The Australian Government has announced that they will be joining China as one of the few countries globally that broadly censor the internet.
The Labor Party’s policy was announced prior to the Australian Election in November (release here) and was justified on the basis that the previous Government’s policy of providing free copies of NetNanny to all Australian households who wanted it didn’t adequately protect children.
As recently as the week prior to the election, Labor Party candidates were telling those concerned about the proposed law that the censorship wouldn’t be compulsory, and that the “clean feed” would be opt-in, not opt-out. Today’s announcement by Telecommunications Minister Stephen Conroy states that the censorship regime will be mandatory, although people will be able to opt-out of it. The problem of course then becomes if you opt-out questions will be asked as to why you want out, which in itself may lead to Government monitoring.
To be censored by the Australian Government is “pornography and inappropriate material.” X rated pornography is illegal online in Australia, as are casino style internet gambling, certain forms of “hate” speech and R rated computer games. BitTorrent would be a possibility, even if certain downloads for personal use may be legal under Australian law, sharing those downloads would not be. How far “inappropriate material” may extend was not made clear, for example questioning Government policy where it comes to Aboriginal people could be deemed to be discrimination under Australian law and hence blocked by the censorship regime. Worst still, bloggers or those (such as forum owners) who allow users to comment or post could find themselves blocked under this proposal should someone say or post the wrong thing. If there is one certainty in any country that implements broadscale censorship, once they start blocking content it doesn’t stop, and certainly every do-gooder group and special interest lobbyist will be wanting the Government to add to the list.
There is also a potential cost involved to Australian Internet users. The previous Government regularly cited feedback from ISP’s stating that the cost of implementing a “clean feed” would be passed onto internet users, who already pay some of the highest internet access costs in the Western world for on average slow services.
Notably Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was a former Australian Diplomat in China, and speaks fluent Mandarin; given Australia’s boom is fueled by mineral exports to China, it would seem that Australian Government policies are now by China in return. This video from before the election may have foretold some of the future.
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I’d like to be the first to congratulate Australia for taking a step back. Actually, make that 25 years!
btw- how many employees does Telstra have these days?
So now we’ll need proxy servers for Australia as well?
I have complete faith in the Australian public service completely buggering up the implementation of this supposed system, jsut like they did for the last lot.
Peter (#2)
until the Government works out that proxies can be used to bypass the censorship by kiddies and they’ll block them as well
With the change of Government I thought we would be taking a step forward, not two steps backward with our expensive, slow and now filtered Internet services.
How long until America goes the same route? These are the greatest times of the internet. A few years from now, many of us will be looking back at these times and wonder what happened.
Cyber terrorism, piracy, and much more are only a few factors that are going to influence how access to the internet is allowed in the near future. Using the internet is merely a privilege, not a right, under U.S. law.
Enjoy these times, as things will be very different in the future.
Paul (#3)
Big Government = incompetence and corruption everywhere
So yes, it will be a nice laugh
ah, thanks…. just is time to cancel my trip… can’t be supporting that kind of mind
So … I guess democracy is not so democratic after all. I would have expected better from Australia. But then it shows you how much I know.
News like this remind me of the movie “Escape From Los Angeles”. Indeed Snake … press that button.
Is it possible to ban using proxy?
ha… porn is just pixels, kids know this, it is the adults who think it is real… and violence? why the internet and not tv??
I thought this group I joined after the election might be relevant about now.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5923057837
Australia takes another step back, and America is lined up to be the next to do so…
What a beat up for the end of the year.
Many Aus ISP’s have and offer an OPT IN for censorship as part of a “responsible Service Provider code of ehics.”
All the pollies have done is try and win brownie points by making it OPT OUT.
They have assumed, based on what I don’t know, that most parents want the Internet filtered.
Before they had to do a bit of homework. Now they don’t.
I and the vast majority have to tick a box. So what?
Settle down TechCrunch, or in 08 your beat ups will catch up with you.
——————————————
SAVE THE INTERNET
Please, just STFU, John! Typical ignorant Aussie rantings that have put us in this precarious position. Have you ever actually made an ‘informed’ comment in your life ? Don’t answer that, because it’s obvious.
How weak you sound,..’ the pollies aren’t bad’ (sic), ….it’s all an innocent mistake…..blah, blah…
Search ‘internet 2′, then search ‘Fabian society’+'labor party’.
