Yesterday I got a letter from my local member of parliament asking my thoughts on the scheme and whether or not I support it,
I was looking for things to mention in my response and wanted other opinions,
 

maybe if you gave some details on what the filter will filter out, etc. then you may get some responses

I think the filter is targeted at porn.
it's not meant to be about what will filtered, but more about the downsides of the implementation, eg will the filter be so poorly implemented that anyone can just bypass it so easily that it would not be worth the cost.

would such a filter impede speed to a noticeable degree?

would any teenager who is wanting to bypass the filter just be able use something like yourfreedom to completely ignore it?

likelihoods that the filter could be misused to obscure freedom of information/free speech.

those are the few points that come to mind, I want to hear peoples thoughts on the points above and any other thoughts people have on the scheme

A filter is completely missing the point.

Regular porn is not illegal, so there is absolutely no point in blocking it. Which leaves childporn and other illegal forms (bestiality in certain countries).

Childporn is illegal in the entire world, instead of blocking it they should be prosecuting the people hosting/creating it. Simply blocking such sites is like covering your eyes and pretending nothing bad is happening.

Which leaves over the types of things which are illegal in Australia, but are not illegal in the country where the site is hosted. Should those things be filtered? Personally I'm completely against any type of censorship, so I'll say no to any filter. China has been trying to censor the internet for years, but never really succeeded. Sure, people who don't care too much are being censored, but everyone who wants to go around any kind of block is succeeding.

I'd like to hear the reasoning of those who support the filter though, and what exactly do they want to filter? And who will be responsible for deciding what to filter? It's hard to make good statements against it if we don't know the exact plans, except for "any kind of censorship is bad".

Also the fact that some legitimate sights that dont have porn on them get blocked by accident, adn the fact that implementing a filter will slow down the net making it even worse than it is now. PC User did a full review on the whole idea of the filter a while back and they made some good points.

what issue i might go read that issue again?
@Menthix the filter is aimed at protecting minors( < 18 ) from viewing adult content,
can you imagine a 16 yr old not being able to watch porn at night, suicides would go through the roof

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Originally posted by Jarrod
@Menthix the filter is aimed at protecting minors( < 18 ) from viewing adult content

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Originally posted by Menthix

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Originally posted by Jarrod
@Menthix the filter is aimed at protecting minors( < 18 ) from viewing adult content

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And how will adults be allowed to view adult content?

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Originally posted by Th3rmal
sights

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Originally posted by vaccination

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Originally posted by Th3rmal
sights

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You just killed a kitten, I hope you're happy.

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From what I've read the compulsory filter is restricted to strong, illegal content. An 'adult' filter will be an optional additional filter under the same system.

I don't think the compulsory component of the system will ever actually be enacted.

This is a basic run down of what the filter will involve.

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   * The Government plans to impose mandatory Internet filtering at the Internet Service Provider (ISP) level. There are two lists, a 'child' safe list which filters both illegal content and hardcore pornography; a second which users can 'opt-out' to which only filters unwanted content.

    * Senator Stephen Conroy, the Government Senator responsible for this project has stated that they will also be looking into the possibility of filtering other content that may be illegal in Australia. Which would for example include: euthanasia, abortion, drug-use, etc.

    * Other political parties and members have made their intentions clear to include further content to be banned, such as overseas online gambling, and as suggested by Family First Senator Steve Fielding - hardcore pornography.
          o 'Conservative' Senator, Cory Bernadi has since rescinded his support for the Government's plan, voiced his concerns with mandatory Internet filtering, and has also elaborated no his frustations with the current filtering systems in use in Parliamentary offices. 1

    * Email, Peer to Peer, Instant messaging, newsgroups and any other custom application protocols are on the ACMA report as things that the Government is also planning to apply the ISP-Level filtering to.

    * Conroy has answered in the Senate at Question Time that the filtering system will block access to "unwanted content". He has avoided answering any questions that Senator Ludlam has directed at him.

