19 March 2009

March in March - Against the Government Internet Filter

| johnboy
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The internet filter may appear to be stymied in the Senate but the Government is pushing on with its plans so the Digital Liberty Coalition is pushing back with a rally this Saturday at Parliament House.

Details on the March In March website:

From there:

    March in March is an upbeat event to give people an opportunity stand up, be heard, and hold the government accountable for their plans of forcing mandatory censorship on a very unwilling public.

    With a mix of live entertainment of bands and DJs, speakers from all sides of the political spectrum and other special guests, the day will be topped off with the annual Canberran Skyfire Festival, just for us … okay, maybe not.

    So whether it’s the social activism, the free gigs, or the big bangs in a V for Vendetta-esque climax in prime position at the front gates of Parliament, come along!

    This is YOUR opportunity to stand up, your TIME to say no to censorship, your chance TO BE HEARD!

The Herald Sun is one of many outlets reporting on the leak today (possibly not a coincidence) of a list of sites flagged to be banned. The banned sites include Wikipedia and YouTube. Try and imagine the net with whose two knocked out.

Wikileaks has published the list but appears to have collapsed under the interest. Anyone got a mirror?

UPDATED: Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Stephen Conroy has announced that the publication of the list is “grossly irresponsible” because it undermines his efforts to impose draconian, arbitrary, and opaque censorship. (OK he said “It undermines efforts to improve cyber–safety and create a safe online environment for children”)

Senator Conroy goes on to say the list linked to (which his authority is reportedly busily censoring access to) is not the real one.

But without letting us see the real one Stephen, or even the one you claim is not real, how ever shall we know?

Do you begin to see the problem with censoring this way? It breeds distrust of you no matter how noble your motives may be. (For all the I suspect this has more to do with regulating and protecting gambling revenue than protecting children, see… there we go again… without seeing the list who’s to say?)

FURTHER UPDATE: Oooh… there on the Senator’s media release is the phone number of his media adviser Tim Marshall: 0408 258 457. If you feel strongly why not let him know? A string of text messages should do.

For the sake of completeness: Here’s the denial from ACMA and their insistence that no-one talk about Fight Club.

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It’s the blind, stubbourn, single-mindedness of it that is astonishing me. Conroy has been given an avalanche of info from so many quarters as to why it won’t work, or shouldn’t ever happen, and he just ignores it all and forges on. I have NEVER seen anything like it.

When you have all the IT people, the internet people, the technical people saying it, and then conservatives, far-rightists, religionists, the kinds of people whom you’d think would support it, also slamming it, for heavan’s sake it’s time to listen!

What is going on?

Stephen Conroy has become the single most hated minister in the country and is responsible for more than a few people refusing to vote for his party ever again: I’m one.

I’ll also be there Saturday.

I was reading this yesterday which was interesting

http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/australia-issues-wikileaks-linking-fine-warning-585894

That’s exactly what I was thinking, jakez.

A friend of mine has made in my opinion, a very good analysis of ACMA’s response. Have a read and come to your own conclusions.

ACMA’s response is here. This has generally been interpreted as a denial that the Wikileaks list was a blacklist. However. Read it carefully. At NO POINT does ACMA deny that the sites listed were on the blacklist. Rather, it speaks at great length about how inappropriate it is to publish the list, and then states “The ACMA blacklist has at no stage been 2300 URLs in length and at August 2008 consisted of 1061 URLs. It is therefore completely inaccurate to say that the list of 2300 URLs constitutes an ACMA blacklist.” Again. Note the wording.

The next sentence reads “It also appears that many of the 2300 URLs provided on the list are no longer active”. I think anyone with any experience in press releases can translate. All the sites were blacklisted. As they became inactive, they were removed from the blacklist. Hence at no one time were these 2300 URL’s on the blacklist. Yet all the sites were in fact on the blacklist at one point.

I’m trying to work out how my playing online poker at Fulltiltpoker.com
(on the banned list!) is contributing to child p*rn!

Although there were a few wikipeadia pages on that list, so you are all risking a lot by clicking the “random article button”.

I heard conroy trying to trot out his chestnut “it’s all about preventing chyld pr.n” again today. What is scary is, a lot of idiots are still buying this crap.

And, since the ACMA’s list of URLs is a secret list, how would anyone know if they are posting a list of illegal URLs?

Because only dirty pedos would ever visit the websites that make it to the list, obviously! “If you do nothing wrong you have nothing to fear”, apparently…

Computers will be limited to Childrens Encarta and Bubble Bobble.

Pacman has been banned due to drug use.

is lolcat on the list? if not then this is a total non-issue.

From Conroy’s own official statement –

“I am aware of reports that a list of URLs has been placed on a web site. This is not the ACMA blacklist.”

“ACMA is investigating this matter and is considering a range of possible actions it may take including referral to the Australian Federal Police. Any Australian involved in making this content publicly available would be at serious risk of criminal prosecution.”

If this list, as stated by the senator, is not the ACMA list, then what law has been broken that would impose a “risk of criminal prosecution”?

Since when is it against the law to post a “list of URLs”?

And, since the ACMA’s list of URLs is a secret list, how would anyone know if they are posting a list of illegal URLs?

Skidbladnir said :

But we will never know why only page 22 of one particular Liveleak video was on the list, nor the abortion websites, nor the assisted suicide pages,, or the dentists’ websites, or 4chan. 🙁

PS: For anyone wondering, the ’38th most popular website in Australia according to Alexa” that the newspapers mention but refuce to link to is Redtube.
http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?cc=AU&ts_mode=country&lang=none

(How Alexa calculates I don’t know)

It guesses.

