A few things are worrying in this document. For instance, one of the criteria tested are circumvention
The Pilot will seek to the test the ease with which different filtering solutions can be circumvented and the capacity of filters to provide warnings on circumvention attempts.Besides the technological issues here (there will be no way to prevent circumvention), this opens up worrying possibilites about the criminalization of using circumvention tools, or at least adding them to the blacklist themselves. I can tell you some other countries that do that, and I'll give you a hint - it's not the UK or Sweden.
This also doesn't address any concerns whatever about what material will be blocked. The ACMA blacklist, often held up by Conroy as a list of horrible and illegal child pornography, forms the basis of this pilot. But the ACMA aren't police - they are not in the business of seeking out and blocking illegal material. Their list is driven by complaints from the public, and extends to a much wider range of material than child pornography. Their annual report from the last year indicates that out of 796 URLs added to the list in that year, "RC – Child – depiction" was given as the reason for 421 of them. That's all well and good, but what about the remainder? These were made up RC, X and R-rated material, most or all of which would be legal to view and even purchase. Just today, the Minister referred to "other unwanted content" when referring to the list. If you suspect that you want different content options to the Minister, then you should be worried. The list will be secret, so it's unlikely there will be a mechanism to get harmless content removed.
The Department would no doubt say that this is their way of consulting with Industry to find the most practical solution (whether or not you think a problem exists). The more cynical, however, might observe that the Government doesn't really know how to accomplish what they want to do, so they are asking the ISPs to bear the cost of figuring out what they can get away with. Presumably the pilot will find that filtering is expensive, ineffective and unpopular. Will the Government then see reason?
I'm not ready to place any bets.
11 comments:
Hearing this makes me very very sad, I had hope it wouldn't come to this and I hoped that they would have seen sense by now, But being the typical Government filled with hot heads who don't know shit. We are once again faced with the problems caused by having unattached dick heads in high places. I really hope Internode and all the good ISPs fight this all the way to the very end.
Will the Government then see reason?
Maybe there is hope. The government decided to scrap the 2 am lockout idea in its efforts to curb binge drinking. The 2 am lockout solution was incredibly useless, finally they saw sense and now there will be more police on patrol (ant other measures) which is a much more sensible and practical solution that is more likely to solve the problem.
I hope this common sense will prevail again in the censorship case.
Maybe the way to get the Government to see sense is to get the masses to write to the ACMA complaining about sites that the government finds useful and would not easily live without.
How about http://www.actu.asn.au/ ??
Too political. Let's get it blacklisted.
etc etc. You get the point.
Let's say this pilot goes ahead, and ISP x chooses to participate. At the end of the pilot, (assuming (and hoping) the government finally realise they're complete dick heads and the system isn't going to work) are the ISPs going to remove the filter? Is the government going to compensate them for the costs of setting it up and then taking it down?
I can't see that the ISPs will be hopping up and down with joy about the filter.
What good could it possibly do for them? I want to see them publicly oppose it. They will have a lot of support.
Many Australian beaches have shark nets. They exist to stop swimmers from being exposed to sharks. Sure, swimmers can just climb over the shark net, and sure, the net isn't 100% effective at shielding swimmers from sharks, but does that really mean we shouldn't build them?
The fact that some of us might like to swim with sharks is completely lost on the majority of the population who don't want sharks near their kids.. and, frankly, think we're being unreasonable by insisting that the shark net be optional.
Instead of focusing on whether or not an ISP level filter can work, we need to be talking about RC and R18+ material not being analogous to sharks.
I don't know what we're all so worried about. Anything the government will bring in will only protect and restrict the stupid. These systems are very easy to get around, even at ISP level it's still entirely possible.
Computer swap meets will become a growing place for trading and purchasing hardware and software to circumvent the filtering technology. It's just another way for the AU Government to waste more of tax payers money.
Cheers,
- Not worried at all
I think children are ifinitely more at risk from Shark attack than from viewing childporn or even regular porn on the internet
The fact that some of us might like to swim with sharks is completely lost on the majority of the population who don't want sharks near their kids
There are no children in this household, so your argument just fell apart. I will decide what is appropriate for me and what is not.
"Expressions of Interest are now being called from ISPs interested in participating in this 'live' pilot. Participation is restricted to those ISPs that provide a service to persons resident in Australia."
What ISP is going to be interested in this? ;\
This whole issue is stirring up a lot of anger - http://www.fireblades.org/forums/off-topic/70559-mandatory-internet-censorship-australia.html Lets hope the government sees the light and steps away from this disgusting idea.
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