The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
Please vote in the Forum Structure Poll. Polling will close at 2PM EST on January 21, 2025.
Australian Government to impose mandatory nationalwide internet filtering
Man ... I was considering to go to college in Australia and maybe even live there afterwards too. I know a couple Aussies, and the country seemed nice.
But after hearing stuff like this, plus the ban of certain games like L4D, and the girl-booze tax ... no.
No personal offense intended to the Aussies here, but I must say that all this censorship is really hurting Australia's reputation worldwide. Soon we'll be hearing jokes like: "in Soviet Australia..."
Where are you from? Because I can come up with terrible things about practically any place on earth. On the grand scale of things internet censorship is very minor.
*e: which doesn't make it right, it just means that if your only reason not to study abroad is this, you should reconsider your priorities.
Man ... I was considering to go to college in Australia and maybe even live there afterwards too. I know a couple Aussies, and the country seemed nice.
But after hearing stuff like this, plus the ban of certain games like L4D, and the girl-booze tax ... no.
No personal offense intended to the Aussies here, but I must say that all this censorship is really hurting Australia's reputation worldwide. Soon we'll be hearing jokes like: "in Soviet Australia..."
this in addition to the national pastime of curry bashing turn me off the place.
Aldo:
Well call me a fundamentalist then, but to me any form of censorship (especially internet censorship) is just unacceptable (except hate speech of course). And you're quite right that this shouldn't prevent me from studying there per se (I can certainly manage for a few years with slow/censored internet and a couple of my favorite games banned), but it definately prevents me from wanting to live there. And it's not just the minor personal discomfort, it's the principle... I can't (not in good conscience anyway) walk around thinking of the internet as probably the greatest hope for the future of the human race, and then move to a country where it's censored.
Sam:
What's curry bashing?
P.S. But let's hope this act gets repealed though of course. Maybe in time it will just be another joke about old politicians and the internet... like "series of tubes" and "the internets".
some of you folks are acting kind of hysterical you know
I wouldn't disagree, but I would point out that it is genuinely frightening when the people responsible for passing laws have massive and obvious flaws in their understanding of the issues involved.
some of you folks are acting kind of hysterical you know
I wouldn't disagree, but I would point out that it is genuinely frightening when the people responsible for passing laws have massive and obvious flaws in their understanding of the issues involved.
Tell me about it. I live here. But acting like this place is worse than, say, the US, for things like crazy laws and poor policing, is not the act of a reasonable person. Its still quite pleasant here, when its not on fire or underwater.
re: that link about the Indian issue is uhhh... not particularly balanced. There's a problem with assaults on foreign students (and indeed students, and indeed young people), but its not at all clear that the attacks are wholly or even partly racially-oriented. Its actually quite a complex problem that frankly deserves its own thread, but I'll try and throw a list of the issues up:
* Some of the attacks are drunk assholes being racist, or at least using racism as an excuse to get their punch on. No question.
* Some of the drunk assholes aren't Australian themselves.
* Some of the attacks are straight robberies, the rate of which seems to have spiked after the stupid media started helpfully pointing out that Indians were quiet, skinny, relatively well-off, and prone to travelling home alone at night on public transport
* the reason a lot of indian students are in that situation is partially structural racism - you come here on a student visa and you're only allowed to work 20 hours a week, which is not enough to live on without savings backing you up. Its hard to get a job when you can only work a few hours and your language skills aren't that great, so you wind up in a kwik-e-mart on the graveyard shift, you take the train, and you live in a shitty apartment in the crap end of town. That said, plenty of Indian students make a decent living in safer jobs - one of my old roommates was a CS tutor, for instance. Our apartment was shit, but it was in a nice spot, and he had a car.
* this doesn't just happen to Indians, although unhelpfully, there's no data on the rates of assault against various segments of the student population. But someone did stab the hell out of a Chinese phD student in a robbery the other day...
* Some of the attacks since then have also been poorly disguised attempts to get an insurance payout for a car way to screw over the people who actually have been bashed, dudes.
