ISPs give clean feed filter a technical green-light

Webshield's entire customer base was ALREADY behind a censored feed. That's the whole reason Webshield EXISTS - that's all they offer! OF COURSE they're not going to experience any slowdown!

Rigged

Surprise surprise. Conjob has successfully rigged the 'live pilot'. An optional trial for a mandatory filter. Sure, that'll prove something...

The Great Australian FAILwall

1% of users at one ISP opted in - <strong>FAIL</strong>

Sites that aren't illegal added to the list - <strong>FAIL</strong>

Unhappy customers - <strong>FAIL</strong>

An unrepresentative trial - <strong>FAIL</strong>

ACMA not knowing whether a site is legal or not - <strong>FAIL</strong>

Not enough time allowed for a proper trial - <strong>FAIL</strong>

As everyone with a clue predicted, this trial has <strong>FAIL</strong> painted all over it in large letters.

Conroy = <strong>FAIL</strong>

We knew the results were always going to be a resounding success. Even the last ACMA trials that slowed the internet by an average of 30% (with the most accurate filter coming with an 87% slowdown) were a success in Conroy's eyes.

iiNet wanted to perform a comprehensive and scientifically valid double-blind test, and Conroy refused.

Instead, we have a tiny percentage of the online population (consisting entirely of people who opt-in and therefore want the filter to begin with), testing against a blacklist that Conroy now claims has nothing to do with the proposed filter (apparently it's "almost exclusively RC" now in contrast to the almost exclusively adult pornography it is now), which is supposed to be representative of 20 million people using the same filter (scalability? what's that?).

The trials are rigged and they have been all along.

with really cheap and competitive pricing......

lies, damned lies and statistics

A few thousand does not compare to a few million.

Scratching head

“From a technical perspective we’re more than confident that if the government decided to roll out a mandatory Internet filter based on or around an Australian Communications and Media Authority [ACMA] blacklist or subset thereof, then it can be done without any impact whatsoever to the speed of the Internet,” he said.

Except for high traffic websites... Wasn't the mandatory filter only going to block "Almost exclusively RC content", oh never mind I thought this policy was meant to be coherent.
It's astonishing how Conroy has almost completely gotten away with conflating 'prohibited content', 'unwanted', 'RC' and all sorts of other misleading (on purpose or not, its hard to tell if hes a liar or just stupid) statements.

So has Conroy answered the question by Senator Ludlam about this being the equivalent to opening everyone's mail? *chirp*

list

They better not damn well block my porn tubes

When I was 12 to 16 I would use internet "handles" for usernames, chatrooms, email addresses and everything else you could think of. Name & location either not provided or false, age and sex would be either not provided or correct/true. Requests for a photo of any kind would also be refused. The general idea at the time was that no one could find myself through MSN etc unless I provided my email address based on the internet "handle".

If you did start getting insults which would not go away by blocking the person, you'd drop that internet handle and re-create a new one, and learn not you trust that specific person again. Also, email addresses would not be given to a person unless I trusted them.

What's REALLY wrong with today's generation of kids is that they have lost the concept of NOT trusting people on the internet & lying or refusing to give information to protect themselves.

Parents need to sit the kids down in front of the computer the first time they use it and create a list through communication on what information SHOULD and SHOULD NOT be shared on the internet to strangers and another list to verified relatives etc.

A sham

We all knew the fix was in. Conroy smugly sitting there continually mouthing "We'll wait for the trial".

Because it's soooo scientifically valid to allow opt in only testers, or have no blinding, or to trial only a tiny fraction of users which would not fully load up the filter machines so we can see just how much traffic they can handle before they start to choke.

Never mind the freedom of speech implications or the fact that he is traipsing down the same road as China and Iraq where ISP level filtering has conclusively FAILED.

If Conroy thought he could change minds with this sham trial, he is as miserably stupid as the anti-filter lobby already believes him to be. Much like the "science" from cigarette companies that claimed to prove that smoking wasn't bad for you, Conroy's trial has no credibility and neither does he.

In other news, a huge surge in VPN services...

@ ACMA not knowing whether a site is legal or not

Apart from not wanting to admit their mistakes, maybe only a few selected people have access to this exclusive black list?

Oh wait, they forgot to check wikileaks!

