Conroy at it again...

[TVR-190]

Don't claim we support filter, iiNet tells Conroy | News.com.au

ONE of Australia's largest internet companies has rubbished claims by a federal minister that it supports the Rudd Government's internet filtering plan.

A spokesperson for iiNet today said the company had been in touch with the office of Communications Minister Stephen Conroy to complain after he claimed it was in support of the Government's filtering policy.

"We've been in touch with Senator Conroy's office to reaffirm that we don't support the filter and requested him not to misrepresent our position," they said.

Senator Conroy was quoted yesterday in the Sydney Morning Herald as saying the plan was supported by several internet service providers (ISPs) including iiNet.

"This policy has been approved by 85 per cent of Australian internet service providers, who have said they would welcome the filter, including Telstra, Optus, iPrimus and iiNet," he was quoted as saying.

But iiNet said that was rubbish.

The company said its position on the Government's web filtering policy had not changed since January, when it warned the plan would not be effective and could give parents a false sense of security.

"Let's be clear. We don't support the Government's proposal. We never have," iiNet chief regulatory officer Steve Dalby said in an open letter at the time.

"If the Government continues to proceed with their ISP filtering plan we will continue to oppose it and seek to make their bad idea better by suggesting improvements.

"But we'll hold fast in our view that it will still be a bad idea that simply won't work."

A spokesperson for iiNet today said Mr Dalby's letter was still representative of the company's stance.

iiNet is Australia's third largest internet service provider behind Telstra and Optus.

Under the Government's internet filtering plan, all ISPs in Australia would be forced to block access to a secret list of banned web pages.

The secret list would consist of web pages containing material which is refused classification (RC).

The Government says: "This content includes child sexual abuse imagery, bestiality, sexual violence, detailed instruction in crime, violence or drug use and/or material that advocates the doing of a terrorist act."

However iiNet believes a filter would not stop the trade of child pornography because it did not usually take place on public websites.

"Why don't we support ISP internet filtering? Because it doesn't work and it won't fix the problem the Government is trying to solve," said Mr Dalby in his letter.

"The reality is paedophiles and criminals do not use public websites to distribute their illegal content and the planned Government filter is currently only proposed to block website addresses or 'URLs' – so it won't prevent this kind of activity."

Australia's largest ISP Telstra said in December that it welcomed the plan, as long as it included other measures such as education and policing as well.

A Telstra spokesperson today said the company's stance had not changed since then, but it was still waiting on the Government to explain how the plan would work.

"We are engaged with the Government on the implementation of its policy but there are a number of issues of detail about which we are awaiting further advice and information," the spokesperson said.

The Government is expected to introduce legislation for its filtering plan later this year.

Optus has been contacted for comment.

Conroy is such a twit

[Tim Smtih]

Mein gott a politician that is full of cr#p? Unheard of!

[danja]

Conroy is such a twit

Actually, it's spelt "twat"

[sjmcc]

Conroy is such a twit

Well said, although Danja's suggestion is also applicable

[skyracer]

Can't he just give up and realize no one wants his stupid filter. >.<

[pow3rslave]

omfg everyone in this thrad are pedophifles! if u dont liek filters you're a pedo!!!Shiftone

[wraith]

We need a person who actually knows stuff about IT and has a clue. Not some idiot who thinks "Hey guiz check it out I did some thing yay for me." This filter will be so easy to bypass it's a joke.

[Dum*P*ster]

We need a person who actually knows stuff about IT and has a clue. Not some idiot who thinks "Hey guiz check it out I did some thing yay for me." This filter will be so easy to bypass it's a joke.

haha...agreed

[danja]

Protip: Start buying shares in offshore proxy companies

[wraith]

More like see if we can get discount for the more people who join the proxy server. I think some one needs to show Conroy how easy it is to bypass filters or download illegal things. I'm sure he will be shocked.

[STEALTHY™]

I cant wait for this to come in. The amount of people who will be cancelling contracts will be huge. Companies will go bust (hopefully telstra are the first).


I really dont think any government would actually bring this in, they'd lose too many votes.

[Stressball]

More like see if we can get discount for the more people who join the proxy server. I think some one needs to show Conroy how easy it is to bypass filters or download illegal things. I'm sure he will be shocked.

Don't think so. He has admitted before that the filter won't stop people from deliberately getting to what they want to get to, it's purpose is just to stop children from seeing things that could hurt their fragile little minds So basically, the 'problem' he is trying to fix is unimportant and not a real problem at all; the 'problem' of pedos goes completely ignored, everybody gets slow internet, Govco spends heaps of money to do nothing, and it's ALL WORTH IT! I mean, just think of the children?

Reckons it will protect children from kiddie porn gone astray... I have to ask, has anyone on here ever accidentally come across kiddie porn during normal browsing? Or even browsing for porn? Not likely. Why? Because the sites that do exist aren't exactly high traffic sites, few as they are, and more importantly, the kiddie porn isn't shared by sites, it's shared P2P. Govco filter won't do shit for that, either.

Way to go intarwebz filtar!

