Australia Looking To Filter BitTorrent

Australia's four year plan is trialling peer-to-peer filtering under the head of Senator Stephen Conroy.

The plan was originally thought to only contain the "world wide web," through which people read normal news sites, but Digital Economy Future Directions blog reports that Conroy is going after file-sharing applications such as BitTorrent, too.

"Technology that filters peer-to-peer and BitTorrent traffic does exist and it is anticipated that the effectiveness of this will be tested in the live pilot trial," said Conroy.

Senator Conroy was quick to deny implications of internet censorship, however. "Freedom of speech is fundamentally important in a democratic society and there was never any suggestion that the Australian Government would seek to block political content," Senator Conroy said, "In this context, claims that the Government's policy is analogous to the approach taken by countries such as Iran, China and Saudi Arabia are not justified."

I'll leave you with a comment from "Nicko" from the blog: "Minister, you are to Broadband and the Digital Economy what King Herod was to the Bethlehem Playgroup Association."

Source: News.com.au

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Australia not such a great place to be these days, eh?

Also, I *snrk*'d out loud at that last comment. Susan can verify.

The Coalition and the Greens are against it, so it will likely fail, due to lack of support in the upper house.

The sooner we can get this idiocy behind us, the better.

I dunno, isn't Australia the only country with a "censorship minister"? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I reckon that you should start taking care of that.

OOOOOOOHHHHHHH

See, in the United States we think of "Freedom of Speech" as including political content, not limited to it. But now I understand, from the Senator's comment, that he seems to feel that free speech needs a "better" definition.

When are politians going to learn that you can't stop geeks doing whatever the hell they want?

Britain has that group who censored Wikipedia due to an album cover that was available on Amazon. I'm pretty sure the only reason nothing like this has been successful in the US is because of that pesky First Amendment.

Sorry for Godwining the thread, but can anyone confirm the validity of this quote?

Hitler:
The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation.

Ha... ha ha ha etc. He really thinks he can filter Bittorrent? Good luck with that... torrents are not a centralised thing, so as soon as he shuts off the big sites like Pirate Bay and Mininova, people are gonna go to the smaller ones... somehow, I guessing instead of 'filter', he means ban.

You give the chronic torrenters to little credit, if this did go through is Australia I give it 1 hour and 45 minutes tops before the pirates find a way around it and the all the people who use P2P legally are left in the dust.

"That's not free speech"
"This, is free speech"

Aardvark:
Britain has that group who censored Wikipedia due to an album cover that was available on Amazon. I'm pretty sure the only reason nothing like this has been successful in the US is because of that pesky First Amendment.

This is true, but it was rescinded and apologized for later

Skrapt:
You give the chronic torrenters to little credit, if this did go through is Australia I give it 1 hour and 45 minutes tops before the pirates find a way around it and the all the people who use P2P legally are left in the dust.

i was thinking the same thing...it will take very little time for them to get round this 'filter'.

tbh im not sure he noes what hes talking about, he probably hasnt even looked into the details about how pirates work...

Aardvark:
I'm pretty sure the only reason nothing like this has been successful in the US is because of that pesky First Amendment.

Gotta love that thing.

This seems a bit ridiculous to me, but then again, I hate censorship in general.

The_root_of_all_evil:

This is true, but it was rescinded and apologized for later

It's still in place, though. There could be repeats at any point in the future. That's the biggest hurdle they have to overcome down here. Getting the thing in place. Once it's in place, it makes all future censorship attempts that much easier to institute.

Aardvark:

Sorry for Godwining the thread, but can anyone confirm the validity of this quote?

Hitler:
The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation.

Whilst Hitler does talk a LOT about children, and the quote is meant to be from "Mein Kampf", I can confirm it doesn't appear in there. If it's from one of his speeches, then it's a lot more difficult to confirm.

Edit: Still checking this, meant to be page 403 in July 1943.

Edit : The original was based on Hitler's words and writen by Rabbi Daniel Lapin, still trying to find confirmation.

Edit : Myth busted : Page 400-410 rely almost on his preference for a flag. Unless the Houghton Mifflin translation has altered the page numbers, the original reference is a Rabbi speaking as if he was Hitler to bring forth his feelings on the Bush administration.

Aardvark:

The_root_of_all_evil:

This is true, but it was rescinded and apologized for later

It's still in place, though. There could be repeats at any point in the future. That's the biggest hurdle they have to overcome down here. Getting the thing in place. Once it's in place, it makes all future censorship attempts that much easier to institute.

Nope, not in place.

wiki:
In December, 2008 the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), a UK-based non-government organization, added the Wikipedia article Virgin Killer to its internet blacklist due to concerns over legality of the image, which had been assessed as the lowest level of legal concern: "erotic posing with no sexual activity".[24] As a result, people using many major UK ISPs were blocked from viewing the entire article by the Cleanfeed system,[25][26][24] and a large part of the U.K. was blocked from editing Wikipedia due to the means of blocking in use. Following discussion, representations by the Wikimedia Foundation (who host the Wikipedia website),[27] and public complaints,[28] the IWF reversed their decision three days later, and confirmed that in future they would not block copies of the image that were hosted overseas.[4]

I received a letter from my local member, after sending in an email, stating my opposition. I shouldn't be surprised that they have a form letter all ready to go that avoids answering the original concern and seems to be, stretched to three pages long, including bullet points, a single query, asking me why I hate children.

