Quote Originally Posted by HoreTore
Btw, the internet restrictions in place here are child porn only.
For now, maybe. And how will you know that, anyway ? Will the list be made public ? What'll stop them from extending it at any point ?

Actually, first and foremost, why the heck should the gov't decide what I may see or may not see on the net ? Filters ALREADY exist, if I want one, I can get one myself, thank you very much.

You think it'll be complicated to add stuff to it, or do you believe they will make a public announcement every time they add an IP to it ? Puhleaze...
Besides, one of the articles says "Senator Conroy says it will be mandatory for all internet service providers to provide clean feeds, or ISP filtering, to houses and schools that are free of pornography and inappropriate material.
and "He says the scheme will better protect children from pornography and violent websites."

So it will most likely not be JUST child pornography... but any "inappropriate material". In other words, the gov't will decide what's inappropriate for me to browse. And no violence, naturally!
May Godwin spin as fast as he wants, but this is exactly the kind of stuff that dictatorships were doing - I've lived under one, except there was no internet back then, so they only had to forbid books and written publications.

I find it stunning that only a few years after the fall of the big scary menace that was communism, laws typical to all those oppressive regimes are passed with great ease, and very few people notice, or care, or seem to acknowledge that it's going towards the same thing they were oh-so-very-much against a few years ago...

Moreover, it's opt-OUT, not opt-in. A lot of people have expressed concern about being put on a special "list" when they would ask to opt-out. How do you know that won't be the case ?

The irony, of course, all the "children" who need to be "protected" will be perfectly able to bypass this in a few seconds...
but then again, they never really cared about that, it's all about votes, and _appearing_ to do something, regardless if it's an epic fail or not.

It's still digusting and appalling, and I hope the Aussies will try to fight this.