ACMA is not computer savvy enough to manage the list what makes them imagine that the will be able to do it better with the power to ban anything.

Conroy has missed the point. We don't give him permission to do this. He acts as an elected official. People do not want this. Australians do not want this. They are saying stop wasting time and money on a thing we don't want. Listen, fv(# ya!

He goes on to blame the Russians for spamming a page on the dentist's site. Will the government compensate businesses that it sends broke by mistakenly secretly banning their sites? Blamming the Russians?? Are you aware that the cold war is over?

All power is open to abuse.

A police liaison officer has been charged with indecent assault while on duty at a school. It doesn't matter who you give power to it is still likely to get abused. The millions upon millions of dollars being burnt up by the Conroy filter could have allowed police liaison officers to work strictly in pairs avoiding this alleged incident.

Millions upon millions of dollars! Think of the opportunity cost. What else could this have achieved?

SMH article:

Legal content blocked.

The blacklist has a Bill Henson fan-site on it. There were 5 images of young boys, one of which was naked. These images are legal to see out here in the real world, however, once they are online the ACMA takes a dislike to them.

This whole black list is a blight on this country, a cancer of stupidity.

Not all but at least some women just want to be involved in the adult industry.

These women want to work in the porn/erotic dancer industry to get ahead. Who is to say that their plan is wrong? They aren't hurting my by doing it. It has no effect on me. It doesn't mean that they should be shunned by society. I'm not interested in watching them do it.

Conroy, being a conservative, anti porn sort of guy would probably be against their right to choose for themselves and an audiences right to decide to be entertained by their show.

Censorship is all about protecting the weak. On this round it is the children who are being held up as the innocent victims of porn. Firstly, I want to see the empirical data of who is getting harmed and how.

In the 1800s the intelligencia felt that they could deal with adult entertainment but that their wives and the working class had to be protected. Little consideration was given to limiting information available to children. Prior to the sexual revolution in the 1960s women had to be protected from information. This is the burkah that women still wear under Islam. This patronising attitude that they need to be protected from something that their husbands access freely is really just a way of keeping them ignorant and, thus, easier to control.

So we move to Conroy's great wall. Under the guise of child protection the elderly wont be able to access euthenasia information. WTF?! It sounds like the church (not happy with the impending doom of irrelivence) trying to re-assert it's control over who gets to shag who and the proper place for women in society.

Don't criticise the government or you'll get the sack.

Don't criticise the government or you'll get the sack.

The author of the Fake Stephen Conroy blog and Twitter Leslie Nassar's employer haven't sacked him, however: "We have started a disciplinary process against him."

This sounds like the lead up to being sacked. If he farts off key in the future he will get the sack. I can't imagine that he will be considered for promotion.

It would be hard to argue that Mr Nassar's actions were the wisest move but did it actually affect his job? How did it stop him from doing his job?

Blogs and Twitters are a conversation, not a publication. I don't look for facts on blogs or Twitters. Only an idiot would see a blog or Twitter as anything more than a personal opinion. Sure thousands of people might read it but blogs becoming popular or even having visitors is very much the exception to the rule. Bitching about the government, Telstra and the boss is part of the cherished Australian psyche. It's the modern world way of stuffing jolly jumbucks into tucker bags. Who are Telstra to punish people for that.

SMH article:

China blocks Youtube.

China has blocked access to youtube.

This is the kind of control that Conroy wants over Australian ISPs. Tell me how they are going to avoid abusing this power. Governments are not known for not using power we give them.

Articles:

ABC Unleashed:
Wikileaks Home Page:
Can't work out whether a site is inaccessable by you or just down? Down For Everyone Or Just Me is the site to test with.
Guardian UK article: Maybe the Queen can save us.
Whirlpool coverage and comments:

SMH Article

Asher has been busy again. In this SMH article: iiNet drops out of the trial and a grandmother is cross about threats to blacklist eutheasia information.

Senator Stephen Conroy - Turning the Lucky Country into a Police State. Wanted for crimes against reality.

