No clean feed
Catallaxy has picked up on the Internet filtering issue and has offered a useful link for those keen to get mobilised on this issue.
From the No Clean Feed website:-
Call the Minister
There’s nothing like a personal phone call to get the message across. Call the minister’s office on (03) 9650 1188 and let them know your objections.
Write to the Minister
A personalised letter to the Minister sends a powerful message: We don’t like the policy, and we care. Letters can be sent to the Ministerial office:
Senator Stephen Conroy
Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy
Level 4, 4 Treasury Place
Melbourne Vic 3002
The No Clean Feed website includes other options also such as petitions and the ministers email address. Check it out and start making some noise.
UPDATE: if you’re a facebook user then you can join the facebook cause to spread the word.
34 Comments »
Leave a comment
-
Recent Comments
Fleeced on Sean Penn Suggests Prison Time… 
'Nuke' Gray on Discussion 
Kev on Discussion 'Nuke' Gray on Discussion 
Cameron Larkin (aka … on Discussion 
DavidLeyonhjelm on Sean Penn Suggests Prison Time… 
Semi Regular Liberta… on Discussion Cameron Larkin (aka … on Discussion 
Here on Discussion 
Jerry on Bob Carr on the wrongs of a bi… 
Michael Sutcliffe on Discussion 'Nuke' Gray on Discussion Annette on Discussion 
Semi Regular Liberta… on More guns, less crime 
Fermi on More guns, less crime
LINKS
Featured Book
Stats
ALS elsewhere
If you call the number you get a voicemail. Makes sure you leave a message that makes it clear that you object to the proposed internet filter.
Keep pushing this one guys. Apart from the fact it’s a disgraceful attack on our individual liberties, it’s a good way to lift the image of libertarianism
While the Greens agree with us on this issue, I wouldn’t want them hoggin all the limelight on it.
Should someone from libertarian “officialdom” then send a formal letter with a number of “signatories”?
One from the ALS and one from the LDP?
There is press release potential here people.
Working on it, Mark.
An online petition would be pretty useless, I think.
We need to do something hard.
Isn’t libertarian officialdom a contridiction in terms?
Send Conroy a letter. I’m going to.
Nanny states quickly slide into police states.. this needs to be stopped dead.
who’s up for a protest?!
But what i find really fucking scary interesting is that this topic has not hit the 6 o’clock “news“
We might have to get some chain emails started to spread the word quickly.
I’ve gave my opinions to the Minister and I agree this is a fantastic chance to advertise libertarianism through a good, activist cause.
Now Fielding wants to filter ALL material above R18+ (ie all X rated and RC rated content).
And Xenophon wants to filter out online gambling sites.
This is getting draconian to the extreme.
Why doesn’t Fielding take a look at some of the adult stores in Sydney. They illegally sell X rated material just a stones throw from the state parliament that made it illegal. If he really cares why not insist that the existing laws are policed rather than piling on more ineffective laws.
p.s. Most material on the Internet isn’t rated so talk of banning X rated material fails at first base to deal with the issue of classification. In any case X rated material is by definition material that shows consensual non-violent sex between adults. The evening news should be banned before this stuff.
catallaxy picks up on this site:
http://www.somebodythinkofthechildren.com/
PEDRO- No, libertarian officialdom is NOT a contradiction in terms, though anarchic officialdom would be! Our officials would be the minimum needed, and no more, and nobody is compelled to support them.
Just a joke Nicholas.
It is not hard to find stuff on the Internet that is tasteless and awful and which if blocked would not be missed. However with a blacket ban on selected websites it would be very hard to find stuff on the Internet that should be unbanned. As such Internet censorship, if accepted, will tend to ratchet toward being more and more restrictive.
Pedro, I’m the maker of weak jokes here. You provide the voice of one of the oppressed minorities. It would help if you were a bisexual lesbian with an addictive habit, and if you had some aboriginal ancestors, but we don’t insist on it.
All those things and half-whale to boot!
Xenophon is a particularly immoral MP IMO.
His media obsessions show a worrying lust for power.
