Once again to the guys in Australia...I'm sorry.

[Ack]

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/ ... 61,00.html

Yeesh. That's kinda disturbing to me. 10,000 websites? I wonder what number websites like Pirate Bay or Underground Gamer will be. If illegal sites go first you can bet you'll be losing access to torrents.

[Niode]

There's always proxies.

Somebody will find a fool proof countermeasure. They always do.

[Tercoil]

also knowing our australian government it probably wont happen... nothing ever actually happens in australia, unless america does it first. for some reason our government loves copying you guys and at the same time stating all the 'problems of america'
but i wonder ack, how did u stumble across this?

[Ack]

It was posted on a news site I read. I also like to sit back and read international newspapers whenever I have time. I started several years ago, first taking an interest in the BBC's International News section. And back in 2002 or so, when Junichiro Koizumi visited the United States and went to Graceland, I realized I knew nothing about Japan other than a very brief smattering of history, so I began reading their newspapers online.

Who said Americans don't pay attention to international politics?

[elvis]

Every single Aussie ISP is against this. It's just one right-wing extremist Christian zealot of a politician who's all for this, and everyone else is telling him it won't work TECHNOLOGICALLY, not to mention the whole moral/ethical/censorship issue behind it.

The big problem with it is that they are advertising it as an "opt out" system, which it isn't. You either get the "kiddie filter" (blocks anything not appropriate for "children", although it doesn't say what age they are aiming for), or the "adult filter" (blocks the really nasty stuff - but nobody's saying who judges what as "nasty"). There's no option to opt-out all together.

Initial tests say the filter will slow web traffic by 30-80%.

All the major ISPs have rallied together to explain to the moron pushing this that it won't work. For starters, most of the really bad stuff on the net isn't distributed via http or https. It's done by peer to peer, freenet, direct access VPNs, etc. Trying to block any of those is impossible, as they're all moving targets. Secondly, breaking past a web filter is trivial. Heck, I've got access to about a dozen servers in the states that I can easily route all my web traffic through without any problems. And that's not even considering the dozens of anonymiser proxies, TOR, and all the other stuff out there on the web that will get around this, and that every 10 year old kid knows about.

My ISP (iiNet) has announced last week that they will sign up for the trial of this filter. Why? The CEO of the company himself said he's going to do it to prove how crap the idea is, and that every time someone gets around the filter, the filter fails, or it affects bandwidth, he's going to publicise it loud and clear. I'm happy he's doing that, because the one major ISP we have here (Telstra) is a monopoly (think ATT before they split it up) and is semi-government, with plenty of it's high up managers in the pockets of the government and vice versa. If Telstra trialled this, they'd cock it up so bad it wouldn't be funny, and we'd be stuck with the stupid filter forever.

It's all a bit surreal at the moment. With the exception of a few stupid technophobic groups ("Australian Women Online" are one - claiming that the technical holes being put forward are just "close mindedness" and will easily be fixed) I don't know a single Aussie who is for this. So much for "by the people, for the people". It sounds like the extremist Christian minority wins again, at the expense of every Australian who uses the Internet for legitimate purposes. As someone who uses the Internet for business, I don't look forward to the day when my speeds are one fifth what they are now because some bible basher is afraid I might be looking at boobs.

[MaliceValentine]

Once again i hate my government....it's basically run by Christians, overweight parents, Closet homos and Racists!

[Droid party]

The government has been talking about this for a few years now(since the last government). I don't really see anything coming of it. Hell,this is the sort of shit we complain about China doing to thier people and now our government is wanting to do it. They wouldn't get away with it.Not while there is air in my lungs and pudding in my undies.

[Daniel Primed]

Has to be better than what I am getting here in Shanghai.