Blogging politics, culture, sociology and life from Brisvegas
So reports ABC news.
In short, it appears the government intends to require ISP’s to block sites on a blacklist, including: “sites containing child sex abuse, bestiality, sexual violence or detailed information about how to use drugs or commit crimes.”
Great. So is the government going to ban this YouTube video?
The original source of this piece of bannable material? The Beeb.
Please read the comments policy. If you would like an icon beside your comment, please register a Gravatar.
There is a Comments Preview function below the typing box which activates when you start typing.
Larvatus Prodeo is an Australian group blog which discusses politics, sociology, culture, life, religion and science from a left of centre perspective. more»
so I’ll be filtered whenever tell someone to ’stick it in their pipe and smoke it’ ?
Well in that case they can go s
God – botherers at Work !
Your mind belongz US !
Perhaps it’s time to Torrify ???
BRAAAAIIINZ … WANT BRAAAIIIINZZZ …
Pterosaur @2: your Tor link appears to have been banned already!
What obstinate, fundie-fumbling idiots. Hopefully, this will crash catastrophically, and they’ll give up on it.
The Labor Party [forgive me for voting for them] is so full of hot air and analyses that with luck they won’t actually do anything, this is just the summer warmer.
But knowing my luck there will be total inaction on the environment and this stupid stuff will be implemented with the internet becoming unworkable. Hmmm sounds like I won’t need to buy a new computer if we are just reduced to email.
Its funny.
I downloaded an update of Adobe whatever some time ago [please be tolerant of computer ignorance being displayed] and it runs at the top of the page.
So I read the post but the YouTube squares had blanks with little crosses in the corners..
So I hit Adobe and it asked me if I want to run the program and do I trust this site?
Hmm, when I’m being warned that it could contain “child sex abuse, bestiality, sexual violence or detailed information about how to use drugs or commit crimes” from that notourious source ‘the beeb’.
I took the risk.
Actually there is a serious point hidden in the paragraph above.
OK, so what about things like Shakespeare (Titus Andronicus), Plato (The Symposium on the Erastes and Eromenos), Jupiter/Zeus cavorting as a swan (Leda) or bull (Europa)…
anyone care to extend the list?
Tor link
http://www.torproject.org/
… Crime and Punishment, Lolita, A Clockwork Orange — and as for Pasiphaë …
It will be interesting to see what Tony “I will oppose everything” Abbott makes of this.
I hope he opposes it.
I don’t see the proposed filter as being part of pandering to fundies. I see it more that the government made the ill-advised promise and rather given the opposition any ammunition, they have decided to damn well keep that promise come what may. Rudd and Conroy’s stubborness achieved a critical mass of momentum that could not be stopped.
Once again we see the middle class left putting their own so called rights ahead of the well being of the community. What sort of sick campaign protests against the censoring of child abuse and sexual violence. Get over yourselves guys. Your right to view whatever you want is overridden by the rights of everyone to a safe life. And the scare campaign is simply dishonest. This is nothing like China. And you know it. This is not about political censorship and if it was I would oppose it. But most people I know support it. Oh, except the middle class left whose ideolgical view means they don’t actually see what happens in society.
That’s what the research says as well. That’s why it’s the easy political option.
As for Abbott, has he any other choice, apart from a few nitpicks along the way?
Re: Spana@13
The problem is the means by which the government is attacking the problem – even the Howard government avoided KRudd/Conroy’s technically flawed approach.
The question is: why aren’t the solutions that are technically superior and much cheaper being made available? Who benefits from the KRudd/Conroy approach.
“Your right to view whatever you want is overridden by the rights of everyone to a safe life.”
Step 1. View what you want.
Step 2.?
Step 3. Bloody rapine and murder wreaked upon our children.
Well I’m sure Cory Bernardi will be fascinated to learn he’s a middle class lefty.
Spana’s just a troll, isn’t it? Why respond to it?
… and porkers.
It’s well known that there was an epidemic of the casting of demons into herds of swine as a result of the sudden popularity of the New Testament.
Pigs plunged to their doom the length and breadth of nascent Christendom.
Early Christianity played merry hell with the humane treatment of livestock.
Actually what’s really nasty is Spana’s inherent assumption that everyone who’s not “middle class left” can’t be trusted with unlimited access to information and management of their domestic arrangements.
If you’ve got pre-pubescent kids, just stick the computer they use in the lounge room so Mum and Dad can easily pass an eye over it. Child abuse is not actually that easily found on the overnet (“OMG, they might see people fucking though!” So what?) and as for violence, I’d be more worried about them watching ‘Hostel’, easily available on DVD.
OK, once they’re pubescent and leaving home, all bets are off. As it ever was. Remember kids have been constantly exposed to sex and death in real life throughout history. It’s only in the last 150 years in a few privileged corners of western society that kids have been treated like delicate porcelain vessels.
And yet life goes on and gets steadily better for more and more people.
For some reason I’m reminded of the observation someone made in the 50s that the working class shouldn’t be able to see tits in the tabloids but it was quite cool for the upper class to ogle dicks, tits, bums and Europa and Leda style bestiality in the art galleries.
According to the report
“In addition to the blacklist, filtering a wider range and volume of material to provide some level of protection to children using the internet [was tested].
Content on the inappropriate for children test list included:
Gambling
Adult
Lingerie/Swimsuit
Drug-advocacy
Nudism
Gross-content
Profanity
Racism/Hate
Sex
Terrorism/Crime”
———-
On the admittedly fairly tenuous basis of SATP and Spana’s contributions above, it looks like this is another policy position that will wedge the right wing/denialist caravan as well…
Aren’t they all trying to make a big deal about BIG government, taxes, a world government conspiracy to deny our freedoms and carbon taxes? In which Rudd and Labour is a significant player?
But government building (demanding of businesses?) an infrastructure to try and control and censor the web is OK?
Even though it is unlikely to prove a barrier to those really curious, interested, and with a bit of knowledge, ie just about anyone at some stage in their life?
The obvious extention of any easy work-around the ‘filter’, seems likely to be that people would be tracked down after the fact and busted, such as a few music and video sharers have found to their cost in recent times.
Or the government gives up trying to sweep the tide back out to sea?
In some ways the ironies and strange bedfellows (for sometimes opposite reasons) that have manifested across issues in this country recently have been almost painful and funny (mostly ridiculous) at once.
Hi SJ, the troll here. After all, anyone you don’t agree with is a troll. The point is is that sections of the left are addicted to ideolgy regardless as to what that means in real life outcomes. So to them, free access to everything on the internet is more important than an attempt to block websites that contain truly evil content. And Nabakov, yes, I agree that children have certainly been treated differently throughout history. In the era you mention they were also sent down coal mines.
You seem Nabakov to have no issue with them being exposed to adult content on the internet. I think this shows a poor understanding of children’s cognitive development and how these images impact upon them, usually negatively. Given that much pornographic content is degrading to women it also raises questions about how constant exposure effects developing male images of gender and sexuality. Psychologists have recently raised this issue and there is growing concern among some feminists that early exposure to these images of women is incredibly harmful to men developing positive views of relationships with women. Yur historical commentary ignores the fact that images such as these both in nature and amount available is unrivalled in history. But I guess it only matters that you can see what you want. Society will just have to deal with the negative consequences.
Spana: The problem is in the details. It will slow down YOUR internet, it will block legal and non-freaky sites that YOU want to visit accidentally, it will cost a lot of YOUR money and worst of all, it will do absolutely nothing to stop child porn or terrorist activity because it is so rediculously easy to get around (just use the TOR sites that have been posted above, I also know people who will be setting up tunnels in other countries, it’s quite cheap and easy apparently).
Keep in mind that the AFP division who go after child pornographers had their budget HALVED.
Rockstar, of course it won’t stop everything. Of course some people will be able to get around it. Most won’t. Most do not know how. It will block many evil sites and stop many kids from seeing evil stuff. I don’t care if my web browsing is a bit slower. I welcome my tax dollars being spent on this. There is a greater good in protecting kids from seeing this evil stuff. Its not about me.
Firstly, I think it’s wrong of SJ to label Spana as a troll. He/she/it seems quite sincere and committed to a point of view and genuinely outraged by some of the views proffered here.
Which makes Spana all the more fun to tease. You just don’t get that quality mileage out of yer basic garden troll.
“You seem Nabakov to have no issue with them being exposed to adult content on the internet.”
I have an issue with the hundreds of millions of third world kids being exposed to adult content in real life – like death by diarrhea and sex slavery while in the West we wring our hands over our kids being exposed to depictions of the act that made them possible.
See, that’s how you really play the conspicuous indignation card.
Y’know maybe you are trolling a bit. Perhaps not intentionally. But you only seem to contribute anything here if it involves issues controlling sexuality and its outcomes. OK, not so much a troll, more a fanatic about the use and abuse of human genitalia.
” Given that much pornographic content is degrading to women it also raises questions about how constant exposure effects developing male images of gender and sexuality.”
That though is a good point. But not one I’d trust you to debate rationally.
Maybe I’m missing something, but wouldn’t the sensible thing be to simply offer an internet subscription package that included content restrictions, maybe with variable settings? That way families who are concerned, schools, institutions etc could use that service, and others could do as they pleased. It wouldn’t be 100 percent foolproof, but then nothing is. It doesn’t sound so hard, but perhaps I’ve misunderstood something basic.
The entire list of banned stuff is all in the Bible – all of it.
Which either explains the catholic church or makes Conroy & Company first class idiots. I think it could be both.
It’s stupid people playing clever games which lead to Rudd’s climate change strategy going down in flames, the only response left open to him being re-introducing the compromised bill and having Matron Gillard give the opposition some stern words about having a good hard look at themselves over the holidays. Do you really want more of this shit?
Spana, you need to get your head around the fact that it won’t block any of those sites.
If there was a chance that some of that stuff could be stopped, then you might have a point.
What is being pointed out multiple times is that you will pay extra tax, have slower internet, without effective blocking of the sites.
Put it another way, you are helping the pornographers. Tax is diverted from the AFP thus hindering them. The sites are not able to be blocked with any real success. So who is the winner from the position you are defending? The pornographers actually.
Spana, I don’t think you’re a troll.
However, I do have an issue with labeling ‘middle-class lefties’, as with labeling, a useless arguementive tool.
Yes, most won’t know how to get around the ban. Maybe most won’t care. As someone in another forum pointed out, the kids won’t care unless they can’t access Facebook. ….. on the other hand, I would love Rudd to extend this further and go nuts banning all sorts of stuff on kids mobiles. Quaranteening text messages for, you know, 2 hours, so the govt can see if the text message fits within the guidelines mentioned above. It’s for the kids.
Will it block evil sites? Doubt it. This is the internet Spana. It moves faster than 1000 of your or my synapses. Evil sites seem to be very very smart at manipulating the wonderful world of the net. More than a beauraucracy can or could do.
When is the last time you stumbled upon a bestiality site or porn with 15 year olds? Ever? If you haven’t for a long time, then that’s how the rest of the world is likely.
Spana, this will end up banning non-child porn sites. Loads of them as the years go on. The DoS attacks will hit the Govt in one way or another. That’s my prediction. Coz its the intertubes. We’ll become an easier target than China or Iran. But I don’t think the ALP is thinking about this one. It will get Stephen Fielding onside, just like Howard got Harradine onside over Telstra.
“I’ll make sure those nasty kids don’t graffiti your house, if you give me the keys to the City”…..oh look how easy that was! Easy to please small minds obsessing over smothering things that remind them of their repressed world, but they had enough gumption to go all the way to the top of the power ladder to keep things downdowndowndowndown. Yawn.
“…but wouldn’t the sensible thing be to simply offer an internet subscription package that included content restrictions, maybe with variable settings?”
Yup, they are easily available. Not to mention the simple solution I pointed out before – just stick the screen where Mummy and Daddy and can see it too.
Basically Spana, if you reckon parents can’t be trusted to bring up their own kids, then just say so.
This kinda thing really brings out the classic small ‘l’ liberal/proto-glibertarian in me.
I’ve been using the ‘tubes since it was text based, and before such things as browsers came into existence.
I have used the ‘tubes for work, research and leisure.
I have NEVER “accidentally stumbled” on stuff such as child prOn in over 20 years of (approaching) daily use of the ‘net.
I am aware that there’s heaps of stuff “out there” that I don’t like or find distasteful.
I am also aware of numerous, free, cheap methods of bypassing any filter which gets superimposed over the ‘net.
