The Australian government is trying to censor the internet. They have a blacklist of over 1300 sites — to be expanded to 10,000 — to which it is illegal to link, with violations costing you as much as $11,000 a day.
This doesn’t work, except as part of a package of tools for oppressing citizens. I did not have the impression that that was a road Australians wanted to travel upon.
It’s all nothing more than blowing smoke. Nothing will come of it (I hope)
In case your blog gets censored, PZ, I am writing here now… if I don’t write here after the ban, then… you can deduce from that what you will.
Is Pharyngula on the do-not-link list yet? By mocking the Australian government’s unenforceable plan to bottle up the Internet, you may be putting yourself at risk, PZ!
I think maybe I’ll send them a link to Halfway There. My latest incendiary postings could get their panties in a bind and get my blog on the banned list — dramatically increasing my traffic. Thanks, Oz! And keep up the good work, little man behind the curtain!
A law like this would be reason enough for me to vote against the incumbent government. I wonder what percentage of the Australian electorate see it that way.
Yeah, it’s all going to fall in a big, fat, messy heap of FAIL very soon; they’re getting crucified in the press here, and will suffer a similar backlash in the polls come election time if they keep going with it.
It is hilarious though! The Australian Communications and Media Athority ( http://www.acma.gov.au ) asked the website http://www.whirlpool.net.au to remove a link to a site that they decided was banned, and was on the block list. Stories were written about the take down notice, that feature the exact same link that ACMA asked Whirlpool to remove! You can read a story here that features the link to the website that has been banned (warning graphic content is featured in links within the following article):
http://www.crikey.com.au/Politics/20090123-So-Conroys-internet-filter-wont-block-political-speech-eh-.html
Now, the banned website is NOT child pornography, it is an anti-abortion webpage. The images on the website are confronting, but to me it is simply FREE SPEECH for this website to exist, even if I happen to disagree with the arguments at that website.
So, it would be illegal for an Australian writer to link to wikileaks.org. But could s/he legally write “visit wikileaks.org”? That’s not a hyperlink. Or how about “there’s lots of interesting information at wikileaks, which is in the .org top-level domain”? Or just “such and such can be found at wikileaks”?
PZ,
can you close the “debate creationists” thread already lol,we are up to 1600+ comments there.
And we noted on the “fertilized egg” thread that the name spoofing security hole is still there.
As to this internet thing,as John Wilkins has pointed out already on his blog,and (unsurprisingly) not many of our media outlets have reported,this blacklist does not include anything PTP,so what it will do is have the pedophiles laugh and the average internet user despair when the IP address check will slow down their speed by up to 86%.
That added to the fact that in the case of Internet speeds and prices Australia is already on a level with,say,Angola.
Considering the chaplains in schools programme, the substantial government funds for religious schools, an overtly religious Prime Minister, prays being said in parliament, and a ban on atheist advertising on buses, really what’s to be shocked about. Australia’s wake up call needs to be no less profound and intense as a number of US Louisiana or Texas.
What if you link to someone that links to someone. Is that a fine of $5,500? What if you link to someone that links to someone that links to ….
sorry for poor english me tired.
It is only our papist prime minister (kevin rudd), and his alterboy – Conroy that want this (though the religious nutter Fielding is also keen). When ratzinger came over here he debased our nation by grovelling to the man. I didn’t actually see him drop to his knees and beg to kiss his ring, but I steered clear of all the noxious tv coverage.
The letter the conroy idiot sent me kept babbling on about “save the wee bairns”. Fuckwit. It looks like this will get canned, but it is not certain. I sent him a custom letter insulting him and I got the same form letter reply that my son got.
There are many very shady things going on in this country (and I actually voted for these pricks). With some luck, Rudd will be revealed in some illegal, patronising oppression done for our own good and the virtuous and vitriolic Julia Gillard will get the top job.
Our govt is a mixed bag. I even like many of the policies of Rudd’s – especially the response to the economic crisis. Its when he trots out his piety that I just want to vomit.
