Australia loves censoring and filtering things on the internet, but its government hasn’t had its fill yet. Next up: blocking BitTorrent in the entire country.
I guess it shouldn’t be too shocking coming from a country with a Censorship Minister, but this is still pretty ridiculous. Said minister Stephen Conroy posted on his department’s blog recently that they were planning to test new filters to block BitTorrent traffic country-wide.
Australians, what do you have to say about this? Why are you electing jackasses like this that are turning your country into a less productive version of China?
AU: The US hasn’t got it quite right here – the government plans on trialling filtering technology of bittorrent in their upcoming trial, but it will be targeted at blocking illegal content as opposed to blocking all bittorrent. In any case, it won’t work and Conroy’s still a jackass. I swear to God, if this filter comes through, I’m moving to New Zealand.
[Slashdot via News.com.au]
Luke
December 23, 2008 at 8:55 AM
how about we all spend our plane ticket money on buying a new cable to run between the US and here so we can have our own internet. Or we just take out whoever it is who’s planning this.
Report Permalinkferal
December 23, 2008 at 9:04 AM
This is the kind of behavior thats gets politicians assasinated. Smug fucker needs a cap in his ass. (I don’t use bittorrent)
Report Permalinksamus
December 23, 2008 at 9:26 AM
What? All my purepwnage ep’s I get via bittorrent, and thats 100% legal. Meh, theres always ways around it anyway.
Report PermalinkPete
December 23, 2008 at 9:39 AM
I am right there with you. I dont have to want to resort to the virus riddled Limewire to get music =P
This filter better not go ahead, and even if it does, no one will go for it once their internet is slowed down or someone goes to look up a perfectly legitamate criminal law website with the words “Child Pornography” in the text somewhere and have the whole site blocked from access!
Report Permalinkbluemukaki
December 23, 2008 at 10:05 AM
Holy crap they included Tasmania!
Report Permalinkyoshie
December 23, 2008 at 10:12 AM
The Retard’s in the Australian Government will spend millions on blocking it.
Report PermalinkProfessional companies that use it to transfer work will suffer and loose money, client’s then jobs.
It will be hacked by a 14 year old and then the government will look like fools.
I already have a way around it, which involves no password on wireless shared disk’s in my block of units. comunity sharing
Rahux
December 23, 2008 at 10:16 AM
I’ve pledged never to vote labour again. Ended up becoming a paying member of the Greens, the only party that seems to give portfolios according to qualifications and understanding.
Or I’ll move to NZ too :P
Report PermalinkDeviant Bone
December 23, 2008 at 10:23 AM
Aussie here.
Report PermalinkOur major ISPs have rejeceted the filter.
Has not stopped the government, what they haven’t told you is that it reduces our internet speed by 77%, so we’re still stuffed even if we find a way around the filter.
Our 25kb/s is about to get a whole lot worse.
tominated
December 23, 2008 at 10:46 AM
NOOOOOOOOOOO! I hate our stupid government.
Report PermalinkElectricBlue
December 23, 2008 at 11:11 AM
Australians, what do you have to say about this? I don’t want it most people i know don’t want it and most people when they have it explained properly don’t want it.
Why are you electing jackasses like this that are turning your country into a less productive version of China? Unfortunately most people had no knowledge of their plans to do this pre-election and considering the options at the time sadly the option we chose was the best we could do at the time.
Australians might want to start protesting right now if they want to avoid further violations on their rights. – we already are see Here
http://nocleanfeed.com/
and here
http://www.getup.org.au/campaign/SaveTheNet/442
Report PermalinkNathan
December 23, 2008 at 11:36 AM
Yep we have one f$%ked up government. Unfortunately the opposition is just as bad. We are doomed. New Zealand here we come.
Report PermalinkSteve McQuarrie
December 23, 2008 at 11:51 AM
You have got to be kidding. Talk about a taxpayer-funded exercise in futility. If the movie studios and music industry care THAT much about piracy – how about pitching in? I’m sure that the majority of taxpayers would argue that they are paying for the protection of an industry that they legally already consume. People across the country that pay already exorbitant prices to go to the movies or purchase (again, overpriced) CDs will now be subsidising the online protection of content that they already have paid to consume legally!
Report PermalinkDavid Novakovic
December 23, 2008 at 12:06 PM
Don’t blame me, I voted Liberal. :)
Report PermalinkMark Cohen
December 23, 2008 at 12:16 PM
There is a large and vocal resistance to this very stupid idea, taking their voices online. See http://www.nocleanfeed.com or http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23nocleanfeed. Also on youtube, see http://au.youtube.com/results?search_query=nocleanfeed&search_type=&aq=f and Flickr photos of rallies etc at http://flickr.com/search/?q=nocleanfeed&w=all
It’s not Australians who are this stupid. It’s an amateur minister who is not qualified to hold his role, who the Prime Minister should really put elsewhere before he cripples the online component of our economy
Report PermalinkKate Carruthers
December 23, 2008 at 12:38 PM
The Australian web community is protesting against this stupid initiative by our Government – more info at http://nocleanfeed.com
We agree it is a stupid & retrogressive policy – please publicize it & our protests far and wide as we need all the help we can get to fight against censorship.
Report PermalinkHoshi
December 23, 2008 at 12:48 PM
It was a great idea signing up to the get up campaign last week, now just tell me where do I sign up to the ‘stop get up from spamming me everyday’ campaign…
Report PermalinkSteve
December 23, 2008 at 1:49 PM
Is it possible for you to have the US version run a correction story? People think we’re more backwards than we are; and besides, it’s just good journalism to run a correction when you outright get the facts wrong.
This seems to happen semi-regularly on Gizmodo: someone from the US version will hear a little piece of a story regarding Australia and go nuts with it. Very disappointing.
Report PermalinkGreenmynci
December 23, 2008 at 2:23 PM
Even if this goes ahead, it will be so easy to circumvent. Just get a seedbox overseas, and ftp in from there.
What are they going to do, block everything thats not on port 80?
Report PermalinkAnthotron
December 23, 2008 at 6:00 PM
This is terrible… I would have thought that after the Internet Filter Fail they would have thought twice about censoring things.
Report PermalinkAngus Grogan
December 23, 2008 at 8:14 PM
The proposal to censor Australian internet connections is ludicrous. If something is against the law then do something about it, take the perpetrators to task. Why as a nation do we seem to have a “bury our heads in the sand (like an emu)” type of attitude? The internet filter won’t get pedofiles or producers of child pornography 1 metre closer to jail.
The internet filter will cost Australian taxpayers money and time, as the filter, no matter which type used will impact on network speeds. To even think for a second that p2p traffic or that even p2p itself can be somehow stifled or combatted shows a total lack of understanding of how technology works.
The filter will lull parents, whom Senator Conroy has labelled as technologically inept into a false sense of security that the internet is a safe place for children to be left unsupervised
Senator Conroy has failed to deliver what the public of Australia want (unfiltered internet access) and were promised (NBN) and must stand down as minister accordingly.
Yours sincerely,
Report PermalinkAngus Grogan