    * The filtering trial has been scheduled to begin in April/May 2009, however there have been delays due to ACMA having to tighten security around the blacklist. iiNet had applied to be part of the trial but they later withdrew. iiNet's CEO Michael Malone said in a statement that "It became increasingly clear that the trial was not simply about restricting child pornography or other such illegal material, but a much wider range of issues including what the government simply describes as 'unwanted material' without an explanation of what that includes". The initial ISPs that will take part in the trial were announced on the 11th of February 2009 and they are Primus Telecommunications, Tech 2U, Webshield, OMNIconnect, Netforce and Highway 1. Optus was announced as a trial participant by the DBCDE on the 22nd April 2009 and will begin their trials on May 22nd 2009 on an opt-out basis for a selection of their DSL direct customers. Telstra and Exetel are conducting their own private trials of filtering technology.

    * Up to 10,000 websites will be on the blacklist of the ISP Level filtering trial scheduled for April/May 2009. It is unknown what is on this list of banned websites, and it is likely that they will not be released at any time in the future.
          o A list has been released on Wikileaks claiming to be the ACMA blacklist, however Conroy, ACMA and Tech2U have claimed this is not the actual ACMA list. Although Senator Conroy did confirm that a number of URLs on the list were present on the ACMA list and suggested that legal action would be taken against people passing on the list and AFP may become involved. The validity of the list cannot be confirmed as unbiased sources are not able to gain access to the real ACMA blacklist. 4

    * Senator Conroy has been repeatedly questioned on the proposed filtering system by several other Senators from various parties, however has each time failed to answer the actual question directed at him.

    * The extent of 'unwanted' websites is still unknown, however Senator Conroy now claims that the Government has always only wanted to block material that has been refused classification (RC) by the classification board. This is in stark contrast to the many statements he has made saying the Government intends to use the ACMA blacklist for the mandatory filtering tier which contains material that comes under a variety of classifications 5. The filtering trial will use the standard ACMA blacklist. It became known that the ACMA blacklist contains political content when a member of Whirlpool recently submitted a complaint relating to an anti-abortion website which contained pictures of unborn fetuses (however legal) to ACMA. ACMA confirmed that they were satisified that the images were something that would be classified as RC by the classification board and that the website had been added to the blacklist.
          o A link to the now banned website was posted on the Whirlpool forums, and subsequently the ACMA ordered a takedown notice to Bulletproof Networks (Whirlpool's webhost) threatening fines of $11,000 a day. This is also unusual in the circumstance that it is never happened before as well as the takedown notice being issued to the webhost instead of the party responsible for hosted website.

    * The ACMA list has already been leaked on the Wikileaks website.
          o This list contained a number of legal websites which also include a dentist, dog kennel, and a Queensland tour operator. Among other URLs on the list are numerous Youtube, wikipedia, fringe religous, legal straight and gay porn, and euthanasia websites.

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Originally posted by too long
maybe if you gave some details on what the filter will filter out, etc. then you may get some responses

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Originally posted by Discrate
P.S Remember, there is two filters, one for everyone (blocks out illegal sites such as child porn) and then theres a filter for families with kids, which is optional.

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Originally posted by Discrate
There are two lists,
1: a 'child' safe list which filters both illegal content and hardcore pornography
2: a second which users can 'opt-out' to which only filters unwanted content.

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Originally posted by Discrate
* Other political parties and members have made their intentions clear to include further content to be banned, such as overseas online gambling, and as suggested by Family First Senator Steve Fielding - hardcore pornography.
          o 'Conservative' Senator, Cory Bernadi has since rescinded his support for the Government's plan, voiced his concerns with mandatory Internet filtering, and has also elaborated no his frustations with the current filtering systems in use in Parliamentary offices. 1

    * Email, Peer to Peer, Instant messaging, newsgroups and any other custom application protocols are on the ACMA report as things that the Government is also planning to apply the ISP-Level filtering to.

    * Conroy has answered in the Senate at Question Time that the filtering system will block access to "unwanted content". He has avoided answering any questions that Senator Ludlam has directed at him.

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Originally posted by Discrate
It became known that the ACMA blacklist contains political content when a member of Whirlpool recently submitted a complaint relating to an anti-abortion website which contained pictures of unborn fetuses (however legal) to ACMA. ACMA confirmed that they were satisified that the images were something that would be classified as RC by the classification board and that the website had been added to the blacklist.

