Now you may be thinking by the picture above that I’m not in support of the Internet filtering scheme. Well I’m here to tell you that you’re entirely wrong. I went out to the streets of Tuggeranong the other day and asked the question “What do you have against the idea of an internet filter?” The response I received was overwhelming. There were many relevant responses, which included such things as censorship and thought control. All very good points, which I shall be getting to later in this article.
The one response that stood out to me was “I won’t be able to download songs from Limewire”.
Let me tell you something sport, Limewire can give you VIRUSES, and the sharing of copyrighted works is ILLEGAL.
What needs to be put into action when such places are blocked, is a system by which the user can download music, as much as they want. A place like what.cd . However, there should be a catch. There should be forced DRM where the user can only keep the song for a period of up to 2 months, and after this time, it is up to the users discretion whether they want to buy the song or not.
This is a completely fair system, however the record companies are too blind to see this. Perhaps the Australian government should pass a law in the senate that allows them to create such a website and only have it available to Australians.
Now for the fun part of the article, talking about censorship and thought control. If the blocking of websites is to happen, there should be complete transparency in what is blocked. The Australian government should create, and maintain a full list of websites that are blocked. If a website is blocked, and it is not on the list, I can guarantee that there would a public outcry and media attacks. The same would apply to a website that shouldn’t be blocked. This could include a website about abortion, euthanasia, or gay marriage.
Another point that came up when I asked the question about Internet censorship was slow speeds. This was relevant because compared to the rest of the world we already have slow Internet connections. It doesn’t make sense to slow it down any further. What the government needs to do before this filtering scheme exists is improve Internet speeds. Once this is done, and the filter is in place, the price of an Internet connection needs to dramatically come down, and download limits abolished.
If all of these things are done, it will lead to a healthier country with happier Internet users.
Open Government – now I’d like to see that!
Peter Styles
21/12/09
ED – Canberra has the highest internet home access in the country according to the lastest ABS stats at 82%, 7% above the next highest state.
Although not a Canberra centric issue Riot hasn’t shied away for the discussion with numerous posts and comments about internet censorship. The case for stopping the clean feed and for more info on internet filtering can be found at No Clean Feed.
Peter, are you aware that the filter will not block p2p sharing software such as limewire?
Just goes to show how much disinformation and FUD there is floating around this issue (from both sides).
There is some excellent (but slightly emotive) info on the issue here:
http://libertus.net/censor/ispfiltering-au-govplan.html
The one response that stood out to you is incorrect – of all the nasty things the filter will do, blocking limewire doenloads is not one of them.
Dear Mr Peter Styles,
Thank you for imposing your sanctified idea of how the music industry should be run- completely omitting the film industry -from what I can only assume is a ‘never actually worked in the music industry’ perspective and not factoring in the current process of producing music/media content.
But really, you’ve really outsmarted yourself here to expose that your single solution to the fact that any filter will slow an connection is to leave it to the very same government that already believes that slowing our already pricey, capped, slow internet connection for an Internet Filter is completely justified; to try and make it faster.
Since you’re so internet savvy you’ll be used to seeing this at every other forum you go to:
P A R A D O X I C A L F A I L
Standing in a large crowded room can give you viruses – oh wrong sort…
A couple of things, firstly P2P traffic is not illegal, and infact there are several bands who use services such as limewire and\or torrents to get their songs out and about in a very cheap (and legal) way. (source JJJ)
As for DRM (which is way off-topic to the filter itself), well DRM does nothing to slow the illegal music trade. All that it does is make people part with good money for a song, where they can’t listen to that song from any device they like, and yet had they illegally downloaded the song they would have been free to listen to the song whereever they like. It’s kinda like the “you wouldn’t steal a car” message they have on DVD’s which should really be updated to “but if you had illegally downloaded this movie you’d already be watching it already instead of copyright messages”
Peter, you’re a twit.
I’m guessing either you’re 55 years old and have once attended a computing course and read a media release about how this would save children, or are maybe 17 years old, don’t understand the ACMA usage of the phrase ‘Restricted Content’, and haven’t read the Enix report on the proposed filter that was trialed.
You seem a bit confused. The filter has nothing to do with DRM or copyright, nor will it block P2P or stop anyone from getting viruses. In fact, by pushing people to use proxies and other workarounds it’s likely to expose more users to malicious software.