* The Victorian Police are idiots, absolute idiots, and have been victim-blaming and denying and basically acting like children over the whole thing. That's done so much harm.
* The Indian tabloid media are insane, absolutely insane, and would have you believe that we cook and eat Indian babies on our BBQs along with the shrimps.
Basically its a clusterfuck, but coming in here and yelling that Australians "hate Indians" is stupid and insulting, and I won't put up with being accused of such.
Man ... I was considering to go to college in Australia and maybe even live there afterwards too. I know a couple Aussies, and the country seemed nice.
Not to worry. You would've been turned away at customs for being a complete wimp.
What? No, don't be ridiculou... oh, fuck it. Yes, they go through our mail and then peg us out in the sun for the drop bears if it turns out we haven't paid our utility bills on time. Don't ask me about what happens when they find out we've ordered goods from overseas instead of buying locally.
Jesus wept, you people.
The Cat on
0
FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
What? No, don't be ridiculou... oh, fuck it. Yes, they go through our mail and then peg us out in the sun for the drop bears if it turns out we haven't paid our utility bills on time. Don't ask me about what happens when they find out we've ordered goods from overseas instead of buying locally.
Jesus wept, you people.
I'm pretty sure ElitistB was trying to say something about the PATRIOT act. At least I hope so, otherwise that would be a stupid thing to say. Of course, at first I thought he was talking about Australia as well, and I had no fucking clue what he was referencing.
I think the main problem with Australia's image on sites like this is that our screwed up legislation tends to be based on stuff that will make internet people angry rather than just, say, denying sick people medical coverage
Thanks for explaining for us the complex issue, it was very informative indeed... but this:
... but coming in here and yelling that Australians "hate Indians" is stupid and insulting, and I won't put up with being accused of such.
I think that's overreacting a bit... but only a bit, since it was IMO offensive to call curry bashing a "national pastime".
Also, for everyone here (regardless of nationality) who is trying to (or would like to) turn this into a nationalism pissing contest and crap-flinging, do your worst. I'm quite immune to such insults, because I despise nationalism and believe only in loyalty towards the human race as a whole.
And FYI I'm not from the USA, but from a very small (yet fiercely nationalistic >_<) country that you've probably never heard of.
And, I'm quite accustomed to harsh environments and would do just fine in Australia or any other place, thank you very much =Þ
Considering changing the DNS address of your router to a DNS server of your choice can be done in a few seconds...
...oh, yeah, HOW VERY EFFECTIVE.
I believe the idea to be DNS traffic will be filtered by the ISP level as well.
Which is going to go magnificently.
Well, the solution for that is turning to your local trusted hacker organization DNS servers (the CCC in my case) wich take protecting civil rights a lot more serious than corrupt politicians.
Basically the hacker society threats this as an ACT OF WAR and you will get any support you need. Of course they tend to peek into your traffic and a lot of "anonymus" tips to the police have their origine here (for an example uncovering pedophile activities), but i really have nothing to hide. Why should i fear using it?
Its interesting that the guys being blacklabled as the "most serious threat" to internet security are the guys saveguarding personal freedom... as opposed to the government wich is supposed to do it and only makes the situation WORSE.
If you want to obtain a list of "clean" DNS servers simply google for "internet filtering" "chaos computer club" "DNS server list". Its really THAT easy.
Well, is your router linked to a hacker DNS already?
some of you folks are acting kind of hysterical you know
I wouldn't disagree, but I would point out that it is genuinely frightening when the people responsible for passing laws have massive and obvious flaws in their understanding of the issues involved.
Tell me about it. I live here. But acting like this place is worse than, say, the US, for things like crazy laws and poor policing, is not the act of a reasonable person. Its still quite pleasant here, when its not on fire or underwater.
re: that link about the Indian issue is uhhh... not particularly balanced. There's a problem with assaults on foreign students (and indeed students, and indeed young people), but its not at all clear that the attacks are wholly or even partly racially-oriented. Its actually quite a complex problem that frankly deserves its own thread, but I'll try and throw a list of the issues up:
* Some of the attacks are drunk assholes being racist, or at least using racism as an excuse to get their punch on. No question.