In my experience there is no valid reason to impose someone else’s values upon my use of the ‘net – and “protecting the kiddies” is a simplistic, populous and unrealistic justification for imposing censorship on all users.
The idea that there is a bunch of “independent” people who are capable of making choices about what I read or view, from. I assume must be a position of relative “moral superiority” is not only ludicrous, but disgusting IMO, and flies in the face of the concept of a “free society”.
Anyone who claims that the proposed filter will not be used for censorship of “unapproved” POV’s is off with the fairies, or didn’t pay any attention to the blacklist unwittingly released earlier this year, which had a significant number of innocent sites blacklisted – and yet this proposal has no means to address this, and indeed, proposes that anyone can contact ACMA in order to blacklist a site.
No wonder the god botherers are practically orgasmic about this proposal, and are already canvassing a “spread” of the coverage to include ……heretics ? straight sex ? politics ?
Atruly terrifying proposal, which never in my wildest dreams featured being introduced by a “Labour” govt. Howard – lite indeed.
Of course when us atheists get into power, we can use the technology to ban all christian, pro-life (sic), creationist sites.
Something about unintended consequences.
“See, that’s how you really play the conspicuous indignation card.”
Well played!
How about the government leaves parents to decide what’s appropriate for their children to do. Then they could create a department to look after those kids whose parents fail to meet community standards.
Technically, it’s a wank. Most decent torrent clients already can do encryption and even I could write a firefox addon to use anonymous proxies in a day or so.
Oh, hang on…“>FoxTor
I think it’s the absolute lack of understanding of the technical limitations that pisses me off as much as the nanny state mentality.
There are tools available to filter the internet at home. Some are free. PCs can be left in the loungeroom instead of kids bedrooms. Those who take responsibility for themselves and their family can manage this without the lumbering, clumsy beast that is the Australian Federal Government getting involved and fucking it up for the rest of us.
I went through the report in detail.
About 20% of noxious content still got through, but this meant about 3% of innocuous content was blocked. 20% is still an awful lot getting through, and I doubt that would satisfy the pro-Conroy mob.
Conroy’s filter is like a very expensive condom with 20% cut off the pointy end.
How much noxious content is too much for the mob KRudd and Conroy are pandering to? Why not do trials to that level (probably at LEAST 95% blockage of nasty stuff, I’d imagine)? How much legitimate content would be blocked then?
Some of us think there’s been a bit too much of that already.
I might be missing something here – but why are we banging on about pornography in this thread? I understood that the blocked URL’s hosted illegal material only?
I doubt anybody is thinking of blocking pornography. However if they are – then the gain in bandwidth and speed will be a true wonder – as half the world’s internet users go back to ferreting under the mattress.
Darin – explain to me how FoxTor or any other identity masker can succesfully request a blocked URL. It can’t.
Spicy debate so far. The real issue is the potential or capacity over time for the technology to be turned to purposes of political censorship. How do you fancy a reactionary government deciding, in the interests of not disturbing Chinese nationals (a lot of whom if not the majority are the children of party cadre)on student visas in Australia, that there will be no further access to images or reports of the Tiananmin Sq massacre? A less fanciful possibility might be mere information transfer at odds with state policy. We have a major tool at our disposal in organising global solidarity and mass movements and we need to keep an eye on this development because, no surprises here, the ALP don’t always know what it is doing.
On a divergant and cheerfully contrarian note I am generally pro-censorship when it comes to protecting children (anyone up to the age of 16 years) from graphically sexualised images. I am also of the view that child pornography is not a victimless crime and that all efforts to prevent the ‘consumption’ of such material ought to be pursued with great vigour and if this means some limitations on my freedoms in the interests of children then then so what?
But the technology proposed will not advance this cause and will put in place measures which may in time severely limit my access to information. It has to be stopped.
OK, sorry! One more. People who habitually view child abuse material end up being locked away. I have some genuine sympathy for some of them who might feel they are only indulging in a private passion. One benefit of making it harder to obtain illegal material is that perhaps less people will fall foul of the law.
The stronger reason for censorship of this type of illegal material – is that it will reduce the income derived from this product and therefore also the absolute number of overseas (usually) children abused in the making of the content.
The fundamental flaw with the approach that individual users should install their own filter – is that only those who wouldn’t pay for the material anyway block themselves from it – while those who create the market driving the illegal activity are left free to continue propping up the trade.
Anyway will be interesting to see how the legislation exactly proposes to operate.
Also..
…or detailed information about how to…commit crimes.’.
WBB:
An anonymising proxy is a server that accepts requests for a third party destination on behalf of of an originating request.In other words, according to the censorship at the edge you aren't requesting the destination, you are just requesting the proxy. On the downside the content can still be looked at.
A secure anonymising proxy is the same, excepts the requests come via an encrypted tunnel - in effect they look like any other encrypted traffic in the net. The traffic cannot be intercepted and analysed. On the downside the source and destination are known.
Secure Onion routing is like the above. Except that the requests are layered, so each layer of the onion is a secure packet pointing to another proxy.
THAT IS WHAT TOR IS. "The Onion Router" is what TOR stands for. It fires a request into a extended list of anonymous yet trusted servers, each one firing the request off to another server so that hopefully the path taken would be difficult (borderline impossible) to decipher. Except for the first and last proxy in the path no information about the source or destination is known by the machines in the network.
So you request "naughty site X" via your browser with foxtor enabled. Foxtor grabs a list of available TOR proxies, and constructs a request that is (TOR 1 (TOR 2(TOR 3(TOR 4(TOR 5(naughty site X))))). According to the internet police(tm) what you have requested is TOR 1, which could be inside Australia.
So when technically proficient, or just plain informed people say that this is daft, and you don't know any better, you can either become informed, or not. It isn't like people haven't been posting links to these exact technologies.
wbb: I agree that the point of banning this material is mainly to protect vulnerable children from being exploited in the manufacture. It is a simple equation: no market, no product. There is however a desirable side effect which is to prevent the process by which exposure to child pr*n opens the gateway in the people’s imaginations to conceptualising children as the objects of appropriate if illegal desire. It is a case of images informing the construction of desire in people without sufficient self respect to patrol their boundaries.
As to the technologuy – apparently in the trial run earlier this year all sorts of url were added to the banned list including, from memory, a dentist’s surgery and a pharmacy. It is apparently very technologically crude and easily given to error.
I might be missing something here – but why are we banging on about pornography in this thread? I understood that the blocked URL’s hosted illegal material only?
Except that last time the “secret list of blocked sites” didn’t block illegal material. It blocked many third party sites that had nothing illegal about them.
And the intent listed above
“sites containing child sex abuse, bestiality, sexual violence or detailed information about how to use drugs or commit crimes.”
Does not explicitly or implicitly block illegal material, but material that someone on a whim might find to fall within those limits. Such as any political party that was considering legalisation of currently illegal narcotics, or considering support for criminal acts – such as striking or industrial action.
If it had slipped your notice, that was entirely what this post was about.
There is a long history of internet censorship blocking very positive, very legal sites, such as rape support centres, and breast cancer awareness groups.
“You seem Nabakov to have no issue with them being exposed to adult content on the internet.”
Well given that the sensible suggestion of putting the PC where it can be monitored was made it would seem that you have a few “cognitive development” problems of your own Spana. After childhood, well we’re all adults aren’t we Spana? Anyway perhaps you could elaborate a list of the types of things you’ve seen or done on the internet that you reckon the rest of us should be protected from. That would be more useful that harping on about what you the reckon the “left” is up to.
“The Australian Christian Lobby has called for a review of the mandatory internet filter within three years to expand its scope beyond the ACMA blacklist.”
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/162962,christian-lobby-wants-filter-net-cast-wider.aspx
And the way Rudd panders to the ACL and like bodies, who knows where the censoring will end.
Do we really want to give this power to future governments let alone this current one?
Spana has saved me the trouble. I was going to write a similar arguement as something that on the net we could laugh at but in real life…
I’m against this censorship thing. I dread to think what Howard could have done with it. (Or Rudd if he suddenly lost it.)
However in real life with Spana’s arguement I would fold. Immediately. Anyone here feel like fighting for free speech on the net? I do. Feel like speaking up for the rights of terrorists or paedophiles to communicate or corrupt? errr…..maybe not.
And that’s why this will go in unoppossed. Anyone who tries to argue against this in any way shape or form is open to being branded a kiddie fiddler.
As for the Tor solution….a few visits by the AFP with the crew of A Current Affair along going on the assumption that anyone using Tor might be up to something very nasty will stop people using it quick smart.
Be interesting to see what this does to online gaming.
All this discussion (and Spana’s outrage) seems to ignore the fact that all the content intended to be censored is already illegal and people who make, view or download it are already prosecutable under existing laws.
And, from what I’ve seen of the detectives involved in closing down such operations, they do it well, with a wide net, and catch a lot of operators and users along the way.
This is a bit like Howard’s use of the anti-terror laws: terrorism, believe it or not, was already illegal before 2001 but, no, everyone got freaked out they screamed for more laws to cover what was already an offense.
It’s magical thinking: if I make a law against it, it won’t happen any more…
I agree Mercurius.
Yet we need to go further.
Rudd is clearly attempting to get at the head of any moral panic movement to prevent it from becoming an anti-ALP rallying point. Yet as Dotty Daphon has pointed out, Rudd’s concessions will serve as a platform from which to mount an assault against currently non-criminal behaviour.
Howard, on the other hand, recognised that the ALP’s association with civil liberties issues was a potential weak point. He could always afford to out-bid the ALP when appealing to anti-civil libertarian sentiment.
Each side of politics poses as guardians of morals for opposite reasons. Only the next electoral cycle matters to them. In the framework of the electoral cycle it is irrelevant whether or not these filters actually work.
There are two noteworthy consequences of this short-term bidding for votes:
1. Dupes like Spana think that something is being done about what disturbs him.
2. The Religious Right are given a platform and a megaphone which they may use to propagate genuine cultural change in the inevitable event that current laws will be proven to be ineffectual.
I very much agree with Mercurius (and the vast majority of commenters here, even Katzie).
Can I quote you on that in a thread on the need for greater financial or labour market regulation?
Well if we must have censorship of the net to protect the children, a good place to start will be those disgusting anti-abortion sites, what with their evil propaganda and digitally created images of so-called unborn children. And it’s not just the kids who have to kept away. It is also those impressionable people who might see that stuff and then do something violent.
I am sure that Spana agrees.
If you have access to a server overseas you can just use something as simple as ssh to proxy which will get around all the filtering. They can’t in practice ban or monitor it as it would kill the ability for business to function over the internet and it would be indistinguishable from the very many other ssh connections around. Even the great wall of china doesn’t block these.
I’ll take up the challenge tssk. Basically I agree with Nabakov.
In Qld, we already have a law that makes it illegal or a crime to publish certain information on the internets. I don’t know if it still exists.
It was introduced on a wave of moral panic in 1997 after a mass GHB overdose on the Gold Coast – which was also the first time the drug really came to the attention of the Australian authorities. I think 17 teenagers stopped breathing and were hospitalised, so it was probably its introduction to the party scene too.
“There’s recipes on the internet”, politicians cried. Never mind that this was published basic chemistry since the early 1900’s – they had to be seen to be doing something.
And everyone was happy to go along.
But the first people who were charged under this law were actually
pot activists.
As to banning that particular video on the internets, one wonders what the govt think of the entire series of Life Support’s much more recent and local gritty style of social commentary.
Why is it desirable that an ISP serve illegal material it to its customers?
It’s one thing to discuss whether this or that material should/should not be illegal. But if something is illegal then it seems reasonable to me that it should not be carried on open networks.
The only benefit of that approach would be defense lawyers.
Presumably you won’t be able to download e-books by the following:
Zola, Flaubert, Fielding (incest), Smollett – (there’s no doubt Peregrine Pickle is highly objectionable), Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens (hints at lesbianism;
Oliver Twist – exploitation of children by criminals; I could go on.
And of course, there’s this bloke: he’s obviously a continuing evil influence.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/dec/15/james-gillray-cartoons-ministry-justice
Quite right Chris – people are forgetting that the Internet existed before websites got “www” addresses – and one of the very first databases outside academia that people used to access via telnet was vast databases of porn images set up by enthusiasts with a modem and time on their hands. Anyone who thinks that there is no longer a horde of enthusiasts out there with modems and time on their hands to circumvent the very blunt instrument of this internet filter (and that links to detailed instructions won’t be all over Facebook/MySpace/Twitter) is simply fooling themselves.
