YouTube porn.

Some people, say maybe people who’ve had their videos censored because of some orchestrated whining about the content, might feel that this is poetic justice.

Senseless censor.

From Wikipedia:

The Streisand effect is a primarily online phenomenon in which an attempt to censor or remove a piece of information has the unintended consequence of causing the information to be publicized widely and to a greater extent than would have occurred if no censorship had been attempted. It is named after American entertainer Barbra Streisand, following a 2003 incident in which her attempts to suppress photographs of her residence inadvertently generated further publicity.

It’s often been the case that attempts to ban something give it a greater attraction than if it had been ignored. “Don’t climb on to the worktop and take biscuits from the tin,” we’re told as children, but until the fact that there was a tin of biscuits was brought to our attention we’d have been happy to go play in the garden or watch TV. Later on we find new restrictions and prohibitions, and naturally many attempt to beat them by drinking, smoking and screwing before they’re of legal age and then trying to find some pot. This is only natural since the reasons given for the prohibition can be unconvincing and so the only way people can understand the need for the rule is to break it and see what all the fuss is about. Therefore if you want teenagers to smoke or drink and to develop a little black market in fake ID just tell them they can’t ’til they’re 18, if you want more people to become interested in drugs just tell them that drugs are completely forbidden, and if you want to ensure maximum publicity for some otherwise fairly uninteresting publication you should emulate Barbara Streisand and do your absolute level best to censor it.

Now Babs may have inadvertently put her name to this in 2003, but it’s much older. I’ve never read Lady Chatterley’s Lover but I’m told by someone who has that it’s not exactly a page-turner, so I can’t help but wonder if a few sex scenes and a smattering of Anglo-Saxon (including at least one word already published centuries before by Chaucer) was enough to create such widespread interest. Or was it that anything that had been banned for three decades had to be something really juicy? During my childhood there was Relax by Frankie Goes To Hollywood, which might well have been good enough to be a hit anyway but was absolutely guaranteed success when the BBC refused to air first the video and then the song, and then Spycatcher, which was easily the most boring book I have ever attempted to read (I gave up about a quarter of the way in, and that was the second try). I know many people who’ve tried and some who actually made it all the way through but very few who actually enjoyed it, yet it sold by the pallet load thanks to the vast amount of free publicity it got courtesy of the government’s desire to prevent it being sold at all. Streisand Effect? It could as easily have been called the Spycatcher Effect or the Frankie Effect.

So with all that in mind you might think that censors would be wary of using their power to ban and prohibit for fear of generating wider interest in something that would largely pass unnoticed. Well, you probably wouldn’t think that because Babs Streisand and her lawyers hadn’t learned, the fucktroons that banned Spycatcher hadn’t learned, the BBC censors that banned Relax hadn’t learned, and so on and so on. Censors never learn, especially the Australian censors, so actually it should be no surprise at all that they’re at it again. Having temporarily run out of computer games to ruin they’ve turned their attention to the movies and banned a film called LA Zombie.

And its director is absolutely delighted.

“My first thought was ‘Eureka!'” director Bruce LaBruce said, speaking from his home in Toronto.

“I’ll never understand how censors don’t see that the more they try to suppress a film, the more people will want to see it. It gives me a profile I didn’t have yesterday.”

Oh, has it ever. This movie is a low budget zombie gay porn flick – to call it ‘niche’ is probably an understatement. Almost certainly it would have lacked sufficiently broad appeal to have got more than a passing mention in most larger newspapers, yet the idiot censors have ensured that it’s newsworthy enough to be given centre attention in The Age and second item on the entertainment section of Google News (click both to enlarge).

Without the helpful hand of censorship LA Zombie would never have got that sort of attention, and not being a fan of zombie movies or gay porn I for one would almost certainly have never heard of it, which would have been no loss as it sounds shit.

Made for “less than $US100,000” in Los Angeles last year, LA Zombie was devised as “a reaction against torture porn” says La Bruce. “People come back to life [in my film], it’s a metaphor for healing.”

Really? The synopsis on Wikipedia says that the central character is a nutter who thinks he’s an alien zombie and who attempts to reanimate the dead by shagging them up the shit chute. And that’s a metaphor for healing, is it? Yeah, okay, right.

Pfffftt.

LaBruce admitted that his film did have explicit scenes of sex and violence, but said the version that was banned from the festival was a “soft core” version, where “it’s obviously a fake prosthetic. It’s a bizarre-looking thing with a scorpion’s stinger, it’s clearly not a human penis.”

That’s big of you.

No, wrong word. Not big. Er… generous. Shit, no. Still sounds a bit like we’re talking about dicks. Must keep the censors happy. Oh, damn… censors! That sounds like we’re talking about dicks as well, which we sort of are.

Seriously, this film didn’t need to be banned. I’m a pretty normal person and I’m no more likely to be corrupted by it than I was to learn the innermost secrets of the British Secret Service by wading through something as coma-inducing as fucking Spycatcher. Have the courage to treat people as adults and allow them to choose for themselves what they want to see, and you may be pleasantly surprised how many won’t bother to seek out what you were tempted to ban. Or carry on using taxpayers’ money to generate vast amounts of free publicity for crap that would have sunk without trace had it been left alone. Your choice, though if you carry on the way you have been you should expect people to be provocative on purpose just so they don’t have to bother with an advertising budget. Don’t believe me, oh censortive souls? Then consider this:

The director denied he’d deliberately sought censorship when making LA Zombie… “I wasn’t expecting it with this one,” he said. “My film Otto screened in Melbourne and that also had a zombie penetrating another zombie.”

Even if you accept LaBruce’s denial that he wanted this to happen, and the fact that he’s used the opportunity to plug another one of his movies means we should probably take it with a large pinch of salt, it seems possible that he’s thought about it before. “I wasn’t expecting it with this one.” If it’s occurred to one then it will certainly have occurred to many more, so it’s now down to the censors to decide whether or not the best method of censorship in the future is in fact not to censor at all. But if I was a betting man I’d put money on them ignoring the evidence and carrying on banning and restricting and cutting and prohibiting just as they and their kind always have. It’s not just that at heart they’re paternalists who really do believe they know what’s best for many millions of individual people, and know it far better than those individuals know it themselves. It’s also that a censor who censors things by not censoring them isn’t likely to be kept on the payroll for very long.

Prohibito ergo sum, but probably also prohibito ergo sum pensus.*

Twats.

* Latin classes were twenty odd years ago and I dropped it as soon as I could. If I’ve mangled that I can only say that it’s because I don’t care enough to have researched it properly.

Facebook grows a set.

‘Facebook is a place where people can express their views and discuss things in an open way as they can and do in many other places, and as such we sometimes find people discussing topics others may find distasteful, however that is not a reason in itself to stop a debate from happening.”

Good for them but it’s funny, isn’t it? Sometimes companies like Facebook find it easy enough to get all worked up about free speech and tell governments to stuff off, and I’m right alongside them when they do. But the same companies will freak out and cave in when confronted by a small number of complaints from misogynists, prudes and tittyphobes who object to photos of slightly too anatomically correct dolls or new mothers breastfeeding their babies. This might make sense if most of the whiners were paying to book their faces, but it’s a free service so what are they losing if the tittyphobes all sod off somewhere else?

Personally I carry no brief for Raoul Moat or anyone else who goes around shooting unarmed people in revenge for perceived wrongs, and I’m generally inclined to support the police when they’re not harassing innocent photographers and chasing victimless crimes that help the clear up rates but are in reality, as the Guide says, mostly harmless. But I accept that not everyone will be of the same opinion and they have as much right to express their thoughts as I do mine. Equally I feel that photographs of breastfeeding mothers can occupy a spectrum from yawn inducing cack that only their family members will be interested in all the way to moving and beautiful (and in keeping with the H2G2 theme I really don’t give a pair of foetid dingo kidneys about nipples on dolls). Why can’t the tittyphobes and prudes take the same attitude and either stop whining about images that offend them (and almost nobody else) or stop fucking looking at them? For that matter, why can’t the Elder Twin start living up to some of these ideals about freedom he espouses from time to time?

