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Comments: 200 +- Games: Australian Web Filter To Censor Downloaded Games on Thursday June 25 2009, @02:03PM
Posted
by
timothy
on Thursday June 25 2009, @02:03PM
from the we've-already-got-these-cool-filters-in-place dept.
from the we've-already-got-these-cool-filters-in-place dept.
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censorship
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games
Xiroth writes "The Australian Federal Communications Ministry has confirmed that they intend to use the planned filter to block the download of games that have been refused by Australia's classification authority, the OFLC. As an Electronic Frontiers Australia spokesman noted, 'This is confirmation that the scope of the mandatory censorship scheme will keep on creeping.'"
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Refused? (Score:5, Insightful)
Who decides what games even get looked at for classification? What if they just haven't gotten to the game you want yet? Is there a backlog of games to classify? So many 'gotchas', so little logic/common sense/ways to appeal. My heart goes out to you Australian gamers.
Re:Refused? (Score:5, Funny)
It's all worth it though. Since we know that if little Johnny sees one pair of tits, his head will explode, and we know that all other forms of censorship are effective, this is a critical step to protect the kids. If even one child's head is saved from exploding, brutal totalitarian dictatorship is worth it!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
But it still puzzles me that the AU people, which I've always considered as easygoing and enlightened, accept this level of government "protectionism".
Australia is a Failed State (Score:5, Informative)
Nope. The Australians are afraid of breasts (Ref: Conservatives MPs... want topless... bathing banned on NSW beaches [news.com.au]). The world is has gone mad.
Parent
Re:Australia is a Failed State (Score:4, Funny)
(Ref: Conservatives MPs... want topless... bathing banned on NSW beaches)
Jeez, you think the "NSW" label would be good enough to warn people.
Parent
Re:Australia is a Failed State (Score:5, Funny)
The joke is, that it is only interesting, as long as not everybody is doing it.
Seriously, after an hour on a topless beach, you start to look them in the faces first. :P
And before you know it, they are not that interesting anymore.
Parent
Re:Australia is a Failed State (Score:4, Insightful)
Why do all these closet homosexuals get into politics?
Huh?
Closet homosexuals are all for tits. They'd live in houses made of tits if they could, to advertise to the world how manly they are, in between gaybashing those homosexuals who are actually secure in their sexuality.
Parent
Re:Refused? (Score:4, Funny)
Please correct me if I am wrong, but it was my impression that Australia is more scared of violence and drugs than tits.
Anyone who argues against censorship of violent video games hsould be rounded up and shot! It's the only way to avoid violence!
Parent
Re:Refused? (Score:4, Interesting)
But it still puzzles me that the AU people, which I've always considered as easygoing and enlightened, accept this level of government "protectionism".
We don't. We're not happy about it and we're making our opinions known. The minister in charge (Stephen Conroy [dbcde.gov.au] is dismissing our objections. Come election time, he will discover this relationship is transitive.
Parent
Re:Refused? (Score:4, Funny)
It's all worth it though. Since we know that if little Johnny sees one pair of tits, his head will explode
Oh crap... how are they going to protect nursing babies???
Parent
Re:Refused? (Score:4, Funny)
It's all worth it though. Since we know that if little Johnny sees one pair of tits, his head will explode
Oh crap... how are they going to protect nursing babies???
Are you some kind of pervert that wants little babies sucking on breasts?!? Pedophilia at its worst!
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Do you know what happens if kids were to find Duke Nukem and pause it when he gives the hookers money? BLASPHEMY.
Re: (Score:2)
This is only marginally on topic, but what I think is really wierd is when they censor a movoe for TV, all they censor is the tits and swear word. All the blood, gore, violence, etc. remains.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Who decides what games even get looked at for classification? What if they just haven't gotten to the game you want yet?
According to the article, somebody from the public needs to make a complaint;
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".
I'm sure there will be special interest groups of many varieties saving the children from various categories of filth and immorality. The Internet will be a much more polished facade of reality than it is now.
Unclassified games (Score:3, Interesting)
My understanding is a LOT of games don't get classifications out there.
Filtering them out so you can't get them at all is horrible as the content isn't necessarily bad (and if it is they shouldn't be the ones judging if someone of age should be able to play them).
What's that? It's just a file so it could be *gasp* encrypted and bypass said filter?
