Online Protests Begin To Rage Against RuddNet Censorship

By Darryl Mason

The Rudd government has released its report into internet filtering and (you may be shocked to read this) has reached the conclusion that it's a fine and practical idea.

Welcome to the RuddNet :

The Federal Government will introduce compulsory internet filtering to block overseas sites which contain criminal content, including child sex abuse and sexual violence.

And political content that will, or already is, categorised as "extremist".

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy announced the changes today following a controversial trial to filter the internet which was conducted earlier this year.

Senator Conroy says some internet content is simply not suitable in a civilised society.

"It is important that all Australians, particularly young children, are protected from this material," he said.

Legislation will be introduced into Parliament next year which will require all ISPs to block material which has been refused classification in other countries.

This would include sites containing child sex abuse, bestiality, sexual violence or detailed information about how to use drugs or commit crimes.

My head is churning with hundreds of titles of classic, brilliant, acclaimed movies that include scenes showing viewers how to use drugs and commit crimes.

And the obligatory declaration of non-censorship :

The Government maintains the filter is not designed to curtail freedom of speech.

It doesn't matter whether it was "designed" to curtain freedom of speech. The simple fact is it will do exactly that.

The ABC News website was one of the first news sites to run the story with comments open, with hundreds pouring in within the first hour the story going up. The reaction is 99% negative, and the outrage at such a draconian move towards mandatory internet censorship is spreading fast.

The Liberals and The Greens could seriously rock the popularity of the Rudd government by opposing internet filtering and fighting hard against this kind of censorship. We know The Greens will, but what about The Libs?

Or do the Coalition Catholics and religious donors demand Liberals back RuddNet?

This comment from Grover at ABC News is a good summary of the vast majority of furious opinions piling up in comments :

Limiting freedoms of citizens is outrageous.

In what world does Conroy think it is appropriate to decide what data we may and may not access?

He is bringing us level with China and it's censorship.

I am genuinely disgusted that they would actually degrade this county's broadband services, instead of improving them, which is what we (including myself) voted the Labor government into power to do. Under no circumstances will I vote for a party responsible for attacks on our freedoms, in the next election.

Any true criminal will go around any black list, it is extremely easy (I have a degree in Computer Science, but no education is required).

Any privacy concious individual will use encryption services, which can _not_ be decrypted by anyone inspecting their data packets.

In short, this will make little or no difference to criminals, but will limit the choices and freedoms of all average citizens of this country, and it open us all up to possible abuse by governments in the future.

Do not for one second attempt to imply that people opposed to this plan are paedophiles or terrorists.

Stephen Conroy has already deployed the 'Responsible Australians Vs Pedos & Terrorists' argument to sugar coat this digital censorship program. They better come up with something stronger than that to argue their case for internet filtering. They've already got hundreds of thousands of teenage to middle aged gamers offside with their censorship and banning of animated vidgames.

If you follow @KevinRuddPM on Twitter, an easy fast way to register your opposition to RuddNet censorship is to block his messages and remove yourself from his Following list.

@KevinRuddPM has almost 900,000 followers on Twitter, amongst the highest of any politician in the world. Let's cut that following in half by Friday. For starters.

More soon...

Pollytics : Kevin Rudd Wants To Filter Your Internets

Asher Moses : Internet Censorship Plan Approved In Australia

Media Hunter : Can The Blogstream Topple A Government? Let's Find Out

LP : Net Censorship Zombies Rise Again


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Self-Interest, Reputation, More Important Than Free Speech

Oh, diddums!

Andrew Bolt has another whine about some of the hate-filled violence-threatening homophobic racist arseholes that are drawn to his blog like flies to shit :

Should I really be censoring such opinions? Should it really be an indictment of me that I don’t? Won’t it be said that the more I censor comments, the clearer it is that those I let through are the ones I endorse?

So as you can see, against my duty, as I perhaps arrogantly perceive it, to allow as free a discussion as possible, there is my ego and my self-interest in protecting my reputation. I should also admit that taking off the comments function should free up more than 10 hours of every choked week. What’s more, reading and checking those comments that I can get to can eat at my optimisim as well as my time.

You should see the stuff we must delete - or, rather, you shouldn’t.

Much there in the way of threats of violence against those you target that you thought you should pass onto any of our intelligence agencies? Or the police?

This is what I’ve been wrestling with in this wretched week.