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Originally posted by Discrate
* Email, Peer to Peer, Instant messaging, newsgroups and any other custom application protocols are on the ACMA report as things that the Government is also planning to apply the ISP-Level filtering to.

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Originally posted by Discrate
   * The Government plans to impose mandatory Internet filtering at the Internet Service Provider (ISP) level. There are two lists, a 'child' safe list which filters both illegal content and hardcore pornography; a second which users can 'opt-out' to which only filters unwanted content.

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Originally posted by Th3rmal
wait so no more wlm? thats just too far if thats the case...

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Originally posted by Th3rmal
would both filters be applied to start with? or would it be like the mandatory is applied then you can ask to have the second applied as well?

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oh and theres like a 95% chance that if a filter is applied, legitimate sites will be blocked off as well. Similar to how some places like the McAfee site advisor thinks Plus! site is bad, when it isnt, (its just there because of ignorant uneducated people who dont know how to use a program or read terms and conditions or use common sense). And its not like you can just call up Kevin Rudd and go "Hey Kev how you goin? I was wondering if you could unblock this site cus its legit, thanks mate", once its blocked itll be hard to legitimately unblock.

Kids, filtering = bad.

This is ridiculous. Seems like several governments are pushing pretty hard to censor the Internet in one way or another atm.

We have had this discussion going on for months here in Germany, the government wants to force ISPs to block websites on a confidential list maintained by the BKA (equiv. to the FBI, I guess). Their knock-out argument is that censoring would be the only way for them to fight child porn on foreign servers and it has been proven a lie already. Some non-profit associations have documented how they sent letters notifying the web-hosts about those sites and most of them went down several hours later.

Looks to me like the Australian government wants to go a few steps further though..

Depending on the way they want to implement it, simply switching from your ISPs DNS to, say, OpenDNS might be the only thing people have to do to circumvent those blacklists. (at least that's how our government wants to do it, via DNS redirecting to a page with a stop sign =P)

Just for the record, it's obvious that the article quoted is attempting to portray it in a negative light and isn't balanced. The Australian constitution provides for the protection of the rights of citizens to freedom of political expression, opinion and information. If a filter restricts access to such information then it will be dealt with by the courts.

However, I personally don't support censoring non-political information either.

I want to make it known that my post with a list of things about the filter, is not mine. It is quoted off a website.

As volv said some of the information in it is not correct.

Porn will not be blocked, unless it is child porn. E-mail, wlm etc will not be blocked.

I posted that list so you can get a basic grasp of what the filter is about. There hasnt been much details yet on the filter. But this is the problem, the government have made public how the system will work, how do they determine what sites will be blocked.

Go to this site, http://nocleanfeed.com/learn.html for a bit more information.

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Like I said before, child porn shouldn't be blocked and act like nothing happened.

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filters are bad, end of story
Everyone should be able to decide what do they want to see/say.

edit: is there any point in filtering paedophile sites? if they found them, they'll probably catch the guys behind them anyway, i find it kinda silly "hey let's block the site and do nothing about it "

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"Who decides what material is "appropriate" for Australians to see?"

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Originally posted by Chrono
filters are bad, end of story
Everyone should be able to decide what do they want to see/say.

edit: is there any point in filtering paedophile sites? if they found them, they'll probably catch the guys behind them anyway, i find it kinda silly "hey let's block the site and do nothing about it "

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Originally posted by Chrono
filters are bad, end of story
Everyone should be able to decide what do they want to see/say.

edit: is there any point in filtering paedophile sites? if they found them, they'll probably catch the guys behind them anyway, i find it kinda silly "hey let's block the site and do nothing about it "

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"Who decides what material is "appropriate" for Australians to see?"

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That's the bigges problem in such a policy: there will be one or a couple of guys deciding what you can or cant see, they'll soon start making stupid decisions and everyone will complain but nothing will be done about it

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child porn should be blocked.






and vegetarians are going to be the end of animal cruelty.

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Originally posted by Discrate
Porn will not be blocked, unless it is child porn. E-mail, wlm etc will not be blocked.

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