As did I. Great stuff.

I just helped add to Tim’s inbox- Thanks jb

Hmmm… I might spend the night on redtube, just in spite of Conroy of course…

my broken fingre is making me make typos. :o(

But we will never know why only page 22 of one particular Liveleak video was on the list, nor the abortion websites, nor the assisted suicide pages,, or the dentists’ websites, or 4chan. 🙁

PS: For anyone wondering, the ’38th most popular website in Australia according to Alexa” that the newspapers mention but refuce to link to is Redtube.
http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?cc=AU&ts_mode=country&lang=none

(How Alexa calculates I don’t know)

Pommy bastard5:22 pm 19 Mar 09

The banned sites include Wikipedia and YouTube. Try and imagine the net with whose two knocked out.

Can you imagine work with those two knocked out? I men I don’t mind going there, but spending a whole day there with no Wiki and YT, that would be purgatory, what the hell would I do?

Not the blacklist, according to one guy. It looked pretty legit to me – it appeared to have been reverse-engineered out of one of the downloadable filter products, but with some from another list mistakenly mixed in.

Americanberran5:11 pm 19 Mar 09

Censorship is the tool of the oppressor; felt this way, ever since the day…I got smart.

Deadmandrinking5:03 pm 19 Mar 09

Well, that sucks, Caf. I’m never voting Labor again. Not voting Liberal either.

Oh… I MUST be there!!!

The list on wikileaks was really quite strange, including all manner of things.
And apparently not the Blacklist.

johnboy said :

The left and the libertarian right would find they have a lot in common if they started talking.

Something I discovered a few years ago when I started talking with them. Of course Murray Rothbard dreamed of a grand coalition with the New Left in the 60’s and 70’s. It was somewhat successful however a conservative-libertarian fusion become more apparent with the rise of Reagan.

Personally I approach it on an issue by issue basis these days.

The Senate hasn’t had the opportunity to take any legally binding action on the filter yet. All it’s done is indicated (via the announcements of individual Senators) that it wouldn’t support legislation for such a filter – but since no legislation has been put up or disallowable instruments made, there’s been nothing for it to vote down. Yet.

Deadmandrinking4:47 pm 19 Mar 09

I’m not talking about the blacklist, caf, I’m talking about the government pushing ahead with the filters.

Could there be a court-case in this?

DMD: The ACMA blacklist and the laws surrounding it ($11,000 fines, 10 year prison sentences and all) have been on the books for years – it’s the imposition of a mandatory filter using that blacklist that is potentially on it’s way.

The left and the libertarian right would find they have a lot in common if they started talking.

Guy Rundle’s call to arms, essentially saying that the left and the libertarian right need to put aside their differences to fight this.

Deadmandrinking4:40 pm 19 Mar 09

I meant with pushing ahead regardless of the senate.

It sounds to me like they’re stamping over our very democratic system.

Which decision DMD?

A takedown notice has to be issued and then we can choose to fight (risking the fine) or just take it down.

Proceeding with developing the filter is an executive decision.

Implementing it on the other hand should require at least regulations which can be disallowed by the Senate.

ABC now has a story that Broadband and Communications Minister Stephen Conroy says the “Leaked blacklist irresponsible, innacurate”

Guess that means linking to the page can’t be bad, since it’s a fake list?

Deadmandrinking4:28 pm 19 Mar 09

I was just wondering too…what’s the exact legal status of the government’s decision?

Deadmandrinking4:25 pm 19 Mar 09

Good on you JB, don’t take sh-t from these clowns.

Now I’m going to do something ‘grossly irresponsible’ as per Stephen Conroy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moron_(psychology)

Until recently I was operating in a state of shock about this. As I’m sure you are aware it’s not like me to trust Government’s of any stripe however 2 years ago I never would have dreamed it could have gotten to this point. I posted what I’m going to do as part of an article on my blog, which I’d like to post here for people who want to know what they can do (I apologise if it doesn’t look pretty with the links).

If you haven’t already, it is time to join the fight. I’m starting by adding a permanent link to No Clean Feed (www.nocleanfeed.com) on my blog. Then I’m going to join EFA (http://www.efa.org.au/join/) and make a further donation as well (http://www.efa.org.au/support/donations/). I’m going to discuss this with my family and make sure they are aware of what is going on. Then I’m going to discuss it with all of my friends. Then I’m going to write an email to my representative. Then I’m going to figure out what else I can do.

I urge you all to do the same or as much of it as you can. Don’t sit back and be silent. We need your voice too.

I’ll definitely be at the rally this Saturday.

When the bible bashers and family values types in the Liberal Party are appalled, you know it’s bad.

I’m sure that ACMA have just been waiting for an excuse to close RA down. 🙂

I await my takedown notice.

Well, it is on their list, so technically yes. Whirlpool got done the other day.

Only one way to find out.

Conroy is a f**ktard.

Also, I wonder if linking to the blacklist will incur an $11,000 a day fine from ACMA?

😉

I reckon I’ll go to this. It’s just stunning how the government is so hell-bent on this thing. And right on cue, the list of banned sites is only partly made up of porn-type sites. And I was right, euthanasia sites are on it… euthanasia is illegal for humans here, and so on it goes.

What on earth do we need to do to stop this evil? It’s blocked in the senate and yet they forge ahead regardless.

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