You look like that nutcase ABC RADIO PRESENTER, which explains your subversive comments. Go jump.
————————————————-
INFOWARS.COM===INFOWARS.COM===INFOWARS.COM
Ahh, this is good that it will filter out the ‘bad’ sites. but undoubtedly it will also filter the innocent sites through mistakes!
Matt, what’s good about it? If people don’t want to look at bad sites, they can chose for themselves. Compulsion by the government is not ever a solution unless real harm (aka, child pornography) is involved. Of course gambling and pornography leads to moral complacency, but let them chose for them selves.
All I can say, is God bless the US of A.
This is total betrayal. My preferences went to Labor and I never thought they would try something like this, even Howard wouldn’t have tried to broadly censor the internet. We need a bill of rights in this country. I am sick of big government creeping up and attacking our freedoms. I always thought the conservative talk from Rudd was just to win the election, but this is over the top. Most Australians I know have looked at internet porn, and how are we going to know the government won’t block sites that criticise government policy? Stephen Conroy is a fool according to the Latham Diaries, where Latham journals how Conroy just wanted to be a shadow minister and didn’t care what portfolio. He obviously doesn’t give a damn about policy either. Then again, maybe Rudd is angry about the youtube video of him eating his own ear wax.
man suks to be me…..dam i hate rudd i didnt remember him tellins me that allthough it says he did….maybe sum1 in the labour side made this article and posted a fake link saying he said it XD wot a lame
This is just crap. These damn Socialists. The advantage and the cause of rapid progression in the internet sphere is because it’s an unregulated, uncensored, a really free space for making great, creative and innovative ideas something “real” and useful. They will destroy this spirit.
[Argh ... third try, for sure]
See my _Guardian_ Column on government Of Australia national censorware plan, from a few months ago:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/tech.....on.comment
Note I don’t like the title they gave it (”The internet can’t be censored and it’s wrong for governments to try”). I don’t assert categorically that the Internet can’t be censored, in fact “Can you censor the Internet?” is the question I’ve explored for many years.
And I thought Australia was a free, democratic country. Sheese. Protecting “THE CHILDREN” from exposure to the real world is not an excuse for censorship in a truly free society.
Could somebody post a link to an article that actually states what the policy is? All I can see here is some xenophobic crap, and a link to an article where the government states what it _isn’t_ doing. If you strip out all the scaremongering, I can’t actually find much content.
The only stuff I can find anywhere else is saying that the government is going to require age verification for sites hosted in Australia with certain sort of content (seems okay), and for mobile services with similar sorts of content (also seems okay). (Would need to see how that’s going to work in practice though.)
Regarding the blocking of stuff that’s illegal in Australia — if people want to look at that, then perhaps they should work to make it not illegal? Is there something wrong with blocking illegal content? You can’t sell or transmit that stuff any other way, so why on the internet?
I also can’t find evidence that there is any great firewall being set up — that’s not to say there isn’t; it’s just that this is another TechCrunch article with no useful links.
Blairman (#17)
my House of Reps vote did too (not that it made any differnce), I really wish I hadn’t now.
Simon
http://alp.org.au/download/lab.....safety.pdf
which if you’d followed the ALP link in the post you would have found
Sorry, when you start censoring stuff it never stops. Child porno is the excuse but the net is far, far wider than that. There is a great firewall being set up, read the link details.
@ 21. Simon Russell “Is there something wrong with blocking illegal content?”
Who decides what’s “legal”?
@ 21. That is the problem, this is one of those stories where politicians legislate via press conference, and there is no documentation to back it up. Although I do have a stab at explaining it here:
http://tinfinger.blogspot.com/.....rship.html
Conroy did give some warning though:
http://blog.myspace.com/index......=330513888
Despite the groundbreaking work TC did with presidential candidates attitudes towards technology recently the reality is politicians of every shade fear losing power just as much as we fear them abusing it and the internet clearly poses a threat to the way traditional top down politics is done.
This more than any real fear of pornography or cyber terrorism is what will see Governments of every persuasion looking very keenly at any ‘respectable’ development to reign in the freedoms people have become used to on the net.
We have more to fear from politicians than perverts.
I voted for this government on the grounds of them building a new telecoms infrastructure seperate from telstra. this is a complete betrayal. i will be voting for the libs again next time.
