[H-GEN] Internet censorship

Stephen Brine sbrine at powerup.com.au
Tue Jun 1 05:35:08 EDT 1999


(Note reply-to: being general at humbug.org.au vs Stephen Brine <sbrine at powerup.com.au>)

Sorry to have to do this to the newsgroup. This is from a email letter that
was send out to all Acenet customers. Written in regard to an ammendment to
the current communications bill. Read the text, at the end of this there is
a link to the actual bill that is currently in the senate. Some of you may
already know about this. In this case Resistance is FURTILE.

Steve B



To all ACENET users,


RE - The Howard Government Censorship Bill


It has been a black week for the Australian Internet. This week the
Senate voted for the Broadcasting Services Amendment (Online Services) Bill
1999.

The bill was rushed through in less than a month, and although it has to
go through the House of Representatives next week, this appears a
formality.


What will this mean to ACENET and you, our customers, is still not 100%
clear, as many aspects of the bill are vague, but the overall
implications are BAD. We now have the Internet censorship only matched by
China,
Singapore, and certain Middle Eastern countries. Restrictions on what
you may see and do on the Internet are extreme.

Implementation of the bill must occur by 1st Jan 2000.


What is clear is that we as ISP's must install "effective" or "approved"
blocking systems, to prevent access to any site banned by the ABA. We
must comply with blocking notices by 6pm on the next working day, or face
fines up to $27,000 per day. The cost of this system is unclear; bearing in
mind that no one has yet developed a successful one.



While everyone applauds the need to restrict access by children to
certain elements of the Internet, there is a reason that other countries have
not gone down this path.


1.      There are already effective means of controlling access at home
by the use of Net Nanny, Cyber Sitter or others.

2.      To control access at the network level means blocking other
services.

3.      The methods required to block access ALWAYS block access to
"normal" sites. While this can be overcome at home by user control, at a
network
level it is impractical.



Despite assurances from the Government that this will not affect the
Internet, they have ignored sound advice from the industry, and the
lessons of other countries.


What this means for you:



   1.. Your Internet speed will suffer, as ALL requests for web pages now
will have to be checked against the banned list first.  How slow will
depend largely on how much we can afford to spend on the blocking system.  Bear
in mind the Queens land state government spent millions of dollars
implementing the blocking system used in state schools. Ask your children
how quick
and effective the School Internet system is, compared to your current ACENET
connection.


   1.. Some services will not be available. Sorry, but if we are liable
for massive fines, we must be sure, that we are not allowing access to
unauthorized sites. It would appear that Newsgroup access will not be
allowed, and although personal emails are now exempt, mailing lists are
not. It is unclear how we are to distinguish one from the other.


   1.. Many "permissible" sites will also not be available. As most web
sites host hundreds (if not thousands) or individual web sites, if one is
blocked, the rest get blocked. A recent test of the governments "preferred"
blocking system blocked many "normal" sites.
   For example: -
Ozemail: www.ozemail.com.au
Powerup: www.powerup.com.au
Iinet: www.iinet.net.au
Geocities: www.geocities.com
AOL members' site: members.aol.com
and many others.

Recent testing of the "preferred search engine" of Senator Richard
Alston, revealed the following examples of "banned" words: -

Alcohol, amateur, anarchy, available, beer (??????), bikini, binaries,
chat(!!!!), cigar, doom, escort, fantasies, fist, flesh, foursome, free,
heroine, hole, kissing, leather, penthouse, madam, mistress, naked,
passwords, pierced, pickle, quake, queer, quickie, rifle, search, shy,
slaves ..

And many more.

So if your web page, or the one you are searching for contains any of
these words or parts of, it will be blocked.

NO, we are NOT joking.


As we are liable for the content of Web pages, we will have to review
our practices regarding access to these. It may be necessary to inspect all
changes to a web or homepage prior to publishing. What this will cost is
uncertain.

What can you do?

It's your choice. DO NOTHING and suffer the consequences. Or DO
SOMETHING and help.

1.      Ring your local MP. In most cases they really DO NOT understand
the full implementations of this Bill. We have had useful discussions with
our local MP's office, even though he is a Labour Member (and not to
blame). If nothing else, he is now fully aware of the consequences of this
Bill.

2.      Write to your local MP. Tell him you are opposed to the bill.

3.      Write to your local newspaper. Politicians gauge public opinion
by the letters to the editor.

4.      Do not bother emailing. They do not read them. Sorry but most of
our
Politicians are not as Internet-aware as you and I.

            Our anti censorship page is to be expanded. Please use it.

We at ACENET can only say that we will continue to provide what we can,
in
the way of Internet services, under these harsh conditions, while we
can. As
we see this Bill as a direct attack on our business, ACENET will do
everything it can to reverse this Bill, even if that requires a change
of
government to affect this.

             Derek Gardner

             ACENET Internet Services

below is the URL it is long and when I pasted it in the email it didn't
create a link properly so just copy the entire url and paste it in the
address box of your browser

http://law.agps.gov.au/cgi-bin/topicSrch.pl?action=View&VdkVgwKey=%2Fscale%2
Fdata%2Fems%2F0%2F1999%2F0%2F0642392986%2Ehtm&DocOffset=1&DocsFound=3&QueryZ
ip=online+services+bill&ViewTemplate=scaleview%2Ehtm&SearchUrl=http%3A%2F%2F203

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I don't know what the future holds
But I do know who holds the future

Stephen Brine

WWW: http://www.powerup.com.au/~sbrine

E-Mail: sbrine at powerup.com.au

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