We object to the Government’s plan to censor the internet for a variety of reasons – it won’t help parents, it won’t help police, it’s secretive, it costs a lot of money. Perhaps these points are debatable, but one isn’t – experts agree, anybody who wants to will be able to get around the censorwall, easily, on day one.
Next Tuesday, August 10 at 1pm, Stephen Conroy, Tony Smith and Scott Ludlam will be debating IT and communications policy at the National Press Club. The event will be broadcast on Sky News, and we’ll be liveblogging it here on Gizmodo, so you can see what party has the best interests of the tech community in mind at this years election.
As part of Senator Conroy’s announcement that the government is delaying the implementation of its incredibly narrow minded internet filter, he announced that large ISPs would be voluntarily blocking child porn and child abuse websites.
It’s been nearly three years since the Labor government was elected, and for almost the entire time they have been pushing their plan to censor Australians’ internet connections. The debate has been highly controversial from day one. Many people expected that the Government would back away from their plans once they realised how unworkable and contentious they were, but at every step of the way they have pushed ahead with renewed enthusiasm.
Stephen Conroy told journalists yesterday that he expects the government’s plan for internet censorship filtering to hit parliament by the end of this year. Great.
When we started our campaign to see Senator Kate Lundy move into the Communications portfolio, there was some critics who argued that despite the fact Conroy has been pushing an unpopular filter down our throats, he’s still unlikely to lose his position thanks to his performance around the NBN and his influence within Labor.
We’ve already seen that the Greens’ Senator Scott Ludlam is the only politician really taking the fight to the government over their proposed Internet filter (although we’re hoping a cabinet reshuffle might change things), but now the Greens are taking the fight a step further by hosting a “Stop the Filter” event in Melbourne on Friday night tonight and Sydney on July 7.
First the government announced the NBN. Then they threatened to lay the smackdown on Telstra if they didn’t play ball. Well, it looks like they’ve won, yesterday announcing that they have struck a deal with the Big T to buy access to Telstra’s existing broadband infrastructure, while moving Telstra customers from the old copper network to the new NBN.
Attention all Australians. The spams and scams are coming through the portal. So you can prepare yourself appropriately, please view these images closely to learn what you’re up against…
Yesterday, Stephen Conroy warned us of the dangers of the spams and scams coming through the portal. Considering some of us were confused as to what that actually meant, imagine the confusion for the non-tech savvy. That’s why we’re going to help make the issue “clearer” with a little Photoshop contest.