He actually went on radio and declared that there must be a god because everything is so purrfect for humans on earth – and then even smugly declared that he had proven god exists. The “things don’t fall up” argument from idiocy. And in public – *embarrassing*. But he is good with the kids ;) lol
Rudd also made a VERY dangerous move. For the first time in our history he sent an ambassador to the vatican (at a cost of $12m per year).
Hopefully it will fall down in a heap. There are a lot of people fighting this bullshit, and the more tech-savvy advisers have been repeatedly pointing out that it’s a waste of time, money and resources.
I gather it’s being driven by the religious fuckwits. I personally am appalled that we have a Prime Minister with links to fundegelical groups like Hillsong.
A number of imbeciles have been proposing such a thing for over 5 years now. I guess they decided that if China can do it, so can they. Besides, one of the world’s biggest and most intrusive governments needs to grow even more to compensate for the current dearth of jobs. I can just imagine: 100% employment with the government employing 85% of the population. The economy will be based entirely on taxes on the public servants’ wages and of course, building houses. Hmm. Yeah, that sounds like a fantastic way to balance the budget and foreign trade figures.
What a waste of resources – all that power wasted in a pathetic attempt to screen the internet. Oh well; I guess it’s the government vs. the Russian mob. I deplore violence and criminal activity, but I’m betting my money that the mob wins. It should be amusing to see how things play out; at the moment, government departments still accept personal information over unsecured web channels so it’s safe to assume that some departments don’t have access to people with so much as a modicum of computer security competence. I haven’t heard anything about any lawsuits being filed for improper handling of such information though – perhaps any such whiners are also censored as they are in the good old PRC.
Time to drag out the old Tom Lehrer recordings. Everyone sing along: SMUT! I love smut and nothing but!
Illegal to put up a hyperlink to a site? Hahaha. How about doing something sensible instead: don’t post the information on the internet. It must be too hard for certified card-carrying dummies.
Protest site: http://nocleanfeed.com/
Hmmm… If you can’t link to those thousands and thousands of sites, how do you find out which ones you can’t link to since you can’t search for a list?
Maybe we should all reproduce the list of the banned sites, to inform people what sites they can’t link to :P
By way of atonement for my crappy English, a token from our Prime Minister
http://www.themonthly.com.au/tm/node/300
1) Australia’s P.M. is no longer Catholic, he converted to Anglicanism.
2) Recently the government has struggled to get ANYTHING through the Senate, I doubt this will get through because the Greens won’t vote for it.
3) The internet censorship scheme is based on the same standards applied to film classification, which unlike the U.S., in Australia is performed by public servants in a Government authority (in the U.S. films are classified by film industry through an industry body)
4) In order for ACMA to have a website link taken down, they must provide the full link to the website, which thus publishes it for all to see!
5) The Australian government won’t lose an election over this issue, like the U.S. the economy is the #1,2 and 3 issue in people’s minds at the moment.
This will definitely not get through because the Greens are firmly opposed to it. Here’s a post by Greens senator Scott Ludlam about it: Could the clean feed bypass parliament?
OK, now that I’ve recovered from passing out due to lack of oxygen from laughing too much (and falling off the chair didn’t help), let’s analyze the situation.
The government wants to protect … uh … who? Let’s see … wants to protect pimply teens from seeing smut; internet smut: evil and illegal. Smut in news stands: legal. Humping anything that moves and spreading veneral disease: legal. Breeding idiots like flies: legal.
Who else is in need of protection? I know! Kiddies! Victims of child pornography – everyone knows that if you remove the kiddie smut all those vicious kiddie rapists will suddenly turn into angels and leave the kids alone.
Did anyone do a cost vs benefit analysis? Did anyone even come up with a scheme to test that this ridiculous plan would work? I doubt it. If anything, the ignorant con artists who came up with the scheme will be inventing numbers and claiming that their scam was a success and that they deserve mountains of the tax payers’ money.
Really, what’s this law meant to accomplish other that to shout to the world: “Look at what morons we are!”
First they come for the guns, then they take the internet.
Well everyone knows that the suppression of ideas is the perfect way to prevent negative effects to society.. oh that’s right.. IT ISN’T! I never thought Australia would sink this low, I always thought that Australia was a wild and open place. Shame on you, blokes, didn’t think you would try something straight out of the Chinese handbook.