The_root_of_all_evil:

Nope, not in place.

Not the block, the IWF. They're still in place.

Aardvark:

The_root_of_all_evil:

Nope, not in place.

Not the block, the IWF. They're still in place.

But with a spanking to keep them at bay. At least I busted the Hitler quote for you. :)

I like how they are saying that we should not be worried because they will not block political content as they censor everything else.

Warning!
Encoded Message!
Ultraviolet Authorization!

Dear Mr. Conroy,

It seems you've discovered a way to completely control the massess of any country. I must now ask you to cease and desist, because that was my plan first.

Sincerely, China.

What pissed me off was when the protesters marched on Canberra they got called pedophiles. This was due to that the filter is supposed to stop all child pornography. I'll attempt to mind my language, but this is a f*cking disgrace.
The government was also thinking of attempting to get rid of the black listing and blocking programs like Peer Guardian. Total control will lead to total anarchy soon enough.

sv93:
Australia is sounding more like a dictatorship every day. No wonder Yahtzee is always so pissed. :P
I've got a feeling this wont happen though.

i agree

Good luck on that Australia. What ever people do to stop torrenting, some one will hack it to get around it. It is unstoppable.

"Freedom of speech is fundamentally important in a democratic society and there was never any suggestion that the Australian Government would seek to block political content"

Bullshit arsehole.

I especially like how they immediately assume that any and all peer to peer / bittorrent traffic is highly illegal. It's not like let's say for instance: Blizzard uses it for all their patches. Or perhaps any and all people who don't like to waste a site's bandwith when the bandwith drain can be divided amongst an unlimited amount of people.

Seriously, it's not the technology that's the problem here. The problem is and always will remain the original uploaders, the thiefs/hackers who somehow manage to get their hands on a copy and make it available for everyone to use. But again doing what is really needed is too much effort, so they'll just make the downloaders switch to a newer and better protocol.

You cannot stop piracy through attacking technology. Governments are lightyears behind on things like these and downloaders quickly adapt and switch to newer technologies. Stop trying to fight it at the wrong place and go to the source already.

I've never really bothered with BitTorrent but this still whole thing still pisses me off. Who does this dick weed think he is?

Well Australia, welcome to the same crap we Americans have been dealing with since the PATRIOT Act got signed!

Skrapt:
You give the chronic torrenters to little credit, if this did go through is Australia I give it 1 hour and 45 minutes tops before the pirates find a way around it and the all the people who use P2P legally are left in the dust.

1hr 45 minutes? I reckon even less. It only took 30minutes for the last Internet Cencorship filter to get cracked.....by a 16 year old.
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22304224-2,00.html

Dommyboy:
What pissed me off was when the protesters marched on Canberra they got called pedophiles. This was due to that the filter is supposed to stop all child pornography. I'll attempt to mind my language, but this is a f*cking disgrace.
The government was also thinking of attempting to get rid of the black listing and blocking programs like Peer Guardian. Total control will lead to total anarchy soon enough.

As long as they can be seen to be protecting the children they get the over reactive, undereducated parents vote which scarily counts for vast amounts of almost every voter population. Which basically means they can do whatever the f**k they want as long as they can be seen to be protecting children - case in point of calling everyone who participated in a march against internet censorship being called pedophiles.

*Five years ago* Come to Australia, you can drink sooner and we're friendly, jolly and like hugging.

*Now* THOUGHT IS A CRIME!!

I'm really thinking of buggering off somewhere nicer, or at least somewhere I can avoid this crap. I'm thinking of France or Canada...

The_root_of_all_evil:

Aardvark:

Sorry for Godwining the thread, but can anyone confirm the validity of this quote?

Hitler:
The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation.

Whilst Hitler does talk a LOT about children, and the quote is meant to be from "Mein Kampf", I can confirm it doesn't appear in there. If it's from one of his speeches, then it's a lot more difficult to confirm.

It could be from the enabling act (which has an uncanny resemblance to the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. act - which is as annoying to type out as S.T.A.L.K.E.R.) or his second unpublished and unfinished book.

Errr, back on topic.

While this may stop piracy and such, won't it greatly hurt the industry? Piracy helps as much as it hurts, there's a whole underworld with it's own underground economy when it comes to piracy. Heck, I think we're "doing it wrong" - piracy revolutionized the music industry, and we still can't find a more effective way to fight it other than scream "ban plz! What? you can't do that? FUCK!"

ElArabDeMagnifico:

It could be from the enabling act (which has an uncanny resemblance to the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. act - which is as annoying to type out as S.T.A.L.K.E.R.) or his second unpublished and unfinished book.

Unlikely, the only reference to it being his work was found in the same place that gave the reference to "Mein Kampf".