@ Scratching head

Seems redtube was fixed, you can now go back to scheduled scratching procedures :P

Redtube definitely on blacklist

Redtube.com is definitely on the ACMA blacklist, see https://broowery.com/content/redtubecom-acma-blacklist

This is one of the fundamental problems with the policy, it treats every Internet user like a child.

Hardware for comment

The positive comments from some of the ISPs participating in the trial may not be all they appear to be.

The ISPs participating in the trial get to keep the shiny new hardware paid for by the Australian taxpayer. Many of the ISPs intend to offer a filtered Internet service using their new hardware when the trials are complete.

Of coursenthey are going to be talking up what is essentially their new products, free PR is the best PR.

What a surprise!

Conroy's trials were always going to be a resounding success, when:

1. The parameters of the test in no way reflect the intended nature of the filter;
2. The participants in the trial were self-selecting filter advocates; and
3. The criteria for "success" were deliberately vague and undefined.

The trials are a farce, and their results are virtually meaningless.

I agree with you I am 18. Yeah everyone of my friends on Facebook and Myspace these days feels they have to use a real name and also put a real picture of themselves as an avatar which is visible to everyone. I hope that ends soon. I've never done this myself and I hope this "real name craze" will go away soon. It is just mad.

web$hield

Keep in mind too if mandatory filter does goes ahead, the web$hield company stands to make millions as consultants or resellers to other ISPs.

well if by chance you get a look at *that* blacklist you will find most of those porn tube sites are blocked from the outset ... I really hope this filter doesnt go through 8-(

Facebook terms of use state that fake names can be removed from the site without warning. The "real name craze" is actually people following the terms and conditions. Also, Go ahead and use fake names on Myspace, the site is rubbish anyways, but the whole point of Facebook is social networking and allowing old friends and colleagues to be able to find you and say hi. Not everyone knows to search for dumb_teenager37 when they go searching for you.

On the webfilter, it's a load of rubbish, if it goes in, it's just going to slow my internet down a ton, even if they manage to attempt to block sites i use, their attempts wont be successful (TOR anyone?) and is just another example of those in power being absolute retards.

well said

add Australia onto the list of countries where the government is going to censor their information, along with Iran and China. next you will see people in free countries helping Australians escape the oppression of their government in order to get the truth that their government denies them. I wonder what this Conroy guy has to hide.

Bollocks

This entire idea is absolute bollocks.
A complete, sinister and huge breach of my civil rights.
Noone - let me repeat that, NOONE, has the right to dictate what I can and cannot have access to.
Who do they think they are to tell me what to do?
It is absolutely disgusting that this has even been trialled.
In Australia.
Australia?
Not some communist backwater - Australia...the "democracy" (the word sticks in my throat every time I say it now).
What a complete joke.
I love Australia and the opportunities it affords me, but this sort of government-controlled (and let's be absolutely clear, it will be controlled in a massively biased way) censorship on something that, by definition, should be limitless, is appalling beyond belief.
The hell with anyone who is involved with this rubbish scheme - I hope it comes back to haunt you for the rest of your lives.

Opt in

why didn't all the other ISPs who knew it couldn't work have registered and proved that it was no good then ?

The trial is just a sham! We all know that clean feeds are technically possible, that the opt in rate is so low as to make it worthless and that the management of the black list are just too contentious as it is just a censorship tool in the hands of a minority interest driven government. All a sham to placate political interests. Spend it on NBN instead.

If they implement this filter we'll party like it its bastille day, 1789.

Off with their heads.

Whingeing. more whingeing, loads of whingeing...

Lol, this statement is a real zinger:

"“Some of the customers complained because the block list really hadn’t been moderated well enough,” OMNIconnect chief technician, Graeme Lee, said. “One in particular was a site called Redtube.com. The whole site had been blocked and it was just a standard pornography site,” Hutton said. "

You could read in Whingepool for a month leading up to the trial begin how they were planning their complaints campaign. The complaints were discussed and decided before the trials even began, irrespective of the actual performance and results...

Sigh

More depression from the aust government.
Bend over a little more people.

Wowser

"ISPs give clean feed filter a technical green-light"

"When asked if he believed the trials provided a fair representative study, Hutton’s answer was an unequivocal “no”. "

UMM HELLO ?! BIASED MUCH ?

15 users?

One percent of users of Nelson Bay Online opted in =15 users.
So this ISP only has 1500 users total?