The Monthly “Faith in Politics” piece Rudd wrote I read before the elections, but the choice was him or Howard. Some choice.
This was an article I read following it, way back, and may give some idea of how bad things are in some sectors of Australia’s management (pre-rudd). The old “get out of jail free” thing. “The Tall Man” is still free and I believe still in the police force. http://www.themonthly.com.au/tm/node/185
Kevin doesn’t listen to me anymore (sob):
I guess he didn’t like the previous email I sent him asking why he wouldn’t drop his religion. The one he rejected was actually praising him for something good he had done. such is life.
Isn’t it extraordinary? First of all, it won’t work. I mean if they can’t even censor child porn effectively what hope have they with censoring their own personal critics?
Secondly, of course, it merely draws attention to what it hopes to close down. I followed the wikileaks link to the “banned in Denmark” list, and hovered over the names. I thought “I wonder if…” and considered, for a brief moment, looking at the stuff I was being told not to – and then clicked “x” with a sense of alarm and revulsion.
I want the internet to be censored. I do not expect that sites which exploit innocent people should be available, and moreover I would like to think that certain people who do access certain sites should be caught.
But I want these sites to be quietly blocked (I think this is what happens in the UK), and the process carried out by people who know what is wrong, and can separate it from stuff that is merely controversial.
Once this process slips over to government agencies, it becomes ridiculous, and, in a sense, undermines the fight against the sites we all believe should be shut down.
And of course, on a practical level, it will entirely fail.
Wait a minute. How can anyone know which links it’s illegal to use if they don’t publish a public list of illegal links? WTF?
Well, I can confirm that the first link on the “blacklist” still works. Just a moment, there’s somebody knocking on the door…
chezjake @25
and therein lies one of the many problems.
Its like that monty python, spiny norman skit where someone violates the “unwritten law” as mandated by the pirhana brothers.
someone in government needs to have their head nailed to the floor!!!
I though Clean Feed was first proposed under Howard? so Rudd cannot be blamed for introducing it, only for not killing it dead. Also if killing it wasn’t in Labor’s manifesto you can hardly complain if they don’t. Look on the bright side, it won’t work.
Word. Absolutely. Word.
Ten out of ten for keeping us informed, but I committed the error of looking at that website without flashblock and adblock.
For a “news” website it’s appalling–flashing gifs, flash animations, all completely and utterly irrelevant to the news and all making it much more difficult to process the information which is the ostensible purpose of having a news website in the first place.
Web users should not have to go out of our way to add extras to our browsers, just to be able to read items on the web.
I don’t want the internet to be censored. All it takes is a few religious zealots in the wrong place, and suddenly scienceblogs is blacklisted, for example.
It would likely return as quickly as it came, but it would be an annoyance, and it would not stay at one incident.
Who is going to decide whether something is acceptable for a website? Are they going to just ban child pornography, or are sites that show a nipple also at risk of getting ‘disappeared’?
Already there are sites that are critical of abortions on the blacklist. We might no agree with their viewpoints, but that’s no reason to blacklist them from the friggin internet.
Yeah, I’ve been hearing about stuff like this going down in Australia a lot. It’s an ongoing situation.
But the Australians have the right idea – who wants filth running down THEIR tubes?!? Because you’ve got to remember, the internet is not, in fact, a big truck. It is actually a series of tubes, and they must not have said tubes being clogged with INAPPROPRIATE MATERIAL *gasp*
Australia’s P.M. is no longer Catholic, he converted to Anglicanism.
What, did he need a divorce?
What the….
I guess I haven’t been paying close enough attention. I didn’t realize that the Australian government was insane. I can barely imagine the difficulty of enforcing such a scheme….
I’m surprised this is coming from Australia. Besides, don’t they know that banning sites only makes people want to visit them more?
I though Clean Feed was first proposed under Howard? so Rudd cannot be blamed for introducing it, only for not killing it dead. Also if killing it wasn’t in Labor’s manifesto you can hardly complain if they don’t. Look on the bright side, it won’t work.
Damn authoritarian statists.
Why the hell does anyone, anywhere, vote for any Labo(u)r Party?