OFLC: Yeah, good luck with that.
Re:Unclassified games (Score:5, Insightful)
It's just a file so it could be *gasp* encrypted and bypass said filter
If any legitimate services do this, they'll be banned. This is a lose for game companies, honest consumers and the government (who loses out on tax revenue). Once again, this dosn't effect the pirates in the slightest, although (for once) this doesn't target them. Is it any wonder that piracy is so widespread?
Parent
Re:Unclassified games (Score:5, Funny)
If it is encrypted, it will not bypass the filter. It will be blocked, because it is encrypted. The innocent have nothing to hide, the innocent have nothing to fear. Are you innocent? Only criminals use encryption. Trust the government.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
This is the same problem with Cable and Satellite TV filters. Most of the movies and TV shows are unrated and setting the V-Chip or whatever filters for PG-13 and under will also filter out unrated shows and movies.
When you block something to keep the children away from it in this way, it also blocks adults from getting the games as well. Just like blocking TV shows and Movies will prevent an adult from seeing them. But you have to enter the four digit code on TV devices to bypass the filter, and kids are s
For the last time... (Score:5, Insightful)
I will say this slowly for you politicians. The Internet sees censorship as damage, it will route around you.
Re:For the last time... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
their thoughts?
w00t, less of our money spent on facilitating the transport of other peoples data.
Don't encourage the greedy bastards please.
Re:For the last time... (Score:5, Insightful)
The Internet sees censorship as damage, it will route around you.
The internet for some users yes. But not for everyone and not for every game. Is this scheme going to be applied to Xbox live for example? Because I can tell you from personal experience that XBLA sees any censorship and damage (and, well, normal functions if I'm being honest) as a signal to give up completely. And commit console suicide probably as well.
Some slashdotters will scoff at those people sure, but I trust a lot of you recognize that not being very computer literate and using consoles shouldn't mean the government should get to tell you what videogames you can and can't play in your freetime.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Because I can tell you from personal experience that XBLA sees any censorship and damage (and, well, normal functions if I'm being honest) as a signal to give up completely. And commit console suicide probably as well.
To be fair, the Xbox 360 sees Tuesday as a reason to commit console suicide.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I will say this slowly for you politicians. The Internet sees censorship as damage, it will route around you.
There's nothing very unique about the Internet in this regard.
Anything that the population might want: internet packets, illegal drugs, tax-free cigarettes, Bibles, Prohibition-era gin, unlicensed DVDs, etc. will get routed around the government's attempts to block it.
Maybe all that really changes is how many people get hurt in the process.
No Route Possible (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Repeating this mantra is not going to make the growing censorship of the internet go away. back in the days when the internet was solely the province of the technically minded, this may have been true. But in the days of a global, universal internet, this mantra is slowly but surely becoming hollow.
Governments of the world are not, NOT, going to put up with a medium in which anyone whatsoever can read or publish anything they wish, at any time, on a global scale, without any government control. More importantly, the public is not going to put up with it. This simply isn't the way human societies work. People want censorship.
If you doubt this, poll your friends and neighbors. Ask the plain question; "Do you think their should be government supervision of the internet?". The overwhelming majority of people will answer, "Yes". And they will not mean supervision over "extreme" material like child pornography and snuff sites. They will mean supervision over anorexia boards, neo-nazi sites, "obscene materials", fringe persons and political groups, atheists/creationists, and in general censorship of anyone that they do not like.
This increasing government interest in internet censorship is not coming out of nowhere. It's a natural progression of the general will of human society; to repress views they disagree with. If you can find enough people who dislike a thing, you can get it banned. That's what's happening to the internet, and that's why its getting so much support.
In the future, the current internet era (or more appropriately the one ten years ago), will be looked back on as we now look back on the late nineteenth century drug era, in which cocaine, cannabis and even heroin could be bought, sold and taken quite legally. People had rights to drugs in those days, but, slowly but surely, disapproval of those liberties lead to their restriction. The same thing is going to happen to the internet.
Eventually, you will need a license to publish material on the web, or at least to host a site, and all sites will be fully regulated by vast, probably international, government offices created for the purpose. This is coming and there is going to be no way to route around such a mortal wound to the free web.