It’s quite simple, Peter. If I want to go to a site that will give my PC viruses then I should be able to make that decision without the Government telling me otherwise. If I want an internet filter, then I’ll install one of the many commercially available, transparent and personally configurable filters on the market.
The proposed mandatory filter is secretive, non-negotiable and mandatory. There’s no information about how a site is deemed sufficiently offensive to be blocked, and apparently the list WILL include sites about abortion and euthanasia and whatever else the Government (unaccountably) deems unsuitable.
Improve speed, install filter, legislate for unlimited downloads (!!??!!) AND lower the cost… :O
How do you suppose the Government (or anyone for that matter) is going to achieve that?!?
This is the same government, whos education department required all students in my friends 10 year olds class, to setup facebook and hotmail accounts (at school, unsupervised) ’so the teacher can stay in contact’. Im wondering how many parents know the schools are requiring their kids to use unmoderated/unfiltered internet sites, while those same parents act responsibly and monitor their childs usage when at home. I wont be naming the school, but its a primary school in the Tuggeranong area, and my friends child was in Yr 5 when they created the accounts.
Maybe the govt needs to clean up their own house, before worrying about what others are doing.
1. What’s to stop me downloading the same songs every 2 months?
2. Euthanasia is *illegal* in Australia. In fact, importing documents about end-of-life methods is illegal. Whether or not this should be the case is a different issue, but for the time being they are illegal. So why should this information be available over the internet?
Love it. You do understand this article IS about the public’s perception of the filter, right?
dvaey said :
I find that pretty disturbing. I wouldn’t be a happy parent if my kid was at that school.
Be interested to see how the proposed filter will inspect traffic passing through encrypted tunnels…
I see this issue as a deprivation of liberty. I really couldn’t care about the internet, it’s more the fact that authoritarian governments such as Rudd’s want to intrude in people’s lives as much as possible and to mollycoddle the public in some sort of nanny state way.
And from internet censorship it’s only a small step to censorship of other things.
People download music and movies because downloading it provides the best service.. easy, fast and free. The filter will not block such programs (which I also think are crap) though.Do you really believe that the Government will put in place any measures to improve the speed? How the hell do they expect to improve internet speeds when some people I know can’t even get anything but dial up Internet because there is no space for them at the exchange?
As for film/music piracy online, interesting I just did a research report into that.
dvaey said :
dvaey, parents don’t know about this because it is not ACT government policy. It should not be happening because there is already a system in place for this type of communication!
For the past 8 years (at least) the ACT gov education system has had an internal online learning environment to facilitate class and teacher communication (ie, internal web-based email, secure discussion forums etc, accessible only to the other students the teacher has added to the class).
This is a situation where I’d advise the parents contact the school for clarification…
PeterStyles said :
Looks more like an opinion piece to me.
“The Australian government should create, and maintain a full list of websites that are blocked.“
Clearly someone who knows very little about the proposed scheme.
If you had read, say, Conroy’s filtering announcement speech (http://www.itnews.com.au/News/162951,conroys-filtering-announcement-speech-in-full.aspx) you would’ve seen that ACMA will be in charge of compiling and maintaining the list of blacklisted websites. You would also have read that the blacklist would be maintained using a complaints from the public type of system. Now if you could piece together pieces of information, maybe you would realise that lobby groups would make a lot of complaints about content. Say goodbye to websites about euthanasia (which is illegal) and a flood of complaints from lobby groups about abortion and gay marriage. In addition, any information relating to anything on the RC list will be blocked, a point Skidbladnir raised earlier.
Finally, any filter put in place can be very easily bypassed. All it will take is a google search and two clicks of the mouse.
So, how will this make a “healthier country with happier Internet users“??? It will make us a censored country with slower, frustrated internet users.
Idiot.
importing documents about end-of-life methods is illegal
There is an important and distinct difference between “illegal” and “refused classification”.
Again, please see libertus.net: http://libertus.net/censor/ispfiltering-au-govplan.html#RC
fnaah said :
Yes there is:
“The purpose of the amending Regulations is to prohibit absolutely the importation of devices that are designed or customized to be used by a person to commit suicide or to be used by a person to assist another to commit suicide.
The amending Regulations also prohibit absolutely the importation of documents which:
* promote the use of such devices; or
* counsel or incite a person to commit suicide using such devices; or
* instruct a person how to commit suicide using such devices.”
