Google, Yahoo and Others Fight the Aussie Filter 166
TheFrunj writes "In the wake of an attack on Australian Government websites comes a statement from a joint group of companies banding together to oppose Senator Conroy's infamous Internet Filter. AtomicMPC has posted the statement up on their site: 'We, the Australian Library and Information Association, Google, Inspire Foundation and Yahoo! agree that Australia needs to take effective action to ensure that internet users, and particularly children, have a safe experience online.' Backed by the weight of the Inspire Foundation, Google and Yahoo, this is a good sign for the local and international community that will hopefully spark some positive reaction."
Conroy has his own agenda (Score:4, Interesting)
...and will not listen to reason, as he has repeatedly demonstrated. I'm not entirely clear what that agenda is, beyond being a douche. Perhaps he's in bed with the media organisations, and the filter censoring kiddie porn is only a side issue, while the real game is filtering music/tv/movie downloads. Perhaps he was teased as a child and this is his revenge on society. Either way he is an irresponsible man and I hope he's now infamous enough that people will vote him out at the next election (though I suspect I hope for too much).
I interpret that as.... (Score:4, Interesting)
So? I read that as they support measures to filter the internet. For the children?
Re:As a parent, I would like to make a suggestion. (Score:1, Interesting)
When you have 4 kids, 2 of whom have learning disabilities and cannot hold a conversation to talk about "stuff" at 12 years old, as a parent you tend to focus on those 2 kids, leaving the 2 others a bit more alone. Sure as hell you cannot be on their back 24h a day.
But thank you for your /.otter advice on parenting. I'm sure that you have an extensive experience on that matter, and you're at the right place to discuss such things.
Re:As a parent, I would like to make a suggestion. (Score:3, Interesting)
The real problem is that the filter will not prevent the technically savvy (including child pornographers, terrorists and other criminals) from using the Internet do distribute and exchange whatever they like. Even the Great Firewall of China doesn't prevent those with the know-how from circumventing it. So it will inconvenience the average user with its rather questionable goals of keeping Australians safe from bad stuff, but will not in fact cause great problems for a lot of the very people it claims to be aimed at. But, as with China and Iran, the point is not so much to prevent the savvy users, who have a wide array of tools at their disposal to sneak past the censors, but to make the average user believe not only that their communications can be censored, but ultimately that there is all-knowing eye. For China and Iran, of course, it's the regimes themselves that need to foster the appearance of this level of control, for Australia, it's a government that wants to cozy up to the religious vote who see this as a way to enforce their notion of Christian principles.
That Australia seems keen to join the ranks of China and Iran is pretty damned sad. What's even sadder is that apart from whatever authoritarianism and pandering this feeds, it's yet another example of security theater. It might have some limited Darwinian effect; the duller-witted child pornographers, terrorists and other criminals who use the Internet being foiled, but this will simply be another mousetrap easily outwitted by a smarter mouse.
Even if Australians don't mind their liberties being eroded, they should be mad as hell at all the money and resources being wasted on a project which is utterly worthless if the bad guys so much as set up an encrypted VPN tunnel.