The Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, wants to force Internet Service Providers to block access to a blacklist of "refused classification" (RC) websites for all Australian internet users.
“Refused classification” is what the government calls movies, magazines, video games, and websites that don’t fit nicely into other classifications (G, PG, MA, etc). The filter will block all content that has been categorized as RC, regardless of whether or not that material is entirely legal to own and see. Generally, RC content includes illegal material such as child pornography, fetishes, bestiality, etc, however acceptable content that is merely difficult to categorize, like certain video games, political websites, news websites, films, medical information and articles have been refused classification because they may either offend someone’s morals or do not fit in to other classifications.
The secret blacklist would be compiled using a public complaints mechanism, Government censors and URLs provided by international agencies.

If the filter were made mandatory, we would be blocked from more than just illegal content. Mistakes are constantly being made in the process of making the blacklist.
When the black list was leaked on to the internet in August 2008, it was seen that only about half the list was illegal content. The other half of the list contained video games, videos about war crimes, many sites about euthanasia, instruction in graffiti art and other minor crimes, information on safe drug use, online poker sites, YouTube links, Wikipedia entries, websites for lesser known, ‘fringe’ religions, Christian sites, the website of a tour operator, a school canteen consultancy, and even the website for a Queensland dentist.
Websites about abortion are also at risk; in Jan 2009, a page on an anti-abortion website was refused classification and put on the black list, and only after complaints were made was the page reclassified to R18+.
The fact that the blacklist was leaked is also pretty worrying, because half of it is essentially a list of the internet’s most abhorrent material. Allowing this list to be around the internet is like handing a paedophile a map to the school. This is also the reason the government is trying to keep the list secret, but if the list was leaked once, it can easily be leaked again.

The idea of filtering the internet is also seriously impractical. Not only will the filter be expensive to produce and maintain, it will also be ineffective, and will slow internet use for all Australians.
The blacklist seems to be based on the (seriously misguided) idea that the internet will stand still while you try to censor it. According to the Australian Federal Police, web pages that contain sexual abuse material also tend to change within hours and are difficult to identify or track, and that’s assuming that the government will be able to check every single website (which it most definitely won’t get even close to being able to do).
Not only that, but anybody with decent knowledge of computers, or enough thought process to Google “how to avoid the Australian internet filter” will be able to get around the filter within a matter of minutes and be able to access any blacklisted material they want.
Internet speed will also be affected, causing huge problems for the superfast broadband rollout that the government was already planning. The planned speed of the new broadband was 100 Mbps, however the maximum speed the filtering will allow is 8 Mbps.
Despite all this, the government has already put aside $44M of taxpayer money for the scheme for four year, and once the system is established it will cost tens of millions more to maintain per year. Most of this cost will fall to Internet Service Providers, like Optus and Telstra, who in turn will charge us more for internet access with a filter that doesn’t serve a purpose.

Another huge concern with the policy is that, with a secret list of website that we aren’t allowed to visit, who is there to stop someone from choosing which articles we can and cannot read? Even if we assume that our government won’t take advantage of the freedom to do this, who’s to say that the next won’t? Or the one after that? Or any of the ones to come?
Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks said secret censorship systems were "invariably corrupted", pointing to the Thailand censorship list, which was originally billed as a mechanism to prevent child pornography but contained more than 1200 sites classified as criticising the royal family.

Despite almost universal condemnation of the mandatory filtering policy, Senator Conroy has continued to push the idea to be put in to action, campaigning that the policy will make the internet safer for children.
Because of this, the common argument for the filtering policy is that it will protect children from the things on the internet that they shouldn’t be exposed to, such as pornography and child predators.
This is entirely false, and the misconception has created a false sense of security about the idea. Only (rare) Refused Classification content will be blocked; R and X rated pornographic content will remain available to anybody who looks for it, children included.
Predators, meanwhile, are not something that can be blocked by an internet filter; children will still be at risk on social networking sites and in chat rooms.
There are already a wide range of opt-in home internet filtering tools available to parents, which are more effective, and better tailored to specific needs than the mandatory filtering.

So then why do we need mandatory filtering? What is Conroy actually hoping to achieve, apart from slowing our internet access and costing us money? He doesn’t seem to realize how ridiculous his idea is, and dismisses all his criticism as “misleading information” spread by “an organised group in the online world”.
Greens Senator Scott Ludlam said: “To characterise sustained opposition by individuals and groups as diverse as EFA, Google, SAGE, Yahoo, Save the Children, Reporters without Borders, Justice Kirby, Choice Magazine, leading online academics and industry associations and the United States Department of State as ‘an organised group in the online world’ is a remarkably naive misreading of how unpopular this proposal is.”

Quote from Blasphemer

Well that takes out a good portion of the assholes on /b/. Now it just needs to happen to America and the UK.

Quote from Blasphemer

Californians, Australians and English people.


Biggest retards on /b/

The rest of America doesnt produce as much faggotry and therefor can lurk moar

Quote from Scarecrow

i am pretty sure americans are the biggest retards, period