Australia To Build Great Firewall Down Under
Looks like China won’t be the only place with a Great Firewall in place–The Australian government is introducing its own censorship regime that will determine what is or isn’t illegal for you to view on the web. The move is said to help stop teenagers from accessing online pornography, but even if you opt-out of the pr0n filter, you’ll get put on a different blacklist for “illegal” content.
So what could be considered illegal content? There’s the possibility that the government will block any website related to controversial opinions on euthanasia, drugs or political dissent. Even legal content might get screwed with, considering even the best Internet content filters still incorrectly firewall about .1% of webpages. Who knew the land of bloomin’ onions and Crocodile Dundee was teetering on the brink of Big Brother-ness? [Boing Boing]
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Comments (AU Comments | US Comments)
Well i am australian and its not surprisng the goverment censor and taxes everything.We have terribly low speed limits and our taxes are sky high.Kevin Rudd [Krudd] is the worst prime minister EVER.
NOOOOO!!!! Even if they do this, it wont work
Bloomin’ Onions! That’s an American invented Outback Steakhouse horror dish that no Aussie has ever heard of! So get your story straight, it’s the land of lamingtons, meat pies and pavlova!
But yeah the best stuff is in that 0.01%, hope it never happens.
i agree with O.
why don’t they make the internet faster. this shit’s fucked. its making me want to go into politics because i would not do this crap i would make it faster
Australia says NO!
Those Americans dont know our government, they couldn’t organise a pissup in a brewery.
Once again a huge waste of taxpayers money.. but on the other hand it might keep me in a job.. ;)
Another example of our tax $$$ at work, forget hospitals, schools, lets make our third world internet even worse.
someone in canberra must have been smoking something very illegal to come up with this crap
Anyone want to recommend a good cheap international proxy service?
NO!
My illegal content is not your illegal content
Well this is just ridiculous. Three cheers for the Australia big brother state!
Also, bloomin’ onions are American, and Australia also includes this little island to the south of it called Tasmania. Just a heads up
I think TOR is about to get much more popular in Australia. Since its impossible to filter every single TOR node in any kind of blacklist, that should do the job.
Time to set up a TOR node on my main box!
I sure am pleased I live in Tassie, if the map is anything to go by we wont be censored!
this is absolute bull. i cant believe that our goverment would try to do something like this. once the goverment has the power to block whatever it likes you know that further down the road they will end up banning whatever they like.
and you know that once the goverment can ban anything that public groupd will put pressure on the goverment to ban whatever they like. think religuos groups putting pressure on the goverment to ban anything with a MA symbol on it.
this is he worst goverment EVER sure he signed the kiyoto agreement but he signed away our freedom on the internet. i hope someone does some thing that will make the goverment stop. . . . . . not sugesting anything. . .
I think the thing to be aware of thou, this has nothign to do with Kevin Rudd, this was something that started in the days of Family First’s ranks just after John Howard was elected, and has been talked about for over 4-5 years now, and yet it still hasnt happened.
Stephen Conroy was going to drop it, but them someone got under his sleves and got him re-interested in it at the start of this year.
Im sick of Ministers for Broadband/Internet/Technology in australia been given to those who have no idea of how the industry works, or the technology.
Could almost say that about any minister of anything in australia.
this is gay. f$^king hell.
Matt K, Sadly Conroy and Labor never considered dropping it, they’ve supported it more strongly than the Liberals.It was an election commitment made by Conroy (probably on Rudd’s orders) just before the election campaign started last year.
I don’t know what the Senate can do about it, but if the Liberals and the Greens or Sen. Xenophon used their majority of votes there maybe they could do something.
Unfortunately, the Liberals probably like the idea.
I agree with you about these ministers having no idea about the industry and technology.
I can’t see why this hasn’t generated any attention. The Government wants to compulsory filter everyone’s internet at cost to the economy (slower connections) and personal freedoms (censoring).
Why is the media ignoring this? I watch the news every day, and I haven’t seen it on the TV news. I wouldn’t even know about it if I hadn’t seen a few times in the Australian.
I think it’ll be fun, personally. We can have little battles to see whose firewall is the best. The Great Firewall of China or the Rabbit Proof Firewall of Australia.