So why should we support something that is technologically ineffectual and which has huge potential for future governmental censorial abuse? Even if it was technologically effective I’d be wary of the potential censorial abuse. Since it’s not even technologically effective, bzzzzzt!! No thanks.
The larger question is why was the funding for the AFP internet monitoring team cut so savagely? Why hasn’t it been increased so that they have more resources to actually catch child pornographers? Why isn’t Spana more worried about actual child pornographers going free than he is about kids maybe catching the occasional glimpse of totally legal pornography featuring adults on a computer screen?
Thanks for the xplanation Veltyen. But I don’t know why I even ventured down that blind alley of technological back doors.
Heroin is illegal in Australia. Therefore it seems reasonable that Woolworths is prevented by law from stocking it at the checkout counter next to the chewing gum.
The fact that heroin is obtainable through various physical back doors has no implication for the former point.
I agree with Spana. The filter doesn’t have to be perfect to do some good. And while the ‘trojan horse’ argument may have theoretical merit, in practice I don’t see the slightest prospect of anything being banned that I would miss.
So, is it all about you, Jenny? Do you think censorship should work on the basis of ‘there’s nothing being banned I’d want to see, therefore everything’s cool’?
Extaordinary.
This is what happens when Left Catholics get too much power. A sobering reminder.
So now I suggest that funds be raised in cyberspace – or anyplace – that can then be pooled and paid to the person or persons unknown that most closely predicts the permanent retirement of this Left Catholic ponce, Conroy from politics.
( My $2 for Xmas 2009 )
“I don’t see the slightest prospect of anything being banned that I would miss.”
In this spirit, I would like to nominate myself as the internet Pope. Henceforth, if I put something on the Index of Banned Websites, then no one can look at it. No discussion shall be entered into, because my taste and judgment are infallible.
It’s extraordinary alright, but also very ordinary. Self centered people generally lack the self awareness to realise just how self centered they are, and therefore come up with the most extraordinary statements which are far more revealing than they realise.
Dear Pope Sam,
I hereby request that you ban all sites using Comic Sans and Papyrus.
I will send you a further comprehensive list of crimes against graphic design to be considered for banning later.
yours obsequiously,
dj
@wbb:
The supermarket as an analogy to the internet fails on so many levels, wbb. The whole point is that stuff doesn’t have to be aggregated in one physical location – it’s available globally. Laws that attempt to treat it otherwise are merely going to annoy people locally while having no effect globally – what is the point of defending an ineffectual nuisance law?
Nobody is proposing decriminalising already illegal acts or the websites that document them. Such websites, when hosted on Australian ISPs, are already subject to being closed down and the principals prosecuted under Australian law, which is as it should be. That is, of course, why such websites are already not hosted on Australian ISPs, although more and more other jurisdictions are also making such websites illegal. This too is as it should be. The proposed filter will do nothing to further the prosecution of child pornographers or terrorists, it will just help to make them even harder to detect as they migrate to proxy systems optimised for customers who want to bypass the filter.
I would be happy if the government mandated that all Australian ISPs had to provide opt-in filtering as a free service to anybody who wanted it for their computer network either at home or for their business. Of course the same technical inadequacies exist for those as well (if you think your kids at school can’t get around the Dept of Education’s nanny-filters, you would be very wrong), but at least the extra CPU and bandwidth load won’t affect the rest of us. It’s the mandatory part which is the problem.
Wbb – I preferred your previous detour.
What I am concerned about are not physical commodities, but the regulation of culture and access to it.
And the government is not touching Erowid, or Lycaeum or pillreports without a fight.
Thats not what they’re actually doing. To draw out your analogy the government rather than removing the heroin from supermarket shelves the government is installing a black box at all supermarket checkouts. Everything you want to buy something you pass it through the black box and it checks to see if it is heroin. Unfortunately not only is the process slow, but 90% of the time if you put heroin in it allows it through as it doesn’t recognise it. But hey every little bit helps right?
And 1% of the time when you put chewing gum through you are forbidden from purchasing it as it thinks its heroin. Unfortunately it doesn’t actually tell you it thinks its heroin, just nothing comes out the other end and you find it pretty hard to tell the difference between the box being broken (which occurs quite a bit) and it misclassifying something innocent as heroin instead.
Conroy isn’t left wing Catholic. However we can moan as much as we want. This is going to happen. It’s a done deal. I mean what can we do to counter this? Vote Abbott? He’s probably already writing a press release on why this filter is soft on crime.
As for the porn angle…the adult industry won’t try to block this. On the contary they’ve been losing money hand over…erm…fist to free alternatives to their wares. And that’s ignoring the (c) infringements.
It’s over. It’s like the legislation that enforces video game censorship in this country. It will never be changed because we need to think about the children etc etc.
Chris to push your analogy a bit further. The box can also be modded to add extra rules. So one day you might feel like some ice cream, try to buy it and be told by the box ’sorry fatty. No ice cream for you. Go buy an apple instead.’
“It’s like the legislation that enforces video game censorship in this country. It will never be changed because we need to think about the children etc etc.”
This might provide a ray of hope.
I gotta say, the idea that the internet should be censored “so that it’s safe for children” is a fairly ridiculous argument. What next, banning all the books that aren’t fit for children to read?
So Conroy’s a Left Catholic responsible for censorship and it’s the middle class Left responsible for children having access to refused classification material in the first place?
Fucken hell can we please stop blaming us nominally Catholic middle class left wingers for everything please, I’d just like to get back to googling pipe bomb recipes and Missy Higgins gossip, ta
Even ignoring Tor for a moment, a technique called ssh tunneling can completely bypass the filter.
The means to set it up are freely available on the net, and are an essential tool for system administration, and thus banning it is not an option for a “digital economy”.
It’s fascinating how many people are commenting without the slighted effort to read the recent announcements. Things have changed since July. Keep up.
The internet filtering policy is about banning the same things that are already banned in other media formats. That’s how it should be – policy should not be tech-specific.
ACMA already has the power to remove illegal content hosted in Australia but no power to do so for sites hosted overseas. So the filter is about restricting access to those sites. It’s effectively an internet version of Customs. And just like Customs, it won’t stop everything. Is anyone proposing we abolish Customs?
Let’s be clear: no policy is implemented perfectly. In this case, implementation is especially difficult for technological reasons. But that’s no reason to abandon the policy principles. We don’t accept this argument in other policy arenas (climate change, remote Indigenous disadvantage, etc), so why here?
Anyone who thinks this is a simple matter of parents monitoring their kids celarly doesn’t have kids. If only it was that easy!
The pilot found that blocking sites on the blacklist (what the Govt is now proposing to implement) was 100% successful with “no noticeable
performance degradation that could be attributed to the filter itself”. (see here – 2.7mb pdf)
The Government also released a discussion paper on the process of blacklisting (and de-listing) specific URLS. In other words – they listened to legitimate concerns about the process of blocking content. That’s good public policy formulation at work.
I find it amazing that people on the left are so opposed to this. I get the impression that we’re suffering from the same problem as Minchin on climate change – if something is opposed by my ideological enemy it must be bad, no matter what.
Either that or people honestly think no material should ever be censored. That’s a legitimate view, but I think you will find you’re in a very small minority in the community. I don’t believe any Government in the world adopts that policy.
Jobby @ 72 makes a fine point.
Let’s apply the internet filter to public libraries and see what happens. There’s a whole stack (probably several stacks worth, actually) of books that discuss crimes in enough detail for anyone to be able to re-enact said crimes.
That’s quite naughty. They’ll have to go.
Oh look, here’s some books aimed at adults about sexuality. Where The Children could find them. O tempora! O mores! No, it won’t do, have to go.
Oh drat, over here in the Political Science section, there’s stuff on terrorism. Out that goes too.
Of course, we could just ask people to supervise their kids but that’s, like, so much effort, man. Quit harshing my parenting trip, man.
I may be wrong, but I believe that refused classification material is not illegal to own or view, only to sell or distribute.
One of the greatest boons of the Internet (amongst many) has been for young non-heterosexual people to learn about their ‘difference’, one of the most important factors being that they are not the only one. I only wish a similar resource had been available in the 50s and 60s when I was growing up.
I have to wonder whether those resources will be available once the censorship regime is in full operation. I remember when I first saw the leaked banned list that there seemed to be predominantly large number of gay sites (yes, apparently porn, but who knows what the filters will limit as they will always be secret).
Fine @ 62
No of course not. But everything’s cool for me. Let those with something to lose fight their own battles.
One thing that makes me laugh about SSH tunneling – at work here they have a filtering proxy setup (similar in concept to what is proposed by the federal government for the whole country). This system brings up a web page with a big stop sign on it every time to try to go somewhere on the banned list.
On the banned list are any web sites that explain how to use ssh (the secure shell) tunneling to get around the filter.
On a normal google search, there are hundreds of pages explaining how to get around a web filter, all of which bring up the “stop” sign when clicked on directly. However, if you click on the google “cached” link underneath the banned website, voila up the information comes, because the filter is too stupid to realise what is going on. It is absolutely ridiculous.
If you get friendly with your local nerd, they most likely have a Linux machine in their home that is running an ssh tunnel to get around the local filter for things like facebook and MSN. I certainly do. There’s more than one nerd around the place running similar services in Australia for families in China and Iran.
Damn. Lost my comment in trying to send it (apols if it turns up after 30 mins in a black hole).
How many people here have read the acutal announcement? Didn’t think so. Keep up people.
The Government wants to block access to the same content that is already blocked in other media, and which is already able to be removed if hosted in Australia. I cannot imagine what people could find wrong with that policy principle.
Yes, there will be implementation problems. Like that’s never happened before (hello climate policy). I don’t see anyone proposing we abolish Customs since some illegal products make it to Australia.
Having said that, the trial found 100% success in blocking the blakcklisted URLs with no identifiable loss of performance. Since the Govt is not proposing to make the more heuristic filters compulsory, there goes that argument.
Anyone who thinks this is about parents overseeing their kids’ use of the internet has clearly does not have any kids. If only life was that simple.
The Govt has also accepted criticisms of its earlier blacklist and released a discussion paper about developing a transparent process for listing and de-listing sites. That’s good public policy process at work.
I get the impression this is a case of “if my ideological opponent proposes something, it must be wrong”. Call it the Minchin Syndrome. I find it troubling how little people on the left seem to be concerned about sexual violence. I don’t think that makes me a wowser. It makes me a feminist.
Unless people are saying no content should ever be censored. That doesn’t even happen in the USA, consitutional rights and all. I don’t think you would find a lot of popular support for that view.
Ute Man @ 78 – thats a good point about google caching. I wonder if they will also block the internet archive since it will almost certainly have cached material which would be refused classification at some point?
If the blacklist is to contain Refused Classification stuff – then I agree it is not going to work – and is not a good idea.
So maybe the Conroy proposal is going to suck.
If the proposal ends up being simply an ISP level list of blocked URLs of illegal material then there is no argument against it.
Backdoor arguments fail by analogy. Just because we can’t stop all crime we still spend hundreds of millions trying to prevent it.
Tigtog – my analogy is 98% fine.
Australian child-sex tourism laws don’t stop offenses occurring overseas – doesn’t mean the laws should be repealed.
“Let those with something to lose fight their own battles.”
First they came for Jenny, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jenny;
I suspect, but cannot prove, that homophobia underpins this legislation as much as any desire to protect children. I agree with Dotty@76 that there may well be a serious cultural narrowing and an attack on the normalisation of homosexuality. I just Googled “recipes for gay men” and found numerous sites designed to provide just that. Imagine that kind of site being banned under this new legislation! At a level closer to the moral panic nerve there is considerable plain ol’ information (not porn) about myriad sexual practices that are designed to assist in the operationalising of desire in safe and respectful ways. I imagine they’ll get the chop as well. Somewhere in Gary Dowsett’s work on gender he makes the point that heterosexual/patriarchal authority rests (literally) on the anal impenetrability of hetero men. I think he is correct and this legislation is evidence that prawns like Conroy (and Abbott) need to learn to relax a little and stop patrolling other people’s preferences.
Oh the Conroy solution will suck. But there’s no way to debate it openly without being labelled an apologist for peadophiles and terrorists.
And Conroy can’t weaken it or nix it now. Otherwise the Lib’s will use it as a hammer to hit the ALP with.
wbb @ 80 – the proposal is for RC stuff and sites which are not illegal where they reside but may be illegal to access in Australia (eg gambling sites).
I also think you’re missing the point that there are very strong side effects to these new laws. Would it be reasonable to stop child sex tourism by stopping people you think *may* break the law even if it had 5% false positive rate? The innocent people wouldn’t be told why and without knowing why they wouldn’t be able to appeal.
