Internet Censorship in Australia

Oh shit… this is not good. Not good at all. Now that a trial is going ahead I have begun to pack my dacks and fear for our civil rights.

To summarise (No to Internet Censorship in Australia):

The Australian Federal Government is pushing forward with a plan to force Internet Service Providers [ISPs] to censor the Internet for all Australians. This plan will waste tens of millions of taxpayer dollars and slow down Internet access.

Despite being almost universally condemned by the public, ISPs, State Governments, Media and censorship experts, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy is determined to force this filter into your home.

$44million has been budgeted for this so far… We do not know how ‘illegal’ material is defined… What about sex education sites? How do you remove those from the black lists? This will make Australia’s internet speed even SLOWER 0_o

But my real problem with this (aside from not being able to watch porn - or even access sites to fucking order it! lol) is what about gay communities and gay education sites?

From Melbourne Community Voice:

“If they put in a dynamic filtering scheme, these [gay sites] are the sites that would be over blocked the most, because the software is not good enough to reliably distinguish between sexuality and pornography, the technology just isn’t there yet. Sites with sexual health or other issues of sexuality could certainly be blocked.”

Senator Ludlam has similar fears, and places gay websites in the top three category of sites that would be targeted under a massive mandatory internet filtering system.

“Our concern is it would take a blacklist with 800 or 900 sites on it at the moment and create a vast grey list of tens of millions of web pages, which will inadvertently block out material you’re supposed to get such as gay and lesbian health-related information or breast cancer,” he says.

“There are people out there who believe homosexuality should be outlawed and [gay websites] are exactly the kind of material they’re going to try to get taken offline,” Ludlam continues.

“The Christian/Family lobby are the only people that are active in the media pushing for this scheme to go ahead,” he says. {Surprise-fucking-surprise!}

“Gay marriage is the most interesting example because it’s unlawful in Australia, regrettably at the moment, so that’s the kind of material they’re going to be trying to take offline because it’s illegal,” he says.

I’m all for preventing kids from seeing unsuitable media but this system can’t prevent sites that shouldn’t be blocked from being so-it shouldn’t go ahead. Going into it all gung-ho with $44million in your pocket with a system that has so many holes isn’t going to solve anything.

I’ve always been so proud being an Australian meant you had such a freedom of speech and access to the media -especially after Proposition 8- and now this… This is fucking scary. It’s 2008 and we could soon be blocked from tens of thousands of sources of valuable information :/

Also, ‘illegal content’, I wonder if fansites will be included in this..? From what I am reading the focus seems to be on pornography but still… What’s to stop them from illegal uploads etc?

Sina,