Those who want it are so far in the minority that it REALLY shouldn’t count. It’s ever so unfortunate that they do.
If you wonder HOW this got in. The election ‘promise’ was for an OPT-IN web filter, which everyone is pretty comfortable with because it’s not mandatory, then after the election, it was ‘There’s an Opt-in and a Mandatory’, which is when shit started to hit the fan. It’s only gotten worse and worse.
Then, the ‘tests’… 2 of the top 3 ISPs in Australia wanted to run the test, the good Senator Conroy (who’s the instigator of all this rubbish) decided not to use them, and to use a handful of completely unknown ISPs to ‘test’ their filter, just so the slowdown effect won’t be as great. The way the government is portraying it is, ‘if you don’t want the filter, then you’re an active peadophile and want to rape children.’ whereas if you want it, you’re a ‘good citizen.’
As a good friend of mine says, ‘Australia, you’re too late for 1984, but better late than never, eh?’
Those who want it are so far in the minority that it REALLY shouldn’t count. It’s ever so unfortunate that they do.
If you wonder HOW this got in. The election ‘promise’ was for an OPT-IN web filter, which everyone is pretty comfortable with because it’s not mandatory, then after the election, it was ‘There’s an Opt-in and a Mandatory’, which is when shit started to hit the fan. It’s only gotten worse and worse.
Then, the ‘tests’… 2 of the top 3 ISPs in Australia wanted to run the test, the good Senator Conroy (who’s the instigator of all this rubbish) decided not to use them, and to use a handful of completely unknown ISPs to ‘test’ their filter, just so the slowdown effect won’t be as great. The way the government is portraying it is, ‘if you don’t want the filter, then you’re an active peadophile and want to rape children.’ whereas if you want it, you’re a ‘good citizen.’
As a good friend of mine says, ‘Australia, you’re too late for 1984, but better late than never, eh?’
Well, Western civilization was already teetering on the edge of the toilet seat… this represents the fall into the bowl… let’s keep an eye on the flush, shall we?
It’s hard to believe this could happen in Australia. If Pharyngula gets banned there we’ll loose our night shift. Then who’ll save us from the christards? Waah!
WTF ? I was planning on returning back to Oz next year. Where to now ?
What was the point of the Aussies fighting so hard in WW2 if they were going to let this happen?
Remember you utopian dellusionists that this is the product of an extreme leftest government.
Remember you utopian dellusionists that this is the product of an extreme leftest government.
Hot damn! I’m banned in Turkey and China, and Duncanville, Texas! Maybe if I’m banned in Australia, I can get banned in Boston, and then my success will be guaranteed!
Is Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub on the list? It sounds racy, at least — I mean, you can imagine bubbles in the bath, and what goes on under the bubbles . . .
Well, that does it. Another cherished myth of mine is crushed. Another “place I’ll move to when it all goes to shit” wiped off my list. What happened to the plucky nation of sensible, boot-strapping pioneers? Aren’t they supposed to be rugged and randy, with solid values, but with hearts that would melt once they got hammered on Fosters™ with a bus full of fabulous drag queens? I mean, really. We finally come up for air and begin to get our act together and now their politics are going down the dunny.
Oz has been going down this road for a while unfortunately. At least we seem to be safe over here on the other side of the Tasman.
We will be wishing you good luck with it failing miserably and never being actually rolled out like the last government ‘blocker’ scheme over there which just quietly died on the vine.
I never knew Australia was communist.
While I am not a fan of censorship, I went to try and find out more about this.
I did not see a link to the list of sites, but there was a similar listing of over 3000 sites banned in Denmark. These sites were all, according to the article, related to child pornography, and scrolling down the list it was quite evident you wouldn’t ever want to click on any of them- lots of names like adsite.imageserver.biz … the creepy kind of url that lets you know nothing good is going to come of it.
I think if a government other than my own wants to force this kind of nonsense, it’s up to the local people to disagree and do something about it. The Hue and Cry from overseas usually goes ignored. Locally, I’d say it’d be a wise option: “This ISP complies with the child safety link watchlist!” If it’s blocking access to kiddie porn, that sounds like a good option to have- that stuff is not protected under our free speech laws to begin with. Then we are trusting a government not to abuse a power, and that never seems to go well- as long as the list was an option, it might work out.