Of course, it's all about The Idiot. Not about the people, the scientists, activists, journalists, community workers, he continually holds up for vicious ridicule and slandering by the worst of his droogies.

Get over yourself, mate. Your reputation will never leave you.

The internet does not forget.

It Really Does Get In

By Darryl Mason

As I've said here before, the Rudd government has to be very careful when it comes to censoring what Australians can read, see and buy online. No Australian election has yet seen Internet Censorship become a Major Election Issue, and if Rudd & Friends keep pushing this Censor The Net stupidity, they are going to find most Australians online are against them. And when it comes to a federal election, that could be extremely bad news.

GetUp! is planning to run the below ad as part of its fight against online censorship.



The message is clear enough, but a parody ad won't really hit home about what Online Censorship really means, and how a constantly expanding blacklist open to undue influence and corporate vendettas will change our online lives. Yes, many "hate sites" will make the list, but soon enough torrent and peer-to-peer file sharing sites will also get blocked. Well, the blacklist will attempt to block such sites, but there are many ways around even mandatory web filters, which you'll learn a bit more about here when the time is right. Obviously, you can already such info online.

The GetUp! anti-censorship ad is a good start, and the line about Iran and Online Censorship should be the ignition point for whatever ad they make next.

Stephen Conroy's Net Filter Will Block Access To eBay And Amazon

Conroy's Net Filter Will Block Access To E-Bay And Amazon

By Darryl Mason

If That Net Censor Guy, Stephen Conroy, wants to stop all Australians from visiting websites that sell games that are not allowed by law to be sold in Australian shops, Stephen Conroy will have no choice but to block web access to both Amazon and E-Bay, which ship thousands of R18+ games to Australian gamers every month.

Asher Moses :

The Federal Government has now set its sights on gamers, promising to use its internet censorship regime to block websites hosting and selling video games that are not suitable for 15 year olds.

Australia is the only developed country without an R18+ classification for games, meaning any titles that do not meet the MA15+ standard - such as those with excessive violence or sexual content - are simply banned from sale by the Classification Board, unless they are modified to remove the offending content.

So far, this has only applied to local bricks-and-mortar stores selling physical copies of games, but a spokesman for Senator Conroy confirmed that under the filtering plan, it will be extended to downloadable games, flash-based web games and sites which sell physical copies of games that do not meet the MA15+ standard.

Sites like Amazon and E-Bay.

That should go down well.

The average age of an Australian gamer is 30 years old.

Conroy should be careful. He doesn't want to get millions of Australian gamers and daily internet users offside anymore than he already has, particularly if an election is drawing near.

If the Rudd government doesn't already know this, they should, but they don't want to make internet censorship and the way they constantly fuck with gamers into election issues, because they can easily be made into Big Election Issues, particularly for Labor voters in their 30s and 40s.

The Greens already know this.

Likewise, Labor has to be careful in their plans to crack down on so-called online piracy and peer to peer file sharing. Cutting off the internet access of, or pursuing prosecutions against, some 40 year old single mother who downloads a digital copy of an album she has already brought on vinyl and/or CD will be the kind of Big Ugly that no-one in Labor wants to find themselves associated with.

They won't even have to go that far. There's a few hundred thousand Australians who regularly use file-sharing sites like The Pirate Bay, and they will be extremely displeased if there comes a day when they visit those sites (to download games that they're not allowed to buy in Australia) and they find that Stephen Conroy has blocked their access. Everyone will know very, very quickly that the Rudd government is responsible.

An independent running in the early 2010 federal election fighting against internet censorship and for the rights of gamers and file sharers, might find themselves a particularly large and surprising number of former Labor voters giving them the big tick.

That's if The Greens, by then, aren't already all over those fundamental issues of digital reality rights. And they probably will be.

Censor This

I'd never even thought about visiting Australia's most popular homemade porn site, until the government decided for me that soon I shouldn't be allowed to see it :

A secret list of websites deemed illegal by the communications watchdog has been leaked to the public, and includes one of the most popular sites in the country.

The site, which news.com.au cannot name, is the 38th most popular site in Australia, according to web ranking service Alexa.

It is a popular pornography website estimated to be visited by millions of Australians.

It's called YouPorn. People vid themselves fucking and post the vid there for whoever's interested in watching them fuck. There are thousands of homemade porn vids at the site, watched by millions of Australians.