* Some of the drunk assholes aren't Australian themselves.
* Some of the attacks are straight robberies, the rate of which seems to have spiked after the stupid media started helpfully pointing out that Indians were quiet, skinny, relatively well-off, and prone to travelling home alone at night on public transport
* the reason a lot of indian students are in that situation is partially structural racism - you come here on a student visa and you're only allowed to work 20 hours a week, which is not enough to live on without savings backing you up. Its hard to get a job when you can only work a few hours and your language skills aren't that great, so you wind up in a kwik-e-mart on the graveyard shift, you take the train, and you live in a shitty apartment in the crap end of town. That said, plenty of Indian students make a decent living in safer jobs - one of my old roommates was a CS tutor, for instance. Our apartment was shit, but it was in a nice spot, and he had a car.
* this doesn't just happen to Indians, although unhelpfully, there's no data on the rates of assault against various segments of the student population. But someone did stab the hell out of a Chinese phD student in a robbery the other day...
* Some of the attacks since then have also been poorly disguised attempts to get an insurance payout for a car way to screw over the people who actually have been bashed, dudes.
* The Victorian Police are idiots, absolute idiots, and have been victim-blaming and denying and basically acting like children over the whole thing. That's done so much harm.
* The Indian tabloid media are insane, absolutely insane, and would have you believe that we cook and eat Indian babies on our BBQs along with the shrimps.
Basically its a clusterfuck, but coming in here and yelling that Australians "hate Indians" is stupid and insulting, and I won't put up with being accused of such.
none of that explains cases like the one where indians were firebombed in their own apartment. All hyperbole aside, Australia is at the very least not conducive to harmonious diversity, or at least not comparable in this respect to other anglophone first world countries.
Sam on
0
Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
edited February 2010
You are one honking hysterically silly goose.
Name an anglophile country that hasn't had some ethnic minority involved in an extreme incident or two?
It's not like I think Australia doesn't have an undercurrent of jingoism, nationalism and racism, it DOES. But the Indian situation is radically, radically overblown.
the difference is a) it's the year 2010 b) this problem does not currently exist on this scale, persisting for this long in other countries. Even the post 9/11 brown people hate crime surge did not go on for this long. And for 9/11 there was a unprecedented traumatizing factor. Here, no. Just pure hate.
Right, because nothing like that ever happens in other countries
on this scale? for this amount of time? There's a reason why the US and UK don't have Australia's reputation. It's because they're safer places to live if you aren't white.
The Indian tabloids had the opportunity to blow up similar incidents that occurred in the US and UK. The difference is the incidents weren't endemic in the same way.
It should be noted that they are not the only ones that in imposing this law. The US, Canada, Mexico, and I believe a few other countries want to do the very same thing. In fact, giving the ISP's free reign to monitor your usage and if you are accused, not just convicted, but accused 3 times for doing any illegal activity they can revoke your internet for a year!
I'll see if I can't find the link somewhere I saw this.
Thankfully that crap got smacked down hard in the courts here thanks to a justice who understood that ISP are carriers like a telephone not a content provider/police etc.
none of that explains cases like the one where indians were firebombed in their own apartment. All hyperbole aside, Australia is at the very least not conducive to harmonious diversity, or at least not comparable in this respect to other anglophone first world countries.
I think Sam's on the money here. I've never heard of non-Indians being victims of crime in Australia. Seriously, not once have I heard or read of a case of, well, any crime in Australia before Indian students started attending our universities.
I guess we just all hate Indians. Even our Indian population.
Let's face facts, guys. It's pretty bad in Australia.
What? No, don't be ridiculou... oh, fuck it. Yes, they go through our mail and then peg us out in the sun for the drop bears if it turns out we haven't paid our utility bills on time. Don't ask me about what happens when they find out we've ordered goods from overseas instead of buying locally.
Jesus wept, you people.
I'm pretty sure ElitistB was trying to say something about the PATRIOT act. At least I hope so, otherwise that would be a stupid thing to say. Of course, at first I thought he was talking about Australia as well, and I had no fucking clue what he was referencing.