Freedom, as I’ve said before, tends to be pretty black and white, and freedom of speech is no exception. You are free to say what you think or you are not – it’s that fucking simple. You are certainly free to say that something someone else has said offends you but that doesn’t give you the right to shut them up. It’s at the top of the page: there is no right not to be offended. If you can’t deal with that without demanding other people’s freedom is restricted to suit you and your tastes I’d suggest you go live in a cave somewhere where you can’t see or hear the rest of the world not agreeing with you. That goes double if you’re a tittyphobe and treble if you’re a politician sucking up to tabloid readers.

Melbourne – a visitor’s guide.

Video removed

St Kilda, eh? Yeah, you know what? Wouldn’t surprise me either. NB if you’ve come across this after late February 2011 I can only say that the previous sentence would have made sense if you’d seen the video clip.

Own goal – UPDATED

Either you are free to speak as you think and feel, or you are not. Any restriction on what can be said by definition means you do not have freedom of speech. It’s one of life’s absolutes. Mrs Exile should be free to call me a pom with an unhealthy obsession with the weather and the correct form of queueing. I’m should be free to call her a typical fucking colonial with a cultural inferiority complex. We should be free to refer to the Scots as a nation of orange haired, drunken porridge wogs* who deep fry anything edible, perhaps anything at all in the hope of making it edible. And the Scots most certainly should be free to say they’d rather support anyone but England in the World Cup.

Arguably the performance of Rooney & Co is enough to make English fans consider supporting anybody but the Italian led bunch of overpaid, talent-free, embarrassing, salad dodgers on whom England’s hopes rest(ed) anyway, but given that the Scots, as usual, don’t have a dog in the fight, why shouldn’t they support who they want for whatever reason they want?

Because it’s racist, apparently.

High street retailer HMV has withdrawn “Anyone But England” World Cup posters and T-shirts from its Scottish stores following complaints they were racist.

/facepalm

Racist? Oh, behave. I wouldn’t call that racist if I heard it from an Aussie, much less a Scot. I might accept that “Anyone But England’ has possible racist overtones, though not that it’s explicitly racist, if it came from someone black or asian etc, but really it’s more nationalist than racist. And even if you do accept as racist, it’s about a bloody soccer tournament for Christ’s sake. How bloody thin-skinned do you need to be to get upset by this? Harden the fuck up!

And who’s behind the complaint?

The Campaign for an English Parliament (CEP) contacted police about the “insensitive and provocative” items which, their website claimed were “criminally irresponsible”.

/double facepalm and oh shit. I’d been meaning to link to the CEP since I thought these guys stood for a return to common sense, fairness and liberty for all. I may still but this move seems awfully like a touch of “if you can’t beat ’em, join in”. The CEP seems to want freedom of speech for England, and of course that’s great. I’m all for freedom of speech so I’m absolutely with the CEP on that, but why stop at England? Personally I’d like to see the day when any North Korean can say that Kim Jong Il is a cunt, so England (or Australia, depending on who/where I’m ranting against) is no more than a first step. But if so then restricting the same freedom elsewhere seems like a step backwards, especially if it’s within your own country. Would we get more freedom here in Victoria by persuading Canberra to put limits on Queenslanders, or would it be more likely for them to apply the same restriction in all states?

You’re not gaining more freedom for yourselves by demanding limits on the freedom of your neighbours, and I think the CEP have scored a massive own goal here. I’d hope that the idea was to try to ridicule the tendency to cry ‘racist’ whenever anyone says something that someone else (not necessarily themselves) finds something vaguely objectionable, but I think they’ve succeeded only in legitimising it even for something as trivial as fucking football. In turn this opens the door for the Scots to cry ‘racist’ if an Englishman says he’d rather eat anything but a clootie dumpling.

As far as I know I haven’t so much as a molecule of Scottish glomahaeblin in my blood but I’m on their side. Screw the English who killed Mel Gibson and won’t let them support whatever football team they like – HMV should have told them to fuck off. Anyone but England indeed, though in the interests of free speech I’ll say I think Scotland’s twelfth most talented footballer is Wee Jimmy Krankie.

UPDATE – I left a brief comment to this effect on a post about the Scottish HMV at The CEP blog at 9:58am on 20/6/10. It’s still awaiting moderation, though ten comments made afterwards seems to be up. [Shrugs] Wonder why.

* In the Aussie sense a wog is a Mediterranean European providing they’re not French and therefore already covered by the term ‘Frog’. The people covered by ‘wog’ have been extended by the use of modifiers. Some, like ‘porridge wog’ for the Scots, I’ve heard fairly often. Others. like ‘potato wog’ for the Irish and ‘clog wog’ for the Dutch, seem more rare. The fact that Australians have given us English the unique and unmodified term ‘Pom’ all to ourselves I take to be an indication of the special place we occupy in the cultural hearts of this linguistically gifted people. Either that or the sand-grubbing bastards loathe us so much that we deserved our own insult.

I don’t lose any sleep over it either way.

Met Office memory hole – UPDATED

I wish I could say I’m shocked by this but it’d be a lie. I’m sure they’re not the only type of holes in the building.

On July 23, 2009 the UK Met Office issued their infamous winter forecast, ahead of the coldest winter in 50 years. It read:

“…Early indications are that winter temperatures are likely to be near or above average over much of Europe including the UK. For the UK, Winter 2009/10 is likely to be milder *(and wetter) than last year “.

…

I remember reading the article on the Met Office web site at the time. But something funny happened on December 30, 2009. The Met Office over wrote that link with a new article titled “Forecast for the rest of Winter 2009/10″ which has no mention of the original prediction. It now reads:

…for the rest of winter, over northern Europe including the UK, the chance of colder conditions is now 45%; there is a 30% chance of average and a 25% chance of milder conditions.

Their original warm winter forecast seems to have been scrubbed from the web site, and there are no longer any press releases dated July 23.

Of course after Climategate this probably isn’t a surprise to anyone, but it’s still quite disturbing. Naturally a couple of Watts Up With That commenters have mentioned the obvious Orwellian link, the memory hole, which was the first thing that I thought of when I saw the post. I’m sure a lot of people have heard of the memory hole concept in 1984 but when you think of how things on the internet can simply be changed from saying one thing to saying another the passage in the book that describes Winston Smith at work is worth re-reading.

Winston examined the four slips of paper which he had unrolled. Each contained a message of only one or two lines, in the abbreviated jargon — not actually Newspeak, but consisting largely of Newspeak words — which was used in the Ministry for internal purposes. They ran:

times 17.3.84 bb speech malreported africa rectify

times 19.12.83 forecasts 3 yp 4th quarter 83 misprints verify current issue

times 14.2.84 miniplenty malquoted chocolate rectify

times 3.12.83 reporting bb dayorder doubleplusungood refs unpersons rewrite fullwise upsub antefiling

With a faint feeling of satisfaction Winston laid the fourth message aside. It was an intricate and responsible job and had better be dealt with last. The other three were routine matters, though the second one would probably mean some tedious wading through lists of figures.

Winston dialled ‘back numbers’ on the telescreen and called for the appropriate issues of The Times, which slid out of the pneumatic tube after only a few minutes’ delay. The messages he had received referred to articles or news items which for one reason or another it was thought necessary to alter, or, as the official phrase had it, to rectify. For example, it appeared from The Times of the seventeenth of March that Big Brother, in his speech of the previous day, had predicted that the South Indian front would remain quiet but that a Eurasian offensive would shortly be launched in North Africa. As it happened, the Eurasian Higher Command had launched its offensive in South India and left North Africa alone. It was therefore necessary to rewrite a paragraph of Big Brother’s speech, in such a way as to make him predict the thing that had actually happened. Or again, The Times of the nineteenth of December had published the official forecasts of the output of various classes of consumption goods in the fourth quarter of 1983, which was also the sixth quarter of the Ninth Three-Year Plan. Today’s issue contained a statement of the actual output, from which it appeared that the forecasts were in every instance grossly wrong. Winston’s job was to rectify the original figures by making them agree with the later ones. As for the third message, it referred to a very simple error which could be set right in a couple of minutes. As short a time ago as February, the Ministry of Plenty had issued a promise (a ‘categorical pledge’ were the official words) that there would be no reduction of the chocolate ration during 1984. Actually, as Winston was aware, the chocolate ration was to be reduced from thirty grammes to twenty at the end of the present week. All that was needed was to substitute for the original promise a warning that it would probably be necessary to reduce the ration at some time in April.

As soon as Winston had dealt with each of the messages, he clipped his speakwritten corrections to the appropriate copy of The Times and pushed them into the pneumatic tube. Then, with a movement which was as nearly as possible unconscious, he crumpled up the original message and any notes that he himself had made, and dropped them into the memory hole to be devoured by the flames.

1984 was, as has been said about a bazillion times, supposed to be a warning, not a fucking instruction manual. It’s ironic that the reason these bastards are getting caught doing this sort of thing is because they don’t control the internet, the medium they’re trying to give the memory hole treatment, and it just takes one nosy blogger to notice and post this sort of thing for other bloggers to read and spread. How on earth did they think this would go unnoticed? Must be more than one type of hole in the building.

UPDATE – Actually it’s a bazillion and one times thanks to cracked.com. I know this is getting away from memory holes but it’s still a fair point.

Aaron Evans is another cautionary tale against bragging. Evidently fearing that someone might take false credit for his illegal deeds, Evans had his full name and birth date tattooed on the back of his neck. This was a particularly poor decision considering he was a car thief from the UK–the place which treats Orwell’s 1984 as a set of instructions concerning video surveillance.

And that was pretty moronic idea for a tattoo.

Net nannying and censorship – the same fucking thing actually.

As I mentioned yesterday Senator Conroy appeared on The 7pm Project this evening to justify the Great Firewall of Australia, his pet ISP level internet filtering project. Now obviously in the short term this is only going to affect people living in Australia, and if you reading this from somewhere else and are confidant that your politicians respect liberty on or offline then you can skip the rest of this – it doesn’t apply to you, you lucky soul. If you’re not so sure about the liberty thing – and if you’re in Britain then news like this and this suggests that you bloody well shouldn’t be – then bear in mind that you may be next, and watch out for a politician giving an interview not unlike this.

So how did Conroy do? How did The 7pm Project do? Did they give Conroy an easy time of it? And most importantly of all am I sold on the filter? Not bloody likely. Please bear with me while I fisk this fuckwit, which unfortunately won’t be brief since the very first question Conroy was asked – the very first – he ducked.

Charlie Pickering: ‘Now, first thing’s first, will this filter stop Aussie kids from accessing X-rated adult material, which is probably what most parents are worried about, on the internet?’

Conroy, being a politician, promptly answered a different question that had not actually been asked.

Senator Conroy: ‘This filter is only designed to block web pages which are defined under the classification processes as Refused Classification. That’s child pornography, pro-bestiality sites, pro-rape websites and material like that.’

Nicely ducked. The answer he was actually looking for would be something along the lines of ‘No, Charlie, it can’t stop kids accessing adult material. That is the responsibility of parents’. Conroy then went on to clarify that the filter would block only RC material, that is material which is already banned in Australia and can’t be seen at the movies, on DVD, in books, or hosted on Australian websites. Are you sure about that, Stephen? Because one of the concerns I had when I first blogged about this more than a year ago was that the phrase “illegal and inappropriate content” being used here and there – one of your own press releases for example – and I wanted to know if that meant that legal content that was deemed inappropriate would be blocked as well as illegal content, and also who the fuck decides what’s inappropriate anyway. Since that in that PR you say (my emphasis):

‘Filtering specifically against a black-list of illegal content as well as the ability to filter additional material will be one part of the upcoming pilot trial.’

I think it’s fair to ask if you will also filter legal content that you don’t like. But okay, let’s assume for now that your government really will just stick to RC stuff. That leads to the next question about what effect the filter would actually have on restricting the availability of child porn on the web in Australia. Again, the answer to that was for a totally different and unasked question:

‘Well, there are a number of complete misrepresentations in that opening package.’

Er, Stephen? He didn’t fucking ask you how accurate the intro film was. He asked what effect the filter would have on the availability of child porn. Stay awake. And ‘package’? Oh, never mind. Call it a package if you want to.

‘The first was that it’s not generally on the internet. That’s not true.’

It’s not strictly what was said either. The point being made was that the majority of muck the nonces are distributing among themselves is done via P2P networking, and that this will bypass the filter anyway. I presume you were conceding this very point in March last year when you admitted that this won’t stop child porn.

Sorry for interrupting, Steve, do go on.

Sen. Conroy: ‘There are currently today 355 websites that are banned because they are websites on the public internet that show child pornography.’

Charlie Pickering: ‘But there are millions and millions of sites on the internet, Senator Conroy, that’s not a huge number.’

Took the words right out of my mouth, except that I’d have said billions. In fact even if that linked article is out by a factor of ten then the odds of randomly stumbling across one of those 355 sites are more than 283 million to one, hugely more remote than, say for example, getting struck by lightning and probably much more remote than being hit by lighting while holding a winning lottery ticket. For it to happen once would be massively, massively unfortunate, and almost everyone would simply navigate away or call the cops or both. For it to happen more than once, or for someone to stick around once they’d got to one of these 355 sites? Almost certainly they’d have to be looking for it, and if they’re doing that in the presence of a filter then they’ll almost certainly be taking steps to bypass the damn thing anyway.

The questions then swung around to the fact, which Conroy didn’t dispute, that the filter doesn’t affect peer-to-peer and that this is the preferred means for nonces to swap their porn. Credit to Conroy here, he did actually answer the question put to him by saying that they’d never claimed the filter would stop P2P but there are other means of monitoring that. For a moment at this point I thought that Charlie Pickering was going to ask why, if the desire is to stop child porn (among other things), most of which is spread by P2P and according to Conroy is being tackled by other means, why have the bloody filter at all. Perhaps he was but he allowed Conroy to get a verbal wedge in and begin to repeat his first answer. The guest panellist (or whatever), whose name I’ve forgotten, did get that question out… sort of.

‘If it’s banned already what’s the point of the filter.’

This let Conroy off the hook somewhat since he was able to say quite truthfully that the problem was websites outside of Australia’s territory. Well, duh, Steve. Obviously you don’t control websites in the rest of the world, and I bet you were relieved that you were able to say so rather than be hit with more questions about the amount of web hosted material you’re going to stop with the filter versus the amount spread via P2P which the filter won’t touch, and what each is costing us in actual dollars. And potential liberty.

It fell to Dave Hughes, a stand up comedian for Christ’s sake, to bring up the point about the government’s secretive attitude towards what gets blocked.

Dave Hughes: ‘So you’re gonna ban websites and, and…’

Senator Conroy: ‘Individual pages within websites that contain this…’

Dave Hughes: ‘Alright. But you won’t tell us which ones you’re banning so I mean … how can we trust you as a government that you’re not influencing it for your own good?’

Thank fuck for that. I was beginning to think this wouldn’t get raised at all. But even though Dave Hughes brought it up he didn’t ask the second part: even if this government can be trusted what is guaranteeing that no future government can abuse it? Because as far as I can tell it’s fuck all. Conroy’s response was, not surprisingly, a mix of evasion and emotion with a dash of logic and illogic in equal measure.

‘This is probably the most complex of the issues that we face.’

That’s one way of looking at it, Stephen. The other is that it’s very simple: how can we trust not just your government but all future governments? Because once the ability is there a future government could add websites of opposition parties or supporters to the blacklist. To put it another way, I’ve called you some unpleasant names on this blog, Senator Conroy, but if I’m still blogging in twenty years and being similarly rude about the Communications Minister of 2030 how do I know that this blog will still be accessible inside Australia? On that basis should I call him/her a cunt now while I still can? I realise the Communications Minister of 2030 might still be at school and calling them a cunt on my blog is a little unfair whatever they’re doing, but at the moment I don’t know if I’ll be able do so at a more reasonable time. See the problem?

Anyway, go on, Steve.

‘The difference between putting up a list of titles of movies that are Refused Classification is you don’t provide access to them.’

Yes, understood, but how hard is it to burn a copy of Wombat Felching in the Outback and print a Sound of Music label on the disc and box cover before mailing it off to some fellow sick marsupial fetishist? How would you know if it happens? Don’t think that just because it’s not being shown at the fucking Crown means you’ve prevented all access because you haven’t. You’ve just made it more difficult.

Sorry, you were saying?

‘If I list the 355 child pornography websites, that’s an address of where to go and see them.’

Now this is a good point and admittedly it will prevent what we might call the perv-curious from shuffling along for a quick look. The thing is that this doesn’t seem likely to be a large number. The sick bastards who already know they like that shit will, as has already pointed out, be operating in such a way that the filter won’t affect them. So these 355 sites will already be known to the perverts who use them and vice versa. Ah, you’ll say, but the page won’t be accessible from Australia once the filter is up. Bullshit, I say. Proxies and TORS, I say. Determined nonces will find ways and, as I’ve already said, even if it does work – which it won’t – then you will have succeeded only in blocking a small proportion of filth accessed by a small proportion of perverts.

And at what cost – not just monetary – will you have achieved ‘all’ this? This sledgehammer you’ve created to miss a nut will have swallowed a fortune and as far as I can see will allow any future government who feels so inclined to quietly block anything on the web that they dislike or find threatening. Even without that every web user in Australia is going to find their ISP is passing the filter costs on to them and that in return they’re not just being treated as a potential perv-curious but will have slower internet connection to boot (and Australia doesn’t have a great rep for internet speeds as it is due to the crappy connections in many rural areas unless you’re willing to pay through the nose for satellite broadband).

Let’s come back to that since Conroy was in mid flow there.

‘And so what we’ve proposed as part of this… we’ve invited public submissions and those – we’ve just published them all yesterday. The public submissions are to say, “Look, help us devise a new transparency mechanism’. We don’t want it to be the government that is making these decisions. What we, what we want is a new mechanism with an industry body perhaps, er, a retired judge, anyone of those sorts of mechanisms that people might suggest, that they will vet the list, say, every six months to make sure the government hasn’t slipped something on that shouldn’t be there.’

Or alternatively you could just not fucking do it. Look, you’re just moving the problem out of your office and down the fucking hall. If it’s down to whatever body or retired judge or other ‘mechanism’ (not sure judges are robots by the way) you have, then it simply becomes a question of whether their personal views coincide with the government that’s blocking content that it really shouldn’t, and if not then their susceptibility to being leant on. In short, it’s no fucking guarantee at all and is hardly better than if the decision remained in your fucking office. On the other hand if the list is public then millions of people can see whether or not you’ve slipped something on that shouldn’t be there. Yes, they’ll also be able to see these 355 sites, or rather the URLs – and the fact that you think this is still a problem is a bit of a giveaway that you know access will still be possible via proxies etc. – but if you feel that defeats the object doesn’t it make more sense to drop the whole silly idea completely?

Now, on to another bit of question ducking where Conroy again answers a question that this time Carrie Bickmore didn’t ask.

Carrie Bickmore: ‘Senator Conroy, I want to ask as a mum: I just wonder whether … using this filter is actually, I guess, almost misleading ’cause it lulls parents into this false sense of thinking, ‘Oh, okay, you’re gonna filter everything. I don’t want my child to see, you know, naughty stuff [“Naughty stuff”? Boggle – Angry Exile] on the internet.’ In fact it’s not going to do that so will it lead to families being, I guess, lax and not watching their kids online?’

Senator Conroy: ‘The focus of the government’s cyber safety policy has been on this one item. Our cyber safety policy actually has more money for more police, more money for court action, more money…’

Charlie Pickering: ‘But a disproportionate amount of money is on the filter. Most of what you’re spending is on this filter, which is, er, if it’s going to have 100% it’s gonna slow down the internet.’

Oh, Charlie. It’s a good point but so was Carrie’s and now Conroy’s never going to have to answer her. Granted, he probably wouldn’t have anyway, but still I’d have liked to have seen him pressured on that because it was probably the most blatant bit of alternative question answering he resorted to. Will it lead to misplaced confidence and parents dropping their guard? Well, we’re giving more money to police and courts. Right. Thanks for that, Steve, it’s just fucking crystal now.

Oh well, since we’ve moved on to costs let’s here Conroy out on that.

‘No, look, that was, that was something that Mark Newton – appeared in your package at the beginning – knows is untrue. let me be very clear about this. All of the tests, all of the trials, and these have been done independently by Telstra who did their own, separate from the government. There is zero impact, zero impact in accuracy. It is 100% accurate.’

Really? So when you said in 2008 (well, that PR again):

‘Successful blocking (the proportion of illegal and inappropriate content that should have been blocked that was successfully blocked) was between 88% and 97% with most achieving over 92%. Overblocking (the proportion of content that was blocked that should not have been blocked) was between 1% and 6%, with most falling under 3%.’

you were talking about some other tests? Tests that for some reason don’t count anymore and shouldn’t be considered. And actually tests that actually were slightly worse than in your PR if these are the same results, which is a fair assumption given it’s the same date.

• One filter caused a 22% drop in speed even when it was not performing filtering;
• Only one of the six filters had an acceptable level of performance (a drop of 2% in a laboratory trial), the others causing drops in speed of between 21% and 86%;
• The most accurate filters were often the slowest;
• All filters tested had problems with under-blocking, allowing access to between 2% and 13% of material that they should have blocked; and
• All filters tested had serious problems with over-blocking, wrongly blocking access to between 1.3% and 7.8% of the websites tested.
• The trial tested speed on a simple ‘black listed or not’ basis for all simulated clients on all systems, yet the report outlines the ability of the filters to provide customised filtering to each client (as would be required by the two levels of filtering which ACMA is proposing) which would significantly impact test results.

Perhaps a special kind of mathematics applies in Canberra that allows 87% to be the same as 100%. Now, on to the issue of speed.

Charlie Pickering (interrupting): ‘But (unclear) a YouTube page said that you are gonna slow down the internet.’

Senator Conroy (slowly and deliberately): ‘This is not true.’

Ahem, according to you (PR again) in 2008 it fucking well is true.

The performance or ‘network degradation’ for one of the tested products was less than 2%, whilst three products were less than 30% and two products were in excess of 75%.

And 22% degradation on one just from fucking being switched on? Would you like me to tell you where you can shove that? Look, if the possible filters have improved since then and what was the case in 2008 isn’t any more, fine. One lost only 2% so that’s not implausible – just say so clearly and unequivocally and we’ll all let it drop.

Stephen, why aren’t you saying so clearly and unequivocally? Could it be that the speed issue is still there?

Senator Conroy (continuing reply to Charlie Pickering):  ‘We’re not including high traffic sites.’

Oh for fuck’s sake, you soppy cunt, you can make nothing into anything or the other way round depending on what you decide to count or ignore. You might just as well measure road traffic only outside metropolitan areas and declare that Australia virtually never has a traffic jam. I cannot believe you said that and it’s a shame that time was clearly running very short at that point because they began to wrap the interview up. None of them were able to take you on about your continued appeal to the authority of Telstra, a telecoms company that last year had every reason to curry favour with your department so as not to be broken up – they didn’t get their way so there might well be nothing in that and they really did get incredible – literally incredible – results of 100% accuracy with no speed loss, disproving the 2008 tests. Or maybe the tests were just a bit shit.

Enex TestLab did not test ISP-level filtering products on internet connection speeds greater than 8 Mbps, raising questions of possible degradation at ADSL2+ and fibre speeds.

Further, none of the nine ISPs who piloted filtering technologies could provide an environment to test Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6), an addressing scheme the internet industry expects will be necessary in the coming years as IPv4 addresses run out.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy yesterday revealed the long-awaited Enex report on the Government’s controversial trials of ISP-level filtering technologies [which] concluded the filtering technologies did not degrade internet performance – except when filtering content above and beyond the ACMA blacklist, in which Enex found the filters were hampered by over-blocking.

But the report also shows that only internet speeds of up to 8 Mbps were subjected to the tests.

…

Internode network engineer Mark Newton – a fervent opponent of the filter proposal – said it was “extraordinary” that the Federal Government had not tested the impact of content filtering on higher speed connections.

“If the Minister thinks this report puts the speed question to bed, he’s sorely mistaken,” Newton said.

“[He] has to accept that this report leaves open questions about whether or not his censorship policy is compatible with his 100 Mbps national broadband network.”

Indeed. Why the fuck spend millions of dollars of our money on the national high speed broadband network if you don’t know if it’s going to be fucked up by this ridiculous and flawed net nanny on which you’ve spent millions of dollars of our money. But beyond the money and beyond the protestations of unrealistic perfection (only with certain allowances made) and a perfect test record (not counting the tests that weren’t perfect and not testing for all real life conditions) we’ve still got the massive issue of being forced to trust not only this government not to abuse it, but also the next government, and the next, and the next, and the next and so on. One day one of them will be handed a print out from some annoying bastard with a website and a big gob and, instead of just wishing that the annoying noise would go away, give instructions to have it blacklisted. That, Senator Conroy, is why you got awarded Internet Villain of the Year and why we’re now being compared with countries like Iran and North Korea. It’s not you – though your personal track record doesn’t fill me with confidence – it’s the unknown politicians who are still to come. If there’s no filter it can’t be abused. If it exists it’s just a matter of time before it is.

And the Grand Prix grid girls’ new uniforms look shit too.

Censor news, and for a change it’s good.

Despite my occasional pessimism that everyone in Australia is going to be treated as a retard incapable of having any contact with a computer or the internet without government nannying things are looking up. First, good news for Australian gamers – Michael Atkinson, the principle barrier to getting an R18+ classification for games, has resigned. I’ve blogged before on Australia’s nannyish attitude to computer games and how even games aimed at adults have had to be altered to suit the squeamish attitudes of the Puritan fuckwits here (see here and here). Finally those gamers who are perhaps more than 20 years older than the current maximum age classification have a realistic chance of being able to buy an unedited, not specially ruined for Australia, copy of Demon Zombie Smash Hack Blam 3 or whatever.

R18+ video games are a step closer to being allowed in Australia following the resignation of South Australian Attorney-General Michael Atkinson.

Mr Atkinson’s decision to leave the front bench means he will no longer be in a position to vote on changes to the country’s classification system, including the introduction of an R18+ rating for games.

As a quick refresher to save anyone picking through my other posts on this, the relevance of one resignation at the state level is that to create a new R18+ classification for games all states must agree, and this decision is up to the Attorneys-General. Fuck knows why but the practical upshot was that Michael Atkinson was opposed to it and that meant that in theory everyone in the whole country could have personally written to Kevin Rudd demanding it and he’d have been able to do precisely fuck all, his hands being legally tied by one politician in a state government. Now in some ways this need for unanimity is not a bad thing – if used to prevent loss of liberty I’d be heaving a sigh of relief. In this instance it’s been the other way around. of course, South Australia may replace Atkinson with someone else who feels the same way but hopefully they’ve sussed the mood. Part of it is that the Australian Labor Party (please donate any spare lower case ‘u’s here) got a bit of a shoeing in the state elections in South Australia and Tasmania.

The decision came after voters gave the Rann Government a kicking in last weekend’s state election. Mr Atkinson won his seat of Croydon comfortably but still suffered a 14.3 per cent swing against him, according to ABC reports.

Heh. It’s a safe seat, won by Atkinson in 2006 with a 6.8 swing in his favour. To lose all that and then more than the same again has to be significant. Not that a politician would ever admit that.

Mr Atkinson said he was stepping down so there could be “renewal” in the Government’s leadership and so he could spend more time with his family, including his son Johnno.

“He was supposed to play his first (soccer) game last night at 7pm and like so many times in my time in Parliament I wasn’t there,” Mr Atkinson said yesterday.

“I am pretty disappointed about that.

“So I resolved that every time Johnno walks on the pitch this year his dad is going to be there even if it embarrasses the hell out of him.”

Depends on whether the other kids start chasing you around the pitch with Nintendos and pointing behind you and yelling “AAAAAARGH SPACE INVADERS”.

That’s not all. With Atkinson gone hopefully we won’t have to hear any more of this sort of thing.
http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9/22881388001?isVid=1&publisherID=22717159001
Dick Puddlecote will be a happy bunny, because the other way of looking at that is that fags are less harmful than videogames. Jesus Christ, what cock socket was behind this? Oh, sorry Michael, was that you too?

A GROUP that says video games and violence are like smoking and lung cancer has received tens of thousands of dollars in funding from politician and outspoken R18+ game critic Michael Atkinson.

An expert from the Australian Council on Children and the Media this week told a TV news program the link between violent games and youth violence was stronger than tobacco and cancer.

Fuck, so that’s this year’s footy and Rugby League seasons called off, is it? Or is it okay because it’s real people?

Twats.

“It’s much greater than the effect of smoking on lung cancer,” psychologist Dr Wayne Warburton said.

It’s the strongest claim yet in the war of words over video game ratings which has heated up after a call for public input on the issue that drew 55,000 submissions.

A spokesman for Mr Atkinson told news.com.au his department provided an annual grant to the council under its trading name Young Media Australia.

The grant is to support a project called “Know Before You Go” that offers parents information about which films are suitable for children.

Mr Atkinson’s spokesman could not say how much the grant was for and declined to provide an estimate, however fellow Labor MP Gay Thompson previously put the figure at up to $33,000.

“The South Australian Attorney-General recently provided $33,000 for the project ‘Know Before You Go’,” she told parliament in 2006.

I’m almost certain that it would be more accurate to say that this group has received funds from South Australian taxpayers courtesy of Michael Atkinson, though if it turns out he gave them $33 grand of his own cash I’ll happily correct this. In the meantime this should delight Dick Puddlecote, Leg-iron and other smoky people. Great news guys, smoking is less harmful than playing videogames.

The final icing on this cake, and probably the most important of all*, is that apparently Michael Atkinson also had a hand in this frankly rather scary law.

SOUTH Australian laws censoring anonymous political comment on the internet have sparked national and international outrage, with readers comparing the “draconian laws” to those in Nazi Germany and China.

Well over 1000 people had posted comments on the AdelaideNow website up to midnight last night – most vehemently against the Rann Government’s legislation which will force internet bloggers and anyone publishing a comment on next month’s state election to supply their real name and postcode.

A poll reveals more than 90 percent of readers are against the laws, which carry a maximum fine of $5,000 for media organisations who do not hand over such information to the Electoral Commissioner.

