It has been revealed that ACMA has blacklisted a page on the whistle-blower website WikiLeaks.org that contains a leaked copy of the Danish blacklist of banned websites.
Like the anti-abortion page recently blacklisted by ACMA, this page was also submitted to the media authority for investigation by a Whirlpool user. The complainant, ‘Tardis42′, believes there may be possible repercussions for publishing the link to the now-blacklisted page on Whirlpool, though they hope they wouldn’t be targeted given the depth of links on the list and the fact they have not visited any of them.
EFA writes about this latest incident:
The spin is starting to wear thin. It can no longer be denied that the blacklist targets a huge range of material that is legal and even uncontroversial. Politically controversial material will be blocked, as we have seen today. As time goes on, pressure will only mount on the Government to expand the list, while money and effort are poured into an enormous black box that will neither help kids nor stem the flow of illegal material.
12 comments
Eddie says:
Mar 16, 2009
ACMA embarasses themselves again. That’s twice in less than a week.
WikiLeaks on Censorship Blacklist « The musings of an Australian classical liberal in Washington DC says:
Mar 17, 2009
[...] is truly horrifying, 1984-type stuff. Somebody Think of the Children has a good summary on this, including the report on WikiLeaks, and a link to EFA’s response [...]
alphamone says:
Mar 17, 2009
looks like I have an even better subject for a poster to take to the march in march this weekend.
becuase unlike that anti abortion website, wikileaks does not seem to have any intrinsicly “potientaly” MA rated material on it.
who knows, since someone inside obviously knows of the site, mabey it is a sign that the filter list is weak, and they dont want people to post it there. (dispite the fact that getting around it is easy) Or possibly that someone plans to post it there, and this was some kind of hint. (but that is very unlikely, but still a possibility.)
Sam D says:
Mar 17, 2009
This is the most stupid decision of ACMA, so far at least. I while back someone told me that the censors would not be tempted into doing anything too daft or controversial. And yet here we are, wondering what is going to end up on the blacklist next.
Kiddie porn is only the beginning | Antony Loewenstein says:
Mar 17, 2009
[...] not believe that the Australian government will only block sites that are deemed [...]
Laurel Papworth- Social Network Strategy » Blog Archive » Australia: ACMA caught out says:
Mar 17, 2009
[...] poorly blacklists are monitored and maintained? And even discussing these issues is… well, somebody think of the children. (hat tip). Bookmark [...]
Bob Bain says:
Mar 17, 2009
“looks like I have an even better subject for a poster to take to the march in march this weekend”
I heard about this “march in march” at the Sydney anti-filter rally but wasn’t aware anything was actually planned.
Here’s a link..
http://www.marchinmarch.org/
WHERE
Parliament House side of Federation Mall, Canberra
(Scroll down for how to get there!)
WHEN
1:00 PM 21st of March, 2009
(Press conference at 11:00 AM)
WHY
The DLC have been organising rallies in capital cities for the past three months raising awareness as to the governments plans to censor the internet and the negative impact involved.
This is only the tip of the wedge of censorship being driven into our society by a vocal minority, as they say, the best time to defend your freedom is while you still have it.
While Senators change their minds daily, and the media report that the filter will go ahead, or won’t go ahead almost as regularly–the fact remains–this issue will not be put to bed unless Australians defend their democracy against the very ideology of censorship culture.
================
Personal note:
I hope they do a better job of getting this publicised. At the Sydney protest they had a camera set up but hardly any media reporting. What they did with the video they may have taken I’m not sure. I haven’t seen it on YouTube. That’s why I took a camera and arranged for copies of speeches to be available on the YouTube nocensorshipaus channel (see link at the side of this blog).
Bob
kyle says:
Mar 17, 2009
This is not really surprising, it was only a matter of time before someone else testing out ACMA blacklisting on whirlpool.
It’s interesting to see that they removed the link from the ACMA email response, an attempt to minimise future embarrassment? Doesn’t really make much sense though since the person submitting the URL would already know what it was they submitted.
It would be funny if opponents of ISP filtering, all just started submitting URLs to ACMA to create a extremely large list, which would make the filtering scheme even more unrealistic. Wouldn’t be hard to do considering the list includes R and X rated material.
Daniel says:
Mar 17, 2009
Conroy asks for the Australian filter not to be constantly compared to the Great Firewall of China, but this is EXACTLY the kind of censorship the Chinese impose on their Internet. The filter hasn’t even been tested yet and already they’re busy censoring political material. Anything Conroy says in support of the filter from now is bulls**t and not to be trusted in my opinion.
DavidF says:
Mar 17, 2009
The mad thing is that I just wandered over to Wikileaks and had a look at the Danish list. And, yes, they all appear to be very, very dodgy.
But I wouldn’t have known it was there if they hadn’t tried to ban it…
Thanks Chief Censor Conroy.
Glenn says:
Mar 17, 2009
Next up would be the Thailand blacklist, methinks.
URL of banned WikiLeaks page published on DBCDE blog - Somebody Think Of The Children says:
Mar 18, 2009
[...] web page on Wikileaks which ACMA recently blacklisted because it contains a copy of Denmark’s Internet Blacklist is also published on the defunct [...]