The Wikileaks webpage that broke the story of what sites and pages are actually on the internet blacklist has now been censored for most Australians :

http://wikileaks.org wiki/Australian_government_secret_ACMA_internet_censorship_blacklist,_6_Aug_2008

As has the rest of Wikileaks. All of it. Every single page. Which will make any number of the world's most powerful corporations and the governments of the United States, the UK, Israel, China and Saudi Arabia very happy indeed.

Some of the banned or blocked sites and pages on the Rudd government internet blacklist :

www.encyclopediadramatica.com

www.redtube.com

www.youporn.com

www.liveleak.com

www.aussieropeworks.com

www.4chan.org

From what I can work out, it will be (or already is) illegal for me to directly link to the above pages, but it's not illegal for me to tell you that you can cut and paste those URLs into the address window and hit return. It's not yet illegal to visit those sites, but they're believed to be on the proposed mandatory internet filtering list. So one day soon, it might be.

More on the pages the government does not, or at soon will not, allow you to see :

* A page of 'weird pictures' on Wikipedia that has collected the weirdest pictures that have appeared on other Wikipedia pages. It's mostly bondage, fetish and Karma Sutra-type sexual positions illustrations.

* Anti-abortion websites that contain images of feotuses, along with Christian websites that are linking to graphic anti-abortion websites.

* A couple of pages on Ways To Kill Yourself. Some are serious, like hanging, others are ridiculously silly, and purposely so, like trying to microwave your head.

* Pages that have been online, in various forms, since about 1988 that detail how to cause low-key chaos in your neighbourhood, how to make your own guns and how to boobytrap your home against intruders.

* Pages of graphic images of civilians killed and wounded in wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine.

* A page on how to use poisons to kill yourself. The most shocking thing on that page is just how many common pharmaceuticals can be used for suicide, and how small some of the fatal doses can actually be.

An interesting conspiracy theory on just what the Rudd government may be up to, from a Reddit commenter :

The Internet filtering plan seems to have been a ploy by the Labor government to win favour with Stephen Fielding, a socially conservative Christian Evangelical senator.

However, there is now no way he could support an Internet filter if it meant that it would block Australians from accessing an anti-abortion website. Any chance of an Internet filter in Australia is now dead in the water.

I wouldn't be surprised if the Labor government was somehow involved in this, as a quick way of killing off an unpopular policy without getting offside with Fielding.

No doubt there will be more to come on this....

UPDATE : Wikileaks is now available once more to Australians, and here's the list of blacklisted websites.

I'd seriously advise all readers of The Orstrahyun to not click any of the links on the Wikileaks 'ACMA Blacklist' page . From the URLs alone, there are clearly hundreds of truly demented and illegal sites there, the kind you never want showing up on your permanent websurfing records. Plus, it's not yet known if some site you visited yesterday or three years ago, even out of simple curiosity, could can be used to prosecute you in the future.

Frankly, seeing the URLs alone of many of the blacklist sites is enough to make anyone feel utter revulsion.

But should fetish sites be categorised, and banned, alongside child porn sites?

Will the growing blacklist eventually include sites that carry political tracts of what we now label, or will soon label, "extremists"?

Will mainstream media companies, already losing lots of business to independent bloggers and independent news sites, eventually lobby the ACMA to have some of the competition taken down?

And what is likely to become the most contentious question of all : How will anti-hate speech laws be used to censor sites that may be labeled anti-religious, or offensive to any one religion?

'Funniest Home Videos' Distributes Child Abuse Imagery

According to this story it does :

Police say it is a crime for anyone to even watch a viral video of a man swinging a baby around the room.

Will they pursue and arrest Coca-Cola or American Express executives for putting an ad on such a clip on YouTube or another video sharing website? Fuck no.

(Police) comment comes after uproar over 60-year-old Chris Illingworth, a father of four from Maroochydore, was charged with posting the video on Liveleak after he stumbled across it on YouTube.

The video, which shows a man swinging a baby over his head by his arms, was broadcast on US television and has been viewed by hundreds of thousands of people on the internet.

But, despite that, Mr Illingworth's home was raided after he posted the clip on Liveleak and he was charged with using the internet to access and publish child-abuse material.

In a statement, Queensland police said the term "child abuse material" even extended to clips where the child "appears" to be a victim of cruelty.

Queensland Police from the anti-pedophile squad, Task Force Argos, raided Illingworth's home on Sunday November 30 and subjected him to a thorough forensic examination of his home and office computers and a gruelling interview over several hours, complete with finger printing and mug shots.