In an extraordinary response to the story, readers have compared the law to those used in Nazi Germany, China, George Orwell’s 1984 and North Korea, including Mark Burns Springer from the United States.

What the cunting fuck were they thinking over there? They sure as fuck can’t blame it on smoking weed because I imagine the Puritan State will be the last one in Australia to accept legalising a bit of puff. Atkinson, to my not especially great surprise, was all for it.

Attorney-General Michael Atkinson said the law would not impinge on free speech and claimed that he expected The Advertiser and AdelaideNow to “publish false stories about me, invent things about me to punish me”.

Mr Atkinson described AdelaideNow as “not just a sewer of criminal defamation” but also “a sewer of identity theft and fraud”.

In a press conference today, Mr Atkinson said the law was “all about honesty”.

…

The state Liberal Party – which supported the law – also drew fire from readers.

Maybe I’m wrong about the puff. Anyway, it didn’t last long.

ATTORNEY-GENERAL Michael Atkinson will move immediately to repeal controversial laws which sparked an outcry over censorship of the internet.

After backing down late last night to say the laws would not be put into effect, Mr Atkinson told reporters he would follow the advice of Opposition legal affairs spokeswoman Vickie Chapman and use a section of the Electoral Act to immediately repeal the section.

Earlier, Mr Atkinson said it would be repealed but could not do it until after the election and had promised that no action would be taken against internet users during the election campaign.

Not completely mad after all then. And in fairness I have to give him credit for this (my emphasis):

“I will immediately after the election move to repeal the law retrospectively.”

Mr Atkinson said the law would not be enforced for comments posted on AdelaideNow during the upcoming election campaign, even though it was technically applicable.

“It may be humiliating for me, but that’s politics in a democracy and I’ll take my lumps,” he continued in the statement.

“This way, no one need fear now that they are being censored on the net or in blogs, whether they blog under their own name or anonymously. The law will be repealed retrospectively.

I think he’s a paternalist and patronising tool, but he’s got more guts than some (probably most in Westminster).

Of course none of this changes Australia’s other big censorship project, the Great Firewall of Australia. This proposed ISP level, government controlled filter is Senator Stephen Conroy’s pet project (blogged at length more than once – see this tag), and in turn is one of the main reasons why I believe Senators (or ‘Senatopeers’ as I called them since I was talking about the UK), who should be part of the brake on the power of the government, should not be allowed to serve in the government unless they want to give up their seat and contest one in the Lower House. Conroy is determined that he knows what’s best for everyone in Australia and is appearing on The 7pm Project tomorrow night tonight to try to sell it to us all. It’s not mentioned on their site but I caught a trailer and it looks like I wasn’t the only one. Conroy is as determined as Atkinson was over the R18+ certificate, and being a Senator he’s not easy to get rid of. I’m hoping to be home in time to watch and I do hope The 7pm Project hosts grill the bastard properly. The fact that Google has both given up co-operating with Chinese censorship and, with Yahoo!, attacked the Australian filter plans should give them some decent ammo.

Both Google and Yahoo say the government’s plans to introduce a mandatory internet filter threaten to restrict legitimate access to information.

“Our primary concern is that the scope of content to be filtered is too wide,” Google said.

…

Google said that while protecting the free exchange of ideas and information could not be without some limits, people should retain the right to freedom of expression.

This is something else I’m planning a post on but I can do a quick summary for Google right here and now. Whenever anyone says they’re all for free speech and then adds the words ‘but’, ‘however’ or ‘as long as’ at the end what they’re actually saying is that they support free speech as long as it’s speech they find agreeable. Freedom of speech is an absolute, a black and white issue in an all too often grey world. If you have no restrictions on speech then it’s free, simple as. If there are restrictions then by definition it is not free. You might say it’s mostly free, and that’s true in a literal sense, but it’s just as true to use a term like ‘only moderately restricted’. This is ‘slightly pregnant’ stuff, fellas. ‘Free exchange of ideas and information’ can, and should, and fucking well must be without limits, because otherwise it’s not actually free, d’you see? Like being able to buy land and do what you like with it I regard this as a litmus test of my libertarianism – if I can stand to see something I loathe and vehemently disagree with in print, on TV or on the web, even though I might wish it hadn’t been said and that the speaker contracts some virulent genital pox, then I guess I’m still supporting free speech. The day I think ‘they shouldn’t be allowed to say that’ I’ll be too ashamed to call myself libertarian.

Google, stop knocking cocks with the politicians and tell ’em the facts. You’re supposed to be the ‘do no evil’ people, remember? Fucking live up to it.

“Some limits, like child pornography, are obvious. No Australian wants that to be available – and we agree.”

Want? It’s not a matter of what we want – it’s there. We don’t want car crashes either but the solution isn’t to dig up the roads or put a speed bump every 50m on the freeway. Child porn is revolting and evil and, sadly, a fact of life. By all means go after the sick bastards who produce it by raping kids, and if – if – they violently resist arrest (oh please) then I wouldn’t shed a tear if the result was a couple of well aimed 9mm rounds in the cunt’s chest. But it’s almost certain, as Conroy himself has admitted, that the filter will not achieve this. Oh sure, it might catch some less net savvy perverts but they’d be what you might call low hanging fruit and most or all will have been caught by now. As I wrote just over a year ago,

…the technically savvy can and will find ways to defeat the filtering, and that there are some very tech savvy nonces out there in cyberspace. In fact I’d go further and suggest that the majority of web using pervs and other genuine internet menaces have had to get reasonably savvy. There will have been a kind of Darwinian selection going on among them in that those who have failed to get savvy and learn to cover their tracks have got arrested, jailed and locked in solitary to prevent the rest of the prison kicking the shit out of them too much. Those that are left, I think it’s safe to assume, are those who’ve learned how not to get caught.

Yep, the ones to worry about are the ones using proxies, TORs and other means to avoid the firewall, which will be giving them the added bonus of lulling a lot of people into a false sense of security. Hey, we’ve got the firewall now so let little Johnny chat away on IM to this other (4)9 year old that he met online. Well done everybody, fucking well done.

Unfortunately Google apparently didn’t mention any of these points and just said they were already taking steps and that it’d bugger things up for the millions of innocent net users.

The company said it already had a global, all-product ban against child sexual abuse material which it filtered out from search results and removed from its products.

“But moving to a mandatory ISP level filtering regime with a scope that goes well beyond such material is heavy-handed and can raise genuine questions about restrictions on access to information.”

The company also said the introduction of a mandatory filtering regime could negatively impact on user access speeds.

Joined in quick order by Yahoo!

“We are concerned that the scope of content to be filtered is too wide,” the company’s submission said.

Senator Conroy has said the filtering plan was about blocking access to material on the Refused Classification or banned content list, such as child sexual abuse imagery, sexual violence and detailed instruction in crime.

Yahoo said it was entirely supportive of any efforts to make the internet a safer place for children.

But the company said mandatory filtering of all banned material could block content with a strong social, political and/or educational value.

It could block access to safe injecting and other harm minimisation websites, euthanasia discussion forums, anti-abortion websites, as well as legitimate discussions of the geo-political causes of terrorism.

“Clearly some of this content is controversial and, depending on one’s political beliefs, rather offensive. However, we maintain that there is enormous value in this content being available to encourage debate and inform opinion,” the company said.

Good, though I still think someone from Google or Yahoo! could have pointed out that even if this government doesn’t abuse the power – and I’m not holding my breath – with these mechanisms in place there’s nothing to stop a future government from doing so. The question to Kevin Rudd (because I don’t see much value in dealing with Conroy) should be: would you trust the Liberals and Nationals with this? Would you trust a far right party? If the answer is anything other than an enthusiastic yes then it should be obvious that the fucking thing needs to go, as does the swivel eyed window licker who wants to inflict it on us all.

* And yes, I was busy when the news came out and forgot to blog about it. Bad Exile. Bad.