Check the customs regulations. Also the Suicide Related Material Offences Act.
For the record, I am against the filter, against censorship by politicians, against the slow-down of connections. But stop bringing euthanasia into it. It is illegal to possess/share/import/access material that relates to how to commit suicide in Australia.
Some excellent comments. Some trashy ones. Some comments that would have been legitimate, had there not been bad language. I think I will ignore those (with the exception of one that caught my eye).
First thing is first. The people I interviewed are not likely to be lawyers or doctors, and they probably don’t visit RiotACT.
Secondly, yes, I should have researched a little more. There, happy? Admission.
Time of writing the article = 5 minutes. I didn’t expect, or want it to be perfect. That’s why I posted it on a discussion site such as this, so I could listen to (some) valid opinions and solid facts.
Assuming that I’m an “idiot” or a “twit” because of one article doesn’t hold any ground at all. When you write that I will ignore your post, no matter how good the rest of the content is. For someone to judge me on a single article proves that they are infact the idiots and twits themselves. Perhaps, a more relevant comment would be “that was a stupid thing to write in the article”.
Now for a reply:
J Dawg said :
Slower?.. How could it possibly be slower? If you speed something up and slow it down, it will still be faster than what it is now.
*”that was a stupid thing to write in your comment J Dawg”.
Ummm. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I smell a Troll…………
Rawhide Kid No 2 said :
With respects to “ED”
PeterStyles said :
Two good reasons are given in the following article: http://www.itnews.com.au/News/162975,filter-pilot-did-not-test-high-speed-internet.aspx
(I should have quoted that in my original post, my mistake)
You wrote that: “What the government needs to do before this filtering scheme exists is improve Internet speeds.” However, this is just your suggestion, not a Government idea. Realistically, I can’t see the Government telling ISPs to speed up their internet connections just to make up for lost speed from the filter. They should, because that would be a good thing. However, there are a lot of things the Government *should* do.
I want to know exactly HOW an internet filter will make “healthier country with happier Internet users“. Well, Mr Styles???? Please quote appropriate sources in your answer.
(On a side note, I would much rather the Government allocate the funds for this stupid idea to the AFP cyber-crime division.)
Peter:
It was a choice between calling you a twit, comparing you to a clueless old man, and getting the reaction I wanted (you bit the bait, and bit hard) while entertaining an audience, or proving you a twit by paying exactly the same things as I have previously in other threads, I chose the more entertaining one.
If you wanted my opinion you could have just used the damn search feature.
Oh goody, a patronising teenager has written an ‘article’ without bothering to do any research and without even the most basic understanding of the issues involved.
If only an internet filter could remove swill like this.
“Some comments that would have been legitimate, had there not been bad language.”
Grow a spine. Lets hope you don’t get to say what a legitimate site is. Wouldn’t want you to take offence at what is, mild language. You might like to consider the rest of the “solid facts” presented by J Dawg and others, regardless of how they present. After all they have already been moderated/censored for your viewing comfort. Surely that makes them all legitimate comments.
You people have wayyy too much time on your hands.
I rather enjoyed your article Peter. I totally agree with the DRM idea you have.
PeterStyles said :
And the award for unintentional irony goes too …
PeterStyles said :
Says the man who’s spent more time than anyone else on this thread.
Talking of VPN’s I use one my self only for when I’m in a hotel or airport to make my wireless connection totally secure. Now this proposed filter and censorship will be totally by passed by this VPN and there isn’t a thing the government can do about it. As they wont block the VPN ports as its an essential part of business. This idea about filtering the internet is so stupid its hard to believe the same guy proposing it is allowed to be in charge of the national broadband roll out. I’ll be happy to put money towards full page adds in newspapers explaining to people exactly how they can easily circumvent this filter in the interests of a free open democracy.
J Dawg said :
Jim Jones said :
Well, I did say I spent about 5 minutes on the article. Think about that.
Okay, I’m going to pick a hole in the only internet-filter related suggestion you seem to have made; viz, that the government should publish its filter list.
THIS IS AN OPT-OUT SYSTEM. Creating a public list of what is to be filtered, and then letting people opt out of filtering, creates a directory of offensive and illegal material, which would be decidedly contrary to their intended purposes (insofar as they have a clear intention – “think of the children” is all well and good, but protecting children from child porn – the most commonly given reason that I hae heard from politicians – should be a job for parents at one end, and the police at the other. Preventing children from *seeing* kiddie porn doesn’t protect the children who are actually in danger).
