What a crock of shit.<p>As an Aussie, I am disgusted that this is seen as a viable solution for an advanced democracy. It riles me on all sorts of censorship levels, even before it pisses me off as a taxpayer that a system so readily circumvented will be the subject of public spending.<p>I honestly thought the 'trial' was going to be used to demonstrate what a pathetic and short-minded idea this was, so that it could be quietly swept under the carpet. Instead, I can only assume the trial was always intended to arrive at a foregone conclusion.<p>Extreme conservatives - who won't ever support the current Labor government - must be delighted. And there will be a whole swathe of middle-class, swing-voting families relieved that their children will be protected, until they discover their 12 year old surfing the net <i>around</i> the filter just to see what sites like donkeyporn.com and ruddisacommunist.org (sites I probably made up) are all about. At that point they'll be wondering why the government couldn't spend $125.8 million over four years on reducing the massive deficit or stimulating jobs.<p>Edit: The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away - the government has also communicated <i>today</i> that they plan to open discussion for an R Rating on video games - <a href="http://www.news.com.au/technology/australians-get-their-say-on-video-game-ratings/story-e6frfro0-1225810592521" rel="nofollow">http://www.news.com.au/technology/australians-get-their-say-...</a>
I doubt it's a timing coincidence.
I think this is a pretty good indication of where Australia is at - welcome to the nanny-nation. What really grates me about this is the supporters always seem to fall back on saying it protects children. I find this absurd - it amounts to "can't see the problem therefore it doesn't exist".
How is this different from China's rationalization of their filtering? Is there any objective difference?<p><i>the Government will not determine what is blacklisted on the internet in Australia, rather an independent body will determine what sites are rated as RC for refused classification.</i><p>This will turn into a convenient way to let lobbyists ("Block the hate speech!" "Block the anticompetitive corporations" and ultimately "Block those who would weaken our country") hide behind a separate entity, giving the politicians a screen to hide behind while continuing to support the overall concept.<p><i>will require all ISPs to block material which has been refused classification in other countries</i><p>Umm... who is in charge of classifying the content on the Internet? I know of no one doing so (let alone someone who can be trusted by all interested parties). I think this statement is 100% BS.
The full report for the Live Pilot is here: <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/24108352/ISP-Filtering-Live-Pilot-Report-High-Res" rel="nofollow">http://www.scribd.com/doc/24108352/ISP-Filtering-Live-Pilot-...</a><p>The report claims no degredation of speed, however it says that about 1 in 30 legitimate sites will be blocked.
It seems that nowadays you can get pretty much anything through by playing the "think of the children" card even if it won't do anything to protect them.<p>I'm not adverse to interventions that will keep children safer (although I think their vulnerability is overplayed) but it'd be nice to see useless proposals get shot down at least once in a while.
It's so ironic to move to Australia from Russia ... the former Soviet Union ... just to find myself eventually back to roughly about the same level of government regulation. Hopefully not worse than that.
Should I now set my goal to leave Australia for a better place ... but what could it be though? Any ideas?
This makes me quite happy to be moving to Estonia in February.<p>It's not just this, it's a pattern of behavior in general by the Australian government. It's not even a single action, I don't play games that often anymore and the lack of an R18+ classification has almost no effect on me, there are many data points in Australian political actions though which reflect a deeply troubling underlying truth, the government perceives it's citizens as children.<p>My reasons for leaving are many, but the two big ones; primarily the above, but secondarily that I can't help thinking in a large amount of cases with regards to aforementioned citizens, the government is not entirely wrong.<p>So long Australia, and thanks for all the fish.
I sure hope one day we will look back on the early age of the internet and even if the debate over illegal content, piracy and privacy and so on is still on going, we will at least have settled on one solid fact. Internet filtering doesn't work and people that want to access illegal content will get it anyways.<p>What a waste of money.
"Successful technology isn't necessarily successful policy. We're still yet to hear a sensible explanation of what this policy is for, who it will help and why it is worth spending so much taxpayer money on."[1]
-- Colin Jacobs, spokesman for the EFA<p>[1]: <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/internet-censorship-plan-gets-the-green-light-20091215-ktzc.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/internet-ce...</a>
For the sake of the kids, Rubbish!!! I feel my kids are safer in the USA than in Australia after the recent developments.<p>and you know, where they burn books...