Telstra, Optus to start censoring the web next month
This is happening on a “voluntary” basis with the two biggest and a few smaller ISPs. By “voluntary” they mean that the ISPs are filtering content identified as child abuse material voluntarily, not that they are giving their customers who don’t want to look at child abuse material anyway any choice about being gifted with a false sense of cybersecurity.
System Administrators Guild of Australia board member Donna Ashelford said blocking these website addresses should not affect internet speed, but was only a “cosmetic fix” that was easily circumvented by criminals.
“The effectiveness will be trivial because you’re just blocking a single website address (and) a person can get around it by changing that address with one character,” she said.
“Child abuse material is more likely to be exchanged on peer-to-peer networks and private networks anyway and is a matter for law enforcement.”
Some of our previous posts on various iterations of the proposed net filter:
On feeling sympathy with Stephen Conroy
The death of the internet filter
We don’t have a censor sitting in every cinema
Left reasons to oppose the net filter #nocleanfeed
I can’t see why anyone would have any issues with the filter covering sites identified as having that material.
(Addendum to the above….as long as the filter is broadened to cover other things like politics.)
If this report is factual (I can find no evidence of this story anywhere else so far), I wonder if customers of Optus and Bigpond can opt of their contracts as this is major change to their Terms of Service?
We won’t know what it covers as the list of filtered sites is secret.
@ 4 – and thats one of the big problems with the way the filter is administered. A website can accidentally end up on the list and the owners won’t get notified so they can’t even protest.
Interest point someone made on Whirlpool:
“ISP filtering requires legislative amendment to TIA to allow inspection of internet traffic (for other than network maintenance or with a warrant) unless the user agrees. The proposed “volunteer” ISP filter is NOT voluntary for the user, so the ISPs require legislative protection.”
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1689023&p=49#r965
I’ve changed my position on web censorship from generally supportive to totally opposed. For others here, that’s evidence of rational thought and an open attitude. I no longer accept that the dangers of exposing children to pornographic material on the web, which was my main concern, outweigh the perils of censorship. The reason is simple: wikileaks, which has the capacity to transform democracy and make open government a real possibility. Today the list of banned sites includes we know not what and tomorrow that list will be longer and we’ll still be in ignorance.
Posting this as anonymous. I’m a consumer of net pr0n – adult comic books and the like mostly. Some of the Japanese hentai stuff is pretty borderline and there was the stupid “naked pictures of Bart Simpson” case a while back. But at bottom, no actual children are harmed to draw a picture with a pencil!
Anyway, I’m wondering if this filter is already in place. I’ve been seeing quite a few regular sites being redirected to “bigpondsitehelp.com” over the last month or two. I think it is more than just a coincidence.
anonymous – hope you realize that in terms of the Australian child pornography laws it doesn’t matter if the images are of actual children or not, only if they depict children. There was a case reported in the paper a few days ago of someone who was convicted of child pornography who possessed only cartoon/animation type images.
Larvatus Prodeo meme #1: Web censorship, boo!
Larvatus Prodeo meme #2: National Broadband Network, yay!
Now let me introduce you two to one another in a handy news story. I’m sure you’ll get on soooo well together…
Yes, I am aware of that. The law in this area needs a serious overhaul, animated or not. There’s basically no defence that can be mounted because the accusation of “possessing child pornography” is enough, regardless of the nature of the evidence. It’s rapidly turning into the 21st century version of accusing someone of being a heretic or red-baiting – find one commie newsletter or Bart Simpson picture in the basement and you can destroy a person’s life whenever it becomes politically convenient to do so.
A quick moderator note to anonymous, who I hasten to add is doing nothing against the comments policy right now.
The email you’ve chosen to use has a registered gravatar attached. I’ve manually edited it twice to change it to something with no gravatar. Could you please change the first bit (before the @) to “anonforthis” for any future comments? Ta.
anon: if you get busted why don’t you argue that you thought the author of the toons was Bill Henson?
British laws say you can legally consent to s-x at 16 but you can’t legally show 16 and 17 year olds having sex in media as it’s classified as “child p@rn” unless everyone is 18 or over.
The nub of it rest in the secret list which is a basic transgression of justice for viewers and those providing the view, in so many ways. People like Conroy and Bowen just so love being able to impose themselves on their subjects.
I should add, if a decision to ban some thing suspect is done above board, people will understand the thinking behind the action and comment on an individual case on its merits and appeal if personally affected, but secrecy creates uncertainty.
Actually I wouldn’t weep if they did knock off gonzo forms of p-rn, I get sad reading stories of parents who have their kids shagged for a quick buck.
‘Nuff said?
Ditto here, Paul. Which means Chris’ summary should read “under Australian [snip] pornography laws it doesn’t matter if the images are of actual children or not, only if they depict [snip] _anyone under the age of 18 even if over the age of consent, or anyone over 18 engaging in ‘fetish’ sexual practises that are perfectly legal to perform but not depict, or even textual descriptions of either. On the other hand these rules only apply to pornography so if you’re accessing otherwise banned stuff in a ‘general interest magazine’ or corresponding website, you’ll be alright. Also, depictions of female genitalia in Oz porn can’t be ‘detailed’ so they tend to get airbrushed in a way that makes the models look underage anyway so… who effing knows._” This I glean from Helen Vnuk’s book on Oz censorship laws Snatched which should be out of date given it was published in 2003, but probably isn’t given the tendency of dumb laws to hang around unchanged.
Not that Australia’s censorship laws are necessarily what will inform the construction of this list.
My post in response to paul at 14, not the subsequent paul.
I’m opposed to net censorship because once the technology is in place the potential for bracket creep is established and governments on a whole are not noted as defenders of political freedom. I’m no supporter of any form of net porn or porn in general therefore my fave article ‘Pornography is a Left Issue’ by gail Dines (https://www.againstpornography.org/articles.html).
Enuff said indeed PW.
Dodgiest filter implementation ever. All they are doing is filtering at the DNS level which is trivial to circumvent. On the other hand it will have no performance impact at all
http://delimiter.com.au/2011/07/04/optus-filter-can-be-defeated-by-trivial-dns-change/