GetUp! gets up with ISP Filtering 26 Nov 2008 GetUp! is an excellent organisation that has been attacking the draconian laws of the “war” on terror, antigay laws, and so on. They now have a petition against ISP filtering. Go for it… Hat tip Samuel Douglas Censorship Internet filtering Politics Technology
Academe Rant: Old people 13 Mar 201413 Mar 2014 The Australian government is looking at extending the pension age to 70, so that older Australians, especially those in the Baby Boom demographic, will be free of the public purse for another 5 years over the present age of 65. Except that it is not the case that older Australians… Read More
Ecology and Biodiversity Evolution and the law 17 Jun 2009 A new paper by Brian Leiter and Michael Weisberg entitled “Why Evolutionary Biology Is (So Far) Irrelevant To Legal Regulation” argues that evolution does not provide the legal system with any useful rules or guidance. Here’s the abstract: Evolutionary biology – or, more precisely, two (purported) applications of Darwin’s theory… Read More
Censorship Australia to impose “opt-out” filtering 2 Jan 2008 I’m going to have to start a “freedom watch” thread, I can see. Australia, under the ALP government, is to impose an “opt-out” internet filtering system on all lSPs, leading to the question asked by IT-Wire: what happens if I do opt out? Will I be listed somewhere as a… Read More
Well, if I can’t petition the Aussie gov. against this measure, then at least know that this “Xeno” is phobic on censorship. Good luck on keeping this threat at bay. It’s rather illustrative that the 1996 efforts in the U.S. Congress to promote filtering turned into a weird boondoggle for services such as “netnanny” and “cybercop” that afforded no protection but cost plenty. And I wonder how many people installed such services only to find that a:) their kids were smarter than they were and circumvented the serviced and b:) the adults grew impatient at having to take the extra step to “Approve” even regular sites with “bad words” occasionally sprinkled. Librarians in Minnesota fought efforts by the Republican legislature to require installation of “third-party” blocking software because, as they argued, their research showed that too many educational sites were being blocked. For their efforts, cultural “conservatives” labeled them “smut purveyors.”
It looks like the Greens will block it in the Senate. It seems Krudd hasn’t offered them a big enough carrot. Hopefully there is no carrot big enough to make them change their minds. http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,25642,24703499-5014239,00.html
Thanks for the link. I have signed it. Hopefully this filtering will die a very, very quick death and the government can get back to more important matters like Julia Gillard’s hair.