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: