Australia: Government censorship legislation blocked

[FedUpWithFaith]

I'm actually very disappointed by this "good" news. I have to say that when Australia was considering this dumb-ass law, a law so stupid I know even my country would never seriously consider it, I felt safe. We Americans had a wedge for leverage against all you snooty Australians with all your air of superiority over us accumulated over the Bush years. When we elected Obama my optimism was ever more ascendant.

Now this

I will only hope that this law gets unblocked and eventually renewed for serious consideration. Then you uppity Aussie slobs, who think you're so much better than us, won't have a leg to stand on, on that burned-out cinder desert shithole you call a country.

[Hermit]

I'm actually very disappointed by this "good" news. I have to say that when Australia was considering this dumb-ass law, a law so stupid I know even my country would never seriously consider it, I felt safe. We Americans had a wedge for leverage against all you snooty Australians with all your air of superiority over us accumulated over the Bush years. When we elected Obama my optimism was ever more ascendant.

Now this

I will only hope that this law gets unblocked and eventually renewed for serious consideration. Then you uppity Aussie slobs, who think you're so much better than us, won't have a leg to stand on, on that burned-out cinder desert shithole you call a country.

So you can be funny rather than sounding like a boor when you go for humor. Onya.

[FedUpWithFaith]

Gimme a break pal.

I started with a rough audience and it takes me time to warm up

[Sparticle]

I'm actually very disappointed by this "good" news. I have to say that when Australia was considering this dumb-ass law, a law so stupid I know even my country would never seriously consider it, I felt safe. We Americans had a wedge for leverage against all you snooty Australians with all your air of superiority over us accumulated over the Bush years. When we elected Obama my optimism was ever more ascendant.

Now this

I will only hope that this law gets unblocked and eventually renewed for serious consideration. Then you uppity Aussie slobs, who think you're so much better than us, won't have a leg to stand on, on that burned-out cinder desert shithole you call a country.

Why you little ...

Nah. I got nothin'. You're right

Hang on, how can one be an uppity slob?

Meanwhile, here's a good article by Senator Scott Ludlam from the Greens:
http://newmatilda.com/2009/03/17/could- ... parliament
The Greens might not quite yet be a "viable third party" as BAA mentioned we desperately need, but Sen. Ludlam is at least a ray of hope in a pretty bleak political landscape.

[Hermit]

Gimme a break pal.

I started with a rough audience and it takes me time to warm up

What a pity you weren't in the southeast corner of this "burned-out cinder desert" last month. Plenty of opportunity to warm up there and then. So much so that more than a hundred people got burnt to death.

Anyway, keep up the good work, cobber.

[FedUpWithFaith]

What a pity you weren't in the southeast corner of this "burned-out cinder desert" last month. Plenty of opportunity to warm up there and then. So much so that more than a hundred people got burnt to death.

Agreed - would have been a great opportunity for toasting marshmallows too.

[devogue]

What a pity you weren't in the southeast corner of this "burned-out cinder desert" last month. Plenty of opportunity to warm up there and then. So much so that more than a hundred people got burnt to death.

Agreed - would have been a great opportunity for toasting marshmallows too.

I hear the Pope lit a candle for the victims.

Seriously.

[FedUpWithFaith]

What a pity you weren't in the southeast corner of this "burned-out cinder desert" last month. Plenty of opportunity to warm up there and then. So much so that more than a hundred people got burnt to death.

Agreed - would have been a great opportunity for toasting marshmallows too.

I hear the Pope lit a candle for the victims.

Seriously.

God, what I would have given to roast a marshmallow over that candle!

[CP]

Elected officials are supposed to be better than the public, not as stupid as it.

They're elected by the public. Why would they be smarter? Much of the public finds intelligence and being too informed both very intimidating in other people.

[Sparticle]

I know this bloke - Jim Stewart. I met him years ago in the theatre when his wife was directing a show I was in, and Jim was in it too. He was 'Net and tech savvy way back then and he has run an interwebz-based business for years. He knows what's what and is a really good bloke. I ran into him at the anti-filter rally back in December.

Now he's popped up on the Whirlpool and I see he runs a little show on YouTube. He's been staunchly anti-filter for a long time.

In this episode he takes aim at ACMA and highlights the insanity of what they are trying to do. Check it out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DD6b7T0d ... re=channel

The word is getting out more and more - the media is gaining interest in it and there's a seemingly infinite amount of scornful, well-informed opposition out there to what's being proposed.

Yet our Communications Minister remains strangely silent. Still.

Personally, I think ACMA itself is not to blame - they have to work within the law and the guidelines they're given and if the law is an ass and the guidelines a shambles, then it stands to reason they are going to produce asshat and shambolic results. So by simply doing their job, they're inadvertently highlighting the impossibility of what is wanted by the censorship/pro-filter crowd, whilst at the same time bringing into sharp relief the utter pointlessless of the exercise. Not too shabby ACMA!

[Sparticle]

It's been leaked! The "unleakable" Australian blacklist that people like Conroy and Bernadette McMenamin (aka BurnTheNet!) swore up and down would not and could not happen.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009 ... 520591.htm

It's starting to unravel very badly for the gubmint now. The question is, will Conroy speak publicly? Will he resign? Will Rudd finally say something about the issue and quietly organise a cabinet reshuffle (Hi Stephen, can we talk? No, don't bother to take off your coat. This won't take long ...")

