Oz gov in confusion over net filter plans The Australian government appears confused as to whether or not it will try to pass laws concerning net filtering before a general election. The Australian Labor party has previously promised to pass laws that would oblige ISPs to apply net filters to block pornography and other illegal content. Critics argue that the measures …
There are various xtian groups applying great pressure on the govt to 'ban' all of life's nasty bits.
At least as far as they apply to the various sky-god myths. Personally, I find the contents of the bible just as offensive as some Internet content, but then that's just me.
Simply because one of the independent senators holding the balance of power in the upper house is from Family First - the fundy political wing. And since KRudd and his merry men need his vote, this is one of the 'sweeteners' to get him onside to support other bills.
Pure politics at the cost of our freedoms.
Well, that's easy. Not only are both our current prime minister and a very important independant senator fundamentalist Christians (even going so far as to be considered New Earth Creationists apparently, the senator anyway), we have something called the Australian Christian Lobby. They have a shocking amount of staying power. If you ever get bored, go have a look around their website.
It's chilling to know that these people are the ones that got a signed promise from a state government promising them that the new Attorney General for that state would stand against a R18+ rating for games, regardless of what he thought.
You may think we are atheocratic here, but we are anything but. This ISP filter alone should prove that.
On the upside, we have a lot of beer...
About 50% of Oz politicians are church-going christians, as opposed to about 20% of the general populace.
Minister for Censorship Conroy is a fundamentalist young-Earth creationist and I have my suspicions about Kevin Rudd who is among the avowed church-goers.
How much more evidence do you want?
RC=Refused Classification -- i.e. in Australia, if a game is considered unsuitable for "mature accompanied" 15 year or older child then it is refused a classification and is effectively banned. Or for film, if a movie is considered unsuitable for an adult over the age of 18 then it is refused even the highest classification of X18+ (and so banned).
There are two sets of guidelines -- one for "film and computers games" and another for "publications". What category does the internet fall under? Particularly when some classes of "restricted" content can only be distributed in a sealed opaque wrapper.
Happy to make that clearer!
I'm wondering if you can win an election if your web site doesn't work. What happens if anonymous starts taking down anyone who is serving ads for the Labor party or the government. I'm wondering if the media companies can be forced into disappearing the labor party by systematic attacks on their revenue streams. If this law gets pushed much more, I'm thinking we will find out.
They want to know whether you will do anything to protect your rights.
They're 90% sure that you won't, but just to be on the safe side they are giving you plenty of opportunities to prove them wrong.
They can and will ignore letters and DDoS attacks. If a letter is all that stands in-between the government and your rights, you have no rights in any meaningful way.
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