The Australian Government, namely Senator Stephen Conroy has given the green light for a ‘Clean Feed’ to be applied to Australian internet.
News posts here, here and here.
In laymens terms, this means that come next August, MANDATORY ISP filtering will occur on all internet.
It’s not up to the Government to say what I can and can’t look at on the internet. I am an adult and so long as my activity isn’t illegal (ch*ld porn) then the Government should have NO RIGHT to filter my internet.
It is up to me to keep my children safe on the net. Not the Government.
See NoCleanFeed for more details and if you agree with me, sign the petition.
SIGN PETITION AGAINST CLEAN FEED.
As a web publisher, this scares me senseless. Officials have admitted that the filtering, while effective against the kind of sites they are wanting to filter (a blacklist, if you will. who knows what exactly they will be deeming ‘not suitable’) there are also plenty of false positives, ie: sites blocked that shouldn’t have been.
Does that mean I could ‘accidentally’ have Frog Ponds Rock blocked? Or what about you. What happens if your website gets blocked?
I don’t agree with it. It is censorship plain and simple.
Sign the petition against it. Please.
Reproduced with permission from Sleepless Nights
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Wrote my first letter to a politician tonight. Conroy is the recipient. My local representative got one too. People in Victoria can call his electorate office directly on 1300 131 546 — then *he* pays for it? (Victorians only though).
Why bother with clean feed in America? Now that we have “hate crimes” legislation, we will all shut up of our own accord.
I agree that censorship is frightening.
Here is an interesting example. As you probably know, most companies already limit their employees’ web access, and I can understand that. Once when our computer was out of use (happens maybe once every 12 months), I was on my husband’s work laptop checking email & my usual web sites. I was horrified to find that a web site for a medical condition I have was blocked. I received a very nasty “you have tried to access a site with…” warning. My main worry was for my husband. He assured me that there would be no trouble from work, and there wasn’t. But it is an example of a false positive. The site is for a gynae condition & naturally those terms are red-flagged.