Online Kiwis maybe feeling Oz censor trickledown
Australia’s drive to protect its own population from the horrors of the internet may be starting to have knock-on effects on the surfing habits of its neighbour, New Zealand - some websites are no longer accessible in NZ via Aussie ISPs. A Reg reader wrote to tell us: "NZ surfers being routed via Optus routers in Oz have been …
This Oz firewall sounded like bad news... but if it blocks people of walmart... that sounds more like public service to me. Rather like blocking goatse et al...
^^ What you're likely to see on people of walmart
... Rant on ...
After spending part of the weekend down in Pompey, being told just how shit Blighty is - big brother police state, blah blah - and then being told "I'm off to Australia first chance I get"...
... I can only laugh at reports like this.
The next time a fellow Brit starts bashing this country, crying foul about our rights being trampled on, how "the country has gone to the dogs", I'll politely remind them of issues like internet censorship.
Fellow Brits who bash this country every chance they get? If you don't like it, sod off, we don't need you. If your naive enough to think the grass is greener 'over there', off you go then - just remember, wherever you go, you take yourself with you - and it may just be YOU and NOT the country you live in who is at fault.
BAAAAH - There's nothing I hate more than a whiney whinging fellow Brit - fuck off already!
... Rant off ...
I assume this is whingeing Poms that you're whingeing about?
I'm sure I'm not the only one who wouldn't expect any remotely intelligent opinion coming out of Pompey, including last weekend.
This kind of censorship will be fully active in the UK before we know it.
So just because the aussies are showing us how a police state should be run means we should shut up whinging about our own, not-so-bad-yet police state?
With a mentality like that it's no wonder how we got this far
tracert? tracert? On all non-brain-damaged systems the thing is called "traceroute", thanks. What this says about the state of the brain of the reporter is left as an excercise. I'm willing to content it's because censorship is contagious and brain-damaging both.
OK, so Windows is brain damaged, you but have to give credit to MS on this one as tracert is less than 8 chars and avoids the french spelling and silent trailing 'e' on traceroute by dropping a few vowels.
In general, my experience is that unix/linux shells tend to be more focused on command length than Windows. So lets give MS a break on this one. You know what they meant right?
Now as for commands like DCOMCNFG.. WTF
Amongst other things I'm a Moderator on the Gamehouse Discussion forums for their version of Scrabble etc and a couple of our users have found a work-around to allow access to Gamehouse games on Facebook for users in New Zealand.
See http://forums.fb.gamehouse.com/showthread.php?t=836
NB this is not an official Gamehouse fix, caveat user! :-)
So far or idiot Communications Minister Sen. Conroy has failed to get the filter in place so if Optus is filtering these sites it is doing voluntarily.
Has anyone asked Optus for a comment?
Using my Optus 'net connection here in Australia I can open both sites.
But it does highlight the dangers we all face as governments attempt to restrict our internet access.
I am increasingly convinced that the Conroy filter is not about porn but preventing access to commercial sites.
Imagine a situation where a particular media outlet has rights to say NHL in your country. They don't want you accessing information about the matches or images or video until they show it.
You can guarantee suddenly that material will be blocked.
There is money at stake friends and you can be assured our politicians of all flavours will look after big content.
ACTA anyone!
The only problem with your reader's theory is that Optus users in Australia can access both sites. Perhaps a little more research before crying wolf next time...?
I'm in the Bay of Plenty, NZ, using Telecom broadband, and peopleofwalmart works just fine. Although I rather wish it hadn't ;-)
Having had the extreme misfortune of having to deal with Optarse as both a customer and a supplier, I can almost absolutely guarantee that this situation is a simple routing issue in their network. I cannot tell you the number of times I've had to identify and locate problems in their network for them just to stop them blaming my unrelated kit for whatever problem was ailing them that day.
Numpties the lot of them.
This is a draconian measure that must be attacked head on.
Join this facebook group. Here you can find information on how to bypass the filters. (Until they block the bypasses)
http://tinyurl.com/yzhw48p
http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?topic=12887&post=49012&uid=294636289572#!/group.php?gid=294636289572&ref=nf
Asia netcom are the ones blocking website and ignoring the New Zealand Bill of rights, and the American constitution.
We can't take this lying down, we have to fight this head on, it isn't an issue you just lie down and ignore, to do so would be defeatist.
Benjamin Franklin said "Those who would trade in their freedom for their protection deserve neither"
Either this is a contractual thing or, most likely, a broken router, a corrupt routing table or something similar.
Did anybody ask Optus what was happening? Or is it just the crowdsourced ramblings of a handful of users who can't get to a couple of sites?
Occam's Razor - it's probably a fault.
What is with people of Wallmart?
As far as I'm aware, there's no government censorship of web feeds in Australia as yet. The legislation enacting it has yet to be tabled in Parliament and even then (if passed) is not scheduled to come online until 2011.
As the great Aussie firewall has yet to be implemented. the legislation hasn't even been presented to Parliament yet, let alone been passed into law. So it's really unlikely that there's anything being blocked for anyone.
Though the story does make a very valid point, what will happen regarding New Zealand Internet users whose ISPs route their traffic through Australian systems?.
Sorry, the nhl.com site is the National Hockey League in the US of A. Instead of watching a bunch of Canadians and Russians (most of the players in the NHL aren't American) bash each other, go to http://www.iha.org.au/ to watch the Aussies bashing each other.
Cheers!
netgeek
That is extreme something, just not sure what.
Then again, in the 1970s Australian TV censored "Doctor Who" to take out violence. Sissies.
"Eggs-terminate, eggs-terminate..."
Throw the switch, mate, it's them bl**dy eggs again...
generally i agree with the comments here. there isnt necessarily a mandatory internet filter thing in place in this instance its probably just a busted ass piece of hardware somewhere.
optus *were* blocking data as part of their inclusion into the mandatory internet filter trials but according to http://bit.ly/cir2tH this was last May for a 6 week period, only for DSL direct customrs.
The filter trial excludes cable, resale DSL (what we are probably talking about) and mobile wireless broadband customers.
Just imagine if people shopped at Tesco whilst dressed in inappropriate clothing...
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