Asked to respond to claims by Illingworth that he was targeted unnecessarily and unfairly labelled a child abuser, QLD Police said it was a crime "to participate in the exploitation and abuse of children by seeking to view, possess, make or distribute child abuse or child exploitation material".

It provided a definition of "child abuse material", which was any material that shows a person under the age of 18 who "is, or appears to be, a victim of torture, cruelty or physical abuse".

Any week you can tune into Funniest Home Videos, one of the most popular shows on Australian TV, adored by most children, and see videos where parents have purposely fed their children, say, chilli, to get a funny, screwed up face reaction, or let their two year ride his scooter down a steep drive knowing he will crash at the bottom. By the definition of Queensland Police, letting kids fall from swings or flip off lounge chairs, even if they enjoy it, and capturing the laughs on video, is child abuse. And perhaps it is. But it's all a very gray area, and police are now going after old people like Illingworth who didn't even film the incident of alleged child abuse, he merely passed on what he no doubt thought was a funny clip to another website.

Insanity. Have they run out of real pedophiles or perverts to go after?

Illingworth said it was unfair that he was being labelled a child abuser over a video he didn't make, when Steve Irwin was let off for dangling his baby near the open jaws of a crocodile.

Very good point.

"This thing started because they were looking for a pedophile, it didn't work, so [police decided] 'lets just take him for something else, make it look like we're doing our job'," Illingworth said.

Is it illegal now for a parent to 'aeroplane' their kid in a public park? I loved being swung around like that when I was a little kid. Awesome fun. Is it illegal to do that to your own child? Or is it just illegal to video it? What if a mum videos dad tossing their laughing, gurgling daughter higher and higher into the air as a Christmas video gift for grandma? Is grandma a criminal if she posts that clip to a website so her friends in another state or another country can share in the joy of her grand-daughter laughing her little head off?

Crazy, crazy shit.

The death of all fun.

The Unfiltered No Option Filtered Internet No Access Blacklist Unoption

By Darryl Mason

Ominous, impractical and very listy :

The Government plans to have two streams of filtered (internet) content.

The mandatory portion will adhere to a blacklist of thousands of illegal web pages managed by ACMA and an optional clean feed of URLs that would automatically censor content, mostly adult material.

You can "plan" all you like, it's not going to happen. Unless the United States, Europe and the UK also come on board with almost identical and compatible net filtering systems and that would be far too Global Government-like and New World Order-ish to ever become a reality.

Probably.

Until it's hacked and released, we won't get to see the full "Blacklist" of sites that your government deems you should never be able to see, but it will include political, alternative news and so-called 'hate' sites. You won't hear much or anything about those news and political sites, but you will surely hear about a few of the other websites that will make The Blacklist, and they will be shocking and disgusting and tabloidia like The Daily Telegraph will leap all over the horrific Snuff and live suicide and Watch Me Torture This Kitten websites held as Examples Of Shame and will help pump the need for The Blacklist to be expanded even more and 'Do You Know Of A SickSite That Should Be On The Blacklist? Vote Now!'

The Rupe, however, will make sure that the Daily Telegraph and the rest of his online media, and even his more gruesome columnists, will never make it onto even the suggestion list for the Blacklist.

And none of The Rupe's newspapers or columnists should be on The Blacklist, but then neither should a pile of already very popular international and alternative news websites and blogs that tell Australians about a world of news and opinion that rarely if ever even makes the letters pages of The Australian or The Herald Sun or the Sydney Morning Herald.

The Blacklist will be a majestically powerful way for established mainstream media to block and crush the rising online competition, or at least limit its accessibility, which of course is its lifeblood. Not that ex-Australian media giants like The Rupe would ever stoop to such anti-competition tactics like that.

You get the feeling that the Rudd Government doesn't really know as much as it thinks it does about what Australians want from the internet, and what they want to read and hear and watch.

Shutting down access to The Pirate Bay, for starters, will incite raw fury in the hundreds of thousands of Australians who use it every day. They Will Not Be Pleased, and they will be motivated to find ways around the Government Internet Gateway Censors, of which there are many.

Anything that slows down net speeds, as all total filtering systems must do, will make every online gamer in the country (and there are many tens of thousands of them as well) shout "Fuck Rudd!"

The scope and scale of Australians who will be annoyed, inconvenienced and disrupted by Total Net Filtering will be massive, and the political fallout will be hard to estimate, and plan for.