I thought I was comparing the internet to a mail system, whereby it is not any government's right to investigate what the information being shipped consists of (within physical safety limits).
Elitistb on
0
Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
the difference is a) it's the year 2010 b) this problem does not currently exist on this scale, persisting for this long in other countries. Even the post 9/11 brown people hate crime surge did not go on for this long. And for 9/11 there was a unprecedented traumatizing factor. Here, no. Just pure hate.
Really? I'd like to see the evidence that it's racial hate, how many perpetrators have been captured? How many specified that their motivation was "curry bashing"? Give us some citations, some evidence.
Do you want to talk about d) India sends a HUGE number of students to Australia for education. Education is one of our major exports. There are a number of good reasons why the Indian media are concerned about Australia in a way that they may not have been before.
Also, I'm not seeing anything about any Indians being firebombed. I recall a guy setting himself on fire by accident and claiming it was a racially motivated attack when he was in fact attempting to commit insurance fraud.
Were you aware that one of, if not the, the major incidents initially claimed to be a racially motivated murder was in fact committed by another Indian couple for financial reasons.
The attacks have escalated in the past several weeks. In Sydney, an apartment was firebombed, cars have been set alight and in Melbourne, amid racial taunts, another youth was brutally stabbed with a screwdriver.
you're seriously in denial if you don't think that more serious incidents happen with higher frequency in Australia. India sends huge numbers of students to the US and UK as well. You don't see 40,000 strong protests in London. You don't see them in American college towns. So unless Australia has something that attracts India's whiniest bitches, the problem isn't Indian students exaggerating the situation.
Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
edited February 2010
40,000 strong protests? There are only 45,000 Indian students in Melbourne, about 32,000 in Adelaide and 20,000 in Sydney. Are you seriously suggesting that the entire population of Indian Students in Melbourne congregated at a single time?
The reality is that the protests numbered from less than 100, to around 300, and almost 4000 depending on the particular protests.
Also, that's a terrible thing to cite, if a regular news article is a secondary source, that's like quaternary source.
I am somewhat bemused that I'm being accused of being in denial, I'm a rather vociferous critic of the unsavory undercurrents of Australian society. The fact is that this is a massive beat up. It doesn't help anyone nor the cause of a less messed up society to pretend that this is more than it is.
it's a product of criminals profiling what's seen as an easy target.
many of them are hate crimes and not robberies- like setting someone's apartment on fire. if someone's sitting in their room in their ground floor apartment on the computer, it doesn't matter what ethnicity they are, they're a sitting duck and you don't profit from it.
The same applies to aggravated group assault. When it's 7 people ganging up on 1 and jamming a screwdriver into his forehead, the guy doesn't have to be Indian to be an easy target, and they aren't after his wallet if they stuck around to play with their prey for that long.
A crime is a crime. There are more crimes committed in poor neighbourhoods, not just robberies. There is also more domestic violence, drug trafficking, psychopaths, gangs, sexual crimes, tax dodging etcetera in poor neighbourhoods than in rich(er) neighbourhoods.
And good work using the car getting set on fire example Sam.
Although the Indian man did that himself to take advantage of the current situation to get insurance money.
silly goose, your denial has you unable to read. I used the example of an apartment getting firebombed not the car insurance fraud. the article's reference to car fires refers to incidents that occurred before the insurance fraud.
I got mugged in January while walking home around 3am. Must have been because I'm white.
because you're white, you didn't get continually beaten and have mechanical tools jammed into your head.
because you don't wear a turban, people don't grab the top of your head asking what it is when you ride the subway, and proceed to beat the shit out of you with the help of their friends.
Posts
*e: which doesn't make it right, it just means that if your only reason not to study abroad is this, you should reconsider your priorities.
this in addition to the national pastime of curry bashing turn me off the place.
Well call me a fundamentalist then, but to me any form of censorship (especially internet censorship) is just unacceptable (except hate speech of course). And you're quite right that this shouldn't prevent me from studying there per se (I can certainly manage for a few years with slow/censored internet and a couple of my favorite games banned), but it definately prevents me from wanting to live there. And it's not just the minor personal discomfort, it's the principle... I can't (not in good conscience anyway) walk around thinking of the internet as probably the greatest hope for the future of the human race, and then move to a country where it's censored.
