"The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation." Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf p.403.

Why does Conroy insist on wearing a target on his back?

Is it that he might be a little bit dim, do you think? Because that's the conclusion I'm coming to following his unintentionally hilarious insistence yesterday that the Internet isn't very special. No minister, no it's not. Near instantaneous communications across the face of the planet, and unimaginably vast repository of human knowledge and celebrity sex videos available at the end of their fingertips, whole worlds created where none existed just a few years ago. Nothing special about that.

Link:

Australian Consumers' Association

Australian Consumers Association

Australian Consumers' Association's Response to Department of Communications, IT and the Arts.

Web filter splits opposition

THE federal opposition is yet to formulate a position on the proposed internet filter despite Labor flagging its intention to introduce the measure before the last election.

The failure of Coalition leader Tony Abbott or his communications spokesman Tony Smith to indicate whether they would support the bill reflects divisions within the party about the government's plan to block access to internet sites banned under Australia's classification rules.

Link:

Abbott is non-committal. I'm hoping he's watching the electorate and will jump the way that they want it.

Without civil liberties, government is just a criminal racket

"The only difference between a Nation State and a Mafioso protection racket is the letterhead and the rituals -- and the series of concessions, hard-won over eight centuries, that we call 'civil liberties'."

That's how I was going to start this article about the importance of defending our civil liberties online. I was going to write about dusk falling at the end of another busy day, the shopkeeper counting the cash in his till, only to have two thugs turn up to demand their share as "protection money" lest something terrible happen to his business. Or his kneecaps. I was going to compare this to the State demanding its share of the shop's profits in the form of taxes to pay for the state's defence, and the shopkeeper's defence, from unspecified enemies. And the penalties if that money wasn't paid.

Link: EFA

Queenslander accused of sex assault

Canadian police have arrested and charged a 37-year-old Queensland man for grooming a child on the internet and then sexually assaulting her.

Newfoundland police allege that Anthony John Porter of Woody Point committed the sex crimes within days of arriving in the province.

Link:

The net filter would not stop this sort of thing from happening. What it will do is give parents a false sense of security. If this is a case of a person being groomed online, this problem will be made worse by parents having a false sense of security.

No proof ISP filtering works: Abbott

OPPOSITION leader Tony Abbott says there is insufficient evidence ISP filtering is effective enough to warrant his full support.

Mr Abbott hasn't been convinced internet filtering can really trap net nasties as there was no substantial technical evidence.

"We certainly haven't seen the kind of technical assurances that we'd need so let's wait and see how this thing develops," he said in response to a question on ABC TV's Q&A program last night.

"I want to see protections in place. I don't want to see our kids exposed to really terrible stuff on the internet. On the other hand I don't want to see the internet destroyed by a filtering system that won't work so I guess for me it's a factual issue.

"Can you have a filtering system that is effective, that doesn't lull parents into a false sense of security and which doesn't in the process make the internet ineffective as the kind of marvellous research tool and educational device that it is?

Link:

My comment:
I've never even considered voting Liberal before. Just typing the words 'voting Liberal' make me do a double take. That said, this will be the only issue I will be voting on. I do not want the Australian Christian Lobby telling me where to surf.

Labor have just lost Tassy... the writing's on the wall.

Nitschke promotes hacking class to beat filter

"The masterclass was prompted by the reported inclusion of Exit International websites (www.peacefulpill.com) on the Government's secret blacklist of banned websites. The Clean Feed policy will see older Australians denied access to current end of life information," the site states.

"To ensure that elderly Australians can continue to receive this important information after the Federal Government's censorship takes effect, the masterclass is intended to provide plain language targeted for Seniors."

Link:

Another article...

Elderly learn to beat euthanasia blacklist

''Now I'm on borrowed time I can afford to live dangerously,'' she said after attending the first in a series of workshops teaching people how to circumvent a proposed law restricting access to some internet sites, expected to include some on euthanasia.

Websites associated with Exit International and its suicide manual, the Peaceful Pill Handbook, are expected to be refused classification and therefore to be inaccessible from Australian computers once a mandatory internet filter is in place.

SMH Link:

This is the best news I've heard. I thought that the filter might increase the computer skills of curious teenagers but it never occurred to me that it might help old people to increase their computer literacy too.

Conroy - Moral crusader!

Conroy out with his anti-porn club protecting everyone from moral perils of the internet.

He is SUPER CONROY!

The History of Modern Pornography

The following paper analyzes the evolution of pornography from 1527 until 2009. It addresses the people, inventions, events and phenomena that have shaped pornography's modern history. This paper has identified four meaningful trends.

