regarding the future of the free world ...

[the_funkmeister]

Watching Question Time in the Senate last night, the topic of the great firewall of Australia came up -- again.

While Conroy was discussing porn and blocked keyword sites that the ACMA list comprises of during the trial run (beginning on December 24th).

Senator Bernardi asked:

I note that the minister failed miserably to answer that question,

Comments

[isabelle_tea]

STOP TRYING TO BLOCK MY PORN! My porn, MINE!

[trayce]

This segues in curiously with an article that is in today's Age about a Melbourne man who has been arrested on child porn charges recently. He's part of a national sting by the feds - good to know they're doing such things, of course - but the curious part was this:

"He came to the attention of the Australian Federal Police Online Child Exploitation Team in August 2007 when Interpol in Austria revealed that he was one of 78 Australians identified as downloading child pornography. More than 6000 were identified worldwide."

Only 78 Australians? That seems like an awfully teeny tiny minority of extreme sickos to be putting everyone else at an inconvenience for, and it's hardly the raging flood of danger around every corner that Conroy and his ilk would have us believe! (and some of the media too, in fairness).

The article also points out these pedos traded stuff directly over chatrooms and encrypted channels. No websites, no bit torrents... WTF is this filter going to STOP, exactly? Jesum H crow...

... sorry, ranted a bit there =)

[the_funkmeister]

Yeah, but this wasn't about the ACMA "Protected" List? (aka. child porn) -- which was the previous question by the senator, also successfully evaded by Conroy -- this was about the "Unwanted Content" list.

First and foremost, I hear there's talk about banning Gambling Related sites to 'help' the bill through.

(note, i'll be a knee-capping operation planned if that goes ahead :))

However, it could include -- nearly anything, which is the scary part.