That's not a valid test. And they all opted in apparently...

numbers people

Where are the hard numbers stating how many people *really* participated in this trial? If they were all opt in and the percentages were anything like 1% it is a farce. Isn't the problem with speed going to require load testing?
Why have Optus not commented, they are one of the biggest.

So 1% of Australians want the filter then? Is Australia a democracy, with all that implies, because it certainly appears to be a dictatorship. Why Australians do you keep accepting political parties like this? WHY WHY ELECT THEM???

Canberra

mmm ... how would this affect Canberra where porn is legal. Think I will build a server there, get an internet connection there (as porn is legal) and create a vpn to melbourne ... then resell my services - hahaha

Censorship

No you won't see other countries help to free Australians, they'll censor that too. :(

It's up to adults to manage their childrens access, there are plenty of software options available and support to do this.

Adults do not need to be supervised by their Government or anyone else.

of course these ISPs reported no slow down

most of the ISPs on the filtering trial have already implemented filtering solutions. It's in their best interest to report no slow down, DUH!

SUFFER IT'S FULL STEAM AHEAD

Filtering works so just accept it.

"Filtering works so just accept it."

Works? Please define 'works'.

SOME of the ISPs in question report that it can be implemented with minimal impact to traffic. This includes one ISP tha already filtered their entire customer base prior to this whole debacle (also one of the slowest and most expensive ISPs in the nation - coincidence?), and one ISP that ended up filtering a colossal FIFTEEN CUSTOMERS. Verdict: inconclusive.

One ISP also reported that an entire domain got blocked, when the legislation behind the ACMA blacklist (which this "trial" was supposed to be based upon) clearly states that only particular URLs are supposed to be blocked, NOT the entire domain. Verdict: fail.

Who supports filtering? The wilfully ignorant; those who stand to gain financially from selling (or reselling!) censorware services; and those who stand to gain politically from controlling information flow.

Which are you?

Conroy's Con-job.

Why won't this clown just accept that the scheme is NOT acceptable, and let it die the death it (and is political career) deserve?

The man's a fool!

Yeah no slow down when 1% of users of a select few ISPs chose to participate. Yeah this definitely shows it's going to work when all the computers in Australia are connected to this, not to mention the phones, PDAs, etc.

Conroy obviously has more experience and technical knowledge than all the industry professionals telling him it's going to slow the net down and this trial proves it. <sic>

What's the damn point

I still don't get the point of this compulsory filter!

Protect the children. Use the opt-in filter, you won't get the free speech uprising you currently have, or provide client based filtering solutions which will be much cheaper, more effective and where the parents are less likely to become complacent.

Stop pedophiles? Give this money to the police to catch them! This will not stop pedophiles! Just drive them deeper underground. Its not hard to encrypt your traffic, making catching them that much harder.

No the only reason for this compulsory filter is to control what the majority would call the grey zone - hardcore pornography, violence, drug advocation, etc - and turn everyone into sheep.

The internet is the wild west and will remain so no matter what filter is in place. If a filter goes up there will be 100 pages up immediately after telling everyone just how to bypass it.

the good old days

"...how would this affect Canberra where porn is legal. Think I will build a server there, get an internet connection there (as porn is legal) and create a vpn to melbourne ... then resell my services - hahaha........"

better still....why don't you perverts just go back to getting your "reading" material from the newsagents in a brown paper bag and leave the rest of us to use the internet for more worthwhile purposes...

Re: the good old days

You failed to answer the question as to how it would affect the ACT, where pornography is LEGAL TO SELL AND TO PURCHASE.

09/09/09. Something is coming. Watch out for it.

worthwhile purposes?

""...how would this affect Canberra where porn is legal. Think I will build a server there, get an internet connection there (as porn is legal) and create a vpn to melbourne ... then resell my services - hahaha........"

better still....why don't you perverts just go back to getting your "reading" material from the newsagents in a brown paper bag and leave the rest of us to use the internet for more worthwhile purposes.."

There's plenty of internets to go around lady (I should know, I work for a ISP), how would you like it if I objected to you using your internets to look up knitting patterns because knitting is a pervy thing to do? I'll use my internets for what I want, you use yours for what you want.

Or to put it another way, how about if the government said you could have a car, but you couldn't drive it to church, because church is for people who have a mental illness because they hear god talking to them and mentally ill people should not be allowed to drive a car?