Another mention of a blacklist in Thailand says their list is full of things which apparently criticize their monarchy.
So, it would be cool if someone can come up with a link to the list Australia is using…
I’ve watched in dismay as Australia got increasingly funky with right-wing hijinks in lock-step with the US ever since that actor raygun’s performance.
On the bright side, they could snap out of it any minute now.
Lesser of two evils… by far. Rudd may be a bureaucratic dork, but the arseholes we have in previously fucked the country up pretty badly.
Saith AnthonyK March 18, 2009 9:28 AM #24
Eh? Is it the same list the Chinese block? How the f#ck would you know what’s on it?
Get real. if we’re going to block websites, let’s be absolutley clear and accountable. This is so much worse than the Australian effort.
Alextangent:
AnthonyK is notorious for yanking chains and writing facetiously poe-ish posts. I offer you a grain of salt.
As (a few) others have commented, it’s not the government as a whole that’s behind this. Its our single resident religious whackjob senator. Unfortunately due to the current make-up of the senate he holds a lot of power as a key swing vote. Labor, the Greens and the one independent (who is not above a bit of arm-twisting of his own on certain issues) make-up exactly half the senate so Labor needs to court Fielding to try to get an majority.
This can’t last however since the Greens and Family First are more or less natural enemies and the odds of keeping both of them on side are… slim. And the good news is the Greens are a larger voting block in the senate.
Damn. Been poed, eh? Ah well :-)
Well, how about we actually do something to fight this? For a start, there’s nothing stopping every Australian from sending a strongly-worded submission to the current Human Rights Consultation, arguing for the fundamental importance of free speech. My submission is here, since I decided to put it online myself (rather than wait for the committee to get around to it):
http://www.users.bigpond.com/russellblackford/Submission%20to%20human%20rights%20consultation.htm
You can easily find the part where I talk about censorship of the internet. You don’t need to write something so long, just a couple of pages will do. The committee is socially conservative and headed by a Jesuit priest, so you need to barrage it with pro-free-speech comments.
Turn up at the public meetings the committee is holding. When you go, insist on the importance of free speech. I’m going on 14 April to a meeting in Melbourne. When are you going?
Write letters to newspapers. Insist to journalists whom you might know that this is an important issue. Write to Rudd and Conroy.
My impression is that we’re all grumbling about this issue, but that very little is being done to fight back, perhaps out of a feeling that the alternative government is worse. I actually voted for Rudd, but with misgivings that couldn’t have been more correct. The Howard government was always prepared to scapegoat some unpopular group or other, like asylum seekers, and I didn’t approve of that. But has anyone noticed that Rudd has already done more to threaten fundamental political rights, such as freedom of speech, than Howard managed to do in a far greater time in office?
Wake up, people, the directions being taken by this government require determined opposition, and it won’t come from the usual suspects on the Left. Too much of what counts as the Left in Australia – Robert Manne, Clive Hamilton, etc. – actually consists of social conservatives who do not value individual liberty. They are lionised on the Left because (to their credit) they took some decent stances on issues like Aboriginal rights, but they do not fundamentally believe in freedom of speech or any of the other basic values that genuine liberals in the tradition of, say, John Stuart Mill stand for.
It’s time to act and organise.
You can and you should. This idea is so offensive to a free society Rudd should have killed it moments after taking office.
This comment is mean only for Pharyngula’s Australian, Danish, and Norwegian readers:
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Australian_Government_censorship_of_US_anti-abortion_site_abortiontv.com%2C_21_Jan_2009
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Norwegian_secret_internet_censorship_blacklist%2C_3518_domains%2C_18_Mar_2009
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Australia_secretly_censors_Wikileaks_press_release_and_Danish_Internet_censorship_list%2C_16_Mar_2009
And here’s a special bonus comment for anyone reading in the UK:
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Barclays_Bank_gags_Guardian_over_leaked_memos_detailing_offshore_tax_scam%2C_16_Mar_2009
I live in Australia and I must say I totally disagree with the policy, it’s pretty crap on many levels. The key sticking point seems to be on keeping children safe and focing ISPs to do it instead of parents, which I find appalling. However in a country where you are forced to vote (and get fined if you don’t) and where most people complain but do nothing, it is hardly suprising that something like this will go forward.
