Australian Gov't Claims Internet Filter Legislation Still In Play 98
Dracophile writes "Contrary to yesterday's article about The Australian's report that the Australian government had put on the back burner plans to introduce Internet filter legislation before the next election, The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the government rejected claims that it had abandoned such plans, and that 'a spokeswoman for Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said the government remained committed to the policy.' Unless the Australian Labor Party abandons the plan altogether, will the timing make any difference to voters?"
I'm a voter... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I'm a voter... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:I'm a voter... (Score:4, Informative)
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They never wanted one because they didn't feel it was necessary. The idea is that if the government infringes on what is seen as our rights, they will to be voted out.
Of course it's a fairly naive approach since it completely ignores the issue that arises when you have a system dominated by two parties who both have the same policy. You're pretty much screwed if none of the parties represent your opinions, you end up having to pick the least horrible.
If anything though, I'd say that the reluctance to introd
In any case.. (Score:1)
Voters are welcome to live in the fantasy world of their choice, but the truth is that Kevin Rudd and his cronies are a big disappointment, as there is little to distinguish them from their predecessors.
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I wonder if the US will accept Australian refugees?
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I normally vote labour, unless this gets scrapped by labour they won't get my vote. I'll probably move to the US with my partner if this ever comes in over here.
And to think only a few years ago I was considering Australia as a fallback.
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Exactly, this move is pretty much the most undemocratic thing they can do.
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Yeah but the IT portion of the voting population is quite small. This wont have any drastic impact on Labors chances of winning next election.
Voting. (Score:4, Insightful)
Election soon make your choice giant douche or turd sandwich. Whoever wins we get censorship like china mark my words.
Re:Voting. (Score:5, Funny)
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Not really - they send you a "please explain" form and a list of valid excuses not to vote. If don't want to be fined, just claim to be Amish - it works. The other way is with an "informal vote" - write "Donald Duck" or something equally stupid in the "other candidate" field and vote 1 for them.
Re:Voting. (Score:4, Insightful)
Or don't even drop the ballot paper in. Once they cross your name off you are good to go.
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Please reconsider. Family First [familyfirst.org.au] is even worse.
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Speaking as someone who's going to be counting your votes, please don't do this. At the end of election day, we have to account for every ballot paper that we can, and it causes no end of headaches if there's a significant discrepancy between the number of ballot papers issued and the number counted. In the worst case, it can trigger a complete recount of that polling station, and we all have to go home late (at no extra pay, I might add).
If you're upset by the rules, I understand that, but it's not those
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Fair enough. I always vote correctly (except the time the City of Maroondah sent me seven postal voting letters in fake names) but for people who don't want to do that it sounds like an informal vote is the way to go.
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Tony Abbot on Q&A only talked about technical issues. He's all for it.
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I guess voting libs might put another minister in charge rather than Conroy, someone who might impose a smart solution rather than whats already put forward.
I believe the filter is being sold in the wrong way, if they want to maintain border control on what gets into the country, just like what we do with immigration, mail transit, shipping etc. Then that's fine go right ahead, it wont change my internet life one bit.
At present stage, it leaves too much possibility of what could be done with the filter, res
Re:Voting. (Score:4, Insightful)
Now they can see it can be done they will keep it.
Try the http://www.democrats.org.au/campaigns/no_internet_censorship/ [democrats.org.au]
or
http://greensmps.org.au/content/media-release/greens-tell-labor-abandon-net-filter-and-start-again [greensmps.org.au]
Both of the big parties in Australian have been infected by faith based groups with long term plans.
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Mark my words; There will never be a mandatory filter.
This Machevelian shit has been going on for at least a decade, the two major parties take turns at being good cop / bad cop. Neither of them have any intention o
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Don't worry, I will.
Re:Voting. (Score:4, Insightful)
What do you expect from a union hack? (Score:1)
Re:What do you expect from a union hack? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Are you sure the greens won't sell us out for environmental causes? I'm sure as hell not.