You'll know just how much freedom of speech and free media the Rudd government believes in when the filters go live, for all major ISPs, towards the middle and end of 2009. Curiously, about the same time that very similar Total Net Filtering systems are expected, or hoped, to be up and running in the United States, the UK and across Europe.

Hell of a coincidence...

UPDATE : Sorry, I should have mentioned this at the start of the story, but this is all about stopping child porn. Of course.

Internet Filtering Won't Work Says Action Group

The Electronic Frontiers Australia advocacy group is trying to whip up some outrage amongst Australian internet users over draconian plans by the Rudd government to censor the internet :

...the Government's decision to fund its mandatory "clean feed" internet in the 2008-09 Federal Budget is a waste of taxpayers money.

"At a time when the Government is cutting services to fight inflation, it's bewildering that they would decide to spend tens of millions of taxpayer dollars on a filter before feasibility trials are even complete," EFA spokesman Colin Jacobs said.

The Budget allocates $24.3 million to the Government's "cyber-safety" initiative, rising to $51.4 million in the 2009-10 financial year.

What exactly is the Rudd government planning that requires a doubling of the internet censorship budget within two years?

"Australians are very uncomfortable with the idea of having the Government decide what's appropriate for them and their families," Mr Jacobs said.

...in a survey of 18,000 internet users, only 13 per cent agreed with the policy.

Few countries have made internet filtering work...well, China and Iran have made it work. But should we be holding up those regimes as examples of how we want the internet in Australia to be censored?

Of course, there are plenty of entertainment companies with outposts in Australia who are all for mandatory filtering of the internet, in the mistaken belief that online piracy is stealing their profits, instead of too much average music and far too many deflating films.

Internet Censorship Clampdown Begins In One Month

Chatrooms Will Be Forced To Undergo "Professional Assessment" To Continue Operating

Will Fight Against Child Pornography Prove To Be The Trojan Horse For Far-Reaching Online Censorship?

By Darryl Mason

A new wave of "restrictions" on mobile phone content, websites, chatrooms and message boards will be introduced in Australia by late January, 2008.

Do you like the way this has been announced only days before Christmas, and will be in place by the time most Australians return from their Christmas holidays? Surely, it's just a coincidence?

The first push in this new wave of censorship of Australian internet content begins with what may well prove to be a 'trojan horse' of sorts - the almost unanimously supported push to keep children from viewing "unsuitable material".

You are supposed to immediately think of child pornography, or graphic adult pornography, but the censorship regime is wide open to interpretation. For example, "violent imagery" also falls under these news bans. It doesn't simply mean photographs of children being abused or raped. It also means imagery that shows the results of acts of violence. War violence, for example. The censorship body in Australia has already tried to ban imagery from a video game that showed two animated android-like women kissing, and backed down to widespread outrage and mockery.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) will be able to force content providers to take down offensive material and issue notices for live content to be stopped and links to the content deleted.

But ACMA chairman Chris Chapman said adults will not be affected by the new laws.

Of course not. Not yet, anyway.

"In developing these new content rules, ACMA was guided by its disposition to allow adults to continue to read, hear and see what they want, while protecting children from exposure to inappropriate content, regardless of the delivery mechanism," Mr Chapman said in a statement.

Providers of live services, such as chatrooms, must have their service professionally assessed to determine whether its "likely content" should be restricted.

And what if you are a one man chatroom operator who can't afford what is likely to be very expensive "professional assessment"? You won't allowed to operate your business online.


story continues after...
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story continues...


Earlier this year, The Orstrahyun reported on moves to censor online content that is deemed, by the government censor, to be supportive of terrorism, or supplies information on how to carry out acts of terrorism. President Bush tells us we must read what Osama Bin Laden has to say to understand the threat of terrorism, but the Australian internet censorship body will be moving to stop you from getting access to that kind of information. Which must also mean you can forget about reading histories of Jewish terrorists fighting for the establishment of Israel, and the history of the IRA.

The new censorship regime for internet content was introduced by Howard government in September, and emulates the steel fist approach used by China. More on that here.

Back to the current story :

Personal emails and other private communications would be excluded from the new laws and so would news or current affairs services.

Is that all news and current affairs services, or just the ones approved by the government censor?

The censorship of website content will begin with tough restrictions on access to pornography and "violent images", but the temptation will be strong to broaden the scope of what material is deemed to be unsuitable for under-18s. Or what should not be available online to Australian web surfers at all.