The trouble is, everyone’s internet speed will be slowed by ISP-level filtering, whether they want it or not, whether they have children or not, and it won’t stop those who want to access child pornography since most of that is distributed through encrypted and/or P2P channels, which won’t be filtered anyway (police source).
To sum up: it will be expensive, create inconvenience, potentially lead to harassment or suspicion of those who wish to opt out, and STILL WON’T WORK.
So you talked to a couple people in Tuggeranong? Good for you. You *are* an idiot, because your “research” didn’t include any research. What you’re seeing here? A much better indication of public opinion, and that opinion is that you are an idiot. Oh, and that internet filtering is a bad idea.
harvyk1 said :
As for this.
1. I did not say anywhere that p2p traffic was illegal. I said that the sharing of copyrighted works was illegal.
2. What I was proposing were DRM restrictions on free files, that the user could download and keep for somewhere up to 2 months.
3. I do not see how that’s off topic when they could plan to implement a three strike policy.
Just to keep other nitpickers happy: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/11/10/2738733.htm
4. This isn’t aimed at you, but I fail at seeing how illegally downloading something is like stealing a car… the original car would still be there.
PeterSyles you appear to be quiet young probably still a teenager and it would be worth your time to familiarize your self with some of the events of the 20th century.
“To be fair, I don’t think that they can block most websites about euthanasia and abortion.”
You see this is the problem its been shown through out history that censorship starts out small and Innocent but can grow into a monster and the people need to nip this in the bud as soon as possible. And I would have hoped that this would have been a fundamental lesson taught at school.
as long as the new filter stops PeterStyles from posting. NEXT!
PeterStyles said :
So, lending a book to a friend is illegal then?
PeterStyles said :
Oh dear. Let’s look at this:
First, there was “smut” before the internet. As I said previously, the filter is easily bypassed. So now those in search of “smut” will revert to pre-internet “smut” or spend an extra 30 seconds to get their internet “smut”-fix.
Secondly, quoting the UN Bill of Rights?? Seriously?? Does this UN document override federal or territory laws? Have you checked? Is there any legally binding treaty that Australia has signed which gives you internet protection under the UN Bill of Rights??
Besides, if you are arguing that we should be allowed to look at whatever expressions of opinion we want to on the internet, wouldn’t you be against an internet filter, as it would limit opinions and information we are allowed to view??
I said it before and I’ll say it again: you, sir, are an idiot.
J Dawg said :
+1
Who even still uses limewire, thats a rather old p2p app there. Pretty shallow pretence at journalism before you proceeded to bash what you don’t understand and preach falsehoods.
It’s almost not worth repeating that the filter won’t block p2p anyway, but can I point out that timeshifting has always been illegal in australia, and if you or anyone else has ever recorded a tv show on a vcr machine for example, then you have broken the same law anyone downloading copyrighted content using limewire or any other p2p app has.
Please, anyone who has never recorded something off tv, watched something a friend recorded etc.. please cast the first stone. I’ll put my hand up right away, ive broken copyright law in my life before, please come arrest me, ill be waiting, arms outstrectched to be led away to my surely life sentence in a maximum security facility.
Smut – A colloquial term for pornography or obscenity.
I’m pretty sure you may be delusional. Much like most of the supporters of the the filter. If only we could filter fantasy from reality in our politicians. Now that’s a filter Id vote for.
“Healthier: The country isn’t exposed to smut.”
Exposed too, you must be kidding. I’m not sure who you think Australians are, but my experience tells me that we are the smut and proud of it. I think from a world perspective you might have the lock on the wrong side of the door.
A Noisy Noise Annoys An Oyster said :
+2
Krelp said :
Stylesy, have you registered under another name? Perhaps to promote some kind of DRM thingy you have sitting on your little hard drive?
Dear PeterStyles,
Before wasting our time again, could you please at least try to write an article which has a focus? You jump from point to point like a caffeine-addicted teenager. Pick one point and stick to it.
In your five-minutes-to-write article you jump from “internet filtering” to “DRM” to Internet speeds.