Commercial Break

Game theory.

On the off chance I have any Australian readers, and in the hope that they’d care about the contemptible level of nannying and censorship imposed on us by the government at both state and federal level, I’d like to draw attention to this public consultation on the classification of video games.

The Commonwealth Government has released a discussion paper which briefly summarises the key arguments for and against an R 18+ classification for computer games. Censorship Ministers have considered the issue of an adult classification for computer games on several occasions. However, they have not undertaken public consultation on this issue.

Submissions are being sought on whether the Australian National Classification Scheme should include an R 18+ classification category for computer games. Submissions can be made by downloading and completing the submission template. Submissions may also be mailed or faxed. The discussion paper and submission template contain the contact details for making a submission.

Submissions are invited by close of business 28 February 2010.

I’ve blogged before on the situation with computer games here in Australia, and as I mentioned here there appears to be only one reason why Australia doesn’t have an adult classification for games, and that is Michael Atkinson, the Attorney-General of South Australia. He doesn’t like them and constitutionally he has the power to prevent a classification being made available to the official government censor, ah, I mean the Office of Film and Literature Classification. Which is a nice way of saying official government censor.

Films, computer games and some publications are classified under a National Classification Scheme which is a cooperative arrangement involving the Commonwealth, States and Territories. The Classification Board classifies films, computer games and publications by applying the Commonwealth Classification (Publications, Films and Computer Games) Act 1995, the National Classification Code and the classification guidelines.

Due to the cooperative nature of the Scheme, any major changes to classification policy, such as the introduction of an R 18+ classification for computer games, must be unanimously agreed by Commonwealth, State and Territory Censorship Ministers.

Bad enough that we have a censor. Bad enough that Australia’s governments at every level don’t think its people are bright enough to be treated as adults. Bad enough that their solution is an unnecessarily complicated system of hard limits, which like all hard limits are fundamentally flawed.* But to have one man, possibly influenced by his personal religious convictions, to be able to impose his views not just on his own state but on every adult across the whole country – the thick end of 14 million people – is fucking ludicrous.

If you agree then nip along to the AG.gov.au site and download a submission form. Yes, if the South Australian AG is determined to obstruct it there’s apparently little or nothing that can stop him apart from the small number of people who elected him in the first place voting him out. However, if enough pressure can be brought by demonstrating that a large number of people do want the adult classification, or at least don’t object, then he might stop being such a tool about it.

* Individuals vary so it’s inevitable that all age limits are set at the wrong level for virtually everyone alive. Those maturing slowly will pass the age limits too soon and those who are more advanced are going to be forced to wait for no practical reason. Without personally getting to know everyone in a population it’s impossible for a government to make these decisions – only the adults responsible for individual children and teenagers can do that.

Let’s hear it for Google.

Google does plenty that’s attracted criticism and to be honest some of it is probably merited. However on this they deserve a standing ovation.

Google says it will not “voluntarily” comply with the [Australian] government’s request that it censor YouTube videos in accordance with broad “refused classification” (RC) content rules.

Go Google! You tell ’em… but by the way, who was asking you to, as if I couldn’t guess?

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy…

Oh, surprise surfuckingprise. Senator Stephen bloody Conroy again. Regular readers (if I have any) may recognise this as a name that crops up in my rantings on a semi regular basis. I’d link to a few of them but it’s got to the point now where I think the bastard deserves his own tag – Censortor Conroy (believe me, I was sorely tempted to use ‘Senator Cuntboy’). Anyway, I digress.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy referred to Google’s censorship on behalf of the Chinese and Thai governments in making his case for the company to impose censorship locally.

Can you believe this fuckwit? Look you vile, authoritarian, smear of excrement, do you really want to use China as Australia’s role model? It’s a country where non-violent crimes such as tax evasion or official fraud can get you executed* and, if such stories are to be believed, having shot you in the head for whatever it was you may have done the state sends your family an invoice for the bullet. It’s a country where you, Stephen, would find life difficult – as a practicing Catholic you would be unable to occupy your current job since they’d expect you to be an atheist, and helping to slot your mates into nice jobs might be on the list of things that would get you slotted as well. It’s a country where the idea of being able to criticise the government freely and without fear of retribution is a distant fantasy. Of course, for all I know that last one might sort of appeal to you. On top of everything else the argument that Google did it for China is weakened by Google’s recent threat to clear off and leave China to it, even if censorship isn’t the exact reason behind it.

Google warns this would lead to the removal of many politically controversial, but harmless, YouTube clips.

University of Sydney associate professor Bjorn Landfeldt, one of Australia’s top communications experts, said that to comply with Conroy’s request Google “would have to install a filter along the lines of what they actually have in China”.

Which is pretty much what Conroy has been planning to inflict on Australian ISPs for a while now.

In an interview with the ABC’s Hungry Beast, which aired last night, Conroy said applying ISP filters to high-traffic sites such as YouTube would slow down the internet, “so we’re currently in discussions with Google about … how we can work this through”.

You can’t and you know it. You can only make the internet slower and more expensive for everyone in Australia.

“What we’re saying is, well in Australia, these are our laws and we’d like you to apply our laws,” Conroy said.

You high and mighty prick. They’re not an Australian company and the content which you claim breaks our laws – and incidentally you’ve got a cheek saying that without having even tried to prosecute anyone for it – might not have broken any local laws where it was loaded. Why the fuck should they be interested in our laws? Try to understand how the internet works, will you. You cannot control it any more than you can control the thoughts of the billions of individuals around the world with internet access – for all practical purposes the two are the same thing. What good are our laws, though the reality is they are more your laws imposed on the rest of us, if they’re fucking unenforceable? You might as well pass a law banning the emailing of dirty jokes not just in Australia but anywhere.

Fortunately Google aren’t playing ball.

“YouTube has clear policies about what content is not allowed, for example hate speech and pornography, and we enforce these, but we can’t give any assurances that we would voluntarily remove all Refused Classification content from YouTube,” [Google Australia’s head of policy, Iarla Flynn] said.

“The scope of RC is simply too broad and can raise genuine questions about restrictions on access to information. RC includes the grey realms of material instructing in any crime from [painting] graffiti to politically controversial crimes such as euthanasia, and exposing these topics to public debate is vital for democracy.”

Slightly disappointing that Flynn didn’t simply ask why enforcing this particular area of the law was the duty of a private company rather than the various services and agencies for which the Aussie taxpayers have already paid. Again it suggests the law is unenforceable and prompts the question of what the fuck was the point in us all being forced to fucking pay for it.

Asked for further comment, a Google Australia spokeswoman said that, while the company “won’t comply voluntarily with the broad scope of all RC content”, it would comply with the relevant laws in countries it operates in.

However, if Conroy includes new YouTube regulations in his internet filtering legislation, it is not clear if these would apply to Google since YouTube is hosted overseas.

“They [Google] don’t control the access in Australia – all their equipment that would do this is hosted overseas … and I would find it very hard to believe that the Australian government can in any way force an American company to follow Australian law in America,” Landfeldt said.

“Quite frankly it would really not be workable … every country in the world would come to Google and say this is what you need to do for our country. You would not be able to run the kind of services that Google provides if that would be the case.”

Frankly you could have stopped with the point that Australia can’t enforce its laws outside its borders.

This week the Computer Research and Education Association (CORE) put out a statement on behalf of all Australasian computer science lecturers and professors opposing the government’s internet filtering policy.

They said the filters would only block a fraction of the unwanted material available on the internet, be inapplicable to many of the current methods of online content distribution and create a false sense of security for parents.

CORE said the blacklist could be used by current and future governments to restrict freedom of speech, while those determined to get around the filters and access nasty content could do so with ease.