@Duncan
Thanks for the link — but isn’t that just what they announced before the election? I want to know what’s changed, that’s made you post this story.
You are somewhat correct about censorship, but comparing it to China (or any other country with significantly different laws) is a bit ridiculous — there is stuff which is illegal there that isn’t illegal in Australia. And nobody’s proposing Australia start filtering stuff which isn’t illegal.
The use of the child pornography thing by the government is a bit of a cop-out though, I always hate it when discussions come down to that. It’s just a way of cutting off debate, because no-one could possibly argue _for_ the distribution of it.
@23 (Marco)
The citizens of the country decide what’s illegal, via the government. Then there is a separate organisation (that governments frequently disagree with for not being harsh enough) that decides what ratings certain things get — and that’s within the fairly limited scope of the laws as defined at that time, and the current social and moral standards.
Australia has a censorship system that works reasonably well for films, TV, games etc. There seems nothing wrong with extending that to the internet.
There are ways to make this sort of thing work _acceptably_ (obviously there will always be some issues) — mainly the separation of responsibility and power, and no central monitoring.
I’m not saying that this is necessarily a good thing; it certainly has to be implemented properly. But from what I see of their policy, if implemented properly people won’t actually notice — most people probably aren’t visiting these sites.
If sites start getting blocked because of their political content (for example), I’ll be one of the first people protesting, however. Luckily, unlike some other countries with heavy filtering, we’re free to change it.
@ 24 (Paul)
Thanks for the link. You are correct that without ISP involvement, this won’t go very far.
Oh really? Gee it’s not like the government would lie to us about things to influence our votes. Not like say, promising a newer better internet infrastructure then turning around and giving us the finger in the form of a federal opt in net-nanny, THEN telling us at the last minute that it’s OPT OUT only, THEN telling us that we can’t opt out at all.
Also, our system for censoring TV and games works well? That’s a laugh! GTA3 San Andreas, they changed ONE camera angle to let it through. Fallout 3, they changed the names of the drugs depicted to fictional ones. That’s it. And the only reason they had to do that is because there’s no R+ rating for games. We can have R+ movies, but not R+ games. What a waste of everyone’s time! We can adult, I’ll choose what I view and do not view thankyou very much, not you, not the government, not anyone else but me.
BEST INTERPRETATION ON THIS PAGE, SO DAMN TRUE !
@ Simon: how naive are you ?
I don’t see the similarity with China. Australians have a choice. If “the people” decide they want censors, then isn’t it is still a democratic decision? Just because parents outnumber freedom lovers it may seem a bit unfair. Maybe democracy is overrated.
Yes, because the general public always seeks to defend minority groups.
remember this, for this won’t be the first time this labor government treats our liberties with such disregard.
One more country that makes a big step back…
Next step… People will allow to visit only the sites that the goverment wants…
Is this the meaning of manipulate a country?
These are the same people that did not ratify the Kyoto Protocol after all.
@27 Sam H. - I voted for this government on the grounds of them building a new telecoms infrastructure separate from telstra. this is a complete betrayal. i will be voting for the libs again next time.
And that is the problem with TOO MANY VOTERS! Many people hear and focus only on their few pet issues and cast their vote for the candidate/party that best speaks to these issues. Then they get blindsided by the reality of who they voted for after they are safely in office.
Here in the USA, this happened most recently with Bush in ‘04 when many voted for a 2nd term on the single issue of fear of a terrorist around every corner. Now, many are aligning with Ron Paul, similarly based only on consideration of a limited number of talking points, most (if not all) of which he would have absolutely no power to change. You need to consider the total package and look closely at all the positions that the candidate and the party has championed in the past. Yeah, it’s a lot of work but you get stuck with what you choose. You want to try and make the best overall choice possible.
back in time
Obviously censorship can be a real danger and can’t be the solution to the possible threat that internet can be to children. Selfishly I am therefore 100% against australia’s move, but the truth is I have a couple of young children and that I am sometimes worried regarding them using internet. Netnanny (or similar) is a good solution of course but I can’t help wondering about about my children’s friends whose parents don’t have an idea about how a computer works (let alone the Internet) but who buy a computer and an access to the web for opening the world to their children. There will definitely never be a Netnanny on these computers. So what can be done? Only a few weeks ago I heard about these two girls who committed suicide after diving deep into gothic sites.