The full extent to the current federal governments plan to control and monitor the internet is starting to come to light. The whirlpool forum is being monitored by government officials now.

This comes hot on the hypocritical heals of him commending Singapore for stopping this same behaviour.

SMH article:

LOL-roy

Dentist vs Conroy

The dentist named on the banned list is cross. The article goes on to quote Conroy denying that this is the list.

The Brisbane Times article quotes Conroy threatening to put the Australian Federal Police onto anyone distributing the list. So, a list that we aren't allowed to see... which we don't have a real copy of... is gonna get us reported to the Federal Police... who are gonna charge us with... what... having a fake list? WTF?!

I think it's time to roll out the Chewbacca defence: That does not make sense!

SMH article: Leaked Australian blacklist reveals banned sites

Leaked Australian blacklist reveals banned sites article by Asher Moses.

EFA comment:

The blacklist grows.

The blacklist is growing. Part of the blacklist is the blacklist itself. Talking about the blacklist on a forum will have the forum blacklisted. Linking to sites that disclose blacklists will result in $11,000 per day fines.

This is exactly the kind of shit that we are fighting against. The internet has shown us a new world, one where we can talk to each other freely and go where we want. I don't think people want to give that world up.

SMH article:

Analysis of who needs filters.

Adam Thierer has researched who needs net filters.


The pff.org page.

The .pdf of the images used in the video.

Senator Nick Xenophon may save the day:

Senator Nick Xenophon may save the day by siding against the government on the issue of ISP filtering. He may have wanted to avoid being labelled the politician who single handedly introduced ISP filtering in the same way that Meg Lees was hung out to dry over GST.

Spoof!

This video was made as a comment on attempts by some German polititians to ban violent games. The makers are trying paint a portrait of what critics believe teenagers do whilst gaiming online.

Grandpa knows it doesn't matter:

Clive Hamilton

The Australian Institute's research on the effect of porn on kids.

The Australian Institute's .pdfs on Regulating Youth Access to Pornography and Youth and Pornography in Australia: Evidence on the extent of exposure and likely effects.

Clive Hamilton has seen this video

Clive Hamilton's description of what 15 year olds all over Australia do as soon as our backs are turned is very reminescent of Randy in this South Park episode. Just give it a couple of minutes.

"A boy comes home from school and logs on to the computer. He types in a search for, say, 'sex pictures'. Thousands of sites appear and he starts exploring. He sees pictures of naked women in all sorts of positions, some using dildos and various devices. He surfs to sites showing men and women having sex. Some are straight sex; others show women being penetrated by two men at the same time. Still others show women engaged in oral sex.

The images are confusing but exciting. The boy clicks on "cum shots". A number of men stand over a woman and ejaculate onto her face. Her smile looks strained. He moves to sites called "Teen facials", "Teen blowjobs" and "Teen hard-core". It says they’re 18 but some look younger.

A pop-up appears which takes him to a site listing dozens of "fetishes" with phrases like "bondage", "fisting", "black bitches", "upskirts", "SM", "incest", "golden showers", "gang bangs", "fat", "amputees", "scat" and many more.

He doesn't have any idea what most of them are, but he is drawn to find out. He sees pictures of women with weird-looking vaginas, men with huge penises and videos of drunken girls having sex. One site shows pictures of pregnant women being penetrated; another specialises in stick-thin anorexics.

The boy senses that some of this is wrong. He feels guilty but it's hard to stop. With a few more clicks of the mouse he sees a picture of a woman defecating into another’s mouth and others showing a woman and a horse. He is disgusted and disturbed. The images stay with him for a long time after.

Enough. You get the point. We are not talking about Playboy."

GetUp's Save the Internet campaign is still going.

GetUp's Save the Internet campaign is still going. It must have prickled Clive Hamilton by the look of his attack on GetUp in this AustralianIT article.

A response to Clive Hamilton's opinion piece

A response to Clive Hamilton's opinion piece: The Web doesn’t belong to net libertarians.