I didn't vote for this. Oh, and *what's* coming 09/09/09 ?

I didn't vote with the intent of supporting imposing systematic censorship on us all. This is a shameful initiative, whose intent can only be to tighten control over the populace.

It's a continuation of Howard's legacy of voluntarily-installed filterware, kind of like China's pet project, but easier to put in front of Australians.

The question is, what's in common with Howard's lot and Rudd's lot that actively promotes this censorship?

That common factor is a force we should name, and discover exactly what it is. Only then we can act against it with some real direction.

This forum banter means nothing if none of you guys are willing to put your hard-earned cash or other real effort where your mouths are.

I just donated $100 to the EFA (www.efa.org.au), I hope they've got some bite.

F - Filtering

Can anybody say VPN?

Trial

Actually, just WHEN will we see the results of the 'trial' Conroy keeps talking about? I know that this article speaks about the results of a sham display that mocks the very definition of a trial ( the internet related version of a kangaroo court ), so when is this real world trial going to start? Because what has occured over the past few months is in no way a live, accurate or even comprehensive trial by a long shot.

In fact I'd go as far as to say the only things this trial had in common with the end goal is that they both involve filtering and the internet but that's it.

Statistics

If only 1% of ISP customers are CHOOSING to opt in to this trial.... isn't that saying that 99% of internet users DO NOT choose to be government filtered?

If this "black list" has been around for the last 9 years, and it presumably contains a list of banned websites based on "Refused Classification".... and the official original list only contains approximately 2,000? websites.... which is apparently checked intermittently for redundant sites.... I'm guessing that the World-Wide-Web contains more than 2 billion websites....
Lets be conservative and say that there are roughly 10k new websites being created each day (world wide) - assume the same amount becoming redundant....

Realistically - this 1% of Australian internet users are asking to be filtered from .0001% of the world's 'known' "Refused Classifcation" sites (as set out in 'the Act')
AND will that include the BMW site who were recently banned from advertising their new BMW Z4 from Australian TV because it is thought to be "encouraging hoon driving"?

And out of these thousands of websites being created daily - how are we to expect this (or any) government to keep on top of "The Black List"?
- the "problem" will still exist - children MIGHT accidently stumble onto a site which contains inappropriate content!

Is this really the best way to spend AUD$90m Tax Payer money?

The minister mislead us and must resign

So Captain Krudd and Corporal Conroy, looking to grab some cheap senate and preference votes, say they will be "guided" by the results of the filter trial. Good one, since they set up the so-called trial to produce absolutely untypical results. On this basis, they will now move to apply their secret political censorship.

We have been subjected to serial lies from the government, and serial silliness from the godbotherers, who might be experts on theology but clearly know bugger all about the Net. What is it about "the filter will not work" that they do not understand?

We shall look back on this impending decision with a rising sense of anger and betrayal. Corporal Conroy AND Captain Krudd should resign for attempting this serious deception.

What is coming?

What is coming?

Considering the abysmal efforts at getting any broader public opposition to the filter, I would say the filter is coming...

Today the internet is as slow as dialup days was 15 years ago.
Like so many of Mr conroys speeches today show his understanding or intelligence of the internet. The current internet filtering dosen't work. It just slows down the whole process. Paying for a high speed service is just not worth it anymore.
Like so many things from this government (RUDD) EG healthcare, education, State police, Immigration Border security, co2 emissions, insulation, green loans and most of all the well erred centrelink.
arrogant with no call back or discusssion allowed. Self regulation Works so well for the Government but not the people of australia.

steven conroy like mr rudd operate in a mind set of their own and for their own political interests, not ours.
nothing's changed from the Howard's days.
Little america

Nyt Tag, Prisen nyt tag, solfanger

efeww , click here http://www.pillbreastenlargement.com/

dseha , here http://www.pillbreastenlargement.com/

fefje , herbal breast enhancements pills http://www.breastenhanceproduct.org/how-to-benefit-from-herbal-breast-enhancements

hfsfa , natural herbal breast enhancement http://www.breastenhanceproduct.org/how-to-benefit-from-herbal-breast-enhancements

This is the first time I've been to your website. Thnx for sharing more details.

kekgd , click here http://infocarretera.com/breast-actives-reviews-as-an-alternative-to-surgery/