Via ASP site:

Stephen Conroy and US at odds on net filter

THE Obama administration has questioned the Rudd government's plan to introduce an internet filter, saying it runs contrary to the US's foreign policy of encouraging an open internet to spread economic growth and global security.
Officials from the State Department have raised the issue with Australian counterparts as the US mounts a diplomatic assault on internet censorship by governments worldwide.

The news is a blow to Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, who is defending the plan for internet companies to mandatorily block illegal and abhorrent websites -- for instance, child pornography -- but faces growing opposition.

Link (ASP):

Goldfields teacher on child sex charges

A Goldfields school teacher has been charged with possessing 30,000 images and more than 7000 videos of child pornography.

Police spokesman Greg Lambert said the man was charged with 15 counts of possessing child pornography after a raid on his house in August last year.

Link:

Good old fashioned policing solved this one. Would the filter have helped of hindered?

ASP's Fiona Patten gives a talk about censorship.

Talk recorded by the ABC's Big Ideas
First of five videos.

A few talking points:
. Politicians can see porn, Senator Harradine could show it to politicians but we can't see it cause it will harm us.
. Clive Hamilton (The Australia Institute) drove the need to filter... now he's running for the Greens.
. Wallace represents a small minority of people and want to force their ideas onto everyone.
. 30% of politicians attend prayer meetings but only 8% of Australians attend church - they are over-represented.
. Female ejaculation and small breasts will be RC and therefore banned.
. The Christian Lobby has raised $150k to lobby the government.
. ASP questions the tax status of religious proselytizing.
. Sheila Jeffries and ACL are allies in trying to get the filter in place.
. No Australian politician has lost a seat on an anti-sex platform.
. Australian politicians are frightened of the christian lobbies.
. The name "Australian Sex Party" was deliberate. Don Chip said that getting noticed was the hardest part of starting out.
. Greens have approached them on sex issues for comment.
. Books: "The Family" and "God Under Howard"
. Beasley's father was in the "Moral Rearmament" movement.
. Gamers are anti-filter but their homophobia doesn't allow them to support the ASP. Do they imagine that the major parties are on their side.
. Anti-biker laws could stop the ASP from calling a meeting between shops wanting to discuss selling X-rated videos cause it's against the law.
. Political parties are exempt from anti-discrimination laws so they can discriminate against women and minorities.

Internet's not special, says communications minister

But Mark Newton, an engineer with ISP internode, said: "Censorship will not catch a single pedophile, will not cause a single image to disappear from the internet, will not protect a single child."

Senator Conroy also brushed aside concerns from leading academics and technology companies that the plan to block a blacklist of "refused classification" (RC) websites for all Australians was an attempt to shoe-horn an offline classification model into a vastly different online world.

"Why is the internet special?," he asked, saying the net was "just a communication and distribution platform".

"This argument that the internet is some mysti...

Link:

'Rape simulator' game goes viral amid calls for censorship

Attempts to ban a deplorable "rape simulator" video game have only caused it to spread virally across the internet, leading to calls for sites hosting the game to be blocked by internet censors.

Karen Willis, executive officer of the NSW Rape Crisis Centre, said in a phone interview that the existence of material such as the RapeLay video game, which lets players simulate stalking and raping young girls, made internet filters, such as those proposed by the government, necessary.

Link:

This is a distasteful game. If a friend felt that it was good fun I would question being their friend.

The calls to ban the game have given it massive coverage.

Rape fantasy doesn't particularly turn into rape. Many sexual fantasies are deliberately kept as fantasy. We often don't want to spoil our fantasies by playing them out in the real world. Rape rates are falling in liberal democracies where pornography is freely available.

In the end, it's fun to be indignant and hard work to do the work and prove your case.

Parents Music Resource Center

The Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) was an American committee formed in 1985 by four women: Tipper Gore, wife of Senator and later Vice President Al Gore; Susan Baker, wife of Treasury Secretary James Baker; Pam Howar, wife of Washington realtor Raymond Howar; and Sally Nevius, wife of Washington City Council Chairman John Nevius. They were known as the "Washington wives" - a reference to their husbands' connections with the federal government. The Center eventually grew to include 22 participants.

Link - Wikipedia

History doesn't repeat but it often rhymes. Look at the list of songs. Did they really harm you? They didn't harm me.

Government goes to war with Google over net censorship

The Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, has launched a stinging attack on Google and its credibility in response to the search giant's campaign against the government's internet filtering policy.

Link SMH:

I posted a comment (me and nearly 700 other people)
It probably wont get put up.

Conroy's plan to equalize the current censorship of videos and books and the internet has merit. Let's get rid of censorship entirely.

I'm not against classification so that people don't get a nasty fright. The DVD player is such a wonderful baby sitter after all. Classification laws need one more category: Unclassified. Parents know that there could be anything on there so don't give it to the kids.

