AUSTRALIA will join China in implementing mandatory censoring of the internet
 

What the hell? :eek:


AUSTRALIA will join China in implementing mandatory censoring of the internet under plans put forward by the Federal Government.

The revelations emerge as US tech giants Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, and a coalition of human rights and other groups unveiled a code of conduct aimed at safeguarding online freedom of speech and privacy.

The government has declared it will not let internet users opt out of the proposed national internet filter.

The plan was first created as a way to combat child pronography and adult content, but could be extended to include controversial websites on euthanasia or anorexia.

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/sto...7-2862,00.html

Let's all move to Mexico.

There go the religious zealots again.

I thought only the US was the land of the religious-right and Christian zealots trying to control the masses and the bedroom?

nah - they are everywhere - Its a grand conspiracy dont ya know?

Get a room, will you two? :lol:

Hey, rightwingextremistwacko's don't do that! Ask tw, he knows. sheeeesh.

Re: child pornography, it's already illegal. You can't be in possession of it or be caught looking at it. So how is it the end of the world if they block it at the source? They'd arrest the dealers if they could, but it's the internet, so they can't.

I know, I know, I get the slippery slope argument. But if we took that to its logical conclusion we would never make any laws at all. Everything "could be extended" beyond the measure of its original intent. Hopefully there are counter-measures in place--like, say, a democratic process--that would allow the population to change things if it goes too far.

Call me a fascist, but I don't have a problem with this.

:notworthy

I would have a problem with this:

"The plan was first created as a way to combat child pronography and adult content, but could be extended to include controversial websites on euthanasia or anorexia."

That my friends is pure censorship.

I got that too, but she wrote it so well and with such conviction.

Next thing you know they are going to want to take away all their guns..... oh, never mind, they already did that. :D

But if I were the alarmist journalist inserting editorial comments into my "news" article, I could just as easily say, "The plan was first created as a way to combat child pornography and adult content, but could be extended to include foreign news sources and streaming movies rated higher than PG-13."

The government didn't threaten to extend the program, the writer just took it upon themselves to remind us of the things they hadn't done but might do.

Ok, I stand corrected. It must be some senationalized journalism caught up in the web of international wires. I thought it sounded pretty radical for you guys down under, but then again we do have Patriot Act 2.

First of all, as Clod says, blocking child porn is no big deal. I have no problem with it at all.

Second of all, as far as euthenasia is concerned, I don't agree with that, however the motivation would be a woman a few years ago who wanted to euthenase herself live online with people watching in order to raise awareness. Obviously no western government wants to be seen to be supporting euthenasia at this time.

With regard to anorexia, have you seen some of the sites available to anyone who wants to look? I wouldn't mind my kids not looking at stuff like that. I'd be just as happy if I didn't accidentally see it either.

At this point, I don't think this legislation will pass. It hasn't even hit the evening news yet, so it's obviously not something too many people are concerned about. I would suggest that if and when it becomes an issue of public debate, it may be passed with the opt-out option.

Australians wont care too much though, except they'll be upset if they think they wont be able to access porn. ;)

It clearly says, "adult content" goodbye cellar Aussie's. Have fun with your play skool internetz!!

I was looking forward to a response from an Aussie. I had a feeling it would be the internet equivalent of a shrug :) I do have to pick you up on this though:
Actually it's legal in some places in Europe. Switzerland seems to be the first choice for Brit Death Tourists, but it's also legal in Belgium, Luxembourg and The Netherlands with so-called "passive suicide (patients allowed to refuse treatment) legal in Italy and Sweden.

True, Sundae, but live online euthansia is probably a step too far even there.

As for the anorexia sites: these are a serious problem. I have seen them, and they contribute to many a youngster's dangerous descent into self-starvation. How long do you think it would take for a website with a full how-to guide to buying and taking illegal drugs to be closed down?

I think we can get carried away in the hysteria over freedom of speech on the internet. There are some real threats to our intellectual liberties which deserve our concern and attention, but there is also an argument for some safeguards in the virtual sphere, just as there are safeguards in every other sphere of life.

Hey! What's going on? Have I been banned or something?


:taps glass:

J/K.
It isn't going to pass.
Yes the religious right is an active political lobbyist here. But the blogosphere has been alerted, pollies' inboxes are swelling with disapproval, ties are being nervously striaghtened.
And yes, the journalist is hyping it. "... might one day possibly be extended to... "

Bah, humbug.

Remember to take that pinch of salt with everything you read.