Pornographic images of children are clearly unacceptable to all Australians, but what about an image of children torn apart by NATO bombs in Afghanistan?

Will a particularly feisty message board about government corruption or filled with commenters voicing great displeasure at the 'War on Terror', with lots of swearing, fall under the censor's blanket bans and restrictions?

Not yet.

But what about six months from now?

And what happens when independent internet media in Australia start pulling the same sort of visitor numbers as the mainstream media news sites?

This is already happening in the US, where sites like Crooks & Liars and PrisonPlanet, on a good day, can pull the same volume of readership as CBS News. Will the mainstream media work behind the scenes to freeze out the new competition? Will they push for tighter censorship and restrictions that makes it all but impossible for the independents to remain in business?

The use of the extremely distressing issue of child pornography is the beginning of the widespread censoring of internet content in Australia. It remains to be seen just how far this new censorship will go, or how far independent media and bloggers will allow it to spread before they start fighting back.

Government Expands "Black List" Of Banned Internet Sites

Porn, Violence, 'Terror' And Social Networking Sites Now In Firing Line

Australia Now Bans More Video Games Than Any Other Country In The World

'Terror' Books And Movies To Be Banned Under Extraordinary New Censorship Laws

"Patriotic" Movies, Video Games That "Glorify War" Will Be Excluded From New Ban Regime

Australia's Plan To Block Websites Copies China's Extreme Censorship

Howard Government Big Brother Internet Role "A Ludicrous Joke"

Like most things concerned with the internet that the Howard government dabbles in, its suddenly announced plan to block "terror" and "cyber-crime" websites from Australian eyes will prove to be an embarrassing and expensive failure.

As this story details, the only way the Howard government can do what it claims it intends to do when it comes to banning "dangerous" websites is to follow the 'block-it-all' steel fist approach of the Chinese government. An approach the Chinese government has already all but given up on.

The Australian website and internet industries are swinging between a state of shock and gails of laughter as it takes a closer look at the new legislation the Howard government rammed into Parliament with no notice or preliminary briefings.

They'll get down on their knees and open wide for coal and oil companies, but when it comes to working in a calm, open-minded and industrious manner with Australia's rapidly expanding internet industry and web-based business communities, to build a prosperous future for all, the Howard government is still locked firmly in the 20th century.

In short, they have no idea, and they show it every time they unfurl new plans to censor the internet, or to introduce "Won't Someone Please Think Of The Children" level content filtering :

The proposed legislation, introduced without notice into Parliament last week, also gives the commissioner powers to order take-downs of Australian sites related to terrorism and cyber-crime.

The amendment allows federal police to notify the Australian Communications and Media Authority of banned websites, and the authority must then notify service providers. It anticipates ISPs will block access to offshore sites with filters and other technical means.

Industry insiders say the only way a service provider could prevent users accessing banned material is by blocking the internet protocol address on the host server.

"Australia is only one tiny fraction of the global internet and there are numerous places where constitutional protections ensuring free speech mean all sorts of objectional stuff can be hosted, and at present there's no regime here actually requiring ISPs to block access to such sites," Internode carriage manager John Lindsay said.

"If such a request were made, the most fine-grained way we could actually do it would be to block access to the IP address. That's the Chinese approach. They basically block by IP address.

"Now, if that IP address happened to be MySpace, or Facebook, that would have the effect of blocking everything from those sites."

According to an Ovum report to the communications department, many hosting services carry thousands of domains on a single published IP address.

Telstra, Optus, the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association, the Internet Industry Association and others are currently reviewing the legislation, which caught them by surprise.

Electronic Frontiers Australia chair Dale Clapperton said the proposal had nothing to do with terrorism.

"These laws will be open to massive abuses by the police," he said. "They could, for example, be used to prevent access to websites organising protest marches or rallies against the government, or advocating the legalisation of euthanasia.

"To the extent that it allows police to ban access to material discussing political matters, it is probably unconstitutional."

ISP-based filtering was "a blunt instrument" that gave users no control over what material had been censored, Mr Clapperton said.

"Unfortunately, filtering will not make the internet safe for children. If parents are deceived into thinking a filtered service is safe they will be less likely to supervise their children while they use the internet."

A requirement to provide filtered services would impose serious costs on local ISPs, while also exposing them to liability when "the filters inevitably fail" to block banned material, he said. Filtering were also likely to cause a reduction in internet speed. Microsoft internet safety regional director Julie Inman-Grant said the company was concerned to ensure it could provide its content services to consumers on substantially the same terms globally.

