Is it really possible that implementing a simple a R18+ classification for Australia was just too hard for our communications minister and government to fathom?

There is no chance in hell such a filter will be able to legally block online content networks such as Steam who have a massive list of 3rd party content providers which supply you the games.  Yes that includes every major Australian ISP and gaming network.

The Clean Feed filter in general shows complete disregard for our common-sense and intelligence and is a testament to an average uneducated, archaic, politically correct and ratings crazed government.

You may have seen this article from the age:

Far from being the ultimate weapon against child abuse, it now will officially censor content deemed too controversial for a 15-year-old. In a free country like ours, do we really need the government to step in and save us from racy web games?”

Senator Conroy’s spokesman said the filter would cover “computer games such as web-based flash games and downloadable games, if a complaint is received and the content is determined by ACMA to be Refused Classification”. All games that exceed MA15+ are deemed to be RC.

Is this a typical morning at the Conroy mansion?

Backwards Man from Pepsi on Vimeo.

Stephen Conroy responds (Credit: Suzanne Tindal/ZDNet.com.au)

The Usenet group alt.binaries.conroy has been flooded with various files in the past 24 hours with the updated blacklist amongst other intriguing and extremely disturbing documents.  I grabbed the Blacklist but be sure to point your Newsgroup reader to the above link before it gets blocked.

Link: acma-blacklist-real

Family Friendly Filters and one of those provided free to (a few) Australian families by the Howard government’s now defunct NetAlert scheme. Provided you’re reasonably tech-savvy, you can extract a list of URLs with the rather unambiguous name “Websites_ACMA.txt”. Depending on which version of the software you download, you get the August 2008 list as published, or something similar containing more recent material.

This method has been proven and also fixed at the Source.

Senator the Hon Stephen Conroy calls the published Wikileaks list of urls as Grossly irresponsible. He is right in this regard as most of the list of URL’s is generally the lowest form of human filth you can imagine, though the Blacklisting of generic ‘unwanted material’ is a case of going too far.  In an interesting turn of Events, iiNet has quit Conroy’s filter trial.

Malone stated that the recent media storm around the leaked blacklist of URLs similar to the ACMA blacklist was part of the reason iiNet had decided to withdraw, along with the policy which was always changing and “confused” explanations of the trial’s purpose.

“It became increasingly clear that the trial was not simply about restricting child pornography or other such illegal material, but a much wider range of issues including what the government simply describes as ‘unwanted material’ without an explanation of what that includes,” Malone said in a statement.

Wikileaks to Conroy: Go after our source and we will go after you

WIKILEAKS PRESS RELEASE (for immediate release)
Thu Mar 19 23:07:20 EDT 2009

“Wikileaks to Conroy: Go after our source and we will go after you.”

The Stockholm based publisher of Wikileaks today issued a warning to the Australian Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Steven Conroy, who is responsible for Australian internet censorship.

Senator Conroy issued an official media release yesterday in response to Wikileaks’ release of last year’s confidential Australian internet censorship blacklist. The Senator said that his department, “is investigating this matter and is considering a range of possible actions it may take including referral to the Australian Federal Police. Any Australian involved in making this content publicly available would be at serious risk of criminal prosecution.”

The Senator is perhaps unware of the legal and diplomatic risks associated with the statement.

Sunshine Press Legal Adviser Jay Lim stated:

“Under the Swedish Constitution’s Press Freedom Act, the right of a confidential press source to anonymity is protected, and criminal penalties apply to anyone acting to breach that right.

Wikileaks source documents are received in Sweden and published from Sweden so as to derive maximum benefit from this legal protection. Should the Senator or anyone else attempt to discover our source we will refer the matter to the Constitutional Police for prosecution, and, if necessary, ask that the Senator and anyone else involved be extradited to face justice for breaching fundamental rights.”

Senator Conroy may wish to consider the position of the South African Competition Commission, which decided to cancel its own high profile leak investigation in January after being advised of the legal ramifications of interfering with Sunshine Press sources.

As expected, the results are overwhelmingly against such filtering.  Check out the full results of the survey: Netspace Australian Filtering Results.

Clean-feed is the Australian government’s $70 million national Internet content filtering scheme, which will impose blanket filtering for all web connections at the Internet Service Provider (ISP) level.  There are two lists, a ‘child’ safe list which filters both illegal content and hardcore pornography and a second which users can ‘opt-out’ to which only filters unwanted content.

Senator Stephen Conroy, the Government Senator responsible for this project has stated that they will also be looking into the possibility of filtering other content that may be illegal in Australia. Which would for example include: euthanasia, abortion, drug-use, etc.

Email, Peer to Peer, Instant messaging, newsgroups and any other custom application protocols are on the ACMA report as things that the Government is also planning to apply the ISP-Level filtering to.

iiNet and Optus have applied to participate in the ISP Level filtering trial, however have maintained they are doing so to prove the inability of the system.

The ACMA Closed Environment Testing of ISP−Level Internet Content Filters which can be viewed here shows the degree of degradation introduced by a filter averages at about 30% loss and can hit up to 70% reduction in performance.

Existing technologies such as open proxy’s can bypass this cleenfeed filter though this would add an additional performance hit to the users already reduced internet connection.

Cleenfeed Roundup

Protest

The rallies, organised by members from activist groups including the Electronic Freedom Project and Digital Liberty Coalition (DLC), saw hundreds gather at Sydney’s Town Hall, Brisbane Square, Melbourne’s State Library, Adelaide Parliament House, Perth’s Stirling Gardens and at Tasmania’s Parliament Lawns to voice their opposition to the scheme.  Source

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUt2RvpUKkk

Sources

• ISP level Content Trial report
• Nocleenfeed
• Whirlpool wiki
• OCAU Wiki