Some people are just technophobes; and not just ordinary technophobes, but extremely scary ones who see a possible bad side to a technology and then decide that nothing good can come of this new-fangled invention. For instance, take Scott Turrow of the Authors Guild. He spoke up against network sharing technology in front of the US Congress: “BitTorrent is to… Read more →
Conroy – are you listening? Once you decide that certain information is off-limits, you end up having to block it in every domain, and always be vigilant – just like the Chinese government. As people on Foursquare started checking into Tian’anmen Square (by the way, guess what anniversary just passed with no media interest that I saw), and mentioning that… Read more →
Conroy fails to convince us, yet again. Not that online polls mean much, but I think that there’s something interesting to be gleaned when 95% or more of respondents regularly vote against the government’s scheme. One point which someone tried to raise in the Radio National debate was that, if the filter will work so well, why not publish the… Read more →
A cute Stephen Conroy comic.
Hey Hetty and Bernadette? Can I get a panic button too? When my boss asks me in email to do something stupid and to do it now, that’s online bullying and harassment, isn’t it? What can I do in that situation? How about we teach the children to tell their parents, if they feel threatened by something they’ve read or… Read more →
It was a stock “don’t worry – we’re politicians” letter. Download it here. However it takes the reader for a fool and depends on an uncritical eye being cast over it. Here’s my response. Conroy, you’re a liar. Your propaganda PDF states that the UK, Finland, Sweden and Norway have adopted filtering technology without any impact on performance. This is… Read more →
Jon Seymour, in a guest post on the blog Somebody think of the Children, talks about what he feels is the real purpose for the proposal of a mandatory internet filter: it’s to impose a middle-class sensibility on society; to take us back to an era when Lady Chatterley’s Lover was banned, where certain things were not said and done… Read more →
Mark Newton, who works for Internode, is one of the main spokesmen (in an unofficial capacity) against the Federal government’s proposal to setup up ISP-level filtering on the Australian internet. The title of this post is a quote from an opinion piece on the ABC’s website, where he rightly takes Senator Conroy and the Australian Families Association to task for… Read more →
The Australian has published an article based on the press release from SAGE-AU: Over-blocking access to Internet sites even three percent of the time will impose “significant†costs on service providers, the System Administrators Guild of Australia”(SAGE-AU) has warned. Unfortunately they don’t publish a link to the actual release, which mentions more issues like deployment costs, and security concerns. It’s… Read more →
According to the Australian, Stephen Conroy has been presented with, and endorsed, a report into the feasibility of internet filtering, which claims success. So now we’re a go for real world trials. The actual report is here (PDF), and it makes interesting reading in a sad way. It’s being pulled apart on the SAGE mailing lists at the moment, and… Read more →