Okay, it was probably just the way Ali worded it. But in countried where it is legal, there would be no need to show it live online.
I disagree with this too. I believe that's the same as saying teaching children that some people are homosexual promotes and therefore causes homosexuality. I'm not saying I support pro-ana websites, but I've known any number of girls with eating disorders (I seem to inspire their confidence) and this was back at a time where there was no online advice. They managed to fuck themselves up pretty well without it. Again, because of the personal aspect to me, I have looked at these websites. I think they help to some extent. These are young girls who are suffering, alone, afraid. The contact with others in the same situation does not normalise their condition - they are not normal, they know they are not normal, they are killing themselves - but it does take away one aspect of the pain.
We (ie the Rest of the World) don't have the same Freedom of Speech issues that the Americans have. I certainly agree with you, and I suspect may people would globally. I don't think it's the thin end of the wedge, and if it was, it started with banning paedo images.

I'm talking about the sites which actively promote the anorexia 'lifestyle' with tips on how to best avoid calories, how to rid your body of unwanted food etc etc, how to hide the problem more effectively, how to sidestep the intervention programmes.

Yes, but again I can't see how it can encourage anyone into the lifestyle. I don't believe anorexia is a choice, I believe it is a mental disorder. Which is why sitting down and having a chat with an anorexic about the harm they are doing themself makes no difference. Which is why anorexics with tubes in their bodies will try to rip them out, knowing they are x days from death.

We can agree to disagree.

Oh I'm not suggesting that they encourage anybody into the lifestyle. I just think they add a very unhelpful (from a medical/psychiatric standpoint) element of sub-culture which then feeds back into the anorexia, providing an internal normative structure, entrenching them further and providing them with more tools to evade help or intervention


[eta] on a related topic, did you see that programme the other week? Dana, the Eight Year Old Anorexic

Utterly heartbreaking. Fascinating though, too.

I am completely less trusting on that assumption...

All this talk of anorexia is making me hungry.

I just ate some pineapple and spicy beef jerky. Yum.

I was troughing beef jerky yesterday. Very naughty (it was supposed to be in my Christmas boxes to British soldiers!)

I will replace it.

Another thing links to China

Billy! How are you?

It's law enforcement that needs to do their jobs, and filters seem like a slack way to do that. They need to make arrests. Keeping you from adult content is not going to keep the illegal sites from being up. Or created. You just won't see them or the cellar indiscretions that you tried to click on.


Not that this is going to pass. When something bad happens the powers try to extend beyond the realm they are intended. Think of the children. ;) I did post my butt here once, Aussie's here are just all about having a filter from now on to block that highly questionable content, and I understand.

fixed it for ya...

Oh yea? If that portion of my pants isn't interesting, then why is everyone always looking at it? Heh.

Just waiting and hoping that you are actually going to show us some skin. :devil: :bolt:

I don't think it's about law enforcement being slack about their jobs. Our cops here are just as overworked as anywhere else in the world. They need all the help they can get.

I would suggest that the success cops have had busting paedophiles lately is in the forefront of everyone's mind when they think of how this 'possible' filtering could affect them.

I highly doubt that even if the law is passed in some form, that it would affect the average aussie's web surfing at all.

ETA: With regard to the anorexia point, I'm with Dana. Some of those sites are filled with ideas on how to avoid eating food and how to purge etc.

I agree that eating disorders are a symptom of some issues with mental processes, but I believe it's in the same boat as depression. With the right treatment, people can be helped generally however, if no one really knows what's happening till it's too late, sometimes it really is too late.

Personally, I don't think blocking the sites will stop young people from developing eating disorders, but it might make it easier for loved ones to spot what's going on.

As far as euthenasia goes, I disagree with Australia's policies and laws surrounding this issue. I believe we all have a right to say when enough is enough. I don't agree with people trying to put on some kind of macabre internet show though. It should be private and it should be legal and health professionals should not have to risk their future for the sake of helping someone achieve peace.

Censorship is an old-thought way of dealing with the, heh, 'information age.' It's part futile, part crippling: there are lots of things on the internet that I don't want to look at. Anyone remember goatse.cx?

But that's the name of the game, now; individually discerning what information you want to look at, while also not wrapping yourself in too much of an insular bubble of unreality: conservativism exists -- the dailykos cannot be your only source of news; liberalism exists -- matt drudge cannot be your only source of news.

'Who do you trust', 'where do you get your news', these are familiar questions. Next for us is the balance of comfort and reality. Blocking something, hiding or ignoring something, does not unmake it, and the failure of this approach is perhaps most perfectly illustrated by child pornography. Australia filtering child porn will have very little effect on the exploitation of children.

Skunks, do you believe that there was the same amount of child-exploitation going on before the internet was around, able to tap into every tiny niche of demand that might be out there?

No; the internet (technology) and porn (fetishism in general) are kind of like garlic and olive oil, or pasta and sauce. Deeply synergistic, and a lot of advances in one have fed from or into advances in the other. (VHS, et cetera.)

But you can't undo the internet. You can't, either, really stop it. Things like Australia's attempt to 'block illegal content' just delay a better solution. It might have an impact on casual pursuit of child pornography by Australians, but I suspect it will mostly make people feel as though they have done something while the market flows around them.

