Here's a link to the story:
http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;1399635276 Quotes some
guy who calls himself Mark Newton.
Mike
At 10:47 PM 21/10/2008, you wrote:
Hello Everyone,
Now, I know this isn't gliding related, but it's for a good cause! Honest!
Those of you who work in the industry may well know that a couple of
days ago the government announced that they were to go ahead with
the plan to filter the internet, but we would have an opt out
option. What they kept quite was that there are two filter lists,
and you can only opt out of one, and opting out results in you
agreeing to be monitored by the government.
In my opinion, and many others, this is a gross invasion of our
privacy and freedom. Not everyone wants to be filtered, and those
that do want to be filtered have already gone for the governments
net nanny released last year. How can the government decide what is
appropriate for the public to view? Don't we have the simple right
to choose what we look at, within legality? Adding to this, going
ahead and making all ISPs filter their connections is bound to end
up slowing down connections.
I think one of the biggest fears of people within the industry is
that this will end up becoming a political tool. Most other
countries in the world that have a national firewall/filter use it
for political purposes, restricting access to opposition party
websites or websites and blogs that publicly oppose the governments
policies etc. More info you can read
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship
which has a list of countries that filter and what they filter.
So what will the government block? Currently, there are two lists.
The first is things deemed "harmful and inappropriate" for children.
Isn't it up to the parents to decide what is harmful and
inappropriate for their child? Where one parent may believe it's
inappropriate for their child to view, say, an article on
homosexuality, another parent may decide that it is important to the
child's development and life choices. To delve even deeper,
religious views can come into this, where a Muslim family will deem
it inappropriate for their child to see any information about
pornography, drug use, gambling and religious conversion, an Atheist
family may well believe it's okay and maybe even important for the
child to understand all this.
So we can choose to opt out of this first list, only to still be
filtered by the second list, which will block content that is
illegal or "inappropriate for adults", and only then to be monitored
by the government. How can they decide what the ADULT population of
Australia is allowed to view? Don't we, as matured well rounded,
educated adults, have the right to decide what may or may not be
appropriate for ourselves? I understand that our children may
stumble upon bad things, but we should still have the right to
decide what OUR children may and may not view.
I don't know if anybody out there has read the statistics on
filtering software, but every filter results in a drop of internet
browsing speed, the most accurate often being the slowed, and you
can never block every single "inappropriate" website out there, with
this resulting in anything from 2 to 13 percent of things that
should be blocked, not being blocked. On top of all this, you will
always end up with blocked websites that should not be in the list,
from some 1.3 to 7.8 percent of blocked websites being wrongly
blocked. (See
<http://www.acma.gov.au/webwr/_assets/main/lib310554/isp-level_internet_content_filtering_trial-report.pdf>http://www.acma.gov.au/webwr/_assets/main/lib310554/isp-level_internet_content_filtering_trial-report.pdf)
I'll finish up now, as this email is long enough as it is, but I
just want to urge people to protest this. Let your local MP know how
you feel about it, let the minister, Stephen Conroy, know what you
think. Send a letter, write an email, make a phone call.
Finishing here, anyone more interesting, you can go to
<http://www.nocleanfeed.com/>http://www.nocleanfeed.com/ and read up
a bit more.
Dion Baker
--
<timmo> you know what i hate
<timmo> errors that wont go away
<Guilty> So you dislike children too
_______________________________________________
Aus-soaring mailing list
[email protected]
To check or change subscription details, visit:
http://lists.internode.on.net/mailman/listinfo/aus-soaring
Borgelt Instruments - manufacturers of quality soaring instruments
phone Int'l + 61 746 355784
fax Int'l + 61 746 358796
cellphone Int'l + 61 428 355784
Int'l + 61 429 355784
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
website: www.borgeltinstruments.com
_______________________________________________
Aus-soaring mailing list
[email protected]
To check or change subscription details, visit:
http://lists.internode.on.net/mailman/listinfo/aus-soaring
