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No Opt-out Of Filtered Internet


Dagabond

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Where the :roflmbo: did this come from....

No opt-out of filtered Internet

Australians will be unable to opt-out of the government's pending Internet content filtering scheme, and will instead be placed on a watered-down blacklist, experts say.

Under the government's $125.8 million Plan for Cyber-Safety, users can switch between two blacklists which block content inappropriate for children, and a separate list which blocks illegal material.

Pundits say consumers have been lulled into believing the opt-out proviso would remove content filtering altogether.

The government will iron-out policy and implementation of the Internet content filtering software following an upcoming trial of the technology, according to the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy.

A spokesman for Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said the filters will be mandatory for all Australians.

“Labor’s plan for cyber-safety will require ISPs to offer a clean feed Internet service to all homes, schools and public Internet points accessible by children,” he said.

“The upcoming field pilot of ISP filtering technology will look at various aspects of filtering, including effectiveness, ease of circumvention, the impact on internet access speeds and cost.”

Internet Service Providers (ISPs) contacted by Computerworld say blanket content filtering will cripple Internet speeds because the technology is not up to scratch.

Online libertarians claim the blacklists could be expanded to censor material such as euthanasia, drugs and protest.

Internode network engineer Mark Newton said many users falsely believe the opt-out proviso will remove content filtering.

“Users can opt-out of the 'additional material' blacklist (referred to in a department press release, which is a list of things unsuitable for children, but there is no opt-out for 'illegal content'”, Newton said.

“That is the way the testing was formulated, the way the upcoming live trials will run, and the way the policy is framed; to believe otherwise is to believe that a government department would go to the lengths of declaring that some kind of Internet content is illegal, then allow an opt-out.

“Illegal is illegal and if there is infrastructure in place to block it, then it will be required to be blocked — end of story.”

Newton said advisers to Minister Conroy have told ISPs that Internet content filtering will be mandatory for all users.

The government reported it does not expected to prescribe which filtering technologies ISPs can use, and will only set blacklists of filtered content, supplied by the Australia Communications and Media Authority (ACMA).

EFA chair Dale Clapperton said in a previous article that Internet content filtering could lead to censorship of drugs, political dissident and other legal freedoms.

“Once the public has allowed the system to be established, it is much easier to block other material,” Clapperton said.

According to preliminary trials, the best Internet content filters would incorrectly block about 10,000 Web pages from one million.

http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id%3b1399635276

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well ya can't have everyone knowing what's actually going on around the world ,that's dangerous and might cause people to disagree with the state , sorry government

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Yeah like that's gonna work, who voted these losers in? hehe

Mate, as much as I hate to admit it, this was introduced by the Lib's a few years ago...

I had been indirectly involved with the development and planning of this for one of the limited yet accepted filter vendors...

Personally I would hate to see anything like this happen, and to be honest dont believe that it will for a very long time if at all, as it would very much so become a censorship issue as mentioned in the article...

But who knows!

:fishin::fool::w00t2:

Might I also add... a few years ago when the initial talks started about this, an un-named vendor who I was promoting through a disty I was working for had their product on demo at a number of high profile meetings...

One worth mentioning was in front of a group of Catholic heads of one of the northern sydney group (ill keep this vague for obvious reasons)...

This meeting had in attendance, 4 school head masters, a number of religious figures, IT tech from a few of the schools, a sales manager from the disty (me), the sales manager from the reseller, a sales guy from the vendor, and a tech from the vendor also...

We started off well, with the demo, all were impressed and then we shifted to the "Google Image Searching" feature they had just finished 'perfecting' the week before...

So the tech loads up google images... and types in a few choice words... and names... to the great dis approval of the members of the schools, 70% of the first page was full of nothing short of explicit images... Yet this product was one of very limited approved but the EDU Dept...

Go Figure...

The following week we had a demo at another Christian school group in the west subs, only to find a number of filters yet again were not working... The group had head all about the amazing features of the google image searching and asked for a demo... only to see a similar result to that of the previous week...

The third and final round - the box was being live trailed at two private schools, one in Bankstown (male school) and the other a very large and wealthy religious school in the east... (Sure many of you can work out which one)...

2 day into the trials, I wake up at 9am to calls from both schools, the reseller going nuts... asking for the director’s name at the vendor....

For some reason the schools had gone live to 50% of the school and run the filter side by side with their existing solution... A good idea...

However the Bankstown school had reported a child of about 16yo for watching porn in class... (dam Leb boys)... as it had not been filtered out by the product and was being streamed from the net... Go figure... the other school had similar issues... however the title was something relating to that religion and a not so inviting outcome... apparently no less then about 10 student had been watching...

I'm sure you can imagine just how funny this story really is if you fill in the blanks and lack of parties I have mentioned...

:roll: Still laugh about it all the time!

I quickly resigned from that role by the end of that week...

I have since been told the product actually was working correctly at the time of the ISP based goverment trials...

Anyways... technology at its best!!!

:beerchug:

I guess one could onyl say some of the results were things many males only dream about and wich they could experiance after a long day at work!

:blush:

Edited by smicky
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I own an ISP and have been one of the vocal opponents of this BS idea.

It will slow the net, easily be bypassed and cost me a fortune to implement.

We only have business clients, yet will still need to provide filtering.

Personally I doubt this will ever go ahead as it will be easy to get around. If it does happen Iran will have less restrictions than we will have.

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It's not just the pRon I'm worried about either....who's going to be doing the cencorship and who decides what is and what isnt to be available to the masses...

Bye Bye Torrents if I read it correctly....

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It's not just the pRon I'm worried about either....who's going to be doing the cencorship and who decides what is and what isnt to be available to the masses...

Bye Bye Torrents if I read it correctly....

Dags!!!

Now we know what you really do in front of the puter....

Well whats running in the background when your on here anyways!

:bump::ph34r:

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