Re:What do you expect from a union hack? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not at all sure the greens won't sell us out for environmental causes - but given both major parties want this "so stupid it's indistinguishable from evil" filter, and labour is already selling us out to the fundies while the liberals seem to be running around with their heads alternately chopped off or buried in the sand... I'm thinking it's one of those situations where we're better off with the devil we don't know.
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Why the hell would you elect someone you don't know? Did you know there's 21 federal parties such as the Liberal Democratic party? Non-custodial parents party? Here's a list of Political parties in Australia [wikipedia.org] or officially from your independent electoral site: Current register of Federal parties [aec.gov.au]
Our system is far better than USA with Preferential voting [wikipedia.org] and Proportional representation [wikipedia.org]. I'll give a quick example:
Guess who wins with USA'
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Thankyou for the links. I have some reading to do...
I note that by "don't know" I meant they've never been the ruling party, so we can't use any such history to form expectations about how good a job they'd do. Sorry that wasn't clear.
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Until Tony Abbot says so they will not get my vote.
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"I'm not at all sure the greens won't sell us out for environmental causes "
Sell you out for environmental causes? Sell you out to who precisely? Mother Earth?
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Some "environmental causes" believe "Mother Earth" would be better off if we went back to a stone age lifestyle or knocked ourselves off.
I am not suggesting the Greens are into either, mind you, just that the religious and the greedy don't have a monopoly on stupid ideas.
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The Democrats also oppose it, but they haven't really been a significant political force in quite a while. May not be a wasted vote to try and put them in the senate though.
I'm not sure if they've been officially registered yet, but the Pirate Party may be somewhat of an option as well, depending on your stance on IP issues in addition to the filtering.
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...demand that the senator provides a very good explanation.
Easier said than done... even in parliament question time all he does is waffle on about crap until his time is up [youtube.com].
I did like the little "I thank the senator for his attempt to answer the question" quip Ludlam threw in...
Say one thing, but do another (Score:2)
The spokeswoman said reports that a promise to introduce the filter before the next election had been shelved were incorrect.
What they are doing:
A spokeswoman for Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said yesterday the legislation would not be introduced next month's or the June sittings of parliament.
With parliament not sitting again until the last week of August, the laws are unlikely to be passed before the election.
Politicians say one thing and then go ahead and do another. When confronted, they'll double-speak, reframe the issue, or change the topic. Happens all the time - nothing new to politics.
But in this particular case, the gov't's packpedalling on their promises results in a good thing, so I'm not complaining.
I'm a voter and... (Score:1)
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No before the election it was an OPT OUT filter. After they got elected it became mandatory, for everyone.
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Pro-tip - we don't.
The other great moral issue of our time. (Score:3, Insightful)
The government does need some wins before the election. Being tough on enemies of the state such as people smugglers and Internet predators may appeal to conservative voters who might otherwise switch back to the coalition.
So don't expect this to necessarily be swept under the carpet as the govt don't want to give Tony Abbott any further ammunition on backflips.
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Why do we hire a government for years anyway?
It should be like a job: First a probation period of 6 months, where it requires only a certain amount of people to sign to get them out of office. (Motto: Let’s see if they keep their promises!)
Then there is an increasing firing delay (with an upper limit), to model trust and forgiving small errors [they’re only human after all]). But for both sides. (So a politician can’t just “step down”, and hence will be much more wary before do
The filter must not go ahead! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The filter must not go ahead! (Score:4, Insightful)
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There is a beautiful quote about this from a fellow Slashdotter:
“Whenever a controversial law is proposed, and its supporters, when confronted with an egregious abuse it would permit, use a phrase along the lines of 'Perhaps in theory, but the law would never be applied in that way' - they're ''lying''. They intend to use the law that way as early and as often as possible.”
