
Users Betrayed as Australia Adopts a Copyright Censorship Regime - DiabloD3
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/06/users-betrayed-australia-adopts-copyright-censorship-regime
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belorn
A big problem I have with every law like this is how inherently inconstant and
big business favored its enforcement is.

Say for example that you are a content developer and finds that illegal copies
are sold on ebay. You ask them to take down one seller only to find new ones
every day, and thus you go to the police and ask them to block ebay.

I doubt the person will ever get a day in court. There could be thousands of
illegal copies listed each day and yet the political nature of blocking laws
means that enforcement is depended on who does the accusation and whom the
accused is.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Or, say a large game publisher pirates your content.

Guess whose site will go down. Hint: not yours.

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PebblesHD
Yet again, and of course as usual, the government of Australia demonstrating
how much they value their citizens by totally ignoring them in favour of big
business. Good job Tony.

~~~
crdb
Whilst I agree with your sentiment as a legal permanent resident of Australia,
I think it is dangerous (if very seductive) to blame Mr Abbott. He's been the
party attack dog for so long that people focus their energy on making it
personal with him (much as the Democrats focus on Bush and the Republicans
have a thing for Obama).

First, from the little I've been tracking this issue, it appears it was the
"relatively moderate", friendly, centrist, old guard Turnbull that was behind
these moves. Chances are it's done as a favour to someone in Washington who
needed something from someone connected to the Hollywood lobbies. Not the
strongest of motives and the kind of thing that popular opinion can reverse.

Second, legislation doesn't magically happen in a vaccuum when the PM says so.
Australians, you MUST get in touch with your local politician, both to let
them know (politely) how you feel about certain issues, and to give them
arguments to use in Canberra if you want any chance of legislation being
passed the way you like it. It's not about Labour vs Liberals. Whoever has
been locally elected, is now responsible for listening to you. They also don't
do much thinking so it helps to do it for them: "This proposed legislation
infringes individual rights like this, this and this; moreover, as per the
Constitution, that" goes much further than "I am pissed at you for letting the
PM get away with it".

This is of course not a personal response to your comment, but a general note
that I thought about and that was triggered by your Tony note. I've found
Australians relatively politically disengaged, with the general opinion - at
least in Sydney - basically being "they're all scumbags anyway, things will
work out in the end", followed by some expletives about Gillard, Rudd or
Abbott depending on where the Australian leans...

~~~
PebblesHD
A very good point, and well written. My only observation is this: politics
doesn't happen in a vacuum, but the current government has set about ignoring
polls and comments from the public on a range of other issues making me less
inclined to believe they will shift for this one. That being said Labor isn't
innocent of this either.

My local member has on several occasions refused to even answer calls or meet
me to discuss this, based only on the fact that as a young adult my opinion
must not be valid.

~~~
vacri
Send a registered, written letter. There are legal requirements for written
letters that mean MPs have to respond to them. I'm told that you should also
ask a couple of disparate questions in the letter, as this means they can't
simply respond with a form letter.

letter-to-MP tips
[https://www.efa.org.au/Campaigns/lobby.html#tipsletter](https://www.efa.org.au/Campaigns/lobby.html#tipsletter)

~~~
Khaine
MPs are under no obligation to respond to a letter

~~~
vacri
Hrm. Perhaps things have changed? I was told a while back by someone closer to
Canberra than me that there were legal requirements for responding to letters;
email was a boon, because it wasn't subject to those requirements. My
apologies if I've misled.

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tux1968
Don't really think people from any other county should be looking down on
Australia. This is the progression in every country, just at varying degrees
currently.

People will look back on the first few decades of the Internet as the wild-
west era. Kids will be born knowing nothing but draconian rules and
enforcement for the Internet. And the powerful elite will once again have
squelched anything that challenges their dominance. Business as usual.

~~~
SturgeonsLaw
I'm glad there are others in the information war who don't share that
defeatist attitude. SOPA and PIPA were defeated and the exposure of the NSA
phone metadata program has spurred an unprecedented movement to encrypt the
web. The fight isn't over by any means.

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5id
It's sad to think that with these laws being passed, regardless of what
position you take, that we still don't have any Fair Use provisions in
Australia. There was even a discussion paper
[[http://www.alrc.gov.au/publications/4-case-fair-use-
australi...](http://www.alrc.gov.au/publications/4-case-fair-use-
australia/summary)] put forward by our Law Reform Commission suggesting this.
I would have though the productivity benefits associated with education and
innovation alone would make this a no brainer

~~~
PebblesHD
I believe one of the only amendments to this bill that got through was a
requirement that Tony Abbott provide a formal response to that paper.

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empressplay
Apparently the ISPs are just going to use DNS poisoning, which anyone will be
able to circumvent by using an overseas public DNS server, like Google's
8.8.8.8

~~~
toothbrush
That's not really the point though. The fact that a minority of tech-savvy
users will be able to get around it doesn't change the fact that it's a very
effective measure against Joe Sixpack and his family having unfettered access
to information.

More generally, this is why i'm very sceptical of technical solutions to
political problems. Years from now, you might find yourself along with your
technically proficient minority of friends being the only people able to still
access the Internet freely—most of it might have already become a corporate-
controlled walled garden. I for one don't want to have to end up living in
digital almost-exile just because we were too lazy to Do Something™ now, when
there is still hope.

I admit that this is at once probably rather tinfoil-hatty but also almost
reality (how many people would be able to find whatever they're looking for if
something like Google Search were blocked? 5%? Never mind if DNS poisoning was
added to that). We on HN would be fine, but this would seriously impede
democracy, given how the other 95% would be stuck without access to
information.

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paulhauggis
At this point in our society, does this even matter? If you go against the
status quo, you will be silenced by special interest groups and other users
online for only expressing your opinion.

They did it to themselves. When you create a system where anyone and everyone
can be silenced for their opinions, this is the result.

Bravo!

