Australia Edges Us Towards the Digital Dark Ages

I was against censorship until I clicked that link.

Yes many of us would like to censor Conroy, but we won't get a chance until this time next year, at the earliest. It may be too late by then.

Bloody h*ll Trace, Oz is getting a bad name OS. First Murdoch and now this drongo Conroy.....

> First Murdoch...

Yeah, but Murdoch isn't hurting anyone but himself with his stupidity.

I will refrain from defaming my countryman as it would violate theTOS ;-)

My boss sent me this http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/12/16/dont-waste-your-time-was... just in case I want to start writing to anyone about the Great Wall of OZ. There are some interesting suggestions in this article, that others might find useful.

One of the biggest concerns about the filter is that while it is promoted as a device for filtering kiddie porn, the majority of sites on the black list are not porn sites, but instead political sites like wikileaks (which is on the list), which suggests that it's real intent has nothing to do with kiddie porn. In fact in other countries, Thialand , for example, where a similar filter is already used, and was also promoted as a device for stopping kiddie porn, the filter is mostly being used to block material other than such porn.

Not surprising...pretty much any time some legislation is passed "for the children" or "for your security" it has almost nothing to do with either and usually serves only to give more power to some government officials somewhere...

Fascinating article there TA. I suspect that applies to most governments.

The other scary thing about such Filters, is that if they are promoted as a device to stop kiddie porn, invariably funding earmarked for services that actually do something useful where kiddie porn is concerned, like the AFP's child sex unit, and state police units with similar functions, gets spent elsewhere, and those services become less effective.

The thing is while such a filter might keep ordinary people and children from accessing kiddie porn accidentally - I'm not even sure that is possible (accidentally accessing it that is), as I'm pretty sure the paedophile rings don't make their porn site public, and practice best prctice encryption, and access is by invite only etc etc. At least that appeared to be the case with the last two kiddie porn busts that I'm aware of - the perpetrators only being caught by accident when one of theor number was arrested on some other charge - it's not going to stop kiddie porn. Nor is it going to stop paedophiles from targeting children, both on the internet, via chat sites, and In real Life in schools, hospitals, parks, homes (especially homes) and other places where they can gain access to children from positions of Trust. Not even the Blue Card registration system, where people are vetted to ensure they are child safe works sufficiently well.

So what we have is a System that makes political censorship possible... no probable, that takes funds away from the currently most effective methods of catching paedophiles.

By the way, thanks to comments on this thread, LXer is probably now on Stephen Conroy's black list, and LXer will now become unavailable to Australians.

Of course, tracyanne. We're truly evil and everyone knows it.

Just redirect them to PenguinPete, TA ;)

> Just redirect them to PenguinPete...

You had to say that. Odds are that he'll now show up complaining about LXer taking his name in vain again.

PenguinPete complain? I'm shocked at the suggestion!

Quoting:Odds are that he'll now show up complaining about LXer taking his name in vain again.

Does that mean we have to refer to him as P-guinP-te, so that HIS name is never spoken.?

A name too far.

@Tracyanne: I am sorry if you get cut off, I happen to like Australians in general..;-)

PenguinPete...uhh no..going to leave that one alone..

@Scott, we're not a bad mob...... until you get to know us.

Well, I meant, we're on two blacklists now.

I'm sure we'll get to three soon enough.

Which two blacklists contain lxer? I read it from Giant Immoral MegaCorp's "squid" WWW cache, and they use that really foolish commercial web blocker, "SmartFilter" that blocks things for being "provocative attire" and other head scratching reasons.

Quoting:and they use that really foolish commercial web blocker

Hey, is that the one who found out only last week that everything they block can still be seen from Google Cache? It's really a pity they found out, now their filter actually seems to work.

Just checked, and I'm blocked for 'illegal / doubtful' content too and that isn't on SmartFilters list it seems.

And when you're blocked for 'provocative attire', please tell your IT department to configure SmartFilter with the '--offensive' option enabled, like sudo.