Also keep in mind that Australia has one of the worst and slowest internet systems in the so called “western” world. This will make it even more pathetic.
Can’t believe this dead horse is still being flogged. Every ISP, tech expert and internerd user in the country told them flat-out that it would not work worth a piece of poo. Problem is that a couple of whacko nutjob Family First senators hold the balance of power in parliament and the Ruddbot has already sold his soul to them in return for executive power.
It will fail.
I’m not overly worried – they don’t have the numbers to get it through both houses, and it will be pretty much impossible to implement without passing some kind of legislation. Senator Conroy is a backwards-minded wanker, and this money-wasting bullshit plan of his is doomed to fail, thank goodness.
Apparently the ACMA already has the power to fine people for linking to sites on the blacklist. Even if the mandatory filtering does not pass, Australia’s internet is already censored.
I’m not overly worried – they don’t have the numbers to get it through both houses, and it will be pretty much impossible to implement without passing some kind of legislation. Senator Conroy is a backwards-minded wanker, and this money-wasting bullshit plan of his is doomed to fail, thank goodness.
Sorry for the double-post – I got an error message telling me to resubmit! It’s not my fault! [/han solo]
It was Rudd policy to go after the “moral” vote, and this asinine piece of legislation was one of the proposals he made. Though what they said in the election was not what’s being proposed now – they said it would be an opt-out filter. Instead what they concealed is that everyone will be filtered, you just can opt-out of the really extreme filter.
This legislation will die and it will die hard. But the government can’t just turn around and say “no” after all this investment they have in it. They have to wait for the inevitable failure of the pilot trials that are being conducted. Otherwise they are just bowing down to public opinion, and that’s no way to run the government. I’m not overly concerned, but I’m still midly cautious.
saw the banned site. i didnt realise abortions were done so late in pregnancy, the fetuses were so big and developed. pretty shocking pictures.
To add my name to the chorus – we don’t want this (obviously), and it probably won’t pass, but yes – it’s horrible that it even got this far.
As far as why anyone would vote for Labor? Well, the impression I get from the US is that your Democrat and Republican parties actually represent relatively extreme parts of the spectrum. That isn’t the case here; Liberal is a little bit on one side, Labor a little on the other. They don’t differ by nearly as much. Howard had had the reigns for years; most Aussies apparently figured it was time for a change.
Rudd hasn’t been universally awful, but he is more overtly religious really than would make your average Aussie (let alone Aussie politician) comfortable. And the Family First party are pure vilest poison of the worst kind.
What can I say? There are nut jobs everywhere – even in a land down under.
I agree the compulsory censoring is a useless idea on a national scale. Even if they could get it through the senate and pass the law, people will find a way around it eventually if they really want to. I think it would be good enough, if they set up a list of suggested banned sites for people to input into their personal webnanny programs they have installed for their kids. Let the parents keep ultimate responsibility for their kids as it should be.
It all seems a bit ‘storm in a teacup’ish to me. It probably won’t pass and I’m sure Rudd knows this. You can call me cynical if you like, but I wonder what the real agenda here is. Is it just a sop to appease the ‘Family First’ group (and how the hell did they get a senate seat?) and distract them from interfering with the real governing of the country? Or is it something to distract all those reactive types in the community from something else more important, like the ‘children overboard’ fiasco?
What I don’t like is the way the Labour politicians seems to have taken up the techniques of the previous Liberal govt. Like they saw Howard getting away with bullying and steamrolling issues through government, so it must be all right for them to do it too. Surely they know that was a big part of why Aust voted Howard out last election and it’s depressing that Rudd seems to be trying to be continue Howard’s legacy.
Personally I vote Green/Democrat and gave all my first preferences to female independents if there’s enough options. I put both Labor and Liberal/National to to bottom under the ‘Free Marijuana’ candidate.
Katinkate – I’m all for feminism, but the likes of Pauline Hanson and our very own WA Carmen Lawrence would turn me off the idea of automatically assuming the female candidates are better.
