Australians Loosing Even More Freedom

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A_Wanderer

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For the children
PORN websites and chat rooms used by child-sex predators will be blocked from home computers under radical moves to protect young internet users.

Australian families will have access to free internet filter systems under a $190 million Howard Government crackdown.

Prime Minister John Howard will back plans for sweeping changes to home computers and public libraries.

Under the strategy, chat room predators will be singled out and blocked from home computers, as will offensive emails.

Terrorist groups also will be under further pressure with the technology to be used to block sites.

Improper content such as swear words, pornography and criminal acts could be detected and barred automatically from being viewed in family homes.

Internet service providers will be required to provide the filter technology, either in homes or from the central server.

The social networking sites Facebook and MySpace are also likely to be affected by the new filter regime.

Mr Howard used a web-cast address to Christian groups to declare that fighting computer crime was complex.

"No single measure is fool-proof," he added last night.

The filtering technology is already being used overseas and experts predict it will lead to a dramatic reduction in offensive content seen by children.

Under the strategy, the Australian Federal Police's sex exploitation team will also be doubled in size.

And a seven-day telephone hotline will be set up to help parents install the filters in their homes.

Regulators will also be given better resources to blacklist websites deemed to provide inappropriate content.

The Government crackdown is the latest move by authorities to protect children using the web.

In 2004, federal Labor considered a push for X-rated filters, which have prevented any under-age viewer from accessing the material.

Mr Howard will expand on his comments tonight in a bid to bolster the Government's family values credentials.

When the roll-out of the new internet system is carried out, Australia will be considered a world-leading country.

The move was introduced in Britain several years ago amid an outcry over the easy access to pornography and the growing trend by child abusers to use chat rooms to target minors.

However, the government crackdown in Australia is likely to be controversial among civil liberty groups.

It will also require a massive effort by the service providers to ensure the filtering systems are installed.

It may take years for the full roll-out of the technology.

The Government is believed to have received independent advice that the filter system will severely hamper the sale and distribution of improper content.
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It is simply monitoring and segregation to start with, but once in place these projects demand furthur abuse for furthur political gains; a stop rape, ban porn campaign could sell.

Pricks, it demands retribution, time to pay for that abbywinters subscription in the name of free speech.

The drugs websites will be banned pretty quickly too, which will suck, and both parties have a thing about hating freedom (junk food advertising, skantily clad women, internet porn, blasphemy etc.) I take solice that I can be out within 5 years.
 
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Sounds like an option. Yes, kind of weird that the government is 'demanding' and option for filtering, agree.

But still just an 'option' right?
 
Yes, an option and opportunity, I imagine that a special deal for filtered internet will just mean profiteering on the actual internet by ISP's; extra money on top of the taxpayers money used to maintain it and the inevitable encroachment over what constitutes allowable content.
 
Of course the hot air of it is pleasing
THE results of Australia's only live commercial internet content filtering trial will never be known because the exercise, championed by the federal Government, was quietly abandoned.

The trial was expected to go ahead in Tasmania last year but the major internet filtering technology supplier for the project, Internet Sheriff, has revealed that it was abandoned because Australia's two largest ISPs, Telstra and Optus, refused to participate.

Internet Sheriff chief executive David Ramsay said the project was commercially risky without support from the two carriers.

"Without having them involved to supply the bandwidth at no cost it would have been quite expensive with no guarantee of any outcome for me. To go and spend upwards of $600,000, I needed some sort of idea what would have happened if this was successful and no one could really give us any assurance as to what the next steps may or may not have been."

The trial was expected to show if it was feasible for ISPs to take steps to stop pornographic and offensive internet content reaching their customers.

Tasmanian Liberal senator Guy Barnett, a strong champion of the trial, said he was disappointed it didn't go ahead.

Communications Minister Helen Coonan has, however, directed Australia's communications regulator, ACMA, to conduct a new ISP-level internet content filtering trial and report its findings to the Government by June next year.

ACMA last week closed its tender, seeking experts to conduct the trials.

It's not clear whether the new trial will be conducted in a live commercial environment. ACMA spokesman Donald Robertson said yesterday technicians close to the trial could not be contacted for comment.
But the fact that it all still costs and that people actually support it is mad.
 
I reckon there's better things Dickhead could be wasting money on, but given his track record I'm not surprised. Still, it sounds like it was always to be a choice and those who wanted to pursue it aren't always mad - just conscientious parents, perhaps. There's no liberty issue with blocking children from porn.
 
dazzlingamy said:
im sure family first was standing behind with a big fucking shit eating grin when this was annouced.

I agree with filtering out porn, but swear words? That just un-fucking-australian! :wink:

Fixed.
 
Nothing wrong with internet filters. I would like to see a nation-wide internet filter that will squeeze out those nasty websites that depict violent and gruesome videos of people's limbs being severed, people being killed, tortured, raped and committing suicide.