Parent
Re:For the last time... (Score:4, Insightful)
Pretty much what I was thinking.
Really, it's probably best to write a letter to your local paper (assuming you live in Australia) - that's a rather good forum for such topics that really hasn't found a truly similar foothold on the Internet yet contrary to those spelling out the doom of newspapers like many here.
Parent
Ban games? (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess that means no more updates for BZflag and Tux Racer.
Precedent (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Precedent (Score:5, Insightful)
That's when you go back to the old Mom question of "If all the other countries were jumping off a bridge, would you jump too?"
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a perfectly legitimate excuse if your ultimate goal is to commit suicide.
It just makes so much sense (Score:4, Interesting)
Will they be blocking violent movies too? What about violent books and song lyrics?
I don't doubt this will have an effect. Instead of 15-20 year olds playing violent games occasionally, they will now find them incredibly cool, and go to great lengths to play them. They won't have much trouble unless Australia figures out how to block torrents and eBay too. Even that wouldn't stop anyone.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The door is open (Score:4, Insightful)
Each step down this path will have the same excuse, "It's for the children".
I wonder how long it will be until the Australian government censors news articles for the "fear effect" such uncensored information might have on the children.
I will say it again, once you accept that censorship is acceptable, then it is only a matter of how much will be censored.
Can You Hear Me Now? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
That sounds like a grand idea! I look forward to your in-depth blog about it in the near future. :-)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure:
China: Comprehensive, active and ongoing censorship of many non-Chinese websites. Filter able to be changed rapidly in response to current events.
Iran: As above, but not as comprehensive or as sophisticated as China.
Australia: No internet censorship at the moment.
What Slashdot always fails to mention in these fear-mongering articles is that this filter is simply something that is being PROPOSED by a minority of politicians, mostly to appease promises they made during the last election to various conser
A way to produce more & better AU hackers (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
From what I can gather about these filters, an eight year old could hack around. The only thing Australian politicians are more of than liberty-hating is just plain retarded. What a collosal pack of uneducated, possibly uneducatable half-wits. I have no doubt that the Australian government will be taken for millions over the list. And the Australians deserve it, because what they should be doing is showing up at their rep's office and threatening to feed them to the sharks if they don't immediately go t
Oh noes!!!1!!! (Score:3, Funny)
Gnometris isn't rated, I'll never be able to update it...
Sheldon
I'm glad i'm leaving Australia (Score:2)
This is just fucking ridiculous.
I'm glad I'm leaving Australia.
Supposedly this means WoW will be banned, too.
We need a Source Mod (Score:2)
Someone needs to make a source mod where the objective is to go around violently killing alien monsters that censor the internet.
Re: (Score:2)
Someone needs to make a source mod where the objective is to go around violently killing politicians that censor the internet.
There, fixed that for ya.
Soon... (Score:2)
It's not so bad, think of all the virii and malware you won't have to contend with!
Steam ? (Score:3, Interesting)
Flood them. (Score:3, Interesting)
We need to submit to them *every single* game on the internet whether it be OSS, Flash, MMOG, Steam / Impulse, Forum based (MySpace & Facebook games) or play by email. Everything. Let them choke on their own stupidity.
Amazon pages will have to be blocked (Score:4, Informative)
So if what Conroy has announced here goes ahead, a whole pile of product pages at Amazon [amazon.com] (among others) are going to have to go on the blacklist. (Leisure Suit Larry is among the games banned in Australia [classification.gov.au].
The problem is that many of the proposed filtering solutions work by routing traffic to IP addresses that host prohibited pages to a proxy server. As we saw with the Internet Watch/BT/Wikipedia debacle, this approach is likely to cause problems with high traffic sites (and may well overload the proxy server).
Danny.
Re:Their censor software was written by a Lunix us (Score:5, Insightful)
Lunix is the crappiest OS since the days of Dos 6.2
Little Johnny: Mommy! Mommy! Can I feed the troll? Pleassssse???
Mom: No dear, he'd just keep on coming back for more. Come on, sweetheart, get into the car.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
"Lunix is the crappiest OS since the days of Dos 6.2"
Honestly, what did you expect from a small Unix for the Commodore 64 microcomputer [wikipedia.org]? Frankly, I think its features list [sourceforge.net] is pretty damned impressive considering the hardware they're targeting.