'Pirate block' proposal back on Oz agenda Australia's government is once again rumoured to favour the idea of ordering ISPs to block Websites accused of hosting copyright-infringing content, or linking to it. In the wake of its confirmed-then-denied-then-confused messages over whether or not its data (miscalled “metadata” to confuse citizens and journalists) retention …
Only try ideas been tested anywhere else that have failed. Make sure they don't work by trying it in Oz. We do better stuffups with a straight face than any other western "democracy" About time to remove all foreign born or educated pollies and clerks with big salaries and give some jobs to Australians, not colonial crawlers from Sydney and Toorak.
Richard - is this finally beating even you into the submission of weary fatalism that the rest of us have so long resigned ourselves to?
A sad day but even the most ardent of us can only trudge along so far.
The biggest problem, as you say in closing, is that we have no opposition voice here, just as there was no opposition voice to the PATRIOT Act in the US.
WTF is happening down under, since when did the Aussies become such a PC crowd ?
Come on Aussies , stand up to the man, let it be heard that you want your Porn, Drugs ( Silk Road), Dodgy videos like everyone else and historical episodes of Neighbours....
Unbelievable, this is the same damned country that invented Aussie Rules, ffs. Don't let Tony Abbott cow down to the Pommie way of life...
[Yes, there is a hint of sarcasm in the above rant]
Point for the comment and one (in the form of this praise) for the manner of the delivery.
GoatJam, mate, there is a continuum between pure, individual-denying socialism and pure, survival-of-the-fittest capitalism.
Neither are good.
Any regime where taxes are levied and used to pay for things on behalf of the state contains socialism. The question, however, is how to manage the blend between the public-welfare concerns of socialism and the individual profitability concerns of capitalism.
Most people agree that some form of public healthcare is important, though people disagree on how much. Likewise public schooling, but again the question is how much. Again, this is true for public infrastructure and, again, the question is how much.
But little of this is overly relevant to the question at hand, excepting that this whole idea is about making laws that will protect (non-state-owned) corporate profits, which is hardly the goal of (non-state-owned) socialism.
It's ironic that by blocking torrent sites, they would actually block distribution of an Australian film, purposely distributed by torrent (The Tunnel).
As an Australian who contributed to The Tunnel, and who creates content on a small scale, I am routinely pissed off by large corporations lying and whinging about their troubles and demanding laws against their customers seeing content.
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