I warned and posted about this a while ago and sadly the Australian government has almost won and their country wide internet filter will likely come into action very soon....
The greatest concern here is the items included in the nations blacklist of banned sites, particularly as this blacklist is to remain secret so no one will really have what idea the government is banning. The government intendeds to ban hundreds of web sites (and even torrents) on terrorism and child pornography and while their immediate intentions are great their is potential for the government and future governments to abuse this privilege in the years to come . Many are concerned that in the future, corporate pressure may lead the government to extend this ban to music downloads, P2P file sharing and movie torrents.. so who knows where this will end.
In particular, as the blacklist can be upgraded and added to secretly whenever the government deems necessary, no website is free from the governments censorship.
In Finland, for instance, a man who runs a website arguing that the blacklist approach is ineffective was called in for questioning last year after publishing "a list of a few hundred censored sites." His own site was then placed on the blacklist, which means that visitors from Finland aren't allowed the information to debate the issue and decide for their selves.
Its a total disgrace that the Australia public have allowed this communist style Internet filtering legislation to make it almost through parliament - what ever happened to value of democracy - i.e. free speech?. Its perceived that the Australia's internet filtering will be a test case for governments worldwide with an eventual roll out of web filtering in the US, UK and Europe after review of Australia's situation.
Just like failed ebay forced paypal measure and the IINet vs the film companies court cases - Australia is seen as a test case for the world on many levels. Some people have commented this is reminiscent of a new world order type pressure to control information over the internet.
Many Internet websites in protest have highlighted that: "No government should have the right to refuse its citizens access to information solely because they perceive it to be 'unwanted',". Information is power and those who are unable to access this information become powerless - just think of the Chinese trying to research Tibet or Tiananmen square on Google in china - they can't period! because of internet filtering.
Its a dangerous path Australia is taking..No website will be free from this filtering (including this site) and while the Australian governments intentions are good at present , who knows what this could lead to for the future of the internet.
In retaliation , Hackers worldwide have in taken down numerous Australian government websites in the last few days .. while this action is not acceptable it shows you how desperate this issue now is:
Groups opposing the government's internet censorship plans have condemned today's attacks on government websites, saying it will do little to help their cause, while Communications Minister Stephen Conroy called them "totally irresponsible".
The Parliament of Australia website, aph.gov.au, was down for a period this morning, while access to the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy's website was patchy.
A spokesman for the Department of Parliamentary Services, which runs the Parliament House website, said at the peak of the attack the site was receiving 7.5 million hits a second, up from the few hundred per second it normally receives.
He said the website was inaccessible for about an hour from 8am, and was offline intermittently due to the four attacks that had been detected by lunchtime.
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