“Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

I’m not feeling too well today so this will be a budget post. However a very important one. Something that’s been riding under the radar since the election.  Hopefully some of the other bloggers who read this will pass this further down the social daisychain better than the FPM site can.  Do take note.

Australians will be unable to opt-out of the government’s pending Internet content filtering scheme, and will instead be placed on a watered-down blacklist, experts say.

…

Internet Service Providers (ISPs) contacted by Computerworld say blanket content filtering will cripple Internet speeds because the technology is not up to scratch.

Online libertarians claim the blacklists could be expanded to censor material such as euthanasia, drugs and protest.

…

“Illegal is illegal and if there is infrastructure in place to block it, then it will be required to be blocked — end of story.”

…

“Once the public has allowed the system to be established, it is much easier to block other material,” Clapperton said.

Please do read the rest of the article at Computerworld.

I’d hate to pull the political bandwagon, but Rudd’s been smoking a bit too much of the Chinese pipe.

For many of us this would probably mean many sites we know well will be blacksited and unavailable to us given the current save-you-from-yourselves type society we live.  How many of the games you know have been banned from Australia?

If you feel you’re against this (and you should) – it’s one switch away from being at China’s censoring levels – contact your local Federal Representative in your area, as well as send a letter (yes an actual physical paper letter) to Stephen Conroy.  Why a paper letter? That’s because Timmy your e-mail basically doesn’t get read – they skim it (if at all) and then send you a pregenerated response.

It’s the proverbial Pandora’s box for Internet censorship. Where does it end?

UPDATE 19/Oct/2008

INTERNET users could be forced to subsidise the federal Government’s quest to censor the internet, with early estimates indicating the scheme could cost $60 million a year.  AustralianIT

When’s the last time you knew a Government project to stay on budget? How often does the Government admit defeat on a project instead of beating it to death to prove that it will work?

Of course you could always call the people opposing the government ignorant extremists.  From “Interview With Media Contact Tim Marshall For Senator the Hon Stephen Conroy.”

and you know there’s a few lobby groups in the sector who are pretty keen to put there extreme view out there without perhaps having too much interest in the facts.  Techwired Interview

One Response to “No opt-out of filtered Internet”

1. jort says:

   17 October, 2008 at 4:10 am

   http://www.crikey.com.au/Media-Arts-and-Sports/20081017-And-the-Wankley-Award-goes-to-Conroys-net-filtering-scheme.html#comments

   Reply