And the good news is that none of the major players are involved.If you use Primus, Tech 2U, Webshield, OMNIconnect, Netforce or Highway 1 as your gateway to the world wide wed, you may want to contact your ISP and let them know you don’t want to play in their filtering sandpit.
It’s kind of strange that none of the big ISPs were involved – Telstra didn’t offer to partake, so that makes sense, but both Optus and iiNet said they’d play (although Optus wouldn’t test P2P filtering), so their omission feels kind of strange. Maybe it had something to do with iiNet saying they’d partake just to debunk the filter’s plausibility?
The trials are set to run for a minimum of six weeks once all the filtering hardware has been installed. For customers of these ISPs, I reckon that six weeks won’t be over soon enough.
[Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy]
psyc
Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 9:41 AMstupid senator conroy…
Liam
Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 10:07 AMIt’s much easier to ‘achieve’ a better result if you don’t have a big company playing – does anyone know how consistent and reliable these companies are anyway? If they’re constantly slow or intermittent to begin with, then of course installing a filter (and maybe upgrading other equipment) won’t have as much of an effect as it would on a well run network.
Also, it’s easy to say the customers don’t mind the filter if you only get 5 complaints (ignoring the fact there were only 6 customers to begin with!)
Steve Johnson
Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 10:15 AMIprimus Just lost a customer.
Nicholas King
Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 10:18 AMThis isn’t a good thing, it means the filter won’t receive the traffic it should and thus it won’t be properly tested.
The ISP chosen are probably compliant puppets of Conroy’s minions. Chances are the ISP’s chosen network performance sucks anyway.
doubleDizz
Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 10:34 AMThe image made me lol.
You know that scene from 2001 where the monkeys are running around screaming at the big, black obelisk? That’s what this whole internet filter crap is like. The Government are the monkeys and “The Internets” is the obelisk (you can use that image idea next time if you want Nick. I don’t mind! =D haha)
That’s what it feels like with this administration anyway. Bureaucratic luddites like Senator Clueless, whose primary action is to please the masses through 10-second news-soundbytes, calling for “an end to child pr0nography!” with no intelligent thought behind the actual process.
Imagine if all this money was put back into reinforce the NetAlert program through upgrading and advertising the service.
What a mess.
poedgirl
Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 11:22 AMOf course Conroy would only pick the ISPs that support his cause. Any results that come from this will be biased. At least if iiNet was in the picture we would have some swing against it.
Reg
Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 11:31 AMI would think that it is a bad thing they aren’t trialling it on a larger, more popular ISP. The impact it will have on customers who are with a smaller ISP may/would be limited, and not give the government a realistic idea about how this impacts day to day internet use when you have a larger users base.
One way of looking at this is maybe they are doing this with smaller ISPs, so the impact doesn’t look bad. Easier to get past the ignorant, dumb-ass militants who have no idea how to use a PC but want to protect the children.
Either way this is a new way for the government to control what we do.
Ashley
Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 11:48 AMHehe, woot! I just changed from iPrimus three weeks ago.
Now with iiNet :D Something to be made aware of though, with iPrimus it is purely Opt-In. You will not automatically get subscribed to this, you have to request it.
Adam
Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 11:54 AMRight now I feel just like that Kangaroo.
Michael
Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 11:58 AMThis is bullshit. Why is the government rolling this out when they also want to roll out a broadband network due to the fact that our bandwidth is currently too low. Conroy is a muppet!
simon
Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 12:02 PMShock! again, the best idea i can think of is enforcing ISPs to distribute pamphlet and filtering software for each new and old subscriber subsidised by the government. That way parents control and monitor childrens use. fact: even tho k-rudd and co want to stop child pron on the interwibbles, its not going to happen through simple filtering, and id be buggered if they can ever stop it (as admirable as their goal is – its too decentralised to stop).
Grail
Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 12:42 PMFor at least one of these ISPs, this will make little to no difference. Webshield already have extensive web filtering and this is infact their point of distinction in the market. They specialise in working with schools and businesses, providing a tailored web service with a very good black list and white list system.
P
Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 12:51 PMW00t, Im not on any of those ISPs, I dont have kangaroo penis in me!!!!
Daemon
Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 1:08 PMdefinately a sure fire way that it’s going to fail.
stoo
Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 1:16 PMIf your ISP has not subscribed to this nonsense, now might be the time to drop them a quick thank-you email to let them get direct feedback. If yours has, and you decide to ditch them, make sure they know why you’re leaving.
Steve
Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 1:18 PMYou have got to be kidding? What is the point of going ahead with this if none of the major players are involved? Does anyone else get the feeling that the results from this test will be *exactly* what the government wants?
I can see the headlines now…. “99.9% of bad stuffs were filtered out – we done good. Conroy out.”
Joel
Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 3:02 PMHow the hell is this even legal? Just look at the list of ISP’s they’ve chosen for the trial, they probably represent about 10% of the market.
tech2u, netforce, omniconnect?!?!
Unbelievable
mr-crash
Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 3:51 PMI’d never even heard of a couple of these ISP’s.
I’d say it’s less than 10% lol
Trev
Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 4:08 PMHere’s a t-shirt for you all!…I am in no way associated with this product
http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=91150810553&h=K5Um4&u=Nw6fB
I also stole the picture from the story a while back and created a FB group, unfortunately it only attracted 91 of my friends :-/
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?id=783133921&pid=1369238#/group.php?gid=34547081269
Cheers
laserguidedbrick
Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 4:21 PMDo you guys remember Comindico?
Most of these little ISP’s are/where resellers of Comindico broadband products.
Heard of a company called Soul?
Soul bought all of comindico’s assets including the client base…
I would be asking what has the Government promised Soul in this little venture….
Chaosboi
Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 6:02 PMThis is not about porn, that the cover the gov are using.
jdms
Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 9:12 PMFor once in my life, I’m proud to be with Telstra.
Matt
Sunday, February 15, 2009 at 10:01 PMWe should be scared of censorship. Slippery slope.
Josh
Sunday, March 8, 2009 at 4:48 PMCheck out a simulation of the Clean Feed. Share it with friends to help demonstrate how they might be affected.
http://www.siteblocker.org
Looks like they’ve blocked Conroy already – http://nanourl.net/3f4ba