Australian Web Filter To Censor Downloaded Games 200
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.'"
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!
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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.
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.
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.
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Hopefully soon, they'll ban breastfeeding in public.
There is nothing like the wrath of pregnant outraged hormonal women.
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> Australia is a Failed State
No, no. A failed state is one where the government is unable to stop people from doing things without permission. Censoring the Net proves that they have the power to control everything. Control is their measure of success.
> The world has gone mad.
The world has always been mad. Otherwise we would have neither government nor religion.
Re:Australia is a DISTRACTED State (Score:2)
When was it ever sane?
Not picking on you personally but this whole filter thing is a beat up and always has been. The filter is NOT mandatory except for government computers (eg schools, librarys, etc). It will never be mandatory for private computers because the little game our two major parties play with this topic is far too valuable a tool for manipulating independent senators and distracting competing special interest groups, neither side wants to stop playing it.
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Remember all those people calling for mandatory voting laws? This is what you get and why it's a bad idea. Uneducated voters electing stupid people, into stupid positions, who vote on stupid things, which do not fit the voting electorate.
What? This isn't rocket surgery. It's bloody common sense.
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.
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they are also afraid of public displays of sexuality because they do not respond to the "appropriate" signals
it is much easier to live a lie if that lie is beneath the surface
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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!
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.
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But it still puzzles me that the AU people, which I've always considered as easygoing and enlightened, accept this level of government "protectionism".
Your answer lies in the question. We are easygoing. "The Government wants to do what? RAAAWWRR... meh."
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???
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!
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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!
Hey hey hey, that's not funny. God gave women breasts to be ogled at, not to feed some mutated kids that should be drinking artificial, drug and hormone filled milk-byproduct like REAL REDBLOODED AMERICAN MEN.
Our hardworking conservative Overlords are working hard to ensure that the next generation are just as properly sexually dysfunctional and neurotic as God and Church demand, and god bless them for it.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have an appointment with my Senator to speak about the dirty, dirty men ru
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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???
Get them to swallow.
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Do you know what happens if kids were to find Duke Nukem and pause it when he gives the hookers money? BLASPHEMY.
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True, although 3Drealms put the patch online to disable the parental lock and made it available to Australians. Since it wasn't hosted in Australia there was nothing wrong with that.
So in reality, very few people actually played that 'parental lock' mode :P I certainly didn't.
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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.
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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.
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Stop being too logical, its not about the true effectiveness, its about the progression of control of the population. If they try, and manage to block one thing, they consider it a success and continue down the same road, looking for #2, then #3. The have time, and unlimited budgets.
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?
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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.
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Its simple. You drop any packet that does not look like normal 'nothing to hide person surfing' traffic.
There is not just black list, there is whitelist approach too. Technology does not win this once the other side gets serious because the other side physically controls the tubes.
As for steam and whatnot, opeartors of those services will take care of it if they want to keep doing business there.
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I sincerely doubt Australians want to kill off online banking and VPN (two other uses for encryption) in order to stop Japanese rape-sim downloads.
Then again it is Australia. "Hello, Bruce! Are you a pooftah?"
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I'd say the ever-growing scope of the Australian filtering system suggests he's right.
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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
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Slow Down, Cowboy! It's been 4 minutes since you last successfully poste
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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)
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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.
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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.
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To be fair, the Xbox 360 sees Tuesday (Tuesday here is defined as every day of the week) as a reason to commit console suicide.
Fixed that for you. Although I think I covered that with my "and, well, normal functions if I'm being honest) as a signal to give up completely."
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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.
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What changes is that these guys get to go back to their navel-gazing core constituencies and say "See, I made those intertubes safer!", and those constituencies will vote for them, apparently believing that some stupid filter can stop anyone with even a passing knowledge of proxies and the like. Hell, if the Butchers of Qom couldn't stop all the images from getting out of Iran, then how the hell do these guys think what apparently is a pretty shitty filter can do it?
I wrote a letter to my own representativ
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The internet is an abstract idea that only exists as when the sum of all of the networks is greater than the individual parts. Networks can and is meant to be scaled up or down. A country-wide firewall is not damage. Filtering, which you can think of is a firewall that looks at content rather than connection, is not damage. Damage is when one node disappears off the network. You can still route around that. But there's no "around" when a country-wide firewall disallows connections to be made with servers ou
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.
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Can I just say this is a fantastic post and I bet you will be proved to be right. If you think about it, the Internet is truly a unique thing in today's world. The only communications medium that has essentially no controls over its use (unless you live in China etc).
I'm Australian and while we don't have any filtering at this time, this proposed filter does worry me. I'm fairly certain it's unpopular (and technicall unfeasible) enough to not pass through Parliament in its current form. But give it another
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.
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Please do write to these politicians but I have to say I'm not holding by breath. Do any of the politicians that request things like that really care what the voters think? The filter was arranged in Germany although there was a large opposition to the idea. The politicians didn't care one bit. I seriously doubt that the suits in Australia are any different. How many people are there left in the parliaments of the world that still try to do what their voters want. It's not like they have anything to lose by
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We've been writing to them, trust me. Unfortunately, it's been decided regardless of public and technical opinion - those in power want our intertubes filtered, so that's the way it's going to be.
