On Sat, Oct 25, 2008 at 6:56 PM, Elias Bizannes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > This issue really, really, really pisses me off. > http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/biztech/how-government-tried-to-gag-censor-critics/2008/10/23/1224351430987.html > > I've already written to the minister, and got a lame response: > http://liako.biz/2008/07/internet-censorship-in-australia/ > > What's the most effective thing we can do as a community? Surely > something is better than ignoring it...
This sort of stuff is going on all over the world and except in Sweden nobody really seems to care about it. As long as the general public does not understand how dangerous censorship (not to mention wire tapping) is, you will not see any major demonstrations. Without that, the goverment will probably just go ahead and pass a law during another distracting crisis. My guess is that the best way to deal with this is to educate the public on this issue and the best way to achieve that is if a massive scandal were to happen. Given how insanely stupid the people behind this are, this is just a matter of keeping a list of every single blocked site. At some point during the censorship period, you present the false positives as dramatically as possible. I am assuming the list of verboten sites will be public (if not, that would be even more scary), which means it effectively serves as a government endorsed name-and-shame list. If your website ends up on that list, you might face public humiliation. These cases need to be documented and preferably contrasted with the actual reduction in child porn creation. Another approach might be to make the link with counties like Iran and China as obvious as possible. If it can be shown that government is using or even considering the exact same software that is used in Iran and China and are simply substituting "Tianan Square" with "naked babies" and "Holocaust" with "Windows Vista torrent", that should stir up some emotions. Iran might even be willing to send Australia an offer to do the censorship at a lower price. Not sure if China would be in for such a diplomatic riot, although it would "support" their "case" for censorship; just different cultural sensitivities. Either way, I agree the goverment is acting absolutely irresponsibly here and some public outcry is justified. A good start would be for the minister to resign for even considering national censorship, but that's just my five cents. Sjors --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Silicon Beach Australia" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/silicon-beach-australia?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