Sam:
What's curry bashing?
P.S. But let's hope this act gets repealed though of course. Maybe in time it will just be another joke about old politicians and the internet... like "series of tubes" and "the internets".
I wouldn't disagree, but I would point out that it is genuinely frightening when the people responsible for passing laws have massive and obvious flaws in their understanding of the issues involved.
Tell me about it. I live here. But acting like this place is worse than, say, the US, for things like crazy laws and poor policing, is not the act of a reasonable person. Its still quite pleasant here, when its not on fire or underwater.
re: that link about the Indian issue is uhhh... not particularly balanced. There's a problem with assaults on foreign students (and indeed students, and indeed young people), but its not at all clear that the attacks are wholly or even partly racially-oriented. Its actually quite a complex problem that frankly deserves its own thread, but I'll try and throw a list of the issues up:
* Some of the attacks are drunk assholes being racist, or at least using racism as an excuse to get their punch on. No question.
* Some of the drunk assholes aren't Australian themselves.
* Some of the attacks are straight robberies, the rate of which seems to have spiked after the stupid media started helpfully pointing out that Indians were quiet, skinny, relatively well-off, and prone to travelling home alone at night on public transport
* the reason a lot of indian students are in that situation is partially structural racism - you come here on a student visa and you're only allowed to work 20 hours a week, which is not enough to live on without savings backing you up. Its hard to get a job when you can only work a few hours and your language skills aren't that great, so you wind up in a kwik-e-mart on the graveyard shift, you take the train, and you live in a shitty apartment in the crap end of town. That said, plenty of Indian students make a decent living in safer jobs - one of my old roommates was a CS tutor, for instance. Our apartment was shit, but it was in a nice spot, and he had a car.
* this doesn't just happen to Indians, although unhelpfully, there's no data on the rates of assault against various segments of the student population. But someone did stab the hell out of a Chinese phD student in a robbery the other day...
* Some of the attacks since then have also been poorly disguised attempts to get an insurance payout for a car
* The Victorian Police are idiots, absolute idiots, and have been victim-blaming and denying and basically acting like children over the whole thing. That's done so much harm.
* The Indian tabloid media are insane, absolutely insane, and would have you believe that we cook and eat Indian babies on our BBQs along with the shrimps.
Basically its a clusterfuck, but coming in here and yelling that Australians "hate Indians" is stupid and insulting, and I won't put up with being accused of such.
Not to worry. You would've been turned away at customs for being a complete wimp.
...oh, yeah, HOW VERY EFFECTIVE.
I believe the idea to be DNS traffic will be filtered by the ISP level as well.
Which is going to go magnificently.
Jesus wept, you people.
I'm pretty sure ElitistB was trying to say something about the PATRIOT act. At least I hope so, otherwise that would be a stupid thing to say. Of course, at first I thought he was talking about Australia as well, and I had no fucking clue what he was referencing.
apparently you guys do have the most hardcore wildlife. shit that is not to be fucked with.
Thanks for explaining for us the complex issue, it was very informative indeed... but this:
I think that's overreacting a bit... but only a bit, since it was IMO offensive to call curry bashing a "national pastime".
Also, for everyone here (regardless of nationality) who is trying to (or would like to) turn this into a nationalism pissing contest and crap-flinging, do your worst. I'm quite immune to such insults, because I despise nationalism and believe only in loyalty towards the human race as a whole.
And FYI I'm not from the USA, but from a very small (yet fiercely nationalistic >_<) country that you've probably never heard of.
And, I'm quite accustomed to harsh environments and would do just fine in Australia or any other place, thank you very much =Þ
Well, the solution for that is turning to your local trusted hacker organization DNS servers (the CCC in my case) wich take protecting civil rights a lot more serious than corrupt politicians.