One of the reasons it isn't getting much play here at all is that the media companies want the filter to go through so they can add torrents/etc. to the blacklist. At the moment they just have to satisfy themselves with suing ISPs because they don't cut their users off when the film industry tells them to.
Ban games? (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess that means no more updates for BZflag and Tux Racer.
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I guess that means no more updates for BZflag and Tux Racer.
Bwaah-haa-ha! Updates for Tux Racer? It looks as if the project died in 2001. The latest incarnation isn't too active, either.
Precedent (Score:5, Insightful)
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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?"
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It's a perfectly legitimate excuse if your ultimate goal is to commit suicide.
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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?"
(puts on senator hat)
Two questions:
1. Can I in some way say it's for the children, morality, economy, or national security?
2. What's the fastest way to the nearest bridge?
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"Every Canadian has the following fundamental freedoms..."
(2)(b)
freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication
Unless:
(1)The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.
So unless the government can prove that such a system is required, within the bounds of a free and democrat
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.
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The solution to that is to fire the person who used the proxy. I am sure it was against company policy, right?
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I was wondering about all the OTHER stuff as well.
Once all this starts piling up, I wonder if Australia is going to experience what I call the "Lynden" syndrome.
Near where I live there is a small town called Lynden that has pretty much made everything illegal. You get a ticket if you don't mow your lawn once a week. I'm not kidding.
The end result is all the kids that grow up there are eagerly awaiting the day of emancipation--the day they move the fuck out of town.
Because of this, there are no younger peopl
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And how about blocking all the fairfax media sites (theage.com.au, smh.com.au etc.) as well due to the screenshot at the top of the article showing a guy getting his head blown off.
They seriously cannot see the irony in this??
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Will they be blocking violent movies too? What about violent books and song lyrics?
I wouldn't put it past them, no.
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.
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Now each item that the Australian government (not the public, but those in control) finds objectionable will come under review and may be censored.
Keep in mind please that no filter has yet come to pass... if you're in Australia, write to your MP. If not... wish us luck :)
(Note: I work at an ISP, but I speak for myself, not my employer)
Can You Hear Me Now? (Score:5, Interesting)
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That sounds like a grand idea! I look forward to your in-depth blog about it in the near future. :-)
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Australia can make its own filtering software. The others had to outsource, to Australia.
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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)
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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
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You got modded 'funny', but you've hit a very good point: Free and Open Source games are -never- rated and would thus be banned altogether.
Just think about that for a while to let it really sink in.
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Not that I agree with the filter in any way whatsoever, but there is a difference between an unrated game and a game that has been refused classification.
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.
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Mod parent up: filter doesn't actually exist ... it's just a proposal supported by a minority of polticians. And the more daft things that they try and block with it, the more ridiculous the whole thing sounds, and the less chance there is of this thing ever actually passing through Parliament and becoming law.
Like the parent, I'm pretty confident this proposal will go and quietly die in a corner eventually.
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.
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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!
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I can't say I trust them enough to not let malware through.
Steam ? (Score:3, Interesting)
I wanna see them... (Score:2)
...blocking encrypted downloads. Lol. Even a ROT128 would circumvent that.
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Two possibilites:
a) They might decide that the number of people able to deal with encryption is too small to matter.
b) They may decide to block encrypted downloads.
So.... (Score:2)
So...... when are we starting the bonfires and begin throwing books?
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.
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Why would they choke? They'd just take their time (moving products of major companies to the head of the line, of course).
HTTPS anyone? (Score:2)
In response, STEAM announced that users can opt-in to SSL for their protocols for an extra $1 per 10GB (to cover buying a few SSL accelerator cards). Australia briefly responded by blocking port 443 until the outcry of a million Aussies unable to get their email, buy porn or surf ebay.au with pitchforks made them "reconsider" the idea.
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> ...surf ebay with pitchforks...
I can understand how one might want to do that...
What filter? (Score:2)
Last I heard the Great Firewall of Australia was being dumped by the biggest ISP and they were backing away from it.
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Yep, All of the major ISP's are against it, iinet, Telstra, Optus, and Internode. Most of the Australian public ignored this as without the industry it would go nowhere, now if push came to shove, the ISP industry has more advertising clout then the Aus government and Heavy Kevvy (Our esteemed Prime Minister, the (dis)honourable Kevin Rudd) cant afford more bad publicity.
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.
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Still the government can try all they like but they are not going to stop people from downloading "illegal" material, it's like trying to stop people from smokin
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Yes it's rather stupid isn't it. We have an R rating for movies, music, books etc...why not computer games? Surely you'd think it would be EASIER, if anything, to just have one consistent set of ratings across all media types, rather than try and deal with each type separately. I'm pretty sure that's the way they do it in Europe (and possibly the US?).
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.
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"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.
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Perhaps they plan to block any site that offers any unapproved games.