[wraith]

Kid's are internet savvy now days. Porn at school was blocked but didn't take me long to find out you can look up boobies on Google Images and get what I wanted.

[Dum*P*ster]

School pretty much teaches how you bypass any firewall

[danja]

Reckons it will protect children from kiddie porn gone astray... I have to ask, has anyone on here ever accidentally come across kiddie porn during normal browsing? Or even browsing for porn? Not likely. Why? Because the sites that do exist aren't exactly high traffic sites, few as they are, and more importantly, the kiddie porn isn't shared by sites, it's shared P2P. Govco filter won't do shit for that, either.

I think even more to the point is how many children seek out child porn in the first place? We're building an internet filter to protect the children from pictures of...themselves? **** it, if I was 13 and wanted to see child porn I could just take off my pants

[Julie]

I have to ask, has anyone on here ever accidentally come across kiddie porn during normal browsing?

Yep unfortunately we have back in the old days of napster or kazaa or maybe even limewire can't remember which one it was a whole ago was downloading a disney movie for the kids, some sick twisted ****er thought it would be funny to label some kiddy porn as a disney flick. Didn't we get a rude shock! Was like WTF!!!!! then didn't know what to do was like hmm do we call mr policeman hmm yeh not such a good idea when we really shouldn't have been downloading shit anyway. We ended up deleting it straight away and leaving an anonymous tip to police about it. I hope no onse else has also accidentally stumbled across this shit sick ****s.

Oh and just for the record even after this I strongly oppose this stupid filter and I have 2 kids. Parents who do want the filter should stop being such lazy ****er and supervise their kids internet usage.

[wraith]

You weren't browsing you were searching for/downloading a movie. There's always a chance with p2p programs you won't get what your expecting. How do you think most of that sort of material gets transferred or shared around? Worst part is there is almost nothing you can do to stop it bar stopping people accessing the internet.

[D3CID3R]

If this filter go ahead, Australia wont have Access to the up and coming Google TV stream .. was kinda looking forward to that

[Stressball]

Yep unfortunately we have back in the old days of napster or kazaa or maybe even limewire...

Exactly right. It is on there, which proves my point; during 'normal browsing' of websites, it doesn't just leap up at you. It's not like porn popups when you look for a cd key or something. It's obviously known to be far from legal, and the people who are into it aren't into it to make money like the popup-kings, they're into it because that's their fetish. Instead, it is passed around through P2P sharing. I do think though that there's probably a list somewhere that someone has compiled of a bunch of 'movies', both actual labels and the p2p filenames. If it got into the hands of a cybercrime division then they'd have a list of the names to look for, and it wouldn't be overly hard to track an IP downloading it.

So, in summary I suppose, the filter will do nothing but inconvenience the general population, while having zero effect on it's targets. Once again; Way to go intarwebz filtar!

[Tim Smtih]

School pretty much teaches how you bypass any firewall

At my school you had a password assigned to you at the start of each school year. I managed to acquire a half dozen and used them willy nilly to avoid the "feds". Sure did make the idiot I.T. teacher who came up with the idea look like the fool he was.

[minux]

The Government says: "This content includes child sexual abuse imagery, bestiality, sexual violence, detailed instruction in crime, violence or drug use and/or material that advocates the doing of a terrorist act."

Hmm, so by the governments own admissions and laws, searching to buy things like bulk chlorine will be blocked. Looking to buy photos of refineries will be blocked. Game sites with ratings that include violence, blocked.

Telstra are going to make a killing not going in on this filter shit.

[TVR-190]

its iinet thats against it, not telstra.

and it doesnt matter if they oppose it, if it becomes law, they will have to filter...

[minux]

TVR, true, but, unless the government provide the hardware/software for it, I cannot see Telstra "agreeing" to go along with it whether it is law or not.

Seriously though, where does this government get off thinking they own the internet lol?

[danja]

Yep unfortunately we have back in the old days of napster or kazaa or maybe even limewire can't remember which one it was a whole ago was downloading a disney movie for the kids, some sick twisted ****er thought it would be funny to label some kiddy porn as a disney flick. Didn't we get a rude shock! Was like WTF!!!!! then didn't know what to do was like hmm do we call mr policeman hmm yeh not such a good idea when we really shouldn't have been downloading shit anyway. We ended up deleting it straight away and leaving an anonymous tip to police about it. I hope no onse else has also accidentally stumbled across this shit sick ****s.

Oh and just for the record even after this I strongly oppose this stupid filter and I have 2 kids. Parents who do want the filter should stop being such lazy ****er and supervise their kids internet usage.

Similar things have happened to me Jules, and I'm sure plenty of others - the problem is that this filter can't touch Limewire/Kazaa/BitTorrent or any of the numerous peer-to-peer networks out there. As you've discovered, this seems to be where the bulk of the trade is done with regards to child porn and other abhorrent material - and to quote MC Hammer, it can't touch this! So here we have a product, which was originally implied to be an opt-in filter, which will be trivial to bypass, is open to abuse, and to top it all - doesn't address any of the problems it set out to solve.

I'm sure Conroy's heart is in the right place, it's just a pity his brain isn't.