They do exist, an infamous clip of a Russian solider having his neck sliced open circulated around schools in Australia for a while a few years back, as did a clip of a woman putting a gun to her head and suiciding, and a clip of an Iraqi soldier being tied to the back of a car and a post and the car driving off and yanking off his arm.

If an internet filter is gonna block out these sites, I'm all for it, especially if they are so easily accessible by peer-motivated, computer-savvy and impressionable school students. No human should be given any kind of access to such grotesque videos, and for any one so sick-minded that they should want to post them on the internet, they should be hunted down and rehabilitated....it's a fucking disgrace.....
 
Angela Harlem said:
I reckon there's better things Dickhead could be wasting money on, but given his track record I'm not surprised. Still, it sounds like it was always to be a choice and those who wanted to pursue it aren't always mad - just conscientious parents, perhaps. There's no liberty issue with blocking children from porn.
There is when it is done at the source by government mandate, the issue of choice is here but that can and would get compromised.
 
intedomine said:
Nothing wrong with internet filters. I would like to see a nation-wide internet filter that will squeeze out those nasty websites that depict violent and gruesome videos of people's limbs being severed, people being killed, tortured, raped and committing suicide.

They do exist, an infamous clip of a Russian solider having his neck sliced open circulated around schools in Australia for a while a few years back, as did a clip of a woman putting a gun to her head and suiciding, and a clip of an Iraqi soldier being tied to the back of a car and a post and the car driving off and yanking off his arm.

If an internet filter is gonna block out these sites, I'm all for it, especially if they are so easily accessible by peer-motivated, computer-savvy and impressionable school students. No human should be given any kind of access to such grotesque videos, and for any one so sick-minded that they should want to post them on the internet, they should be hunted down and rehabilitated....it's a fucking disgrace.....
That sort of censorship also removes documentation of abuse that people need to know about, about mass murders and war crimes; the manner in which material from Iraq gets filetered already is bad enough, there shouldn't be such censorship and it would infringe upon free speech (although a school should have have their own filters and tracking materials in place).
 
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Today porn, tomorrow "terrorists." And who's a "terrorist"? Someone from an activist wing of the other Party? Environmentalists? Animal-lovers? Anti-HMO and pro-healthcare activist groups? Human rights and civil liberties campaigners? Heck,anyone who has ever protested and demonstrated about anything, or just is on, say, an anti-war mailing list (regardlessof whether they've been active on any of these issues--just subscribing to the maling list or even looking at the webiste makes you a terrorist?

Slippery slope, people, the "children of Men"/1984 oh so slippery slope....
 
A_Wanderer said:
That sort of censorship also removes documentation of abuse that people need to know about, about mass murders and war crimes; the manner in which material from Iraq gets filetered already is bad enough, there shouldn't be such censorship and it would infringe upon free speech (although a school should have have their own filters and tracking materials in place).

We don't need to see videos of disgusting scenes that should never have been filmed and put onto tape in the first place.
 
A_Wanderer said:
There is when it is done at the source by government mandate, the issue of choice is here but that can and would get compromised.


Perhaps, perhaps, but really, I don't buy it. You're not losing a great amount when it comes to porn and children. I don't put much behind that slippery slope.
 
intedomine said:


We don't need to see videos of disgusting scenes that should never have been filmed and put onto tape in the first place.
Then don't watch them, nobody is forcing you to.
 
A_Wanderer said:
Then don't watch them, nobody is forcing you to.

Agreed.

I really doubt I'll ever get the urge to watch most of that type of thing, but I damn well want the right to watch it if I do wish. I despise people who want to make everything "child-safe" at the expense of everyone else. If you have kids it's your responsibility to make sure they don't have access to what you don't want them to have access to. But those of us without kids, or those who do have kids but have different ideas about what is appropriate for them to see, shouldn't be forced into the most restrictive view of what is appropriate to see. :mad:
 
Angela Harlem said:



Perhaps, perhaps, but really, I don't buy it. You're not losing a great amount when it comes to porn and children. I don't put much behind that slippery slope.
I don't support giving porn to children, although I think that any kid over the age of ten will eventually come across it and that is part of growing up, but the concept of ISP level filters goes against the idea of internet freedom, there are already consumer level ones (which are being given away to families under these policies) why put a blanket level system in place (of course the answer is votes). If it ever reached a stage where one was prevented from viewing certain websites it would be sacrificing too much.

It simultaneously abdicates the responsibility of parents to ensure that their children are not getting onto offensive material or in some ways teaching them how they should react to it (and anti-porn crusaders go about it the wrong way)and infringes on the rights of other people to make an informed choice about what they do or do not want to see. We aren't talking about criminal activity, child pornography or paedophiles stalking kids online - it is about having a two tiered internet.

The other issue that comes into play is the abuse of the system once it is in place, how long until it starts being used to prosecute individuals for software and music piracy? How much privacy do we loose. If it ever reaches the stage that a workable system of state censorship can be extended over one tier of internet access I don't think that it is a terrible stretch of the imagination for it to be pushed upon the other (but only with the most "extreme"websites like drug forums, anarchy pages etc.).
 
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