There are alternatives which are just as effective (eg not very) without the big downsides.
@tssk;
Possum points out that the Libs already have a hammer to hit the ALP with on this, a hammer that was rapidly deployed yesterday (remembering that the entire justification for this filter is protecting children from net nasties):
@wbb;
Wide-open back doors are indeed relevant when the purpose of a law is allegedly to obstruct access to undesirable goods/services but in reality it does no such thing. The War on Drugs laws are an example that supports my argument, not yours – the Prohibition route has only enriched organised crime syndicates in general without effectively restricting access to the illegal addictive substances – regulation of the addictive substances in the same way as alcohol and tobacco was always and still remains the sensible and humane option. The War on Drugs has been a nuisance law that diverts public resources into law enforcement that criminalises addicts while allowing drug barons to accumulate obscene wealth: public resources that could instead be used for hospitals and schools and public transport.
I’m against laws that purport to do something that they actually don’t do at all. Aren’t you?
There seems to be an unholy alliance here between those that think the filter won’t work and those that are opposed to censorship. A bit like the Greens and the Libs teaming up to defeat the CPRS for ideologically opposite reasons.
Nabakov, perhaps you have not read my posts about privatising QLD assets and my contributions to the discussion on police powers. Correct me if I am wrong but I don’t see a link to sex there.
I have a simple question for those who are arguing that the government should not block websites containing sexual violence and abuse. Are you okay with this material being available at the local newsagent? Because if you are not then why do you argue it should not be blocked on the web as well? The simple fact is that the government is not trying to censor political views or debate, despite dishonest comparisons made by the hysterical anti web filter lobby. They are blocking material which involves horrendous exploitation of kids and violence which has no place in society. The hysteria about this is again an example of how sections of the left miss the main issue. I don’t meet anyone in my daily life who opposes this, just ideologues on the web.
This is an honest attempt to block evil material, nothing more. Any person who argues it should be available on the web needs to explain how having these images and sites available benefit anyone. And please stop arguing that it won’t solve al problems. Umm, we know that. But it will solve some. The anti filter campaign has been involved in one of the most dishonest and hyped campaign since Howard tried to justify Iraq.
Spana, in all honesty have you read any of the comments above? Or are you to obtuse or disengenuous to actually understand the argument?
Simply again: to repeat what tigtog has said – it will not stop those websites, but it will inadvertently stop other innocent websites. Given this, if you’re so concerned about websites contaning images of child sexual abuse, why would you support this? ‘Cos it won’t stop people getting access to those sites.
Jobby @83 in response to my “Let those with something to lose fight their own battles.”
The principle you evoke is a sound one, but in my view has more application to people being taken off to Nazi death camps than to restrictions on access to terrorism and kiddie-porn sites.
Fine, I believe you are wrong. It will block these websites. If you are talking about the technology available to do it then it can be done quite well but not at 100 percent success rate. The trial showed this. There will be a few mistakes. But does that mean nothing should be done? When is any system perfect? If the anti filter brigade are so convinced it won’t work why do they keep comparing it to China which from all reports runs a pretty tight system. Of course there will always be a minority who will get around it. Most teenagers and adults however have no idea how. If it can be blocked to most then it is still worthwhile. I also do not see why this can’t be seen as one prong of the attack. Why does the anti filter lobby put up an either or argument. We can actually block websites AND fund police to track down the criminals behind them.
@ Jenny
What Fine said: “‘Cos it won’t stop people getting access to those sites.”
You know, Spana, more people around here would probably take you a lot more seriously if you stopped making ridiculous, paranoid generalisations about ‘the left’. Are you actually bothering to read all the comments on the thread? Liam’s at #73 is particularly pertinent.
“Of course there will always be a minority who will get around it. Most teenagers and adults however have no idea”
Any child, teenager or adult will get around it quick smart if they want to. Have you not noticed that already on this thread people people have been pasting ways of doing so?
Spana @ 92 – one problem is that it will in be 100% effective for those who have no clue (many parents) and 0% effective for those who do (many kids who will share techniques for getting around them). So not only does it not work well but it lulls parents into a false sense of security – eg its ok for their young children to have unsupervised access to computers as the filter will protect them. And the false positives will stop people trying to work within the system from getting to sites they should be allowed to access.
I bet in the trial that no testers made any reasonable effort (eg even just google for techniques) at getting around the filter.
It is a falacy that all those teenagers out there have such incredible technological knowledge. Simply not true. Most kids know how to use their mobiles, access websites and use facebook. The myth of the super human teenager is laughable and promoted by a few adults who don’t know much about kids. I don’t deny some people will get around it. You seem to underestimate the fact the the government actually has some of these computer “geeks” working for them. I also doubt how effective many of these techniques to get around the block will be. And they will not be quick and simple.
Spana,
By supporting the censorship of the Internet you are putting a whole lot of trust in future governments, perhaps even this one. Once a door begins to open, the opening just keeps getting wider …
Counting down to teenage IT entrepreneurs selling bypass programs on thumbnail drives down behind the
bikeshedscarpark in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 …Dotty, you could make the same argument about police. One day we may become a police state if we have a police force. Unless you are an anarchist then at some point people place a limited amount of trust in the state. This level of trust will vary from person to person but this is one area where I back the state one hundred percent. In the state versus the abusers I come down on the side of the state.
OK, without linking (again) to my frequently-banned favourites, Marighella’s Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla and the US Army’s TM-31-210 Field Manual Improvised Munitions Handbook, I’ll leave it to readers to decide whether Refused Classfication material is always non-political with the following link.
Here’s the environmental activist’s guilty pleasure Ecodefense: A Field Guide To Monkeywrenching, currently rated RC by the OFLC. Kids! Don’t try it at home!
I think this shows a poor understanding of children’s cognitive development and how these images impact upon them, usually negatively.
Although I suspect this sentence likely contains situationally convenient usages of the terms “these images” and “children”, I’d be interested to know more generally where the notion that pr0n impacts negatively on cognitive development comes from, along with any relevant physiological/psychological evidence confirming or undercutting said notion. Credible sources only, please.
Or should I assume as I suspect: that everyone abides by this bien-pensant premise because questioning it makes them uncomfortable?
Spana, you don’t need a lot of people with incredible tech knowledge. You just need some and they’ll happily sell or give away that knowledge, as tigtog has pointed out above. You’re a little naive about this stuff, methinks.
Also just to throw it out there, there will be people like me who could find out about ways to circumvent the system but won’t as they would assume it would be against the law.
And what’s to stop the government from assuming you are up to no good if you have such bypass software in the same way that having a set of lockpicks if you aren’t a locksmith or carrying around a meat cleaver if you aren’t a chef can potentially get you into trouble?
Well tssk,
1. presumably folks like your good self would never have eaten of the tree of knowledge. If tssk had been Adam, we’d still all be in Eden.
2. you are positing a police state of enormous magnitude. Either you toss all the alleged malefactors in gaol without due process or you spend a fortune on law and order infrastructure. How much are you willing to pay to prevent your teenager from wielding a lustful mouse?
1. You’d be wrong. I have sometimes looked at lewd pictures. (Try studying art without doing so!) I fear the fig leaf brigade is on the upswing again. If it gets much worse we’ll be out on enforced weekends trying to put pants on shamefully naked animals.
2. With electronic use the police state can become automated and eventually the good citizens become ’self correcting’ lest they get caught up as noisy data. That’s what we really all want to avoid isn’t it. I’d be willing to say as a responsible parent all I would have to pay is attention rather than money.
However the cry will be all about other people’s children.
Conroy already has form on this. He will accuse anyone with issues about this bill as caring more for peado’s than the community.
The usual analogy is Prohibition in the US.
Attempts at banning of stuff that a large number of folks didn’t want banning ends in failure, loss of respect for the law and the rise of organised crime.
Would an internet ban have a different outcome?
I’ve been skimming, so this point may already have been made, but what about the blacklist?
From memory, the only reason we know what was on the list was that it was leaked. Once in place we, the people who are paying for it with taxes and the degradation of service, will have no idea of what is on the blacklist. And it will be illegal for the information to be made public.
Now tell me, who would trust a government (or even a bureaucracy) with that sort of power?
Indeed Nicki. What’s to stop it from blocking sites devoted to say whistleblowing about political corruption?
I’m not saying Rudd is corrupt. But if he was in office for more than a decade or if the ALP saw an opportunity to diminish or extinguish the Libs (much like the Libs tried to do with workchoices in a sense.)
He who controls history controls the future.
Here’s another reason why the filter won’t work: all people have to do is post bypass instructions on one of the really popular social networking sites and the proxy servers won’t be able to block that site: This, from Telstra’s own technical report on the trials, mentions a few technical limitations that Mr Conroy has seen fit to elide:
So, evil nasty YouTube videos? Cannot be blocked or the proxy filter will fall over.
Evil nasty anything on Facebook? Cannot be blocked or the proxy filter will fall over.
Twitter? MySpace? Google? Yahoo? Cannot be blocked or the proxy filter will fall over.
Hmmm – what happens when the proxy filter falls over? Does it just stop working and let people see all the sites on the blacklist after all? Or does it throttle all the requests going through it so that the internet falls down for everybody attempting to access any site at all? I hugely suspect it is the latter, in which case aren’t you at all worried about Australia’s brand new vulnerability to DDos attacks that can cripple a whole nation’s internet access that this filter will create?
These popular sites already have their own procedures in place for removing objectionable/illegal/infringing content, so the filter will add nothing that isn’t already there for these very popular sites. I wonder just how these sites will view content that tells people how to bypass the filter though? Will such content, hosted on servers outside Australian jurisdiction, be liable to be removed by the popular service if the relevant Australian bureaucracy complains? Should the Australian bureaucracy have the power to tell such sites to take down such content?
Here’s the thing though. Who’s going to speak up for net users?
It’s in the traditional media’s interest for the net to be nobbled.
It’s in the politician’s interest for the net to be nobbled.
It’s in the church’s interest for the net to be nobbled.
that’s three very powerful bodies already neatly alligned.
Ditto Prohibition. It failed.
Katz @ 113
True, but yet it continues – joint anyone ?
Yeah Katz but in the short term is was popular. See also the New York ban on Pinball machines. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinball
Back when the mayor of New York Fiorello Henry LaGuardia passed the law in 1942 he showed his populist rage by smashing some machines in public with a hammer. (He wasn’t a bad man though, he was the one who passed sentence against a man who stole bread to feed his family fining him $10. He then fined everyone in the court 50c for “living in a city where a man has to steal bread in order to eat.”)
Getting back on topic, could you imagine waiting 35 years for the net to be made free again? (How long was prohibition btw?)
1. Pinball machines are a marginal aspect of people’s lives. Pinball machine operators faced total loss if they placed their machines in public places to be confiscated by the authorities. There was clearly no market for “pinball speakeasies”, otherwise they would have arisen. The internet is now integral to the lives of hundreds of millions of people.
2. Marijuana is illegal but it is also the biggest cash crop of California (and several other US states). What’s your point? The law cannot, or will not, suppress agribusiness of this importance.
Then there’s this article
which states (among other things) that :
”
1.Filtering trials designed to succeed….
2.Harmless content will be blocked
3.Accountability measures questionable”
Well worth reading in full
Katz @ 116
What’s my point ? I thought it was clear enough – prohibition continues – the substances prohibited have changed, not the nature of the laws, nor the effectiveness of the policy in enabling profiteering, corruption and the criminalisation of those “indulging” in their favoured recreational chemical.
No, that is my point.
See #108
Laws may be on the books, but under the right circumstances people will behave most with impunity in defiance of them, to the detriment of respect for the law.
Hotspot Shield Download it while you still can.
nicki @109: the government has accepted that criticism and is proposing a more transparent process. See my comments at 80.
The scare mongering about political censorship really does people here no favours. It’s getting pretty silly. Did I see a Godwin’s Law invocation in there somewhere?
I also agree with Spana that people are overestimating the technological prowess of the modern teenager. I note this is coupled with assertions that parents should be able to monitor said kids to keep them safe. That’s an inconsisent argument.
Parents should be able to monitor their children’s computer use by keeping computers in the family room where their very own eyeballs can see what is on the screens, instead of relying on technical measures to keep the net nasties away with computers way off in bedrooms. It’s the people who insist on hiding the computers away from the family/living rooms (for aesthetic reasons or whatever) and still think they can monitor what kids are using them for who are being inconsistent.
