GetUp! is an excellent organisation that has been attacking the draconian laws of the "war" on terror, antigay laws, and so on. They now have a petition against ISP filtering. Go for it...
Hat tip Samuel Douglas
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John Wilkins is an eternal student, who thinks philosophy of biology is at least as interesting as politics or sport and twice as important. He has a PhD from the University of Melbourne and worked at the University of Queensland, in Australia, before taking up a research fellowship at the University of Sydney. After a varied career, involving factories, gardening, civil service, publishing, graphics, public relations but not, unfortunately for the CV, driving a truck, John finally completed his thesis on species concepts in 2004, which he has worked into two books.
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« 149 years ago today | Main | Some more on ISP filtering, and a rant on censorship in Australia »
GetUp! gets up with ISP Filtering
Category: Censorship • Internet filtering • Politics • Technology
Posted on: November 26, 2008 1:11 AM, by John S. Wilkins
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Comments
I would be glad to add my name, but is it appropriate for non-Australians to do so?
Posted by: Susan Silberstein | November 26, 2008 2:30 AM
Probably not. We're a xenophobic lot...
Posted by: John S. Wilkins | November 26, 2008 2:35 AM
Well, if I can't petition the Aussie gov. against this measure, then at least know that this "Xeno" is phobic on censorship. Good luck on keeping this threat at bay.
It's rather illustrative that the 1996 efforts in the U.S. Congress to promote filtering turned into a weird boondoggle for services such as "netnanny" and "cybercop" that afforded no protection but cost plenty. And I wonder how many people installed such services only to find that a:) their kids were smarter than they were and circumvented the serviced and b:) the adults grew impatient at having to take the extra step to "Approve" even regular sites with "bad words" occasionally sprinkled.
Librarians in Minnesota fought efforts by the Republican legislature to require installation of "third-party" blocking software because, as they argued, their research showed that too many educational sites were being blocked. For their efforts, cultural "conservatives" labeled them "smut purveyors."
Posted by: Mike Haubrich, FCD | November 26, 2008 10:14 AM
Thanks for the link. I have signed it. Hopefully this filtering will die a very, very quick death and the government can get back to more important matters like Julia Gillard's hair.
Posted by: Silmarillion | November 26, 2008 6:03 PM
It looks like the Greens will block it in the Senate. It seems Krudd hasn't offered them a big enough carrot. Hopefully there is no carrot big enough to make them change their minds.
http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,25642,24703499-5014239,00.html
Posted by: Eyeoffaith | November 26, 2008 11:19 PM
Thanks for the hat -tip John.
Posted by: Sam D | November 26, 2008 11:24 PM