To oversimplify, it might at first glance seem that "because of the internet, child pornography has skyrocketed" leads directly to "block child pornography on the internet." This is an application of pre-internet solutions such as embargos and bans: distribution is completely different now (instant, nearly free, not reliant on the physical presence of people). Targetting the source is by far the more efficient use of resources, while conveniently not at all resembling censorship.

I think there's a second argument towards focusing on the source somewhere in the relationship between production and product, but I want some dinner first.

But when the source is outside their country, how do you propose they do that?

A war on porn, like our war on drugs?

Well if it turns into a war on porn, I'll be fighting for my right to view it.

Skunks, while I understand your point about the internet and accessibility to things such as child porn, I also believe that our government agencies such as police at any level, have a responsibility to continually update their methods of fighting illegal activities such as child porn. I'd support blocking access to any site which contained illegal images of any sort, however as stated earlier in this thread, that wont stop file sharing. It will however, stop people from accidentally finding these sites through ordinary searches for adult porn and anything that limits the exploitation of children is ok with me.

It clearly says, adult content....What is so hard to get about that? Is everyone ignoring that or what?

What clearly says adult content? I don't understand your point Cicero.

~snip~The plan was first created as a way to combat child pronography and adult content~snip~

Here, where adult content is lumped in with pedera@# pron. Doesn't it bother you that it was originally intended to combat the photos of ducksy's butt and filter? It bothers me. I like ducks butt.

How is blocking Australian access going to do anything more than discourage one of many 'niches of demand'?

I'd be interested in seeing more leadership by example on a state scale: for them to aggressively pursue child pornography within Australian borders and then say, look, nobody makes child pornography here anymore, and here's how we went about it.

Digital pornography is a particularly odd thing to criminalize because production and product have a tenuous link: there's no shelf life, and there's no limit to how many 'copies' can be made of a given photograph or video. Unfortunately, on the whole moralizing and not-in-my-back-yarding is much more politically viable.

I guess what I'm trying to get at here is that the language of digital trade might mirror physical trade, import export smuggling and all of these things, but the notion of stopping information at the border is both frightening and deeply impractical. Neither a 'war on porn' nor high tariffs are going to do much about it.

As I mentioned earlier in this thread, Australian police have been doing a cracking job of busting child porn rings lately. Hundreds of people have been arrested and charged over various offences. As I also mentioned, I think if 'the source' is the internet, they have to try and fight the source, and that's where a lot of these busts came from. Task forces targetting internet porn rings right back to the source.

Cicero, as I mentioned, I don't think it'll ever stop Australians from viewing normal, average adult content. I think the authorities are just trying to think of ways to improve on the job they're already doing. I support them on that, and I suppose if I can't view Duck's butt online, I can just jump on a plane and go see if for myself.

Adult content means:adult content.....Totally.

FFS Cicero, that point has already been addressed. Do you want me to repeat myself once more, or can someone else take over?

You should let someone else do it. I do not copy...*over and out* ksssht!

Yeah, and you don't make much sense either. :rolleyes:

It wasn't addressed to my satisfaction...And that's what we care about right? lol!

Oh no Cicero. You're mistaken. It's all about me. Didn't you know that? ;)

uh oh. Worlds of sef-involvement colliding.

It's like crossing the streams.

Well it all worked out in the end didn't it? :D

Yeah, now we know that Cicero and Ali are the SAME PERSON!*

*cue for scary movie music

Except I often find Cicero incomprehensible (said with love) whereas even when Ali is off on one and I don't know why, I do understand what she's posting.

It's ok, you're all safe. You still get to deal with two separate people. :)

Hmmm...I'll take that as a compliment thanks SG. lol

BTW you've not had a really good blow out in a while.
I thought pregnancy was supposed to make you more tetchy?

Or are you working on zen to keep the old blood pressure down?

I stopped caring what some of the arseholes around here said and decided to ignore them. :) It's been very theraputic.

I also think a lot of people around this place have misjudged me, but I don't care about that either.

eta: I had some very serious issues which I addressed earlier this year which had been holding me down for a very long time. I didn't post anything about them on here because quite frankly, I didn't expect to get any meaningful support from most and in fact expected people to be quite critical. Also because I prefer to keep my personal issues to myself mostly.

"...working on zen...."?

Hey, leave me out of this!


Seriously, though, a few thoughts have struck me about censorship and the cellar. There is some very NSFW stuff here, and I'm not certain of the ages of posters.

We've had some strong pictures of MTP. She is kinda young. And Ibram has posted some fairly explicit descriptions of sexual acts. He is kinda young.

If either of those two are under 18 then we are all guilty of accessing, viewing and possessing Child p#r#o#r#p#y.

Send me cookies in prison, will ya? Maybe I can use them to bribe my butch.