Internet Censorship (Aus)

I've heard of this before, mainly through 4chan, but was reminded of it again today. Are they really going to spend millions of dollars just to block some sites that can be blocked from home anyway? Millions that could be spent in much more beneficial ways such as on health-care or education. It seems ridiculous that people would even consider this at all. Sure, it might be able to remove some dangerous or unwanted sites... but... isn't it also removing people's rights to have access to information? (granted.. I'm sure most of the sites on the list would be porn, but even so...)

What does everyone else think?

Also just checked here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Australia and apparently some of the sites that may be blocked include some about euthanasia, video games and Encyclopedia Dramatica.

It starts at porn, but what will the government start blocking once they have the power to do so?
For example there may be a website that is against that government. The government could then take this down because it gives them a bad image. We should be able to look at that website if we choose, if they stop it they are blocking out freedom of information.
The same thing happened in China and if it goes through it will happen here as well. China even blocked Google.

NOT GOOGLE!

Poor Chinese people have to use "Yahoo!" I feel sorry for them

I disagree with the internet filter, though saying that the Government will go as far to block sites that oppose it is drastic, Australia is, and will be for the forseeable future, a representative democracy, not a totalitarian one.

There is a shit load of extremely objectionable content on the net, that is what the filter wants to get rid of. It's not about getting rid of porn - sick and tortured sites about suicide, murder, child porn, paedophelia, and a bunch more of really fucked up demented stuff. I don't have a problem with this stuff going - hell, I'm not even that bothered if porn goes away for good, but I do have a problem with the fact that it will;

- Be a fucking huge waste of tax payers money

- It's going to get cracked right after it's released. Remember the optional filter John Howard brought out 6 or so years ago? The one that 16 year old cracked within 4 hours of being released?

- The internet is not designed to be filtered, its structure doesn't allow it to happen on a feasable scale.

- It won't work. From what they've said about it so far, there'll be about a 5-10% failure rate in judging websites. That is an abysmal number - how many sites are on the web? fuck, lord knows, but 10% of them is a huge figure.

- Peer to peer networking completely bypasses the filter - 99% of child porn and other fucked up stuff is shared over PtP.

- It will be a massive toll on the already horrendous broadband networks in Australia

And I also dislike the idea of censorship - obviously though, there is stuff that needs to be censored.

Just keep in mind that the stuff the government want to censor is much worse than goatse or anything like that, way fucking worse. The censor is a bad idea, but a misinformed argument against it is almost as bad.

Yeah I just don't think it will work full stop. This is why Christians shouldn't run the country.

I agree with Riley. I agree with all the horrible sites with child porn and murder and such going, but its more the idea of the censorship, and the fact that they're trying to spend so much money on it that I don't like.