My analysis at Australia’s Brand Spanking Clean Feed Internet Filter
The report is staggering for its shallowness. Telstra seem to have done better than the pilot ISPs without being paid. A first?
tigtog, do you have any kids?
Do you really think it is possible to monitor one’s childrens’ internet use (yes, some people have more than one child and more than one computer) at all times? Even in an age when one can access the internet from a mobile phone?
Parents who support this policy don’t expect it to fix the problem. They expect it to help.
As an aside, of course it is also not just about blocking kids’ access to these sites. I’m not sure where that argument came from (might have been the Govt).
“Heroin is illegal in Australia. Therefore it seems reasonable that Woolworths is prevented by law from stocking it at the checkout counter next to the chewing gum.”
Stupid argument. It’s pretty easy to identify heroin. Can you identify a site which my be serving illegal so easily or definitively? I doubt it.
Its the government trying to argue that they need to do this to “save the children” when in reality its about stopping adults from accessing information they disagree with. Information about euthanasia for example would be filtered. There are plenty of tools around that parents can install on their computers if they care – the government used to even pay the entire cost of them.
Yes Josh, I have two kids and our home has its own LAN of 4 desktops and a subsidiary wireless modem which can be activated for our laptops but which is not activated most of the time, so the kids can’t use their school laptops with it from their bedrooms.
Nobody in this house has a computer in their bedroom, so everybody has to be aware that other members of the family might walk past and see what they are looking at on the computer at any time. Am I there every second? No. Could I be there at any second? Yes. Does this discourage idle wasting of our bandwidth on unapproved sites? You bet it does. My kids don’t have internet plans on their mobile phones either – and I question the judgement of any parent who has set their child up with such a phone plan. It’s not hard to restrict them a basic plan for phone calls and SMS only.
When my children were younger I downloaded one of the home filter programs made available by the previous govt – it worked just fine for several years. My son didn’t figure out how to hack past it until he was 12, which was about when I expected he would have found out how to do it from online forums. We use other methods now, but the biggest key by far is having the computers in our home’s public rooms, followed by having only myself and my husband as the administrators of the LAN and of each individual computer, so no software gets installed on any computer without us approving it. (yeah flash drives I know, but we check those regularly too – after all, we bought them for the kids to use, but they’re on loan, not their property)
I’m absolutely sure that my kids at age 15 and 16 are not showing me everything that they do online, but at this age they also deserve some privacy. Up until two years ago, they were on a much tighter leash, and it’s still fairly taut now. When they were younger I also had their email accounts set up to forward a copy of everything to me – they knew this. When my son turned 16, I took the forwarder off. My daughter knows that it’s still in place until she’s 16.
It’s not that hard to find people who can set up a system like this for parents if they don’t have the knowledge to do it themselves.
tigtog wrote:
THIS.
It’s painful too, but nobody said raising kids would be easy.
tigtog’s intrusion into young people’s explorations on line is creepy, I must say.
No it’s not.
Yes it is.
@ Vanessa,
Who else is going to guide them through the minefield of online forums than someone who has been there and done that? I’ve been cyberstalked and had people attempt to swindle me, you think I’m going to send them out there entirely unshielded? If I was not monitoring them at all, you’d no doubt be trumpeting what an irresponsible parent I was. Parenting Catch-22.
My intrusion is light – I flick through the forwarded mail once a week at most. I know who their meatspace friends are in email, and I’ve never read those conversations. I only monitor the conversations with cyber-strangers, because I don’t want either of my inexperienced and trusting kids groomed into going and meeting some predator in secret. How creepy that is, to not want them exploited by pervs. (So far the worst new internet friend was trying to recruit my son into a cadre of script-kiddie hackers – once I was able to show him how that cool dude was not as untraceable on the internet as he claimed to be, my son’s interest waned.)
“It is a falacy that all those teenagers out there have such incredible technological knowledge. ”
.
This isn’t surprising, because there’s no real need for them to have such knolwedge right now. Alternatively, last time I was China, where, as you note, they run a much tighter system than that which the Australian government intends and hence there is a need for teenagers to get around things, most of the university students I met (I don’t meet many others so perhaps I have bad sample), didn’t seem to have the slightest problem getting around all of the government stuff (and in case you were really ignorant, there would always be someone you could pay a dollar or two to get you what you want anyway). It seems to me that one of the reasons the government probably blocks stuff which everybody sees in China is that if they need a reason to harass you for some reason, they will always have one (good for pesky academics I presume), not because it actually works.
Fair enough tigtog, but you seem to paint a picture of overwhelming malevolence operating on the net which isn’t true or relevant for most teens and is not really the message I think they need about what’s out there or provides any guidance about how to deal with it other than parental censorship and control.
Isn’t ‘Vanessa’ just greenslime?
Hasn’t Conroy done enough for Fielding already?
I’ve raised 5 children, and the web is a relatively minor concern. Drunks and rev heads are a way bigger worry. What are Conroy and Fielding doing about them?
You talk to your kids about the web like you do about any other mixed blessing.
Fielding advocates banning of alcohol advertising in sport.
There’s a contradiction at the heart of the case for this thing which really scares me. Sorry if its already been pointed out, but I haven’t seen it.
There are two reasons given for the filter: 1) To stop the distribution of really nasty stuff like child pornography. 2) To stop children viewing other stuff which we consider unsuitable for them.
Now I think we all agree that 1) is desirable. The opponents of the filter (including me) just think there are better ways of doing it.
But look at 2). Most here probably agree this is desirable as well. However, unless the filter is going to involve some amazing identity recognition it cannot possibly stop children looking at these sites without also stopping adults. The only way to do that is something along the lines of what Tig Tog describes.
So inevitably, if the filter starts off only blocking 1) people will be disappointed and start argueing for it to block 2) This isn’t arguing the thin edge of the wedge, which I usually think is a bogus arguement. This is already there in the case being used to sell the filter.
In other words, the whole trajectory of the filter is about cutting off everyone’s access to the things society doesn’t want children seeing. Now in some cases we might not care about this. There’s a whole lot of misogynist stuff out there that is legal for adults, illegal for kids but I’d shed no tears over seeing blocked. But seriously…supporters of the filter should ask themselves is there nothing that troubles you about the idea of banning everyone from accessing every single scrap of material deemed unsuitable for children? Cause it scares the hell out of me.
The thing is Stephen Conroy and his far-right Christian mates have said previously (I don’t know if it’s changed) that not only do they inted to block RC material but anything above an R rating as that is all you can get in shops here (X rated material is available in Canberra, oh the irony). So forget about trying to look up adults you know having sex unless you’re able to get around the ISP filters. Why can’t the government subsidise opt-in filters for those defending this bullshit? Oh that’s right it’s not really about restricting kids access to porn at all. Michael Atkinson will be proud. We roll the footpaths up at night.
That’s before we even get to the more serious stuff like a government deciding what it deems suitable for the plebs to view on the internet. Like previously mentioned what if say China asked our government to block access to the Tianemen Square (spelling?) stuff in return for a big lucrative contract? “This is a great deal for all Australians as it means x amount of jobs blah, blah, blah”.
Pains me to say it but with this internet filter which puts us in the same company as flourishing democracy’s like China & Burma, Rudd’s pissweak ETS & Labor bringing in mandatory welfare quarantining for everyone, I do hope this is a one-term government. They are a shameful excuse of a Labor government.
“…I do hope this is a one-term government. They are a shameful excuse of a Labor government.”
Oh yeh, Jacques, Tony will fix everything.
Not a far right christian fundamentalist idea amongst that mob and they would make it all better by dismantling the legislation?… frying pan/fire, anyone?
I was wondering how long it would take for someone to get that silly over this, albeit, worrying matter.
No, Joe. I have no doubt the Libs would be worse but it would give Labor the opportunity to go back into opposition and really sort itself out as we’d be getting this internet censorship under either one in their attempts to out do each other from the Right. They’re not going to learn anything by being returned next year, as they no doubt will be.
@Alphonse,
Exactly. I view surfing the web much like I view swimming in the actual surf – it has its own set of flags to stay between, there are warning signals you need to know to pay attention to (shark sirens), there are dangers you need to know how to get yourself out of (get caught in a rip, swim parallel to the shore until you leave the rip zone) and there are occasional disorienting moments (getting caught by a dumper) that might necessitate coming out to catch your breath before diving back in. There are also minor aggravations such as skylarking idiots who don’t care whether they “accidentally” splash you or cut you off from the wave you wanted to catch, plus more dangerous nuisances such as board riders who don’t keep away from the swimmers between the flags. But most of the time it’s just great good fun, and crucially: it’s more fun for everybody when you’re with people who stick to the safety rules.
Nothing that I do to monitor my kids online is onerous. The computer screens they use are just part of our normal family room environment, and the occasional flick through their emails takes me 5 minutes here and there. The rest of the time we’re just a family enjoying our separate forms of digital pursuits while in the same room and sharing bits that especially appeal to us.
An interesting schizophrenia has drifted into this discussion.
One branch of the argument for censorship is to prevent images and depictions of practices becoming available to persons (implicitly adult males who are creepy strangers). Proponents of this argument claim that these creepy persons are provoked by this material to do real harm to real victims in the community.
The other branch of the argument for censorship is to prevent images and depictions of practices becoming available to persons (implicitly adolescent males who are members of one’s own family). Proponents of this argument claim that these members of one’s own family may be “damaged” in some way by viewing certain types of internet material.
Isn’t the feared “damage” being inflicted on the adolescent family member that he will become one of those reviled and despised creepy persons?
Does this fear indicate that folks have lost a large measure of confidence in their ability to rear their adolescent male family members to a satisfactory standard?
Is the internet being scapegoated for a broader perceived failure to raise morally sound young men?
And perhaps, Katz, a mothers rightful concern that their sons will become as big a grub as their dad/partner is?
Cutting and pasting a comment I just made over at Hoyden: I found Telstra’s own technical report on the blacklist trials interesting:
1. The proxy servers that will act as the filter can only cope with 10,000 URLs in the blacklist
2. If they try to block a popular video site such as YouTube, the proxy server will be overloaded because of the bandwidth/TCP socket demands, so the proxy server will fail and will not route any other internet requests for anybody (how will it cope with Facebook and Twitter I wonder?). Hmm, do I smell Anonymous gearing up for recreational hacktivist DDoS attacks on the entire Australian internet structure through script-kiddy botnet shenanigans? I think I do.
3. The only way they can block circumvention attempts would be to restrict all Telstra customers to accessing only Telstra DNS. I’m sure they’ve put that line in there because they know that there is absolutely no way that businesses will accept such a restricted customer base for their online presence – either only Telstra BigPond customers or only NOT Telstra Bigpond customers? The same for any other Australian ISP? No way will that ever pass the commercial smell test.
The proposed system is so vulnerable to both circumvention and falling over with an ephemeral surge in hits on just one blacklisted site that Australia will have to cope will rolling cyber outages within days (if not hours) of it being implemented. The howls of outrage about how “this isn’t how it’s supposed to work” should toll its death-knell within a week.
The planned system is bound to crash as you suggest, Tigtog, or avoided, by various techniques, as many have already indicated.
It looks like it will turn out in practice an ‘opt out’ deal rather than the much more acceptable ‘opt in’ arrangement.
The net has a life of its own now and the resultant chaos will forever remind any family values driven minister of communications to stay well clear.
Unless you are an extreme anti censorship person who argues nothing should be banned, including abuse material then there seems to be little reason not to block these sites. Do the opponents of the filter accept that if a ship is ferrying abusive material to Australia the police should intercept it and stop it being sold here? If you believe that police should intercept this material in the actual world then why do you not accept that it be intercepted and blocked in the cyber world? Are you arguing that this material should be legal or that we just do nothing about it? Or are you basing your argument on some possible future theoretical banning of other websites at some later date using the same technology. Please clarify.
1. Police don’t board ships to search for censorable material.
2. Australian customs have not had that role since the Chipp reforms of the early 1970s
3. No “interception”, as Spana imagines it, has happened in Australia for almost 40 years!
4. So, yes, I’d like to see the current program of interception of physical material maintained.
5. Spana ought to learn a few facts about how the law actually works.
@Spana
In brief I support anything that will make an actual effective difference instead of merely providing a false sense of security.
Regarding already illegal material:
* Existing laws against the publication and dissemination of illegal material of a violent and/or abusive/exploitative nature should be retained and the squads/taskforces that monitor and pursue the perpetrators and remove the illegal material from public access should have their funding increased. The more perps whose online profiteering is shut down and who go to prison for many years the more meaningful discouragement for others like them.