Basically the hacker society threats this as an ACT OF WAR and you will get any support you need. Of course they tend to peek into your traffic and a lot of "anonymus" tips to the police have their origine here (for an example uncovering pedophile activities), but i really have nothing to hide. Why should i fear using it?
Its interesting that the guys being blacklabled as the "most serious threat" to internet security are the guys saveguarding personal freedom... as opposed to the government wich is supposed to do it and only makes the situation WORSE.
If you want to obtain a list of "clean" DNS servers simply google for "internet filtering" "chaos computer club" "DNS server list". Its really THAT easy.
Well, is your router linked to a hacker DNS already?
none of that explains cases like the one where indians were firebombed in their own apartment. All hyperbole aside, Australia is at the very least not conducive to harmonious diversity, or at least not comparable in this respect to other anglophone first world countries.
Name an anglophile country that hasn't had some ethnic minority involved in an extreme incident or two?
It's not like I think Australia doesn't have an undercurrent of jingoism, nationalism and racism, it DOES. But the Indian situation is radically, radically overblown.
really, what a fucking stupid thing to say
on this scale? for this amount of time? There's a reason why the US and UK don't have Australia's reputation. It's because they're safer places to live if you aren't white.
I'll see if I can't find the link somewhere I saw this.
http://www.metronews.ca/vancouver/comment/article/449519--a-lifetime-ban-from-the-internet-it-could-happen
I also found some additional information
http://www.zeropaid.com/news/9664/eff__new_us_copyright_enforcement_proposal_and_acta_could_be_a_catastrophe/
Screw Australia its about to get a lot worse for all of us!
I guess we just all hate Indians. Even our Indian population.
Let's face facts, guys. It's pretty bad in Australia.
Really? I'd like to see the evidence that it's racial hate, how many perpetrators have been captured? How many specified that their motivation was "curry bashing"? Give us some citations, some evidence.
Do you want to talk about d) India sends a HUGE number of students to Australia for education. Education is one of our major exports. There are a number of good reasons why the Indian media are concerned about Australia in a way that they may not have been before.
Also, I'm not seeing anything about any Indians being firebombed. I recall a guy setting himself on fire by accident and claiming it was a racially motivated attack when he was in fact attempting to commit insurance fraud.
Were you aware that one of, if not the, the major incidents initially claimed to be a racially motivated murder was in fact committed by another Indian couple for financial reasons.
Seriously, show the data you hysterical gosling.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jun2009/pers-j13.shtml
you're seriously in denial if you don't think that more serious incidents happen with higher frequency in Australia. India sends huge numbers of students to the US and UK as well. You don't see 40,000 strong protests in London. You don't see them in American college towns. So unless Australia has something that attracts India's whiniest bitches, the problem isn't Indian students exaggerating the situation.
The reality is that the protests numbered from less than 100, to around 300, and almost 4000 depending on the particular protests.
Also, that's a terrible thing to cite, if a regular news article is a secondary source, that's like quaternary source.
I am somewhat bemused that I'm being accused of being in denial, I'm a rather vociferous critic of the unsavory undercurrents of Australian society. The fact is that this is a massive beat up. It doesn't help anyone nor the cause of a less messed up society to pretend that this is more than it is.
many of them are hate crimes and not robberies- like setting someone's apartment on fire. if someone's sitting in their room in their ground floor apartment on the computer, it doesn't matter what ethnicity they are, they're a sitting duck and you don't profit from it.
The same applies to aggravated group assault. When it's 7 people ganging up on 1 and jamming a screwdriver into his forehead, the guy doesn't have to be Indian to be an easy target, and they aren't after his wallet if they stuck around to play with their prey for that long.
This isn't criminal profiling, it's hate crime.
Although the Indian man did that himself to take advantage of the current situation to get insurance money.
silly goose, your denial has you unable to read. I used the example of an apartment getting firebombed not the car insurance fraud. the article's reference to car fires refers to incidents that occurred before the insurance fraud.
because you're white, you didn't get continually beaten and have mechanical tools jammed into your head.
because you don't wear a turban, people don't grab the top of your head asking what it is when you ride the subway, and proceed to beat the shit out of you with the help of their friends.