And this particular life long teetotaller voted Free Marijuana first – it’s never made any sense to me that alcohol and tobacco are legal while other less dangerous recreational drugs are not. Not my cup of tea, but I don’t think the government should regulate what we want to put in our own bodies.
Newsflash:
THe ACMA blacklist (Aug 2008 version) just got posted by Wikileaks
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Australian_government_secret_ACMA_internet_censorship_blacklist%2C_6_Aug_2008
Hate to say we told you so, but, well…..
Unfortunately our Prim Minister who tried to pass him self off as a Harry Potter lookalike at the last election, has revealed himself to be an evil little troll more akin to Voldemorte than young Harry. As for the dis-Communications minister, If i voiced my opinion of that clueless little twerp ACMA would block scineceblogs
FYI
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2009/02/26/1235237810486.html
The list is just a wet dream. This thing will never pass; pursuing it would be political suicide.
And now wikileaks is unavailable. I’d say it’s been slashdotted except the story isn’t on Slashdot’s main page yet.
It goes against the fundemental nature of the internet to circumvent such obstacles.
Sites that show a nipple may be getting banned; sites that contain written fantasies or cartoon images involving no actual children, that depict sexual abuse of a character in a manifestly nonpornographic story by one of the villains, that publish survivors’ accounts of sexual abuse with any level of detail, or provide explicit factual information on teenage sexual behaviors, or information about sex aimed at teenagers, are considerably likelier to be.
They aren’t.
Not unless there are medical complications that threaten the mother’s life.
These people think that a woman’s life is disposable.
They almost never are done that late in the pregnancy. The dishonest vermin who run sites like this know that an accurate representation of typical abortions wouldn’t have the same emotional effect, so they use these photos.
In other words, You Have Been Trolled.
On the abortions thing … yeah, what Azkyroth just said.
thanks for that jasonk and Azkyroth.
for those of you who dont know yet. the shit has really hit the fucking fan. the blacklist (or a fake one) has been leaked.
Grrrr.
I’m angry. I can’t get to Wikileaks, not even through an anonymiser.
I had to go via Google cache to look at one article, and it took (seemingly) forever to load.
I’m very angry.
My Government has lost any goodwill it had accrued with me whilst in opposition to the Howard government.
I’m so very angry I almost used intemperate language, but common-sense dictates there’s a real possibility that my words might be used against me in the future, were I to express my true feelings.
I’ve been a lifelong labor voter until today. I will NEVER vote labor again. EVER.
Now I can’t access richarddawkins.net. Maybe its just me.
Can any of the non-Aussies please confirm that RD.net is down please? Im feeling a little paranoid right now lol
Clinteas,
are you unable get to rd.net either?
USA shift won’t be on for an hour or two methinks
Clinteas: I got an error message for richardawkins.net too, and I’m in America, so I think the site is down. I can usually access the site from my work computer, and the error message was not my work block message, it was an internal server error.
And yes, even though I spelled the site wrong in my message, I DID input it correctly.
@John Morales, that’s the message I got, too.
As Clinteas said, this move is engendering paranoia in me.
Now, when I fail to reach a site, I’m not sure if the site is down or if it’s blocked.
I note that Wikileaks just times out, it doesn’t generate any error messages, so perhaps the site is genuinely down.
Sigh.
Paranoia is setting in here (with me anyway). I guess it is “good” that non-aussies can’t access the site either.
Network timeout is the msg I get for wikileaks, so I guess that will be the indicator.
Can’t answer about Wikileaks availability. The address is blocked by my work block. By the time I get home from work (it’s 6:54 am here in my part of the USA, I’ll get home around 5pm) I’m sure someone else will have checked to see if they can get to it.
The wikileaks one has been reported/confirmed.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/03/18/aussie_firewall_wikileaks/
I’m in the US and I still can’t get wikileaks. I’m pretty sure it’s down because of traffic.
It might seem as if Australia is being taken over by a Taliban. Perhaps an exaggeration, but this is the direction it is going towards.
Wikileaks is back up now.
I wrote @83
On reflection I grudgingly confess to making the above statement from a position of paranoid passion.