I'm an adult. If I want to watch adult material - we are talking about just normal sex like hundreds of thousands of Australians are doing right now - what does that have to do with Senator Conroy and his ACMA.

He says that this isn't about banning porn but so much porn is banned. Excellent, sex positive porn like Tony Comstock's films showing positive, conscentual loving sex between loving, sexual partners. That is a definite No-no.

Porn is part of a person's sexuality. According to 'The Porn Report' - based on a long term, peer reviewed study, not a hunch or a religion - 1/3 of people like porn and people either like it or they don't, there is little point in trying to convince people otherwise just like GLBTI people. Conversion doesn't work because our sexuality is hard wired into us. Try converting a straight person to GLBTI, it doesn't work. Politicians have no place interfering with other peoples sexuality.

Senator Conroy announced the filter results to the Australian Christian Lobby before the public. With the Vatican besieged by child abuse allegations I wonder why we allow our actions to be informed by people who claim to have a direct line to god.

Conroy to go on ABC Radio National

Conroy to go on ABC Radio National 6pm tomorrow.

You'll be able to listen online after if you miss it.

The federal government will introduce mandatory internet filtering this year. And after recent abuse appearing on Facebook memorial sites, the government is also looking at establishing an internet ombudsman. So how far should control of the internet go for the sake of making the online world safer for children? Is it actually possible to make the internet safe?

Link:

The comments up already aren't very complimentary. :)

Australia on internet watchlist with Iran, North Korea

A top media rights watchdog has listed Australia along with Iran and North Korea in a report on countries that pose a threat of internet censorship.

Paris-based media rights group Reporters Without Borders on Thursday put Australia and South Korea on its list of countries "under surveillance" in its "Internet Enemies" report.

Australia was listed for the government's plan to block access to websites featuring material such as rape, drug use, bestiality and child sex abuse.

SMH:

Reporters Without Borders, Senator Conroy. We aren't talking about a crackpot internet libertarian rabble here. Drop this idea.

Conroy's net gag sparks assassination and bomb plot chatter

Members of the community responsible for recent attacks on government websites are now discussing a violent uprising, trading bomb recipes and calling for the assassination of Communications Minister Stephen Conroy.

Senator Conroy's appearance on the 7pm Project last night to defend his internet filtering policy has galvanised online miscreants who are planning new attacks.

Link: BNE Times

Can't condone the threat of violence but I'm not surprise. People are upset.

China hits back at Google with the Great Firewall

The ''Great Firewall of China'' appeared intact yesterday despite an announcement from Google that it had stopped censoring its Chinese-language search engine.

The internet giant said on Monday that it had stopped filtering results on Google.cn based in China and was redirecting mainland Chinese users to an uncensored site based in Hong Kong - effectively closing down its mainland site.

Link:

Google's just told China to get stuffed. They have lodged a strong complaint with the Australian Government too. Why is it that only Rudd and Conroy can see that this idea sucks?

Conroy's internet censorship agenda slammed by tech giants

Australia's biggest technology companies, communications academics and many lobby groups have delivered a withering critique of the government's plans to censor the internet.

The government today published most of the 174 submissions it received relating to improving the transparency and accountability measures of its internet filtering policy.

Link:

Conroy was on The 7pm Report. He just denied that experts knew what they were talking about. What can we do about this. We know he's stuffing our internet and he just wont listen.

How to fix Refused Classification online: start again

On the same day that Google stopped censoring search results in China, the Department of Broadband, Communications and Digital Economy published the 174 public submissions it received on the oddly Kafkaesque issue of improving the transparency of creating a secret censorship blacklist. You can see why Minister Conroy couldn't introduce legislation into the autumn session of parliament as planned. The criticism is comprehensive.

The "Submissions on measures to increase accountability and transparency for Refused Classification material" were meant to focus on how the list of RC material to be blocked by the mandatory internet filter is compiled and managed. A discussion paper put forward six options for consideration.

Crikey:

Third-person effect

The third-person effect hypothesis states that a person exposed to a persuasive communication in the mass media sees it as having a greater effect on others than on himself or herself (Davison, 1983). This is known as the perceptual hypothesis, but there is also a behavioral hypothesis predicting that perceiving others as more vulnerable increases support for restrictions on mass media.

The third-person effect hypothesis also argues that people are compelled themselves to take action after being exposed to a persuasive message but this action might not be due to the message itself but to the anticipation of the reaction of others. This action is unpredictable and it might be either in conformity with the message or counter to it.

Link:

This is the patronizing attitude that the government is taking with the Australian public. If ACMA reviews content for classification why haven't they all turned into sex crazed maniacs. They assume that the Australian public is too stupid and fragile to cope with adult material.

They do not offer evidence to support this idea. Show me the proof that people are harmed by x-rated material, even underage people. Evidence people!