In fairness to Senator Conrod (lots of noise and energy spent going up and down and round and round) I believe he honestly thinks this idea of his is in everyone’s best interests and does not intend that it should be used to restrict freedom of speech. He’s a fully paid up member of the god squad and I’m sure it’s just morally iffy stuff he has a problem with. But I in turn have a problem with that since I’m strongly opposed to government at any level acting as any kind of moral authority. If you want morality lessons don’t go to the fucking government, go to church (synagogue, temple, mosque, whatever). Or better yet, sit down and nut it out for yourselves instead of being someone else’s brain slave. As night follows day when governments begin imposing the morality of government ministers on their citizens freedoms are lost and liberty suffers, which is why it’s one of the vast and increasing number of things that they absolutely must not be allowed to do.

The best thing the government could do for Australia

Conroy might not want to restrict my freedom of speech as such, but if I want to make a YouTube video on topics like abortion or euthanasia and assisted suicide then he might do it anyway. Worse, far worse, once the legal framework is in place his successors will have the legal ability and the fucking precedent to really fuck us up.

It’s got to stop.

* Not being Chinese must be a huge relief to certain British MPs and Lords.

The blackout is over…

… at least for now. However, the threat of internet censorship in Australia is still alive and well. Some will use TORs and proxies to get around it but I can’t see any way around the fact that the combination of the federal government’s patronising opinion of our intelligence and it’s desire to nanny us all as if the most fragile person in the country typified us all will almost certainly make the internet slower and more expensive. As I said at the beginning of the week, if you’re outside Australia don’t think for a minute that this doesn’t apply to you too. It just doesn’t apply yet. It’s already gone too far here, don’t let it happen where you are.

UPDATE: At Leg-iron’s I see the UK have got their own version of Conroy web control freakery in the form of the Mandelsnake.

The Count of Mandelsonia has a spiffing wheeze that will help him shut down those naughty people who call him names and point out the idiocy in his government’s systems. It’s all based on the filesharing nonsense that they’ve been harping on about for ages. I couldn’t see why the Count would care but it’s perfectly clear now that the pieces are all in place.

It’s simple. If you are accused of filesharing, your internet connection is shut off. Not filesharing and want it back? Well, nothing to hide, nothing to fear, right? Just go to that Ofcom place and tell them you aren’t filesharing and there’s been a mistake. A quick look at your internet records will clear you. No problem.

Well, there is a problem. You now have to pay for asking for your connection back, whether the accusation is true or not. How much? That’s not specified yet. Will you get the money back if you’re innocent? No.

Why don’t we all just move to China? At least the food’s good.

Australia Day

Blogging will be light – those lamb chops won’t barbecue themselves, you know. In the meantime I hope a few people may take a look through some of the EFA links on the pop up when the blog loads, and if you’re here in Oz and have a website or blog yourself maybe you’ll join in the Great Australian Internet Blackout for the rest of the week. For everyone else please do look into it – it’ll give you an idea of what you’re probably going to be in for in the not too distant future.

Anyone who opposes censorship must love kiddie porn.

As a follow up to this the SMH blogger aturner has posted an update to his piece about Senator Stephen Conroy proposing speed humps be installed across Australia’s freeways and highways. Like the first one it’s so good that it’s just not worth chopping bits out, so I make no apology for quoting en bloc again (my emphasis in the last couple of paragraphs).

Conroy abandons speed hump plans for Australia’s freeways.

aturner | December 21, 2009

In the face of a significant public backlash, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has backed down on plans to install speed humps on every Australian freeway.

Last week Senator Conroy said he was confident that placing speed humps every 100 metres on all Australian freeways would protect children – reducing accidents by 100 percent with a “negligible” impact on traffic congestion and travel times. The plan was supported by traffic management trials which had only been conducted in suburban back streets.

The plan to throttle Australia’s road transport system was slammed by critics as flawed, unworkable, easily bypassed, politically motivated and open to abuse, as reported in the media on Friday.

After listening to public concern over the mandatory speed hump plan, Senator Conroy today abandoned the concept in favour of public education campaigns and better policing.

“Over the weekend I’ve realised that I don’t actually know that much about traffic management and it might be best to listen to the experts,” Senator Conroy said.

“I realise that certain segments of the community were keen on the idea of mandatory speed humps, using them as a tool to control everywhere Australians go and everything they see. Such a plan is not acceptable in a democratic country and would make Australia an international laughing stock.”

Rather than waste the time and money already invested in the mandatory speed hump plan, Senator Conroy has decided to apply the exact same concept to Australia’s internet access – introducing mandatory ISP-level internet content filtering for all Australians. He has ignored criticisms from networking experts and consumer advocacy groups that the mandatory internet filtering plan is just as unworkable as speed humps on the freeways.

“There are a lot of analogies between Australia’s road system and its broadband internet network,” Senator Conroy said. “Both are critical infrastructure, vital to the nation’s economy. Both require significant investment and long-term planning, driven by experts in the field. Neither should be manipulated for short-term political gain at the expense of the nation’s future.“

“The difference is that your average man on the street can understand how foolish the speed hump idea is, but if we apply the same concept to Australia’s internet access most people will blindly accept it because they don’t understand how ill-conceived and unworkable the idea is.“

“People might have thought we were joking about speed humps on the freeway, but I can assure you the plan to do the same to the internet is completely real. It’s been all over the news. That’s fine, because anyone who opposes mandatory internet filtering obviously loves kiddie porn.“

“We know the filtering plan will work, because a website opposing mandatory filtering was taken offline in record time last week. Australia’s domain authority body pulled the plug on stephenconroy.com.au in three hours, even though the process generally takes days. That clearly proves that we can eliminate unsavoury websites, although once the web filtering is in place you won’t even know that we’ve done it.”

More details of Senator Conroy’s mandatory ISP-level internet filtering can be found at nocleanfeed.com.

Gold. Just gold.

Australia – all grown up now according to the censors.

If only that were true, but there’s been one little victory for responsible adults and their freedom to decide things for themselves. The Aliens vs Predator game, which I wrote about here, is going to be available in Australia after all. And without being specially edited or revised for the notoriously over sensitive and sooky Australian gamers who all faint at the sight of virtual blood being spilled.

Sega Australia has confirmed that the Classification Review Board has overturned the original decision to Refuse Classification for Aliens vs Predator and has given it an MA15+ rating.
Sega Australia’s Managing Director, Darren Macbeth said, “It is with great pleasure that we announce the success of our appeal. We are particularly proud that the game will be released in its original entirety, with no content altered or removed whatsoever.”
“This is a big win for Australian gamers. We applaud the Classification Review Board on making a decision that clearly considers the context of the game, and is in line with the modern expectations of reasonable Australians,” added Macbeth.

I wouldn’t go that far. It’s a small win, but since I don’t see what the fuck it has to do with government what games adults choose to play I’m inclined to reserve the phrase ‘big win for gamers’ for the time when the government gives up the power to ban a game from the entire country because of it’s own squeamishness or the moral positions of certain state officials. Look, check the games out if you must, and if you want to insist on slapping a little sign on the spine of the box to indicate the type of content to buyers, okay. But don’t extend that to deciding for a nation of 20 million people who can play what and whether some games can be played by anyone at all. We’re adults. Fuck off and leave us alone.

However, since we look like being stuck with the present situation for the foreseeable future I have to concede that it is a result, and I can’t help but wonder if the companies behind Risen, Fallout 3 and Left For Dead 2 would have gotten a similar result if they’d stood up to the censors by saying something like

“We will not be releasing a sanitized or cut down version for territories where adults are not considered by their governments to be able to make their own entertainment choices.”

Declaration of interest: I don’t play computer games much and I’m not hugely interested in shoot-’em-ups when I do. While I’m not really in the market for any of the games I’ve mentioned here I want to not have them because I chose not to buy them, not because the government made the decision for me. However, I’m half tempted to buy Aliens vs Predator because of the admirable way they stood up to the nanny state here.