Australian Government Porn Filter To Slow Down the Internet

by What-A-Coincidence 55 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  LtCmd.Lore

  It's not censorship when they give you the option to opt out and surf porn to your heart's content.

  As I already pointed out, it IS censorship, because PUBLIC hot-spots will still have the censorship. You won't be able to go down to your local library and get uncensored internet access.

  Also, the internet is not within the governments jurisdiction. If they are allowed to put mandatory censorship on your internet, then in the future they will also be allowed to take away your right to opt-out.

  The internet is just communication. This is like the governemt installing a language blocker on your cell phone, so when you're talking to uncle Dirty Mouth it bleeps out his "F--k, s--t and c--t"... What gives the government the right to do that?
• 

  brinjen

  It's my feeling the filter won't work, just give a false sense of security. There is always a way around them, especially when it comes to worms, trojans and viruses. The legal, legitimate sites will be the ones most likely blocked, it's impossible to filter information effectively to the point that only graphic material is censored...
• 

  R.Crusoe

  In England a porn filter is a woman with a ruler arresting all those who exceed her scale for later questioning and taking down evidence.
• 

  sammielee24

  Wow...what the $%!##! is going on in Australia?????? First the request to stock pile 10 weeks for the bird flue pandemic and now this????

  Ask yourself - first porn, then what? Parents objecting to what they consider damning material religiously? Put filters on all religious data? All data that might relate to news around the world that might show offensive pictures - such as dead bodies after a car bombing? All chat sites that kids might get into? All music sites that might not be filtered for kiddie ears? When does it stop? Furthermore - what is defined by porn? Some fundies insist that Desperate Housewives is pornographic. Big Love? South Park? Two and a Half Men? Is the Bible pornographic? How far do we want to take it?

  This is a no win situation for a lot of people.

  If you opt out of the ISP filter, this immediately gives the government, your family, your friends and possibly your employer, the ability to recognize you as a porn user. That in itself could cause a lot of additional problems due to labelling. If you opt in, then you have allowed the government, your family, your friends and the rest of the world to begin to restructure what and how all information is relayed to you. Porn is just the first in a line of sure to come filters.

  No doubt porn is an issue for a lot of people but so is spamming and they still haven't cleaned that up! This will be interesting...sammieswife.
• 

  sammielee24

  of pornography and other inappropriate material.

  They have mentioned pornography and inappropriate and/or violent material.

  Does anyone have any idea what parameters are going to be used? This does not extend just to porn - since many people have different ideas on what should be deemed inappropriate and/or violent content to be restricted.

  sammieswife.
• 

  brinjen

  It's censorship, pure and simple...

  And for those who think I'm only concerned about losing my porn, I don't look at that stuff, my concern is exactly what will be censored. As I've said before, no filter exists that will only stop the "inappropiate" content. As another poster has also pointed out, people have different ideas as to what "inappropiate" content is.

  As for protecting children from pedophiles, I'm all for that. How is a filter going to stop it? Don't pedophiles lure children by pretending to be one themselves? No filter will stop that from happening...

  Why do I have to opt out of something I never asked for?
• 

  PrimateDave

  It never works the way it is supposed to. I used the local library's wireless access for over a year. Their service provider's filter prevented access to perfectly acceptable web sites while being incapable of stopping P2P and newsgroup access. Yes, people, there's more to the WWW than web pages. For example, anyone with access to a "News" server can download porn, pirated movies, and music to their hearts content. I'm not advocating this, but know that it is possible.
  
  Conservatives and Liberals are two sides to the same coin. Conservatives want to control what you think and do based on their own standards of "morality", while Liberals want everyone to be equally controlled by the nanny state "for your own good".
  
  I'm not a child, and I'll be the judge of what I will and will not read, watch, and listen to. If you've got children, it is YOUR responsibility to help them to learn to become responsible, capable, and functional sentient beings who can recognize danger to themselves and others and know how to think critically. Teaching them to rely on the government to "protect" them is lazy and an abdication of parental responsibility, besides setting a dangerous precedent with respects to limitation of governmental powers.
  
  Dave
  
  PS. Not sure how a "virus" can upload porn, and I've been on the net for ten years now. Surely the solution to that would be antivirus/firewall software and not sweeping government control of the internet.
• 

  yesidid

  This needs repeating:

  Personnaly, I am happy that ONE government takes online child protection seriously.

  I feel no pain for those adults unable to function online without porn.

  And this;

  As a parent, I can't help be confused by objections to this measure.

  It's not censorship when they give you the option to opt out and surf porn to your heart's content.

  Funny how the people who don't want the Government involved in the Internet are probably the same people who want more social programs...run by the Government.
• 

  5thGeneration

  Kinda turning into a dumb argument.

  Buying family friendly Internet with an option to turn off the providers' blocking is no different than the cable company asking you to call them to hook up the adult channels.

  Not censorship at all. Just a reversal of the choice the customer has to what service they want: Family oriented or Adult oriented. What the hell is the big deal?

  P.S. Dave, we have virus/firewall and I'm pretty sure my 10 year old daughter was not curious about sex with horses, sorry. Our computer guru said he's seen it happen before and that kid's websites are often targeted by the malware.

  FYI from Wikipedia:

  Malware is software designed to infiltrate or damage a computer system without the owner's informed consent. It is a portmanteau of the words "malicious" and "software". The expression is a general term used by computer professionals to mean a variety of forms of hostile, intrusive, or annoying software or program code.

  Many normal computer users are however still unfamiliar with the term, and most never use it.
• 

  jgnat

  An internet instructor many years ago suggested one compromise that had been floated. Give the porn people their own suffice. That is, in addition to *.com or *.org, have a *.xxx.

  It would then be fairly easy to segregate the porn lovers from the rest, and very easy to set up blocking software. It would make it easier also to go after the predatory porn sites who try to masquerade as something else.