Save the Internet - The Clean Feed

[Moses]

Please join the 85,000 Australians who have so far signed the survey as there is still hope for this expensive, ineffective, and downright frightening bill to be quashed.

Did you know that Kevin Rudd's Government is proposing an internet censorship scheme that goes further than any other democracy in the world? This level of net censorship will put us in the same league as China, Cuba, Iran and North Korea, and there will be no opt-out of the proposed national internet filter when it is implemented.

Taken into the last election by the Labor government as a magic bullet to protect the kids, it has now been expanded to have an additional compulsory 'clean feed' that is intended to block "unwanted" sites which are maintained in a secret blacklist. Already special interest groups are calling for all adult, gambling euthanasia, anerexia and drug education sites to be blocked to all Australians.

Early testing indicates that it will slow down the internet by 30% to 87%. Costs will increase, and up to 1 in 12 legitimate sites will be blocked. What's more it will miss the vast majority of inappropriate content and is very easily circumvented. The use of overseas based proxy servers will allow anyone with half a clue to still browse any blocked website, albeit painfully slowly, and questionable content will still be available via BitTorrent and other file sharing technologies.

The blacklist will need to be distributed to ISP's, and any leak of this will facilitate the propogation of dodgy material. Additionally it'll force the sick twisted f*&ks who look at that stuff to encrypt their crap resulting in increased difficulty for the police to investigate them.

Say for example the shared hosting server that contains The Yellow Scarf, Go The Tahs, Green and Gold Rugby and Beer and Sport is also hosting a site that contains information about an anorexia sufferer. A concerned parent could call the hotline and have this naughty site added to the secret blacklist. Suddenly there'd be no Australians able to access any of these sites.

It happened just this week in the UK with the WikiPedia being blacklisted to the majority of Internet users due to one borderline image.

Anyone opposed to the idea on any level is labelled a supporter of child p?rnography by Senator Conroy. What's more he's using his power as a Senator to silence critics of the scheme.

Wide scale testing of the 'clean feed' begins on 24th December, 2008.

http://www.getup.org.au/campaign/SaveTheNet/442

 

[Pfitzy]

Already signed Moses my good man. :thumb

What an unworkable piece of tripe they're suggesting. It isn't a frigging nanny state!

 

[cyclopath]

+1 here.
And Nick, I think we are well down the nanny state road, I'm afraid. Nobody takes any responsibility for anything they do, everyone wants a hand-out, and the government think they need to tell us what we need. Forgive the hyperbole.

 

[Cutter]

Yep, I've already signed as well. Getup does some good stuff. Its reassuring to know that someone is watching the pollies and not just feeding us spin.

 

[Pfitzy]

. Nobody takes any responsibility for anything they do, everyone wants a hand-out, and the government think they need to tell us what we need. Forgive the hyperbole.

Unfortunately you're right. Nowadays you see parents climb into the Cops if their little darlings get caught doing something bad. In my day I didn't even THINK about doing something that could draw attention from the Wallopers because my parents could make my life a misery.

Some people don't even want to be responsible for breathing.

 

[spectator]

Unbeleivable!! Yep - signed up too.

 

[Lindommer]

Petition signed.

 

[rugbywhisperer]

All done and dusted.
I agree, no one wants to take responsibiity for their own actions. They want to Be fed from the cradle to the grave and blame someone else for their own misfortune.

 

[Lindommer]

Editorial in today's SMH.

Swinging baby, infantile police
WE SHOULD be chilled by what happened to Chris Illingworth. The 60-year-old father of four from Maroochydore in Queensland was surfing the internet recently when he came upon an unusual video clip on YouTube showing a father vigorously swinging his baby by the arms. It was unusual, robust and somewhat nerve-racking, but at the end of the video, when the man stops swinging and props the baby in his arms, both father and baby look into the camera with big smiles. They were having fun.

It's been no fun for Illingworth, who has no record of having been anything other than a responsible father and productive citizen. But because he posted the baby-swinging film-clip onto a video-sharing website - after it had already been viewed by hundreds of thousands of people - his home was raided and he has been charged with a criminal offence by the same police unit which handles child pornography. "I'm devastated," he said last week. "This is absolute stupidity." He is right. It is absolute stupidity. By charging Illingworth, Queensland Police have invited questions about their competence, judgment and operating procedures, all the way up to the Commissioner, Robert Atkinson.

At a time when the state has failed to stem the high incidence of sexual abuse and child neglect among Aboriginal children in Queensland, we see this surreal example of wasted energy and exploding credibility. We also know the police, from Australian Federal Police down, have a terrible problem admitting error. Go no further than the millions of dollars wasted on face-saving after the arrest of another Queensland resident, Mohamed Haneef, in the wake of terrorist bombings in Glasgow last year. So we expect a nonsensical prosecution to follow this nonsensical charge.

The video contains no violence, child abuse or child pornography, yet Queensland Police say it is a crime for anyone to watch it. Once again, state authorities are playing catch-up with the internet, and once again the process is eating away at the credibility of the criminal justice system which appears to devote an inordinate amount of time and resources to intimidating soft targets, such as people with a sense of the absurd - like anyone who has marvelled at the beaming baby gymnast who stars in this video.

