Aussie cloud provider to fight Internet filter
- 23 April, 2010 16:48
- Comments 10
An IT reseller is launching a cloud-based proxy server provisioning service to fight the Federal Government’s proposed Internet filter.
ProxyMate.net founder, Chris Bell, said his website will kick-off this month with the help of fellow Web developers. He has been in the IT industry for 18 years and works full-time as a systems administrator. Proxy services are nothing new and have been used to overcome filters in countries such as China and Dubai.
Bell claimed the filter will give Australian parents a false sense of security as it will do little to protect children against ‘inappropriate’ material. His website will use the Amazon Web Service (AWS) to provision a dedicated proxy server for each user to bypass Internet filters anonymously. The server will then ‘self-destruct’ after the user has finished.
ProxyMate.net will charge users $0.20 per hour depending on download usage. The concept had been on the backburner for several months but Bell kicked things into high gear as discussions on the proposed ISP-level clean-feed started to heat up. “It is a cloud service that can be charged per hour and per MB,” he said.
ProxyMate.net is currently a bare-bone site but Bell intended to get the service up and running soon. An application programming interface (API) is ready to be deployed but a billing service has yet to be implemented.
While there was initially some commercial motivation behind ProxyMate.net, it has since shifted focus. Bell said he had no intentions to get rich from ProxyMate.net and was only doing this to prove a point.
“There is probably a business opportunity in there but I’ll leave it for somebody with more time to put into it than I do,” he said.
Instead, Bell wanted the website to be a hub for filtering information and his proxy service to be a tool to educate customers on how “easily, cheaply and securely circumventing a filter can be done without actually creating anything”.
“I have a real job so I’m not interested in a high-maintenance website,” Bell said. “The idea is anybody can use it and all the billing infrastructure and systems are handed off to third-parties.
“All the tools are already out there to bypass the filter.”
Bell hoped to develop a completely self-serviced website where billing and provisioning would be automated through a one-page online application form. ProxyMate will have an emphasis on providing a secure proxy service for users.
“People need to realise there are security risks involved with using proxies, but we offer something more secure,” Bell said. Also on the cards is a proxy service, which locks computers into a clean-feed as a tool for parents to control content access by their children.
Bell’s anti-filter stance complements The Pirate Party member and Newcastle-based reseller, David Campbell, who have begun offering classes on how to bypass Internet filters. Systems integrator, Minopher, is also looking to host its own filter circumvention classes.
If the mandatory filtering bill is passed, a clean-feed will be imposed onto Australia which will block refused classification (RC) material. So far, the Government has yet to ratify the standards for labelling RC content.
The filter plan was recently criticised by a University of Sydney academic for being short-sighted.
Nominations for the 2012 ARN IT Industry Awards open on Tuesday, June 12.
- Bookmark this page
- Share this article
- Got more on this story? Email ARN
- Follow ARN on twitter
- Premier Media Group Fast Study
- Market Potential-Strategy Guide to the Active Archive Market
- Aberdeen Group: Building Business Resilience Through Active Archive
- Spectra Logic and Australian National University Success Story - March 2012
- In Search of the Long-Term Archiving Solution —Tape Continues to Be a Major Player
-
REVIEW: HTC Sensation - a powerful beast wrapped in a sturdy, aluminium shell
-
First look: Samsung Galaxy S III
-
Spotify tunes into Australia
-
Telstra and Navman Wireless extend GPS tracking partnership
-
World’s eyes on Aussie NBN: Conroy
Get exclusive access to ARN's news, research and invitation only events. 
Comments
Matt
The Pirate Party need to pull their heads-in...
FIGHT the filter and not use the defeatist tactic of assuming the filter will be passed by offering people how to get around it.
Do that IF it passes not before.
The Gringo
How is this different to any other VPN service already being offered for a cheaper price and no bandwidth limits/charges.
US VPN service ~$60/year which is much cheaper than what this guy proposes.
Harquebus
$0.20 per hour! Tell 'em their dreamin'.
Chris Johnson
Good on yas. I hope you get some interest. Just another way to IRRITATE Conboy and Krudd, who I suspect wont be in office much longer......
Skeptick
OK. So they'll just add ProxyMate.net to the blacklist!
Rusty
Hahahah $60 per year.....
Try $10 for 3 months (or $30 a year) for a US VPN payable through PayPal and administered through email and not solely through a website.
So are they going to ban a PayPal payment?????
Chris Dawes
One thing uneducated people think is that VPN and proxies won't be blocked by ip or domain... both are VERY easy to block if you own or control the entire backbone, and private VPN's will probably need to be registered. Chances are that if you've found a way to get around it, the experts already have the antidote. Yes new ways will come, but they will be publicised and then concequently blocked.
Only those people doing things they shouldn't care about the filter, the rest of us think it's a great idea.
Remember it takes seconds to break SSL encryption... so even if you encrypt, then it can be read.
Ben
@ Chris Dawes
"Remember it takes seconds to break SSL encryption... so even if you encrypt, then it can be read."
Utter rubbish. SSL is often 128 or 256 bit, taking millions of years to crack.
"One thing uneducated people think is that VPN and proxies won't be blocked by ip or domain... both are VERY easy to block if you own or control the entire backbone"
Collatoral damage would suggest that the government would not block these. VPNs are critical to our economy, and will become more so in the future, and I doubt that even our government would go so far to block them in a futile attempt to control information.
Even China doesn't block VPNs for this reason. The government should know full well that they can't win the arms race, and no matter how much they crack down on circumvention, there will always be many more techniques developed, and will quickly evolve to evade the censors. Observe the number of us versus the number of them.
The government could of course shut the entire Internet in Australia to stop circumvention. Hmm....would they go that far?
Chris Bell
@Matt - agreed. We keep up the pressure and preferably it never passes. It looks dubious at best currently.
@Gringo - it's different because you get a dedicated server that is managed by a third party. We are considering offering virtualised servers to lower costs but this obviously offers a lower level of security - because the server that hosts that guest machine is very much persistent. The dedicated server instance vanishes after use.
@Harquebus - you spend too much time on the internet!
@Skeptick - we would need to have content that fell under RC to be blocked. Conroy has been clear about that. If bypassing the Clean Feed becomes one of those topics of "how to break the law" that are frequently cited as subject to the filter (graffiti being a common example) then we fight it. The ProxyMate service is purely technical and can be used for any number of purposes, so to block it on that basis would be presumptuous.
@Chris Dawes - you're basically saying that they will shut down the Internet.
Again, this isn't about circumventing the feed, it's about demonstrating how easily it can be done. They can take down ProxyMate, but they can't take down our AMI, they can't block AWS and they can't stop people from using the technology that is basically the backbone of the system that they're trying to regulate - yet refuse to make any sort of effort to understand.
cb
--
gnome
Yes, Chris, but Conboy has gone quiet about his odious filter until after the election. Meanwhile, he's trying to paint Google as a threat to our democracy, so he may soon move to claiming that only his filter will save the Aussie way of life. Black pot yelling that the kettle is discoloured, etc.
And after the election, Conboy and his claque will find lots more things we must not be allowed to know about, and no doubt they will impose heavy penalties on anyone who tries to go round their Internet thingy.
Post new comment