Looks Like Australia's Plan To Censor The Internet Is Dead… Again… For Now
from the so-much-for-that-plan dept
Australian politicians have been pushing a variety of schemes to censor the internet for years… and each time they waste millions of taxpayer dollars before they discover that the plan doesn’t work, at all. Yet… they keep trying. The most recent plan involved some “tests” where ISPs would be forced to block a secret blacklist of sites — which many ISPs pointed out was stupid and wouldn’t work. While some politicians are still insisting it’s necessary, it looks like there is no longer enough support in the Australian Senate to pass the law that would make such filtering mandatory. In other words, it’s yet another costly Australian censorship plan down the drain. Until the next one, of course.
Filed Under: australia, censorship
Comments on “Looks Like Australia's Plan To Censor The Internet Is Dead… Again… For Now”
Yay!
<yay>
Censorship bad!
Liberty Good!</yay>
(that concludes today’s lesson)
Re: Yay!
Genius.
Someone forgot to tell China that it doesn’t work.
Re: Re:
From what i’ve heard, doesn’t china not so much censor as monitor and beat people up after the fact?
At last, someone in the Senate has seen reason
As an Australian, I can only say how relieved I am that Nick Xenephon (independent) has finally seen through the Labor spin and outright deceit and decided to vote against this travesty.
I would have thought that the instigator of this stupid idea (Senator Conroy, I’m looking at you) would have realised early on how few people actually want any form of censorship from the amazingly poor take-up of the free PC-based filtering software made available by the previous government on the home-page of every ISP in the country (from memory around a 1-2% take-up).
Of course, some of the more vocal ‘child-protection’ lobbies will be disappointed – especially the ones that loudly proclaimed ‘If you are against the filter you must be a peodophile’, which now, in their eyes, must include the vast majority of the Australian public, and a simple majority of the Senate.
Re: At last, someone in the Senate has seen reason
The only reason the ALP brought this policy in was to try and appease Family First and hope they return the favour by voting with them on other matters. They could have gone a variety of ways – make homosexuality illegal, ban abortions, ban sex before marriage, or any other fruit-loop idea they support. They chose Internet censorship. Come next election and hopefully FF can piss off forever after haunting the senate since 2003 and we’ll never need to hear of this again.
And Alan(Comment 5) – Nick didn’t need to oppose it. For it to pass the ALP would have needed either the Liberals/Nationals to support it or have the support of the Greens(who have always opposed it), Nick, and Family First(who being a right-wing Christian nutcase would always support it). Nick could still vote for it(if it gets to the senate) and it still won’t come in.
Isn't that one of the secret political party preferences?
“especially the ones that loudly proclaimed ‘If you are against the filter you must be a peodophile’, which now, in their eyes, must include the vast majority of the Australian public, and a simple majority of the Senate.”
Isn’t it usually the individuals who spend much time and energy (not to mention taxpayer money) promoting these things usually the ones that are guilty themselves? Perhaps they are so guilty of their own actions that they feel the need to ‘protect the children’ that they haven’t already gotten to..
Okay, that’s probably wrong on so many levels…
Filtering
What a waste of time and money.
It would have been better spent offering local filtering (net nanny) type software for parents who feel the need for filtering.
At least the majority will still be able to enjoy private unfiltered bandwidth at normal speeds.
Lets hope this is the last we hear of this ridiculous idea.
Re: Filtering
The previous government did offer free filtering software to anyone who wanted it. It was available on every Australian ISP’s main page. As I noted before, the take-up was around 1-2% of users.
However, Senator Conroy has spun this to mean that, rather than people not wanting/being interested in a filtered feed, the installation and use of the software must have been too difficult for people, hence the idea of installing filters at the ISP level.
The fact that the 1-2% was the download figure rather than the usage figure was completely lost on him. But, just to make sure, the current government has removed all the free filters now so the only option is their ‘cleanfeed’ system.
transparent facade
Could it be – the real reason for censorship has nothing to do with child abuse ? – Say it isn’t so.
I would like just one of these jokers to speak up and admit the truth, but that wont happen – so they hide behind a transparent facade.
not for long
as long as we have democratically elected politicians, we will have fear mongering panderers pushing censorship to “save the children”.