 

[Mainlander]

Also add in the court case that IInet are currently fighting because they refused to cut off their customers on the say so of some Hollywood studios that has resulted in all Torrents being stopped on IInet by order of the court or injunction or something although I'm not 100% sure about that last bit, Torrent stopped working for us almost a week ago but IInet are not allowed to discuss it even to confirm or deny they have stopped all torrents.

Have signed partition but can't see this opportunity of all the wowser groups letting this opportunity to control us slip bye.

If they decide that you shouldn't be allowed then they will....
Stop you looking at it,
Take away all your internet ability because you tried to look at it.
Arrest and send you to jail because they found their cookie in your recycle bin.

Personally I believe we should all go and view this unwholesome video and then toddle off to the locale cop shop and hand ourselves in.

 

[Moses]

Well, the trial with no goals is now complete, and surprise surprise, it was an astounding "success".

They tested at speeds of up to 8MBit and didn't notice significant decrease in throughput. Strange thing though, I have 24MBit connection (ADSL2+), and this same government is in the process of spending over 40 billion dollars on a 100MBit network. Well, so long as the filtering works on 8....

As I understand it, the filter blocks distinct URLs, they're planning on blocking around 1000 of these nasty URLs. That said, one only need put a ? on the end of a URL to bypass the filter. Interestingly, GAGR currently has around 2000 URLs, and there's a lot of internet out there.

GAGR is participating in an online protest over the Australia Day weekend, if you look at our front page you should see a one off notice with some information about the proposed legislation.

Details are at http://www.internetblackout.com.au/

 

[Pfitzy]

Rudd and his mates are little commies.

Removed commment because of its obvious intentions. Get it clean NTA

 

[naza]

Rudd and his mates are little commies.

Removed commment because of its obvious intentions. Get it clean NTA

I do love the irony of a post on internet censorship being censored. :lmao: :lmao:

 

[Scarfman]

Self-aware irony, though, naza: Get it clean.

 

[Pfitzy]

That was hours ago. I can't even remember what I said. That's OK though, because I've got the nanny state looking after my internet :thumb

 

[Scotty]

His socialism is certainly getting closer to communism. He may be good a conning the masses, but his policies are slowly but surely being shown up. There is this one, then the website on schools which is going to affect not only individual schools but whole suburb values (as seen in the UK) and of course his continuous backing of climate change propaganda. Even climate change scientist are starting to admit they have fudged their studies, while some still don't release the data their findings are based on - so why are we jumping head first into an ETS when there is still no steady science on the causes and effects?

It all comes down to politics and winning the next election - giving money to the working class, pandering to parents votes with the internet and school business, propaganda as the 'building the education revolution' (which has been one of the most inefficient policies in regards to value for money that I can remember), and of course going down the popular route of seeing to do something for the environment via the ETS (despite the reality of its effectiveness).

The constant spin and propaganda from our current government makes me sick. They are unwilling to make the right choices if they are seen to be unpopular - more so than any other Australian government that I can remember.

 

[Scarfman]

That's probably all true, Scotty. But Howard's period in office wasn't completely devoid of buying cheap votes. He redesigned the welfare system to benefit middle class families, and used wedge politics to get the bogans on board.

They're all bastards, mate.

One thing you have to understand about KRudd is that he is very pro-private education. His son has attended a couple of the richest schools in Australia. Knowing that helps you understand where he is coming from. And I don't think you need to worry too much about him being a commie.

 

[Scotty]

No doubt that Howard bought votes as well, particularly with his promised tax cuts, but the Rudd government started to jockey for the next election within 6 months of being voted in. I don't remember a previous government, whether it be Labor or Liberal being that concerned about future terms so early in there current term that they let their own politics get in the way of governing the country properly.

We have a government that cut back spending heavily in their first 6-12 months (including some worthwhile projects), only to turn around and start splashing money around inefficiently over the next 12 months. I support the overall goal of the stimulus spending but abhor the inefficiencies of how it has been done. Believe me it has been done very poorly - I have worked on some of the 'Building the Education Revolution' projects. A part of the requirement for schools receiving this money is to invite Gillard to the opening and put a propaganda plaque on the buildings. Oh and not to mention schools were required to spend the money on a maximum of two projects - normally libraries and school halls. Why? Because then you can guarantee the building the money has gone to is large and visible, and the Labor politicians can all go through their electorates pointing them out. Landscaping could not be included, so we aren't exactly going to get good environments in which our children will attend school.

Of course then you have the tight time lines restricting the building designs, particularly for state schools, which generally used generic designs slightly altered for their sites - designs that were done years ago, and would not be all considered sustainable or have architectural merit. And of course the consultants and builders involved in these generic designs were the ones that received the projects - meaning that the stimulus money was not spread around well at all.

We will be paying for these inefficiencies in our taxes and economy for a decade into the future. We should be angry and we should demand more from our government.

 

[naza]

I'm outraged by the internet filter. But I'm far too lazy & apathetic to do anything about it.

 

[Pfitzy]

I have no problem with the school website thingy. I think people SHOULD be able to see where the best benefits are for their kids, provided they go and actually see those schools for themselves. Stats are one thing; experience another entirely.

I think its a good way to give the whole education system a kick up the arse. If schools are in socially disadvantaged areas then its up to the government to take a whole-of-society approach to improving it.