"It would be very difficult to have the capacity to check every single link that is posted on a user's individual webpage." Internode's John Lindsay said ISPs fully supported the government's efforts to remove violence and child pornography, race hate and other objectional material from local sites, and would be happy to extend that to sites promoting terrorism.

"(But)...once you start building up enormous lists of things you want to block, the list gets endlessly larger even though the original content has gone." This would have the ultimate effect of slowing down internet performance. "You might have fast broadband, but you won't get any speed from it because there's a whole room of servers between you and the internet that are picking over everything to make sure you don't see anything objectionable," he said. "That would be a ludicrous joke."

Go Here For The Full Story

The latest Howard government plans for censoring the internet will be "re-tooled" in the coming weeks, but they've already made the industry extremely nervous with this absurd, fascistic, anti-free speech legislation.

Government Expands "Black List" Of Banned Websites

Greenpeace Get Nervous

The Howard government has a "black list" of websites they have decided should not be viewed by any Australians. At least, not while they're in Australia. Some are porn sites, some are sites that supposedly disseminate terror propaganda, or information on how to build bombs or stage terror attacks.

But some of the sites on the government's "black list" are information sites related to terrorism and jihad, software "mashing" and peer to peer sharing.

Now the government has back-doored a new "web ban bill" described as a "bombshell" into to the Senate on the last day it sits before the federal election. No warning, no briefings. It was just suddenly there.

And the "black list" of web sites that are already blocked to all Australian users of the internet is about to grow much, much longer under the new "web ban bill".

More alleged terrorist and cyber-crime websites will be included.

But what is a terrorist or cyber-crime website under the new Howard government legislation? Nobody's sure. The wording is vague, and basically leaves it up to government ministers and the police to decide what information should disappear into the black hole of Australia's new wave of censorship.

Today, it's websites that demand violent retaliation for the slaughter of Muslims in Iraq. Tomorrow it might be a pro-conservation website explaining how locals can organize themselves into legal action groups and protest groups to stop a local forest from being chainsawed.

What few Australians now realise is that the Howard government's anti-terror legislation also includes vaguely-worded provisions stating that the disruption of a corporation's daily business practices could also be categorised as an act of terrorism.

In fact, a bunch of protesters don't have to actually chain themselves to a mining company's head office front doors to be acting like a bunch of terrorists. They merely have to have the intent, the plan, to do so.

Pre-crime in Australia is a growing reality.

From The Australian :

Australian Privacy Foundation chair Roger Clarke expressed disbelief that "the government of any country in the free world could table a Bill of this kind".

"Without warning, the Government, through Senator Coonan, is proposing to provide Federal Police with powers to censor the internet," Dr Clarke said.

"Even worse, ISPs throughout the country are to be the vehicle for censorship, by being required to block internet content."

Greens Senator Kerry Nettle said the Bill would give the Police Commissioner "enormous power over what political content Australians can look at" on the web.

"This gives the Commissioner sweeping powers which could potentially be applied to millions of websites," she said. "The Government has dropped the Bill into the Senate on the eve of an election with virtually no explanation."

Senator Nettle said environmental organisations such as Greenpeace had been accused of crime or terrorism-related actions. "Will the Police Commissioner call for Greenpeace's website to be shut down?"

Anti-terror legislation in Australia, the US, the EU and the UK was purposely crafted, and worded, to allow governments to decide that this action group or that dissenting protest organisation is actually conducting a form of terrorism, should any of these governments ever decide it is necessary to do so.

Non-government groups don't have to be conducting, or staging, terrorism against civilians to be regarded as terrorists. Merely planning protest actions against a corporation is also defined as an act of terrorism.

The Australian government, as part of its alleged fight against children being exposed to pornography or "shocking images" online, now offers free "content filters" through its NetAlert program. They sell it as a means to stop children from being exposed to pornography, but it's also about blocking "inappropriate material".

Once the software is installed, websites that the Howard government and the Police Commissioner decide should be locked out of Australian computer screens will be instantly blocked.

There are no set limits to what the Howard government or the Police Commissioner can determine is "inappropriate material."

The Howard government stealthily introduced the "web ban bill" to the Senate at the last possible moment because it didn't want the bill to come under intense scrutiny.

Not exactly a reassuring sign that their moves to ramp up censorship of the internet is being done in the best interest of the Australian people.