Australia to implement mandatory internet censorship
AUSTRALIA will join China in implementing mandatory censoring of the internet under plans put forward by the Federal Government.
The revelations emerge as US tech giants Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, and a coalition of human rights and other groups unveiled a code of conduct aimed at safeguarding online freedom of speech and privacy.
The government has declared it will not let internet users opt out of the proposed national internet filter.
The plan was first created as a way to combat child pronography and adult content, but could be extended to include controversial websites on euthanasia or anorexia. ...
One problem that has surfaced, is from a school teacher I know. He needed to access some legit sites on drug and alcohol abuse and some sites on alternative lifestyles to obtain facts and figures and handout materials. They were all blocked.
The Australian Government has been wanting to go this was for the last 10 years, but the slowly softly approach always works best till it's time to spring the trap.
Unfortunately living in a godless society means that man has to become the law. And for that to work total control is required to achieve what a simple little thing God put in all of us, namely the conscience.
I hate the internet and all forms of media. It exacerbates sin and evil very much like the way a city operates except far more effective. Yet I have come to realize that scripture is right about the end. The wicked will wax worse and worse and the righteous will become even more righteous.
Some time back the Australian Government put out a internet filter that you could use on your computer and it blocked even political parties like the now defunct Democrats.
In time it will be used against religious beliefs and free thinking sites. Watch carefully how pornography will won't be "blocked" per se as these are blocked, it will just become part of the
Overcome Evil made the right point. File sharing networks again get off scott free which are the very bane of pornography. The authorities will not do anything about it though.
A provision whereby Internet users could opt out of the filter by contacting their ISP has been stripped from the legislation, meaning the filter will be universal and mandatory.
The Australian government will no doubt insist it is in the best interest of the people and is only designed to block child pornography, snuff films and other horrors, yet the system is completely pointless because it will not affect file sharing networks, which is the medium through which the vast majority of such material is distributed.
In China, any website that is critical of the state is blocked. And every website the user attempts to visit first has to pass through the "great firewall," causing excruciating delays while web addresses are checked against a government blacklist.
It is like being on a bad dial-up connection in the mid 1990’s. Even in the center of Shanghai with a fixed ethernet connection, the user experience is barely tolerable.
Not only are websites in China blocked, but e mails too are scanned for "controversial" words and blocked from being sent if they contain phrases related to politics or obscenities.
The censorship simply won't work. You'd think by now that anyone could figure that out. Nothing like this has ever worked, and usually it's broken before it's officially rolled out. (Just wait until Aus. businesses are impacted by having their packets go through this single-point-of-failure filter system and some heads start rolling.)
The code of conduct is utterly toothless -- I can find no hint that it is binding on anyone who signs up, or any way that it could be enforced. Just a press release to make the naive feel good about these great companies on their mission to make the world a better place.
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