All this to say that it is really not simple and maybe some of you who have children know what I’m talking about… There must be some solution which is other than censorship… At one time, for instance, it was proposed that pornograpgic sites all have the extension .xxx , but that went down the drain.
Hey Remy, do u let your kids drink booze and drive cars? Well don’t let ‘em on the internet either. Problem solved.
Little shits should be outside playing anyway.
Australia following the steps of Mao. How will New Zealand respond ?
This sounds familiar…
“Move three steps back”
and pretty soon…
“Go directly to jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.”
How exactly does censorship work if you get your internet through a sat phone? They can censor hard lines but I doubt they can do the same with those guys (owned by private companies).
Jon
may the article and picture with some ideology ,I don’t think it’s compatible in TechCrunch as an IT blog 。
OK,it’s a open world,I only Comment it with my little unhappy feeling as a Chinese and TC reader.
but its for the kids… i hate it when politicians use the “for the good of our kids” card on matters that go far beyond the initial reactive remarks.
I love how he contradicts himself:
“Senator Conroy says it will be mandatory for all internet service providers to provide clean feeds, or ISP filtering, to houses and schools that are free of pornography and inappropriate material.”..
Ok so we need to protect the kids from surfing the web + porn at school. Hey i’m for that, lets do that - wait isn’t that what most software out there today does.. but lets add another layer of protection for good measure. SO.. no problem with that so far…
“Labor makes no apologies to those that argue that any regulation of the internet is like going down the Chinese road,” he said.
Oook.. now i’m nervous.. he likes the Chinese way of life… Isn’t labour political colors red.. ok now i have a sinking feeling in my stomach..
“If people equate freedom of speech with watching child pornography, then the Rudd-Labor Government is going to disagree.”
There we go, he went for the “..it will stop Child pornography, mark my words” angle. Who could dare to refute that.. Oh wait.. if i recall the kids involved in such content ARE THE ONES GETTING MOLESTED.. not the ones viewing the said molestation.. so i’m still scratching the old head wondering how this is going to rid the world of child pornography.. but none the less it has a great distraction momentum attached to it..
“Senator Conroy says anyone wanting uncensored access to the internet will have to opt out of the service.”
Ok.. now i’m lost yet again… so on one hand they want to protect us from ourselves so to speak, yet equally you have the chance to sign a waiver i guess to say “I want to see Paris Hiltons home video, and i want it now..”
Now i’m guessing.. it’s only a crazy wild guess but that may also be a gateway to allow pedophiles to say “..err yeah.. i want to look at Paris Hiltons goodies to.. honest..” and then before you know it, they are up to their acidic scummy tricks.
So what has changed overall? well a list of people is now being populated with “those that have porn access vs those whom don’t”..
“There are people who are going to make all sorts of statements about the impact on the [internet] speed,” he said.
Um… i don’t think speeds going to be top of the agenda, i think the idea of vocal anger around stupid filters in place to prevent the sky from caving in when in fact the sky isn’t caving in is going to rise to the top of the agenda.. but thats just my initial knee jerk thinking
“The internet hasn’t ground to a halt in the UK, it hasn’t ground to a halt in Scandinavian countries and it’s not grinding the internet to a halt in Europe.”
Correct but that’s pretty much because they figured out a way around it and most of the child pornography appparently comes from Europe anyway (Germany/Austria to be exact).. but hey.. if that floats his boat to get this stupid ruling passed, whom i to get in his way.. as after all.. its about protecting the kids right..
I don’t question the intent, i am glad a politician is bold enough to want to put a stop to something that clearly is the lowest of low. Yet, I question the methods behind such notion, as it’s essentially trying to boil the ocean with a box of matches..
Scott Out.
(Source Links)
http://russiatoday.ru/news/news/2530
http://www.abc.net.au/news/sto.....=australia
What happens if they block my site by mistake. Is then anyone responsible for my losses and has to compensate that. This could become expensive for the Goverment or ISPs.
People may be interested to read:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship
Perhaps this article should be titled “Australia joins Britain, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and many other countries in blocking parts of the Internet”. Those countries have laws much more closely resembling Australia’s, and have porn-filtering solutions in place that seem to work adequately.