— meringuoid (568297) [slashdot.org] @ 2005-11-24 16:40 (#14107454 [slashdot.org])
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Trying to remove child and violent porn is a good thing
Right there is where the problem starts.
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Don’ you get it? By hiding away the child porn, you don’t stop the CP from being created!
No, you actually only conceal it, and thereby protect it.
So this filter is actually making those “politicians” pro-child-porn. And ” unknowingly or not — you too.
It does nothing to stop the child abuse (*hinthint* original point *hinthint*) from being done! Zero.
But hey, that’s what you get from a culture of people who take painkillers and other problem-ignorers / symptom-treate
Wll we or won't we (Score:2)
..its just keeping Conroy in the news, giving him lots of data points on whether this is good or bad for him. I don't see much of a point in having a /. article on each and every apparent change.
Wish I could skip to the end.
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He should have enough data points by now on how bad it is for him. (Unless they are all being filtered out of course).
Here's my prediction for the end - Conroy is not returned at the next election, and the internet filter issue dies a quiet death.
Forget all your basic freedoms... (Score:2)
and think of the children [cat-v.org]!!!!!
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Both parties support it. You don't think that raving fascist fundamentalist Catholic Tony Abbot doesn't want a repressive filter in place? Then you're more deluded than they are.
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Really? Care to provide some links to Abbot conclusively speaking out against internet censorship? If you can provide them I may just vote liberal party for the first time in my life.
I'm betting you cannot provide those links.
Weasel Politics (Score:2, Insightful)
Dear Labor Party (Score:2, Insightful)
Scrap the filter policy and quite a number of us will vote for you again.
I really don't want the Liberal Party back in power.
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no vote for any government that supports censorshi (Score:2, Interesting)
what a choice - thought police or climate sceptic (Score:1)
We need to get out there and show why it wont work (Score:2)
Someone needs to come up with a demonstration that normal people will understand (people who know nothing about "the internet" except that you have to click on the blue E to get to it and that its full of "bad" things like child pornography, violent video games and Muslims urging other Muslims to kill people who arent Muslim) that shows exactly why this filter wont do the things that the government claims it will do (including blocking all the "bad" content) and how easy it will be to bypass the filter. (an
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The even more depressing thing is it comes out of the same budget that should be used for the less than thirty cops who have the job of actually tracking down the pedophiles on the net so it is counterproductive.
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Thats the whole point of my post, we show the "think of the children" crowd that the Rudd proposal wont do a thing to stop child pornography or other "bad" internet content and that the money is better spent going after the pedophiles and pornographers who create the "bad" content in the first place.
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Someone needs to come up with a demonstration [...]
No, they don't. The reason to be against censorship is a fundamental one of principle, not because of technical limitations in implementing it.
Liberal broadband (Score:3, Insightful)
I find it interesting that everybody is up in arms over this filter, and ready to vote Liberal second last; yet the Liberal party is ready to scrap the NBN, setting Australia's broadband infrastructure back another 3 years...
He'll be history anyway (Score:2)
At least that's how it's been and that's what I hope will happen. Conroy will make life hell for a completely different industry.
There's no chance of a Liberal or National Minister in the role. The Liberals at the moment couldn't win a chook raffle with all the tickets let alone an election. Rudd's just going to throw their own policies at them and they will re
A matter of timing (Score:2)
Unless the Australian Labor Party abandons the plan altogether, will the timing make any difference to voters?
Well, yes, the timing would make a difference. If they were to schedule it to begin in (say) 2100, I would be quite happy.
My prediction. (Score:2)
Well - I think I'll start submitting everything... (Score:1)
Ban Stephen Conroy from entry into the US and UK (Score:2)
The US routinely bars human rights violators from entering the US why not in this case?
Cant we get him on to the US no-fly list?
Im sure the UK has similar laws.
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It's not just Conroy we need to also ban Kevin Rudd he is after all Conroys boss.
i'm gonna keep this one real short (Score:1)