Regarding legal but widely considered to be offensive/distasteful material:
* Opt-in filtering systems should be made widely available for private and commercial networks so that they can block content they do not want their network users to view, and I have absolutely no objection to the government subsidising those as much as it likes.
3. Technical considerations:
* any filter that is proposed to regulate content for an entire nation’s HTTP network will be vulnerable to DDoS attacks that will affect all users. It is an inherent limitation of the concept of proxy server filtering – even if the next generation of server machines could cope with today’s loadings, the very same type of machine will be the one being used to deliver the internet as well, so the capacity of ‘net requests to overload the proxy servers will keep pace.
* it’s still only going to block HTTP protocols for accessing the internet. As a commentor at Hoyden said – “Of course, they’re still welcome to use SMTP, FTP, IRC, newsgroups, peer-to-peer, IP tunnelling, VPNs, and anything else except straight HTTP to get their fix, so it’s rather like clearing all the heroin and ecstasy out of the pharmacies to crack down on the drug addiction problem”. So even if an HTTP filter can be made to work without making out whole structure vulnerable to rolling cyber outages, it’s still not going to make any difference to the existence of illegal material on the internet nor to the ability of motivated consumers to access it. Only better resources for the relevant law enforcement groups can do that.
The proposed censorship regime has little to do with “internet nasties, (it’s already been admitted that it will not work.
There’s a pretty good article here which exposes much of the tripe (such as espoused by Spana) and addresses the realities of this backward policy.
Some of the current legislative assault on the HTTP world, as opposed to the alphabet soup of all the other protocols, is based on honest ignorance.
The moral straiteners and assorted panic merchants who are leading this legislative assault have a variety of motives. One powerful motive for some is that these individuals have made a pact with their god(s) to attempt to create a world that conforms with their understanding of what their god(s) want this world to look like. Another motive is that the assault is another front in the ongoing culture war.
Other assailants of the http world are cleverer than this. Rudd and his advisers know about the rest of the alphabet soup of protocols where torrents of objectionable material flow unchecked but are gambling that smiting the wicked old HTTP world will satisfy enough of the moral straiteners to prevent them from becoming a political problem.
Some, no doubt, will be satisfied with the feeble program proposed by Conroy.
Others, culture wars warriors in the main, know that this is just one more round in a very long fight. When will they start demanding filters on SMTP?
That’s when it really gets scary.
tigtog @ 149 – re technical considerations – I think its pretty clear that the government is relying on the public’s general ignorance about how the internet works to portray their scheme as reasonable and effective.
If they were talking about border security for example and said that they would be searching all red boats for illegal material since red boats are the most common colour, but a boat of any other colour will be allowed through without searching, the general public would laugh at the insanity of the scheme. But because people don’t understand how the internet works they can propose pretty much the same thing for internet filtering without looking silly to the general public.
Yes. I think The Elders of the Internet rely on that.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSGT6SSI0lA
I think Spana should note that if the scope of this filter was purely child pornography, no one would have an issue. However, the reality is it goes much further and, as demonstrated (blacklist contains: images of abortion, videos of Neda (who became a rallying point for the recent Iran protests), straight and consensual hardcore pornography sites, etc), certainly encompasses political content and content a moral minority objects to.
The child pr0n angle is little more than a distraction anyway: Why bother filtering child pr0n when it’s damn near impossible to find online anyway? Has anyone here ever ’stumbled’ across child pr0n on the web?
Child pr0n is distributed via peer-to-peer networking, not web sites.
joe2 @ 153 – thats hilarious!
Thanks pterosaur@150 for the link to ABC and thence to Hamilton’s article in the Oz. There appears to be general agreement about the incompetence of the legislation in blocking total access via technologies other than HTTP protocol. There is also reasonable concern about the potential of Conroy’s legislation to extend to a form of political censorship either in his hands or the hands of more reactionary forces. As well, there is a libertarian position represented by katz@151.
I think it would be tactically useful to pay close attention to what Hamilton is saying. Here from the Oz feb. 16/09:
“Here is the kind of situation the Government’s proposed internet filter is aimed at.
A boy comes home from school and logs on to the computer. He types in a search for, say, ’sex pictures’. Thousands of sites appear and he starts exploring. He sees pictures of naked women in all sorts of positions, some using dildos and various devices. He surfs to sites showing men and women having sex. Some are straight sex; others show women being penetrated by two men at the same time. Still others show women engaged in oral sex.
The images are confusing but exciting. The boy clicks on “cum shots”. A number of men stand over a woman and ejaculate onto her face. Her smile looks strained. He moves to sites called “Teen facials”, “Teen blowjobs” and “Teen hard-core”. It says they’re 18 but some look younger.
A pop-up appears which takes him to a site listing dozens of “fetishes” with phrases like “bondage”, “fisting”, “black bitches”, “upskirts”, “SM”, “incest”, “golden showers”, “gang bangs”, “fat”, “amputees”, “scat” and many more.
He doesn’t have any idea what most of them are, but he is drawn to find out. He sees pictures of women with weird-looking vaginas, men with huge penises and videos of drunken girls having sex. One site shows pictures of pregnant women being penetrated; another specialises in stick-thin anorexics.
The boy senses that some of this is wrong. He feels guilty but it’s hard to stop. With a few more clicks of the mouse he sees a picture of a woman defecating into another’s mouth and others showing a woman and a horse. He is disgusted and disturbed. The images stay with him for a long time after.
Enough. You get the point. We are not talking about Playboy.”
The fact of the matter is that this is rhetorically powerful stuff made the more so by the ease with which any parent, grandparent, aunt and so on can verify with their own mouse how readily the sort of misadventure described above can happen. It does not even matter that Hamilton has elsewhere provided objective evidence of the psychological consequences of adolescent exposure to pornography. The visceral revulsion at the human degradation contained in some of the worst images is sufficient to end rational consideration of other issues around censorship for a lot of people and especially for those not previously so exposed to such material.
The absurdities of past censorship debacles notwithstanding the fact of the matter is that we are over a barrel on this: we do have censorship of other media and this extends to all forms of media that are piped into our homes. It is all very well to argue that adult supervision is the answer but that solution does even not fit the needs even of tech-savvy middle class parents let alone the needs of those families in disarray (ie, where absolutely no-one pays attention to parenting of children).
This is a tough political nut to crack. Hamilton and the social conservatives are on a winner.
My own position is that in so far as anyone wants to look at what I regard as sexually degrading material they are free to do so. However, they cannot insist that such material be so freely available that it is virtually on public display which is the current situation with HTTP material. It may be the case that there is no other course than pursuing the failures of the current legislation on a case by case basis. Keane’s arguments about ‘monitory democracy’ fit the bill. Only vigilance will prevent reactionaries from bundling censorship of political information in with censorship of the grossest forms of sexual display. Maybe in their minds they cannot differentiate the two.
joe2@153 thanks as well. I did not see the end of the world punch line coming at all. Great.
LP is way too popular, a thread like this takes ages to read thru…so these thoughts have probably been canvassed before, whatever.
Does anyone remember the abortion debates? Whenever the government of the day wanted to distract attention away from an issue where they were going to FAIL they would find some way to resurrect abortion as a political issue. People get all righteous, the media joins the party and a great lot of hot air is expelled after which nothing much changes.
The NetFilter/Blacklist plan of Conroy and Co is a technical FAIL from the start. It will do nothing to reduce the amount of undesirable material on the net, it will waste money, it will add technical complexity where it isn’t needed and anyone who wants to get stuff of the net will find a way regardless. I mean if people in China can sneak around the Great Firewall of China, what does Conroy think will happen with his little mickey mouse scheme?
So if the plan is flawed, and Conroy would know that it is, why are they perservering? To appeal to the conservative mind control mob is an obvious conclusion but it’s also likely the red flag is another way to distract the public from the epic FAIL that is this government on Climate Change.
Like Anthony Nolan I have been around the tubes since text days and I agree its actually very hard to accidentally find stuff you’re not looking for. On the otherhand if you put your mind to it you can find almost anything. This is a simple censorship question, which bits do we censor on whose say so?
And Spana it’s not about some wanky middle class ideology, freedom to know is critical to anyone’s capacity to make an informed choice, that is, to exercise their free will.
Anyone in Brisbane who wants to fight against this outrage, please attend an Anti-Internet Censorship meeting.
When: 21 December 2009, 7:30 PM
Where: Brisbane Square Library – Community Meeting Room
See also facebook.
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.
There has been too much talk and not enough action. The plan of this meeting is to not only discuss the filter and what impacts it will have on us, but to look at how we can work together to bring awareness to others. Ultimately the goal is to have this stopped before it is even put into place.
–
IMPORTANT NOTE
Please note that the venue has a maximum capacity of 50 people. We will see how we go but some people may be disappointed.
I’m sure there will be people live tweeting from the meeting so if you can’t make it there will be other ways to be involved. This is just the first step, not the only step so you won’t be left out
Room is available to us from 7:15pm. Meeting starts at 7:30pm. Afterwards those who wish to can join us at the Pancake Manor for coffee, pancakes and further discussions.
—
Another article of interest may be “Rudd – just a control freak with his little book or are we witnessing the emergence of the ‘Rudd State’?” by Tigerquoll.
—
As an intending independent candidate I will raise this issue and do my utmost to place all the candidates, especially Arch Bevis, under the spotlight on this issue.
James Sinnamon
Brisbane Independent for Truth, Democracy,
the Environment and Economic Justice
Australian Federal Elections, 2010
Jobby @ 155,
Well said. I’ve looked up enough porn in my time and not once have I ever come across child porn. I’m not into torrents/peer to peer but as I understand it that is where the vast majority of child porn is.
A few things the censorship hand-wringers need to keep in mind is that child porn is already illegal and we see people charged with offences every day in the news and as mentioned in Crikey yesterday I think it’s Germany & Italy who both have mandatory government filters to block out child porn, but not ALL porn like this extreme legislation. Who could argue with that?
and if that’s still not enough for some why can’t the government make voluntary filters available to everyone? Because this has got absoluetly nothing to do with child porn and everything to do with trying to ban pornography in an attempt to lock in the Christian vote.
anthony nolan wrote:
What else has Clive written? He’s quite good at a bit of text pr0n, maybe he should try harry potter fan fiction next
Anthony @ 157
There’s an easy solution to that: opt-in filters, customisable by the user. These already exist (Net Nanny is particularly well known example). Parents can restrict what materials their children have access to without having to restrict the rest of the country.
The Australian Library & Information Association (the professional body for librarians; I’m a member) isn’t impressed.
We have two sons, aged 4 and 8. The Geek plans to put the boys’ computers (when they are old enough to have them) on a subnet, which will make him the Stephen Conroy of our household. With the move to portable computing, it isn’t likely that our computers will always be in sight of someone else. He also likes Tigtog’s setup which has all e-mail cc:d to a parent. Note that we do not use any local “filters” and that our practices would not change if the Zombie Filter of Doom came in… because it will not be filtering out all the material we don’t want our boys to see.
Spana says, “One day we may become a police state if we have a police force.” That’s true, but it’s not illegal to put in a complaint against a police officer, and there’s a known disciplinary structure for police. As opposed to a secret blacklist with no process for appeal for either consumers or providers?
Spana also says: “They are blocking material which involves horrendous exploitation of kids and violence which has no place in society.” Well it’s funny that the leaked blacklist, according to the SMH, looked like this:
“Alongside child porn, bestiality, rape and extreme violence sites, the list also includes a slew of online poker sites, YouTube links, regular gay and straight porn sites, Wikipedia entries, euthanasia sites, websites of fringe religions such as satanic sites, fetish sites, Christian sites, the website of a tour operator and even a Queensland dentist.
Other Australian sites on the list are canteens.com.au (“Tuckshop and Canteen Management Consultants”) and animal carers MaroochyBoardingKennels.com.au.”
When it comes to secret lists, no, I don’t trust the state. Are you sure you do?
Katz, you are analysing a hypothetical situation a little too deeply and avoiding the question. If you like consider a customs officer blocking the entry of abuse material at an airport during a baggage check. My point remains essentially the same. If it is illegal and is blocked in real life then whay not in the cyber world?
I also agree with Anthony Nolan to a point. I do not believe banning all sexually explicit material would have the support of society so I support his view that whilst adults may view non abusive material this does not mean that this material should be available freely in the public domain which is currently the case on the internet. I fail to see why some people place their so called right to view certain material above the wider well being of socity and in particular adolescents whose exposure to this stuff can have long lasting negative impacts on sexuality and views of women.