Political parties tend to be fluid – one day stating one position and potentially turning 180 degrees the next day. Leadership changes, policies change and community sentiment can also force governments to reassess.
Whilst suppression of freedom of speech that does not advocate violence (in this case, net censorship) is mandated by ANY Australian government (be it Federal, State or Local) I will oppose it openly, irrespective of fear of incarceration or state sanctioned discrimination or punishment.
“Damn authoritarian statists.
Why the hell does anyone, anywhere, vote for any Labo(u)r Party?’
Because in this case the principal alternative was a conservative party which was even keener on censorship and other repressive polices.
“Remember you utopian dellusionists that this is the product of an extreme leftest government.”
Can you cite any other examples of the extremist leftest policies of the current Australian government?
“This idea is so offensive to a free society Rudd should have killed it moments after taking office.”
Yes this is vastly more important than ratifying the Kyoto Protocol; attempting to end 200+ years of oppression of Aboriginal Australians and restoring union rights.
Australia is not about to become Taliban-era Afghanistan.
As others have previously alluded to, this is a cynical political manouevre by Big Kev. (I should probably mention hear that I briefly worked for him over a decade ago and that he’s my local MP. He’s actually a pretty decent guy.)
1. This is the same basic policy the Howard government had before the election. There is no real Australian equivalent of the American Religious Right in Australian politics and Krudd was determined not to see one develop. So he made the exact same promises to the small “Christian” parties as Howard did.
Then in the election, one member of one of those parties won a Senate seat. (It’s actually pretty easy to get into the Australian Senate.) Usually, have one Senator gets you pretty much nothing but the last election resulted in a hung senate where Labor needs the support of the minor parties to pass their legislation.
So they need to continue to pander to Family First for the moment.
They next election will probably be called within 12-18 months, Labor will likely pick up a bunch of Senate seats and this dumb legislation will then be allowed to die.
“Can you cite any other examples of the extremist leftest policies of the current Australian government?”
Sure. One mental defective goes nuts at Port Arthur and the whole of Australia has guns banned. Pretty bright for a country 90% “outback”, huh? Somehow, it doesn’t occur to anyone that self-defense is the duty of “self”, there being no one else capable of the task.
Oh, wait. You said, “current”. I’m sure they didn’t impose the various bans.
“Oh, wait. You said, “current”. I’m sure they didn’t impose the various bans.”
That wasn’t the present Australian government that was the previous conservative government, the one led by one Hohn howard the self-described most conservative leader we’ve ever known and close personal friend of one George W Bush.
And guns weren’t banned here.
A couple of other quick points:
1. Handguns have been generally banned here since the 1920s – as they have in Canada and Great Britain. In all three cases, the bans were introduced by conservative governments alarmed by the Russian Revolution.
2. The post-Port Arthur laws didn’t “ban guns” they banned semi-automatic weapons and weapons with larger magazines.
Private Australian citizens own 3 million firearms and 5% of the population has a gun license.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_gun_ownership
That’s some ban.
You might want to try getting your information from less blatantly partisan sources in future.
Jasonk [78]. One, they’re not unless it is a dire medical emergency; and it’s very rare. Those are more likely stillbirths.
Two, I’ve seen protesters carrying images of almost-full-term fetuses (or perhaps dead babies) prominently labelled “8 weeks.”
Three, a woman is officially two weeks pregnant at conception, because pregnancy is counted from the first day of the last menstrual period. Embryology starts at conception. The anti-abortion brigade fails to mention that little fact. So you have to look at images two weeks earlier to see the real state of development.
Here is a diagram of an 8-week fetus (just scroll down), and here’s its cute little face. That’s the 10th week of pregnancy, which is pushing the limit for doctors in Canada willing to do elective abortions without a good reason—if you can find a doctor who does abortions. Unfortunately that’s also about the time someone who’s not counting the days realizes she’s pregnant.
And here is a six-week embryo (scroll down more).
I know that the numbers are small, but I did notice that in this poll on Richard Dawkins .net, people with children are less than 1/4 as likely to say that abortions should be forbidden. I think that’s because they realize how big a job it is and how much it changes your life.