Oh, and if you have the time or the interest, take a look at the list of what we're being protected from. It includes a Queensland dentist (who has the misfortune to register a site with a name that was once used by a paedophile ring), a LOLcat site (OH NOES!) and parts of 4chan, amongst others.

Stay tuned for further developments

[CP]

They were gonna censor parts of 4chan?

Oh, man. It'd almost be worth it just for the retaliating pranks.

[Trolldor]

They were gonna censor parts of 4chan?

Oh, man. It'd almost be worth it just for the retaliating pranks.

They still intend to.

[Sparticle]

More goings-on since the first "it's not the real list but we'll still threaten prosecution on anyone who publishes it" leak yesterday.

A further, allegedly true, list has now been leaked and it's a doozy.

Always bear in mind that the whole bottom line intent of the mandatory filter (according to ConroySpin) has been to "protect the children" and rid the world of kiddie porn. But the reality is far from that - the reality is that what is being proposed is nothing more and nothing less than censorship of all manner of stuff - including a stack of perfectly legal material.

In the words of John Birmingham [10 Jan 08 - yes, he was onto it a long time ago], (author, columnist and all-round good bloke):

Now, before you do that puckered cat's bum thing with your mouth and start accusing people of equating kiddie porn with freedom of speech, you can just knock it off. Accessing any kind of kiddie porn in any fashion is already a criminal offence and will score you a long, hard session of playing pick-up-the-soap at Her Majesty's nearest correctional facility with tattooed armed robbers possessed of genitals so large they qualify for their own post code. Which is cool. We can all groove on that, but you're waving around a rhetorical dead cat by trying to link the two issues.

And the two issues have been linked ever since. If you oppose the filter, you obviously endorse kiddie porn. And that's all there is to it, according to people like Conroy, Bernadette McMenamin, Jim Wallace, and others. As a parent and a staunch filter opponent, this offends me more than I can say.

But I digress (this is such a multi-layered issue - hard to keep up with it sometimes!)

But what of this new leaked list? Well it contains such howlers as a ballroom dancing site (ballroom dancing? bannable under ACMA guidelines? Surely not. Morris dancing, Riverdance, LINE DANCING perhaps, but ballroom dancing?) - the poor site's "crime" apparently was that its guestbook has been hacked and overrun by spam with links to everything from V-iagra to hard-core pron). So the poor schmucks who own the business - rather than have someone tell them their guestbook has been infected and some suggestions as to how to clean it up so it doesn't happen again - get their site (and business) whacked on the ACMA blacklist and BANG! They're forever tainted as a business (guilt-by-association: ACMA blacklist = kiddie porn/offensive/illegal material, blah blah).

And of course, they don't know their site has been blacklisted. Why? Because the ACMA list is SECRET (oh hang on, it's been leaked now ).

And there's lots of other stuff on the list too - perfectly legal stuff - bus companies, online poker site, Betfair (huge gambling company), Wikipedia entries! Hmm ... I'm not seeing a lot of kiddie porn there ...

Scared? You should be. How easy would it be to fuck someone up you didn't like? Submit their site to ACMA for blacklisting (say you're offended by something on it) and screw their business good and proper (remember, you wouldn't know if your site was on the blacklist unless someone told you - you may notice traffic down and business dropping but what other clues would you get?). Another site on the leaked list is a blog written by some woman who, in a tiny corner of her site had a jokes section where there was a joke about suicide. Possibly tasteless, sure, but enough to have her put on the ACMA blacklist? FFS!

Okay, enough from me. Here's some good reading on the current situation from people far better informed than I am (and much better writers, too!):

EFA (Electronic Frontiers Australia) on the leaking of the list:
http://www.efa.org.au/2009/03/20/answer ... blacklist/

Stilgherrian writing for Crikey.com:
http://www.crikey.com.au/Media-Arts-and ... -over.html

Helen Razer writing for The Age:
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/net-fi ... -94fa.html
(I love Helen, she and I are apparently the only women in Australia prepared to publicly admit that we do love a bit of porn and smut :twisted: )

And, saving the best 'til last - Wikileaks (hosted overseas and utterly fearless) give it to Conroy both barrels about what they'll do if he attempts to silence them (and the fool has, if you can believe it ):
http://tinyurl.com/cvy6qe
[currently down due to hugely heavy traffic but worth checking out if you can get on]

In another interesting twist, the mainstream media is yet again strangely silent on the issue. It was massive news on the internet when it broke yesterday - the Whirlpool was nearly melting with the rate of posts, EFA put on an extra 8 servers to cope with the load and the Wikileaks site kept crashing. Twitter just about fell of its perch as the news spread. So we checked Channel 7, 9 and 10 news - nothing. ABC and SBS - teeny little mentions. Otherwise, nothing. We have to ask ourselves why this is so?

If you haven't yet written to your local Federal member about this - time is crucial now. Without public outcry and highlighting how farcical it has all become, there is still a chance some deluded people in Canberra will vote this stupid thing in.

It must not come into effect. If people want to filter their home internet, let them buy a bloody filter. Do not let "Uncle Stephen" filter your internet for you

[charlou]

Fucking brilliantly written post, Sparticle! Just WOW!

As for the upshot of your post, I can only tell you how very glad I am that we have people like you speaking up on our behalf, and I thank you for keeping us so comprehensively informed!

I'd like to quote your article on another forum where I started a thread on this censorship issue, if you don't mind?

Helen Razer writing for The Age:
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/net-fi ... -94fa.html
(I love Helen, she and I are apparently the only women in Australia prepared to publicly admit that we do love a bit of porn and smut :twisted: )

Make that three.