As for those who are opposing the filter becauethey say it will not work, will you support it if a filter was developed that would work? Or is the technological argument merely a convenient side issue meant to raise doubt and avoid the real issue?
That’s a radical modification of your position, Spana. Are you really advocating the filtering of non-illegal material for adults?
“I fail to see why some people place their so called right to view certain material above the wider well being of socity and in particular adolescents whose exposure to this stuff can have long lasting negative impacts on sexuality and views of women.”
Spana, the ‘won’t somebody think of the children’ angle has been demonstrated so many times to be a furphy:
a) filtering cannot even begin to censor all the sites that might be considered damaging for children – it’s currently a technical impossibillity
b) children’s activities online should be monitored by parents/guardians, if there is a pressing need to prevent them accessing particular material, this can be achieved with an actual degree of success via a local filter (net nanny, subnet, etc.)
b) dumbing down the internet so that it safe for kids is akin to removing all the ‘adult’ books from the library system because they could be potentially damaging.
c) the child pr0n argument is a red herring – child pr0n is actually extremely difficult to find online; it is transmitted via peer to peer networks, which aren’t effected by filtering at all.
I really am gobsmacked that creating a secret blacklist of censored sites (with an overblock rate of 3% no less) including great swathes of material that has nothing to do with pr0n is so good for “the well being of society”.
It’s the same argument that Iran and China make for their ‘filtering’ activities, and I don’t think many people here would have been convinced of that.
Liam, my personal view is that some material which is illegal, violent, abusive should be blocked as proposed by this filter. I do however believe that other material which may not be technically illegal should not be available by turning on your computer. I do acknowledge that this is a different issue from the filter. There has been an idea floated that for offensive material, not illegal material, a user would have to subscribe to a certain internet access account which would allow this material through. I am not aware of the technical issues and I am also aware that the anti filter brigade will confuse these issue which are actually quite separate. Just as we don’t allow everything to be screened on free to air TV nor should we have free access to all internet material. If you want to view hardcore porn, then another level of access could be put in place. The internet is not the sacred object that so many here think it is. If it is free to air then there are certain images which should only be accessible to adults. Now watch the anti censorship brigade confuse these two issues.
Liam, it could be that a pin number is required to access R rated material. When subscribing to an internet service if you wish to have access to adult material than a pin number can be issued, just as I believe it is with adult TV subscriptions.
Evidently. I think it’s quite clear that you simply do not understand the way service providers operate their businesses or the sheer scale of the internet—it is simply not at all like receiving a free-to-air broadcast.
If you want to restrict internet access, by all means restrict yours, but who gives you the right to decide on other adults’ access to information?
Liam, I am not deciding on others access aside from illegal material. I am not advocating restricting your access to legal material. I am advocating putting in a further step which would prevent kids accessing it. Did you read my post??? If you want access then get a pin number. Just like TV. As I suspected you are confusing the issues. If you oppose a pin number system then you are in effect arguing that kids should have access to adult material. It also seems the anti censorship brigade hide behind the the so called difficulties of the web.
Actually, yes, you are. Under your scheme, somebody has to decide on the classification for all of the material on the internet, and to decide what is and what is not offensive. Who’s going to do it, the OFLC? Will it be self-regulating with an oversight agency, like ACMA?
Why should I have to have my internet throttled so that somebody else’s children don’t have to be exposed to youtube clips from Apocalypse Now or The Godfather (ie. R rated material)?
“a further step which would prevent kids accessing it”
Like proper parental supervision? Or installing a local filter on the home computer?
Oh no, surely it’s much easier to just filter the internet for the entire country.
“If you oppose a pin number system then you are in effect arguing that kids should have access to adult material.”
That sounds remarkably like Conroy’s “everyone who opposes me supports paedophiles” line.
Jobby, I work with kids. I would love a world where parents did monitor their kids. But I know very well that some parents simply don’t. Sadly some kids are exposed to all sorts long before they should be. Of course I agree with you. But I also see the real world where this does not happen. What I see here again is people operating in an ideological bubble with little reference to real life. You can go on about parents monitoring their kids bu it will not help the many kids who this does not happen for. If you oppose a pin number system and believe in total free access do you also support hard core porn on free to air TV at any time of day? Whay is it different? Is asking an adult to type an extra few numbers and letters before accessing a website really that much of a sacrifice??
Spana, they are two entirely different media. There are entirely different public domains in discussion. What you are proposing is the regulation of communication between individuals—if my mates want to read me swearing on my blog or twitter feed, what business is it of the Government is it? Should people in relationships have to punch in a PIN and be regulated if they want to talk dirty to each other on skype?
If you do not understand the difference between a very tightly regulated broadcasting and telecommunications industry and the communally produced internet, you really, honestly, should not be discussing the regulation of either.
But, Spana, as has been pointed out, the internet isn’t like free to air tv. We have an extremely limited number of the latter, yet the amount of websites floating in the ether seems almost infinite. In practical terms, who looks at all these websites? Who decides about the material placed on them?
This is not about kiddy porn. Katz speaks sense. There is overwhelming support for laws that protect kids from exploitation.
Support for laws that ban consensually produced pornography, less so. And in my state x-rated material is illegal. But every sex store is well-stocked, and there is a store at every major suburban junction on a major road. So the law is getting flouted, publicly – what makes you expect the internet to be any different?
Finally, if I haven’t made my point about the pointlessness of trying to ban certain information like ‘recipes’ or information on ‘how to use drugs’ (and yes these have been banned in other forms but only enforced on political activists) – these include not just literary works that might raise censorship hackles, they are historical texts and chemistry journals. For example, large chunks of information in The Book of Bud, for which people in Qld have been previously charged in non-internet form, are obtainable from numerous other public sources – including older editions of Encyclopedia Britannica, agricultural journals, government reports etc.
Are you seriously not concerned that access to important information about filters and safer injecting might not be limited? Limiting this sort of info is the opposite of everything I know about public health.
And that’s not even going into sexual health and sexuality issues etc raised by others.
Spana – the fact that some people can’t be arsed to install a local filter on the home computer is not a compelling argument for internet censorship. I might as well argue that, because some people don’t feed their children adequately, all child-rearing should be taken over by the state.
I’m sorry but an appeal to ‘just typing in some numbers’ doesn’t hold much weight when a ‘pin number system’ doesn’t exist (and would appear to be as much of a technical impossibility as the proposed filtering scheme) – if we are, as you suggest, dealing with reality here instead of ‘ideological bubbles’ then it’s best to stop referring to an imaginary internet utopia. If ‘typing in a few numbers’ is such a small sacrifice, what is stopping people who are genuinely concerned about this from ‘typing in a few numbers’ to install net nanny? It’s a far simpler process (that has the bonus of actually existing). Why is the technically impossible option so feasible while the model that actually exists is completely out of the question?
The whole ‘if you oppose this censorship then you’re in favour of children watching hard-core pornography’ line is just getting painful now. On top of being a false dichotomy, it’s an offensive way of characterising the other side of the argument. Do I call you a Stalinist murderer because you’re in favour of state censorship? No. So why do you attempt to tar others with the brush of child abusers?
The arguments against the proposed filtering scheme have been made – quite clearly – in this forum. But rather than engage with them, you’re appealing to an emotionally charged argument unhinged from reality and engaging in character assassination of those who oppose you.
Liam, I believe we currently have a classification system. nothing needs to change. the argument about them being different forms of media are irrelevent and I believe will become increasingly so as the line between TV and the web blur.
The argument about throttled internet is a scare tactic. Not true. Also, if you were to communicate with your friend in a public space in a certain way then yes, there would be consequences. I am not talking about private communication. Again, another misleading statement. We are talking about publically available websites, not your private communication. Very different. Am I suggesting monitoring your email? No.
Fine. As I have said there is already a classification system in place. No changes needed. Just extend it to the web. Do you have issues with our current classification system. If so that is an argument in itself, be it for TV or internet.
Jobby, I have a lot of faith in the ability to bring about new changes to how the internet is used. I am not one who says the internet is so hard to develop new system of classification for. Where there is a will there is a way to use an old saying. Some of you place this almost mythical status on the web. It is just another human invention that will be very quickly changed with politcal will. It is not sacred.
I also am not calling filter opponents abusers. The real life effect of having no filter is having kids exposed to this stuff. Simple question. Should this stuff be available on the web? Ye or no? Do you propose doing nothing about it?
Some people can’t be arsed to look after their children properly so we’re going to censor everything.
Oh brave new world!
“Do you propose doing nothing about it?”
Damn straight.
There’s a lot of confected outrage about this issue – but I haven’t seen any evidence that generations of children of the world are in serious danger of becoming ‘damaged’ because there’s some nasty stuff on the web.
If parents are concerned about their children, then there are literally hundreds (if not thousands) of easy options to filter their home computers. This (a) actually works and (b) actually exists. To ignore it as being the obvious option and instead insist on censorship on a national scale is patently ridiculous.
Spana – “What I see here again is people operating in an ideological bubble with little reference to real life.”
…..and the 2009 Award for unintended irony goes to….*drumroll*…
Jobby@181: there is a difference between inormed opinion and hot air. The following abstract took me about 90 seconds to locate:
“Effects of Exposure to Pornography
A study of 275 Canadian teenagers with an average age of 14 found a significant correlation between boys’ frequent consumption of pornography and their agreement with the idea that it is acceptable to hold a girl down and force her to
have intercourse. On the other hand, a wide range of studies has been conducted among young people aged 18 to 25. One of the most important areas of social concern has been the impact of pornography on men’s sexual behaviour towards women, and particularly male sexual aggression or rape. One major study integrated the findings of a broad range of research and concluded that there is consistent and reliable evidence that exposure to or consumption of pornography is related to male sexual aggression against women. This association is strongest for violent pornography and still reliable for nonviolent pornography, particularly when used frequently.”
http://www.mediawatchuk.org.uk/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=234
Michael Flood’s study (2009). “Youth, Sex, and the Internet. Counselling, Psychotherapy, and Health, 5(1), The Use of Technology in Mental Health Special Issue, 131-147 can be found at:
http://www.latrobe.edu.au/arcshs/assets/downloads/flood/Flood,%20Youth,%20sex%20and%20the%20internet%2009.pdf
When looking for evidence it helps to use both eyes.
Spana, as you know,* the current classification system for radio and TV works on self-regulation with ACMA as the oversight body, with the power to alter and/or rescind station licences. There is no “barrier” censorship or classification body in the way there is for film and literature—it’s straight from John Laws (or Kyle & Jackie O) to the airwaves.
If this is an acceptable system for the internet? Should foreign website administrators apply for licences to ACMA? Or do you suggest a PIN system before anyone can tune into an Austereo FM station?
*I assume you know all of this about Australia’s classification regime, right?
Delicately phrased, AN. I take it that you intended to remain agnostic about the direction of cause and effect.
Spana, stop and think. How many millions and millions of internet sites are there? Do you suggest that some body watches them all and classifies them? Or do they just watch the porn sites? – there’s still millions of them. How do they choose which ones to watch. The ones with sexy names? The ones that come up on Google?
And still child porn will be watched on peer-to-peer sites which escape all filters.
Penny Sharpe MLC on the filters.
Sorry to throw a spanner in your works Spana and anthony nolan, but aren’t there replicable studies showing a substantial decrease in rape stats. in all US jurisdictions esp. in the 15-19 y.o. age groups that correlates exactly with the increase of online availability of pr0nography over a ten year or so period.
With all variables taken into account, yadda, yadda = more availability to free online pr0n means less rape on the streets.
By now we should be getting quality data on the effects and viewing patterns of older kids as per above, and there is no doubt about the harmful effects on young children of pr0n, but why would a pre-pubescent child be online looking up sex sites of their own volition. This would be highly unusual behaviour for a child who has not already been exposed to inappropriate parenting before going online.
Just a drive by comment, on my way out the door.
anthony @ 183 – that’s a pretty aggressive sounding post, maybe you should lay off the pr0n for a bit.
Regardless, a study that demonstrates frequent consumption of pornography equates to increased acceptance of sexual aggression doesn’t equate to ‘a generation of damaged children’ – beyond the all too frequent moral panics of the Australian Christian Lobby, there’s no evidence that children are awash in a deluge of ‘frequently accessed’ pornography.
And if there were, who would you say should take responsibility for this: parents or the state?
Up front, I’m opposed to the net filter because it will be ineffective and contains the potential to be used for political censorship of all types.