I know I’ve posted several comments, but I should make it clear: I mainly have a problem with the tone of the article; I think more thought should be given to this sort of technological (partial) solution to a social problem — and I don’t support censorship on political or religious grounds. And I don’t think it should be under the control of the government.
It should also probably be opt-out. (Or opt-in — I don’t care really — it would be a useful service for _some_ people.)
Incidentally, the use of the term “clean feed” by the government, are they proposing the use of:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C....._system%29
Or is it a more generic use of the term?
(I’m also trying to leave politics out of this discussion, something which the original TechCrunch post could possibly benefit from.)
to Remy Wilders
Actually… I still think this is some kind of joke.
Nevertheless I wanna express my surprise… do you really believe that gothic sites can make anybody committ suicide? Apparently many people share this point of view. Don’t you think it’s crazy?
I don’t think ANY site is able to make ANY damage to child who has self-confidence and who is growing in loving and supporting environment. And if there is a problem - don’t blame web sites - blame parrents and look for REAL cause of the problem.
I understand… you are worried about your kids. Tell me… you never saw a porn when you were a kid? When I was a kid there was no internet so we had to find dirty magazines. Oh man, how exciting it was to see naked woman for the first time when I was 11. Every boy in my school saw it. Didn’t you, when you were about this age? Did it hurt you? It certainly did not hurt me - I live in beautiful relationship enjoing commitment and sex with loved woman - anything wrong with that?
You are asking for solution. Censorship is no solution. Talk to your kids. Make them feel loved and valuable and they will not evet think about suicide despite any gothic site. Answer their questions about sex and care about them. Show them with your wife what partnership and love mean - and any porn site will not be able to hurt them.
I am sorry about my english.
Censorship just makes forbidden stuff even more interesting - and kids are smart. They will always find their way to find what they are looking for.
Hey this will be good… for porn distributors in Australia :p
Censoring is never good, education is.
@ Jan
(I have another comment awaiting moderation, it says a bit more)
I agree with you, basically. But the porn magazines you looked at when you were a kid were regulated somewhat (depending on where you lived, I guess) — certainly in Australia they would have been. I _do_ (to disagree with you slightly) think that certain material really _can_ affect children negatively.
But things are actually different — there is much more communication going on, stuff can be distributed and hidden more easily. And the stuff probably is potentially much stranger than what you looked at. (I’m talking about distribution between children here.)
And I guess, ultimately, this sort of blocking can’t possibly stop that. So perhaps that’s why it shouldn’t be done. It can’t possibly stop everything bad — so perhaps it would give a false sense of security to the parents who are relying on it. There’s a bunch of stuff that I wouldn’t want my kids (who are theoretical at this point
) to see that isn’t illegal — I wouldn’t want the government to be involved in blocking legal (but questionable) stuff. (And I’m talking from a left-wing viewpoint here — I don’t care if my kids want to read balanced information about drugs or abortion; I’m mainly talking about violent imagery).
Setting your kids up with a good sense of what’s right and what’s wrong is a good idea; it’s essential, for many reasons. But what about the other kids at their school?
The internet does present some new problems (and new opportunities), we can’t just pretend they don’t exist, or that they’re just like the problems of the past.
Simon:
It’s not about head in the sand syndrome. It’s more to do with the approach and given there is a lot of issues around simply blacklisting an IP/DOMAIN as being “bad”. As who decides what is bad, when do they do it and if they get it wrong whom compensates.
I like my taxes low, and don’t feel like funding a class action against sheer stupidity based around the moral compass of someone whom is grandstanding over pornography…
More thought is required to a complex issue and knee jerk law making is simply not appropriate.
Scott Out.
Fabian Schonholz wrote:
> I would have expected better from Australia.
This is not merely a national policy, but a worlwide trend.
Here in Germany, where I live, from Janurary 1st, 2008 onwards, the data of all email traffic, Internet traffic, phone calls (merely the data, not the contents) will be stored nationwide (!) for six months, allegedly to prevent something (whatever this “something” may be), keep better track of “criminal activities”–we all know those arguments. And: From what I’ve read, this policy originates in the EU parliament.
I find this very frightening, and I wonder where this will lead us in the long run. (Please, note, that Germany has close ties to China as well, and if one takes a closer look, there are attempts to whitewash the Chinsese image (exhibitions on how nice & friendly China actually is; the interesting culture, etc.).
This fucking cunt is going down (Rudd).