He is an extreme statist hell bent on destroying the freedoms he should rightfully be employed to protect. And it’s no surprise he supports compulsory government internet censorship.
If Xenophon was run over by a bus, I and every Australian would be better off for it IMO.
Xenophon wouldn’t be better off. And the bus driver might be distressed. So that’s at least two counter examples assuming the bus driver is Australian.
I’m starting to suspect that all this talk of child porn and now X rated porn and fetish sites are merely trojan horses for introducing censorship. It goes like this – no-one will argue in defence of child porn, and virtually no-one will argue in defence of hardcore porn and fetish sites, making it easy for the legislation to pass.
Once the filter is in place it will be much easier to ‘tweak’ the definition of illegal content, or worse still, just add sites to the blacklist.
Another consideration – not that I’m particularly knowledgeable about hardcore porn sites mindyou, but I would imagine the URLs would chop and change frequently, especially the really tasteless/illegal stuff, if servers are shut down and relocate to other countries etc.
How many government bureaucrats are going to have the ongoing job of tracking nasty websites and updating the blacklist? I hope their role comes with free psych counselling – they’d be exposed to some horrible stuff in the course of protecting us from harm!
If they know the web address where child porn is situated then arrest the people running the site and shut them down. The practice is morally repugnant and illegal pretty much anywhere in the world. If they don’t know the web address then how are they going to blacklist it?
The thing I find most laughable is that they somehow think the WEB is the best way to track and find child pornographers.
I don’t claim to be an expert on it- but from my experience with file sharing networks- they seem to be a far better safe haven for illegal activities (and I assume purveyors of kiddie porn) than the web. As if anyone committing illegal activity would rely on something as public and open as google. IRC, IM, anonymous, encrypted email servers, programs like limewire are all far better venues for illegal content (I assume the kiddie porn underground works like the piracy underground).
Papachango; I think once they get the legislation up, changing the rules on what is censored becomes simply an executive decision, thats the way it used to work. The trick is as you allude to, getting the legislation in place.
Child porn and so on is not the big danger on the web, the pedophile networks are, and this will do bugger all to prevent that.
[...] Internet Filtering The federal governments move toward a national compulsory internet filter is misguided. However I suspect that it does tap into a genuine concern held in certain quarters of [...]
Pingback by Private Internet Filtering « Thoughts on Freedom | October 29, 2008
Of course, if they mean simply not letting Graemebird ever get on the net, I’m all for it! (Oh, darn, there’s that Voltaire quote, about not agreeing with everything you say, but letting you say it anyway. But Voltaire never met GraemeBird!)
Weird, when I logged on to this blog, this post mysteriously ‘vanished’ when I scrolled down to it!
Even weirder, my comment #23 is on this list, but gets no credit!
Nicholas; Comment 23 is by TimT, you complain about it on 24, and haven’t appeared since c14. Is that the way you read it?
Jim, #23 is by ME, #24 is TimT, I complain at 25, you talk about the comments at #26, this line should be #27. Is that what you see?
No mate, 23 is TimT, 24 is you complaining, 25 is my November 1 comment, and 26 is your response. unless someone else gets in first this will be 27.
I think this is the same as happened to me.
What do other people see? Is Jim playing a joke, or does the filter affect differing sites differently?
I’m not kidding.
The way it happened, was that my comment would seem to go up, but did not appear in the recent comments section. On these occasions the thread just went on as if the comment didn’t happen, even after baiting Temujin.
I then noticed that the comment number on the bottom was different to the number of comments at the top. This one has “28 comments” at the bottom of the post, and your question about am I playing a joje is on the bottom at 28.
If the two don’t match up you have the same problem I had. The trouble is I don’t really know why it happened.
Well, my #23 comment was how I was all in favour of censorship if it kept GMB off the pages. Then I remembered Voltaire’s quote, about not agreeing with what people say, but defending to the death your right to say it. But, I pointed out, Voltaire never met GMB! This should be #31
Nicholas try to remember what Anatole France said about that:
“To be willing to die for an idea is to set a rather high price on conjecture.”
If a comment comes out of moderation it is inserted according to when it was originally posted and then the numbers all jiggle to accomodate.