Here are some facts about the proposed Internet Filtering: first, there are two parts – the mandatory block list based on a secret black list, and an opt-out filter based on some commercial filtering software. For the black list, the Government has stated that it only blocks sites dealing in illegal content. They have also stated that they wish to expand the scope of the secret blacklist at a later date. Steven Fielding has some interesting ideas about what type of material should be illegal – you should go read up about his opinons before you go supporting a Government mandated Internet Filtering system.
Got that? It’s all on the department’s web site. No, I’m not linking here since I want you to actually develop some research skills. We can work on the writing skills later.
Here’s a talking point about Government censorship: a satire site taking the piss out of Sen. Conroy was pulled off the ‘net with 3 hours notice. The regular process for the domain name registrar is 30 days.
Here’s a talking point about smut: Ask Google about the skit “The Internet Is For Porn”. Why are the Dads of Australia so keen to get high speed broadband? It’s probably so they can stream more “Hi 5″ videos. For the kids, of course. We don’t have a collective crush on Charli, oh no sirree. Bloody Gilchrist. But I digress, and here’s me accusing you of being a caffeine-addicted teenager…
Your DRM idea is broken by design, mostly because it involves DRM. Two of the classic DRM failures I can bring to mind are the Microsoft Music Store, which closed down and thus denied their customers access to the music they’d already purchased, or the recent failure in Microsoft Office which caused people who’d used the DRM features of Microsoft Office to be locked out of their own documents. If Microsoft can’t get it right, who can? Apple is shifting their entire store across to non-DRM versions as quickly as they can, because amongst other reasons people want to be able to use the music they purchase from the iTMS on their non-Apple MP3 players.
I’m not sure why you bring up Internet speeds in this discussion – the way to solve the problem of filters slowing down your Internet connection is not to get a faster Internet connection, it’s to get rid of the filtering software.
So please, pick one idea and write some more about it. I’d really like to hear your opinion about the Government’s plans to keep the blacklist secret, and to keep secret what type of content they expect to put on that blacklist. I’d also like to hear how you expect people to detect that sites on euthanasia or sexual health advice to teenagers are blocked by the secret blacklist as opposed to simply not existing.
I’ve used the Internet since before the first web browser was invented, and I’ve never accidentally stumbled upon objectionable content. Though I have seen the goaste.cx site and been told about the two girls, one cup site – but I’d hardly call being dared to open a web page, “stumbling upon it accidentally.”
For what it’s worth, this response took me 7 minutes.
Seriously, mass-scale internet filtering isn’t going to accomplish anything. The naughty people will still send each other their naughty bits and bytes. Time and money would be so much better spent actually hunting down the generators of the stuff.
My big issue with this proposed internet filter is that at any time the individuals who control the black list can apply their views of how society works on the entire population at a whim. Don’t like gays? No problem, we’ll just filter that. Don’t like what China is saying about the Australian government? No problem, we’ll just filter that. Don’t like what the blogsphere is saying about our latest policies? No problem, we’ll just filter that.
You see? This filter gives the government a tool to control the information we see. Once in place there is no removing it and there is no legislation protecting citizens with regards to accessing any content on the internet what so ever. Three people will determine what you can see – the Prime Minister, the Minister for Communications, and whatever public servant is administering the black list.
Meanwhile the kiddy porn merchants will just encrypt their pictures and send them to each other – oh wait, they are probably doing that already.
By the way, there was an attempt at a study in Canada to compare men who looked at porn against men who didn’t: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/relationships/6709646/All-men-watch-porn-scientists-find.html
- apparently they couldn’t find any men who didn’t. So, it appears that even peterstyles looks at porn – you dirty boy.
shauno said :
Trust me, the average teenager is no where near as ill-informed as the author of this piece.
Anyone with any clue about the net knows this will not work.
What this article demonstrates (albeit with a limited sample) is that the average schmuck out there knows nothing about it and would like the Government to keep us safe from the dangers of the evil intarwebs.
One argument I’ve heard already is to protect our children from stumbling upon illegal material – because we’re too lazy to be parents?
Let’s just hope that people are educated about this and quickly.
Muttsybignuts said :
What?.. no. At this current point in time I’m as surprised as you are that someone actually likes this article.
PeterStyles said :
.. perhaps there was a hint of sarcasm in the original post though.
+1 Grail for an informed response to an uninformed ramble.