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.

Censorship beyond its use-by date.

The Australian Censorship board is out of step with society's views that, simply, they've just gotta go.

Some real research

The Effectiveness of Internet Content Filters, Philip B. Stark, Department of Statistics, University of California, Berkeley.

Some real research has been done on what a filter will do and how it will work.

Clive Hamilton's at it again.

AustralianIT article:

Ben Self

Ben Self, Obama's web guru, says internet filtering is a bad idea. The article goes on to site the Thai experience where the banned list was leaked. Some 20% of the banned sites were anti-government. I'm not saying that this is why the Rudd government wants this but once it is in place, why wouldn't they? Or the next government. Look at the power grab that the US government went through in the aftermath of 911.

Large ISPs aren't invited now.

The government is going to run their trial with half a dozen small ISPs. Surely the deployment would be easier for a small ISP.

Web filtering's slippery slope.

Birmingham City Council has banned access to sites on atheism and witchcraft. Sites expressing other religious ideas are A-OK though. The National Secular Society are planning on fighting the ban.

BBC Article:

A city council has blocked its staff from looking at websites about atheism.

Lawyers at the National Secular Society said the move by Birmingham City Council was "discriminatory" and they would consider legal action.

The rules also ban sites that promote witchcraft, the paranormal, sexual deviancy and criminal activity.

The city council declined to comment on the possible legal action, but said the new system helped make it easier for managers to monitor staff web access.

'Very strong case'

The authority's Bluecoat WebFilter computer system allows staff to look at websites relating to Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and other religions but blocks sites to do with "witchcraft or Satanism" and "occult practices, atheistic views, voodoo rituals or any other form of mysticism".

Under the Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003, it is unlawful to discriminate against workers because of their religion or belief, which includes atheism.

National Secular Society president Terry Sanderson said the city council's rules also discriminated against people who practise witchcraft, which is also classed as a legitimate belief.


We feel very strongly that people who don't believe should not be denied the access that people who do believe have got
Terry Sanderson, National Secular Society

He said the society would initially contact the council and ask for the policy to be changed, and otherwise pursue legal action.

He said he believed he would have a "very strong case".

Mr Sanderson said: "It is discriminatory not only against atheists but they also are banning access to sites to do with witchcraft.

"Witchcraft these days is called Wicca, which is an actual legitimate and recognised religion.

"We feel very strongly that people who don't believe should not be denied the access that people who do believe have got."

He added that some opinion polls said that up to 25% of the UK population now considered themselves atheist.

A city council statement said the authority had a "long-standing internet usage policy for staff".

It added: "We are currently implementing new internet monitoring software to make the control of internet access easier to manage.

"The aim of this is to provide greater control for individual line managers to monitor internet usage, and for departments, such as trading standards and child protection, to gain access, if needed, to certain sites for business reasons."

Bypassing the Australian Firewall for free

Adam Turner at the SMH expains the ease with which the firewall will be bypassed.

Set the controls to 'porn mode'

IE8 will have a private mode. Private mode means the computer does not store any data on where it has been so no-one can find out what you've been looking at.

SMH Article >

The Gamers are pushing **it up hill too

Gamers want an R18+ catagory for games with sexual content or violence. They are allowed to watch a DVD of sex or violence (note the 'or', I'm not talking about sexual violence) but they are not allowed to play a game of it... unless they just download the game.

Actual Online Risk

There is much talk of online risk. How much risk is really out there? Harvard University has had a look at it and released a report. It includes such shoking revelations as 17 year old boys are interested in porn! No, I kid you not! 17 year old boys are sexually curious.

MsNaughty looks at underage curiosity about pornography.

The Chinese ISP filtering model

Does this sound familiar? The government asserts that it has the right to stop citizens from looking at sites or talking to each other to preserve social order. What a crock of shit. The government is preserving its power. This is what the Rudd government wants to do, preserve its power and the churches authority over moral issues pertaining to sexuality. They don't want to protect kids, only the status quo.

Cyberbullying

SMH article discussing cyberbullying.

There is an implication here that teachers don't fully understand social sites like MySpace and thus cannot control cyberbullying. Tell me, were teachers ever able to control bullying? I was bullied in high school. This happened right under the teacher's noses. They weren't able to stop it or help. How the hell are they supposed to stop it online? How did this get dumped into teacher's laps? This is a parenting issue. If your kid is a bully you have to take your kid to councilling to get them out of the habit.

That said, if the kid is a bully the parent is probably a bully too. Thus the parent wont believe reports of the kid's bullying so they probably wont seek councilling.

I just have to assume that this article is designed to generate more i-fear (fear of the internet) to support the proposed ISP filtering scheme. Filtering wont stop bullying. It wont keep kids out of social web sites. If you ban MySpace a dozen social networking sites will pop up in its place. The dozen probably already exist and are waiting for something like this to give them an opening on MySpace's market share.

Kids all have to have a mobile so that they can ring if the swarms of pedophiles leap out at them. Are you going to take their mobiles off them so that the bullies can't text them?

Bullying has been going on forever. Kids just have to grow out of it. Bullied kids cop it. Come up with a solution instead of blaming the easy targets.