
Aussie censors implement six degrees of separation policy - Links to links now banned - vaksel
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/07/oz_link_ban/
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jibiki
This looks like an easy one to protest. Just get a huge bunch of people to
post the link: on personal websites, message boards, whatever.

~~~
chaosmachine
A series of redirecting pages would be fun. Get a few hundred people to form a
link chain..

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dxjones
Sadly, the Aussie govt even issued a "link removal" notice to EFA, who
complied by removing their link to a link to an offending site. They may not
have deep enough pockets to battle the govt in court.

~~~
tomjen
If a lion is to beat a crocodile, it must stay out of the water.

In this case they did the right thing. You comply with the governments legal
request, then dig through their trash and find ugly stuff you can throw at
them.

Then with that info, you go to a friendly journalist and cry censorship and
talk about how evil the politicians are. Then you put the content back up
again and wait for the next sucker - they will stop trying pretty quickly.

It continues to annoy me how many people who try to play it clean with the
politicians. The reason you have to shower is that the real world is dirty;
pretending otherwise will mean you end up being the one who stinks.

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siculars
what kinda koolaid is the aussie government drinking? you would think that in
2009 people would know how the interweb works. tubes, ya know?

how can anyone exert control over what someone else links to? government
forcing you to accept responsibility for what others link to basically chills
linking at all. what if you link to a blog which has public commenting and
someone then comments with a link to 'censored' materials. where is the list
of censored materials? who knows what is censored? how do i know that
something is censored and that i should not link to it?

this quote was taken from an article linked off the op, (
[http://www.itnews.com.au/News/98679,conroy-requests-faith-
in...](http://www.itnews.com.au/News/98679,conroy-requests-faith-in-net-
filter-scheme.aspx) ):

"Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has urged detractors of the
Government's proposed Internet Filtering scheme to have faith in their elected
parliamentarians to pass the right legislation."

here is a news flash: stop censoring! then i wont have to worry about elected
parliamentarians passing the right legislation. this is like right out of a
tolstoy novel or something.

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jonny_noog
_what kinda koolaid is the aussie government drinking?_

Let me try and explain what koolaid they're drinking: I believe the real
reason the Australian Government is pushing this plan so hard in spite of
massive opposition from industry and the general public is they need support
from a couple of minor party/independent senators in order to pass basically
any controversial legislation. These senators represent social conservative
special interest groups who have strong objections to things like gambling and
adult (legal) pornography. In this case, we're talking about the online
versions of these things.

It has little do to with protecting the children (that's just the cover) or
anything else other than good old political manoeuvring. The whole situation
is probably not helped by the fact that the current left-wing Australian
Government is by and large, about as conservative as you can get and still be
called left-wing. But I think it's mainly that they need support from outside
their own party if they really want to get anything done.

~~~
froo
_they need support from outside their own party if they really want to get
anything done._

I thought Rudd had already broken the record for most time spent overseas for
any PM in Australia's history.... Seems like he's getting plenty done[1].

Oh wait, you mean getting stuff done in the country? Nevermind.

[1] - for those who don't know, our current PM was elected after it was
brought to light he used a tax payer funded overseas trip to visit a strip
club in New York. Since becoming PM, he has spent more time overseas than any
other Australian PM in history...

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jamiequint
By this definition don't they have to block Google?

~~~
dejb
Yes they would if the title of the article was accurate. But it isn't. The
title is a poor piece of sensationalistic journalism. They are only issuing
'take down' notices for direct links. This is stupid enough in itself and
should be ridiculed. But adding false information to the mix is counter
productive.

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froo
The ironic thing in this whole internet censorship debacle here in Australia
is that this bullshit is being led by the left wing side* of our political
system which one would typically associate with progressive ideals and liberal
thinking.

The same party also whole heartedly opposed any plans for Internet censorship
in 2003 at the ISP level, which they are now trying to implement themselves.

[http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/biztech/web-
censorship...](http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/biztech/web-censorship-
plan-heads-towards-a-dead-end/2009/02/26/1235237810486.html?page=fullpage)
(last 2 paragraphs)

Go figure.

*(I can't say the liberal side, because the Liberal Party here in Australia are the conservatives/right wingers, whereas the Labor Party are the liberal/left wingers and I wouldn't want to confuse the two)

~~~
laut
I think authoritarian vs. non authoritarian is more useful than left-right.
For instance in the US both of the big parties are authoritarian and are
pushing big government. To me they are very similar.

That it is leftist doing censor ship is not surprising at all, just look at
the history.

In the US both the term "liberal" has been hijacked by socialists. In the US
the term libertarian is used for what in the rest of the world is still called
"liberal".

~~~
thomaspaine
To be fair, the original usage of the term "libertarian" in a political
context was to refer to socialist-anarchists.

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pmjordan
As far as I know, this isn't the only instance of a law banning certain
hyperlinks. If I remember correctly, in Germany it is currently illegal to
link to software which can be used to remove copy protection. (for example,
DVD-ripping software that breaks the CSS encryption)

Copyright holders can bill you (together with a cease and desist) or sue you
if you don't comply.

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dejb
I believe this is inaccurate. After reading through the entire article and the
page on EFF there is no indication of a take down notice for anything but a
direct link to the 'offending material'. If I've missed something please let
me know.

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dan_the_welder
Wow this is embarrassing. I thought Australians were progressive.

~~~
winanga
We are... as an Aussie living overseas I am still amazed by these laws, and
the fact that there doesn't seem to be a lot of protests/action against them.
Maybe protests have been banned as well?

~~~
jonny_noog
I think most people don't realise what's at stake. Many just don't care, many
others hear the talk about protecting the children, and swallow it, hook line
and sinker.

I think in places like this forum, where most people are pretty web/tech
savvy, it's easy to forget that we are still the minority.

When this latest round of censorship stuff reared its ugly head, there was
some talk from parts of the pro-censorship side that the country should
instate a policy of relegating certain web content to different ports. So
rather than the standard port for HTTP being port 80, instead certain web
content could only be served on a particular port and of course this would
make it easy to block said content by blocking its associated port.

Yes, you read that right. So like you'd have a porn port (lets say port 69)
and a gambling port and eventually I guess you'd have a political decent port
before too long.

This is the level of understanding we're dealing with. Born in an earlier
time, I'm sure these people would be spending their days burning witches after
making sure they were witches by determining that they weighed the same as a
duck.