On consideration it is possible to discern a variety of positions on LP in relation to filtering of web content at the level of public domain. Without going into an exhaustive taxonomy – what interests me is the way that some respondents disavow state regulation. In so doing they perhaps unwittingly are aligning themselves with the sort of extreme neo-liberal anti-state position most often pronounced by right neo-lib proponents like Nozic and Hayek. Nozic in particular, but Hayek as well, stood resolutely against any role for the state other than that of a ‘night watchman’ in the belief that this guaranteed individual freedoms; they were absolutely opposed to any form of state intervention in what they regarded as the private business of individuals. Neither would have a problem with what some people here argue which is that where some form of social intervention was necessary, in this case for the protection of children and adolescents, then that is a matter for individuals and/or individual family units. Neolibs would argue that it is not a fit subject for the state becuase social policy is anathema to them.
By contrast Spana and I have been arguing for a more communitarian approach, one that recognises that not all families have the capacity to take the sort of precautionary actions that others might. It also sees a reasonable role for the state in in certain forms of regulation of individual freedoms.
I’m throwing down the gauntlet here by claiming that libertarianism is not necessarily of the left and can easily be accommodated within the worst elements of neo-liberalism. Libertarianism blends easily into right wing anarchism et voila thence argues for private solutions for what are genuinely social ills on the grounds of defending private activity from state control no matter what the consequences for vulnerable others might be.
Mark Newton backs up my point about how this really has nothing to do with child porn:
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/163063,commentary-why-we-dont-need-a-filter.aspx
Anthony Nolan – generalising from the specific in order to declare: I’m a communitarian, I care about families and the most vulnerable, those with views different from my own are extreme neo-liberals opposed to solving genuine social ills.
Nice politics, but extremely poor logic.
Jobby@193: well, it is not mere difference of views that is the problem. It appears that you’ve a problem with how I have characterised that difference.
As a matter of information here is an excellent overview research available from the Australian Insitute of Criminology by Colleen Bryant, March 2009. It commences:
“The proliferation of pornographic materials and their ease of access are such that it is not a matter of whether a young person will be exposed to pornography but when. Exposure may be inadvertent (such as through unsolicited e-mails or an accidental encounter with pornography online) or intentional. Concern exists that young people are being inundated with sexual information before they are developmentally capable of integrating it into a healthy sexual identity, with ramifications for both individual and society.”
The article states clearly tht the field is under reearched and notes the difficulty of doing qualitative study in an area where gaining the confidence of the subjects sufficiently for them to make what are virtually intimate disclosures is very difficult. Nevertheless it does dubstantiate the idea that adolescent porn exposure appears to constitute a risk of harm.
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/current%20series/tandi/361-380/tandi368.aspx
Jo@189:
“aren’t there replicable studies showing a substantial decrease in rape stats. in all US jurisdictions esp. in the 15-19 y.o. age groups that correlates exactly with the increase of online availability of pr0nography over a ten year or so period.”
Don’t know. It appears counter intuitive or at best a very long bow.
anthony, I believe this is the original paper, haven’t got time today to find any follow up papers and studies. Maybe later tonight. Worth a read.
http://www.law.stanford.edu/display/images/dynamic/events_media/Kendall%20cover%20+%20paper.pdf
The point about young children themselves accessing online pr0n as I said, is an ‘indicator’ of previous exposure to pr0n or to adult sexuality within their environment.
We now have a big proprotion of this generation of kids like my 12 y.o. daughter who have had access to the internet in their houses since their birth. She has never accidently googled up anything remotely explicit online when doing school projects or playing online games, and I don’t have filtering software beyond the explorer content settings.
As you said the risk is there, but it behoves the pro-filter side to provide actual evidence of mass numbers of young children in this country being exposed to pr0n online, not the fear that it may happen, nor that such exposure is indeed harmful to developmentally unprepared children.
And this is even before we get to all the technical and censorship issues which extend beyond x-rated materials.
Internet censorship threat confirms urgent need for Binding Citizens Initiated Referenda – An Open Letter to the Greens
James Sinnamon, an independent candidate for the seat of Brisbane in the forthcoming 2010 Federal elections puts, in an open letter to Senator Bob Brown and members of the Greens Party, that the Greens must pledge, at the earliest possible opportunity to introduce into our Federal Parliament, bills that would enable ordinary citizens to initiate Binding Citizens Initiated Referenda as is now the law in Switzerland. This would be our strongest possible guarantee against politicians ever again being able to abuse their office in order to enact laws, overwhelmingly opposed by the people, in the way Senator Stephen Conroy is now attempting to ram his Chinese-style Mandatory Internet Filtering Laws through the Senate.
I don’t know if there is evidence access to online p0rn is correlated with declines in rape, but I wouldn’t find it counter-intuitive. If young men figure they can have fun at home they’re less likely to go out. That won’t stop the cases of men who deliberately go out looking to rape a woman, but its entirely possible it will reduce the cases where men go out looking to score, fail and then get nasty as a result.
I must say I’ve never understood how Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, both of whom have such limited infrastructure, apparently manage to ensure all their young men have easy access to online porn. Or perhaps there really are other factors contributing to rape.
The blacklist filter is not directed against pornography, jo.
Jo@ 195 I think the following addresses the issue of rates of exposure:
” Gender: Males not only are exposed to more pornography inadvertently as they undertake activities and socialise within environments that place them at higher risk, but also will more actively seek out sexually explicit material than females will. When they do so, they tend to consume pornography at greater rates than their female counterparts. Though possibly affected by the willingness to disclose, a telephone survey of 200 young Australians aged 16 to 17 by Flood and Hamilton (2003) found rates of exposure as follows:
* X-rated videos: 73 percent of males (5% exposed weekly; 16% exposed every three to four weeks), compared with 11 percent of females (all exposed less than once every three months);
* Inadvertent online exposure: 84 percent of males (24% exposed weekly; 22%, every three to four weeks) compared with 60 percent of females (7% weekly; 6% every three to four weeks);
* Deliberate online exposure: 38 percent of males (4% exposed every week; 7%, every three to four weeks), compared with two percent of females (less frequently).
Males may also differ from females in how they prefer to engage with pornographic media. Though media-usage patterns change rapidly, males in many cultures are more likely than females to seek pornography on line, with females demonstrating greater attraction to regulated markets, e.g. videos (Flood & Hamilton 2003; Wallmyr & Welin 2006).
Age: Methodological difficulties such as sample heterogeneity, generational changes in social norms and mores, increased availability of pornography, and lack of longitudinal studies hamper attempts to describe how pornography exposure varies across the human lifespan.”
This was from the article cited @194. Small sample so pretty weak. Anectdotally it appears that exposure of children to online (including downloaded and cached) porn (child < 16 years) happens in three broad categorical circumstances:
i) exposure by family members or close associates of the family with the intention of grooming;
ii) inadvertant exposure while online;
iii) exposure by peers who have themselves been subject to grooming or inadvertantly exposed.
Such exposure is frequently (almost uniformly in fact) behind what is described by child protection workers as "age inappropriate sexualised behaviour" by which they mean that the conduct of children is more informed about sexual practises than is usual for the age. This is treated as a 'risk of harm'.
Sometimes, of course, such behaviour is actually informed by sexual experience. Where this occurs in a situation of coercion, ignorance of the biological reality, ignorance of the affective impact or where it is outside of the rule of thumb used by some for 'peer sexual relations' (an age difference of < 2 years but where the participants are above the age of 12) then the results are usually very serious forms of psychological harm.
Back to the point: the availability of what I see as "public domain" (ie http) pr0n does appear to be a major factor in the increasing sexualisation of children. It wouldn't bother me if people who wanted to purchase Pr0n were put to some inconvenience, the equivalent of walking off the street into restricted access premises, in order to make the purchase.
wbb, yes it is. You seem to keep missing this point. The whole thing was proposed based on a badly constructed survey showing children were coming across pornography online, and needed to be stopped. If you read the arguments of the bulk of those advertising it (including on this thread) its about how accessing porn will damage children’ development. (Mostly couched in terms of making male children misogynists).
Of course introducing something that filters out all prOn is too big a jump, so the advocates say they’re just trying to shut out the really nasty stuff, but they’re not really hiding the agenda that hard, and if you look at the things that actually made it onto the blacklist, heaps of it is ordinary prOn.
That is certainly true!
So, accepting your claim that the true & covert purpose of the blacklist filter is to stop pornography being available on the internet, can you please provide links and examples so I can finally get this all straight, feral sparrowhawk.
wbb, lets look at what Clive Hamilton says, as he not only sparked the idea but has been the most prominent advocate other than Conroy:
“A boy comes home from school and logs on to the computer. He types in a search for, say, ’sex pictures’. Thousands of sites appear and he starts exploring. He sees pictures of naked women in all sorts of positions, some using dildos and various devices. He surfs to sites showing men and women having sex. Some are straight sex; others show women being penetrated by two men at the same time. Still others show women engaged in oral sex.”
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/web-doesnt-belong-to-net-libertarians/story-e6frgakx-1111118869227
I could go on, but you get the idea. And how does Hamilton start the article? “HERE is the kind of situation the Government’s proposed internet filter is aimed at.” Sure Hamilton goes on to talk about more extreme things, but most of what he covers is at least portrayed as consensual.
Now you can make a case that much of this material is made in exploitative conditions and should be banned for that reason. But that’s not the case most people are making, and I’d certainly argue the filter isn’t the best way to do it anyway. Hamilton is saying this is sick and children must not be allowed to see it, and the solution is to create a filter that will block everyone from seeing it.
If the original source isn’t enough for you, check the rhetoric of those who support it. I’m not sure how far I’m supposed to range, so let’s just look at what the advocates are saying on this thread.
Spana @23, talking about the effect of “adult content” on cognitive development, and @164 wanting to ban non-abusive material from the net.
Ok so Spana is just an anonymous supporter, but roam around. Pretty soon all the supporters come back to this. They’re trying to stop children accessing “adult content” and think the filter is the way to do it. But the only way the filter can do that is if adults can’t access the same things online children can’t.
But for final proof, just take a look at the leaked blacklist. Grab a random sample of sites. Most of the names certainly sound like mainstream pr0nn. Some of them are brandnames big enough that you don’t need to be a pr0n aficionado to recognise them. Some names may be deceptive, and I’m sure as hell not planning to check them all out, but clearly much, if not most, is the sort of stuff you can buy legally in the ACT or NT on DVD, and illegally but easily anywhere else. In some cases this might be mistakes, like the accidental blocking of a school tuckshop. But they didn’t block Seymour butts by mistake. They blocked it because that’s the point.
wbb, I thought I might have to wade through a random sample of the stuff on the filter blacklist to prove its more about blocking ordinary pr0n than child pr0n. However, it turns out someone else has done it for me.
I don’t know the source, so I guess it could be wrong, but a quick look at the URLs on the list tends to support this. Andrew Brooke in a letter to Crikey writes:
“As revealed when the ACMA blacklist was leaked, less than half (49.2%) of the URLs on the ACMA blacklist relate to illegal RC material.
So — what about the other 50.8% of the 1370 URLs on the ACMA blacklist?
37% (506 URLs) is R18+ or X18+ content — thus not illegal for Australian adults to access, view or possess. A further 14% (190 URLs) is ‘RC’ content not in the child abuse sub-set — thus not illegal for Australian adults (except in WA and parts of NT) to access, view or possess.”
Thanks feral – for your work there. The list and entry at wikileaks appear dubious. It is more likely they have posted the list used in the optional child filter. But anyway – look – I do not support mandatory filtering of pornography.
Reason being: it is consensual and people have wide tastes. We agree there.
I do support filtering of criminal material ie meterial that is the result of violence etc. My intent is to damage the market that could reward people for abusing highly vulnerable people in ineffective jurisdictions. I understand there are always going to be backdoors. Even wide open side doors. Just as in “real” life. We can’t stop crime. We should always hinder crime.
It’s hard to discuss until there is actual legislation – so I know what I am defending or not.
@wbb,
Isn’t the truly pointy point that Conroy doesn’t need to pass any legislation whatsoever in order to get the filter through? So far it’s mostly about ministerial regulation not openly debated legislation at all.
Doesn’t strike me as democratic.
One of the great things about the internet is that no one person or group of people controls it. As a teenage girl who sometimes looks up fanfiction with adult content, i am slightly worried that the blacklist could extend to my fave fanfic sites but im much more worried about what this secret blacklist could be extended to by this government and future ones.
I have never just stumbled accross porn on the internet and am told child porn is very hard to find on the net. If this filter was only going to block child porn and if it was actually going to be effective then i would support it but as it is it feels like this filter is going to be a major infringement on our rights.