Australian Family Association happy to block 3% of innocent websites
November 2, 2008 – 4:05 pm
The Australian Family Association yesterday issued a press release describing the 3% false positive rate of one of the recently trialed Tasmanian filters as “encouraging” and a “great improvement” on the current situation.
That’s right, the AFA believes blocking access to 30,000 innocent websites out of every 1 million is encouraging.
How is banning the website’s of Australian small businesses beneficial to the family unit AFA claim to uphold? It isn’t.
It gets better. They also say a number of Internet industry representatives have recently tried to attack the government for their attempt at making the Internet safer for Australians.
“These critics are claiming that people’s civil liberties will be infringed upon. These claims of mandatory “censorship” are unfair and misleading” the press release states.
[...]
“This can hardly be called censorship, as the Government has a responsibility to protect citizens from illegal activity. We don’t allow child pornography in Australia, why let it though the back door of the Internet?”
Child pornography isn’t allowed through any back door, it is illegal no matter what form of media it resides on. The police regularly make arrests and if they had half of the money being wasted on mandatory ISP filtering, they could probably make many more. Not to mention actually help children who are victims of such terrible crimes.
However, the most ridiculous aspect of the press release is AFA’s invention of a new form of pornography called goreporn and their claim that a tool capable of blocking it would be of immense value to parents in being comfortable in allowing their children to explore the web more safely.
As we here know, a filter under no circumstances makes the Internet safe for children to explore. AFA should know better.
They suggest that instead of lambasting Senator Conroy in his attempts to provide a choice for families to gain a cleaner Internet feed, his detractors should offer their own expertise and insight into developing the current technology into something that would function even better.
Offer our expertise? We have been but the government has their hands in their ears and is telling experts to zip it.
12 Responses to “Australian Family Association happy to block 3% of innocent websites”
Have these people even been on the internet? Do they know that all the filter will create is a false sense of security, which could lead to more abuse, not less?
By Sam D on Nov 2, 2008
and children will be searching for ‘gore porn’ because?…. I highly doubt this stuff is going to randomly spring up on your screen.
By Glen Jamison on Nov 2, 2008
No doubt this an innocent site that would fall foul of Conroy’s filter..
http://tw.youtube.com/goreporn
Yes. It’s a dog !!
Conducting both image and video searches on “gore porn” reveals thousands and thousands of images and stories about the US military conducting investigations into solidiers in Iraq trading images of dead soldiers for free pornographic images.
Have a look at this entry..
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/10/gi_jane_arrested/
Porn and gore man arrested
GI Jane man collared for ‘obscenity’
By John Oates
Posted in Music and Media, 10th October 2005 08:55 GMT
Christopher Wilson, 27 from Lakeland, Florida, was charged with 300 counts of obscenity over 20 films and 80 still photographs - he is charged with possession, distribution and offering to distribute each item. He was held over the weekend with bail set at $151,000. Wilson’s website hosted amateur pornography and pictures of dead and mutilated Afghans and Iraqis apparently provided by US soldiers.
If you click on the link to the site (http://www.nowthatsfuckedup.com/bbs/ftopic47120.html) you receive this message..
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“Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd and the State Attorney’s Office of the 10th Judicial Circuit have concluded an investigation documenting violations of Florida laws pertaining to obscenity.
The investigation resulted in the prosecution of Christopher Wilson, the former web master of this website. The Polk County Sheriff’s Office now maintains this URL to prevent further transmission of obscene material.”
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That’s a filter in action real time (live) !
However the army said “Ho hum”
http://www.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20050926/024460.html
Army spokesman Paul Boyce told CNN that a preliminary investigation had found “no evidence of a felony crime,” but both he and Col. Joseph Curtin said the Web postings, if verified, could constitute a violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice provisions on good conduct.
“There is no criminal investigation into the matter of photos of deceased bodies in Iraq being posted on the worldwide Web anonymously,” Boyce said. “Army criminal investigators examined this recently as a preliminary inquiry but found there is no specific evidence of a felony crime.”
Curtin acknowledged an ongoing investigation, however, saying it was focusing on “allegations that soldiers may have exchanged personally taken photographs of dead Iraqis in exchange for pornographic access.”
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CNN could not verify the authenticity of the photographs and videos posted on the site and will not include its name because it is considered offensive by many people.
Wilson, of Lakeland, Florida, said the military hasn’t contacted him about the postings or the anonymous posters and he doesn’t “suspect they’d have reason to.”
“It would be a matter of free speech,” he said. “Since I’m not a member of the military, I’m not bound by the laws of the military.”
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I believe the AFA may be referring to “splatter films” (see wikipedia entry at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splatter_film )
BUT feel sorry for the poor dog on the Taiwanese YouTube site which may suffer in the “3% is ok” block considered appropriate by the Australian Family Association.
Do a google image search on “gore porn” with safe search off and I believe it would be hard for any filter to completely eradicate what I see there.
Here’s a video of guy who believes Gore Porn Must Stop..
http://my.spill.com/video/video/show?id=947994%3AVideo%3A208970
I note he seemingly includes depictions of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ in the category “gore porn”.
Bob
By Bob Bain on Nov 2, 2008
Family.org.au website offline (under contstruction)?
By Geordie on Nov 2, 2008
Australian Family association please wake up…
3% error rate can send someone business broke by losing potential sales and customer base
Sex and pornography is noy just on the internet it is all around us. TV, radio, news papers….
Episodes like “Sex and the city”, “secret diary of a call girl” ( sex and sex scenes), CIS, Criminal intent ( violence)… Whats next?
Lets filter movies we see on the TV ( MA15+ and MA18+), lets shut down all Barbarellas shops, lets tell all video rentals what can be rented out, lets tell all game manufacturers what they are allowed to bring into legendry, lets stop sales of all pr0n, lets forbid sales of all pr0nogrphic magazines…. lets tell all newspaper publisher what is allowed to publish what not….sex and porn are forbidden words
Have I gone to far? Maybe but it needs to be put into prospective if government gets away with this
How many respective parents out there have tried to filter internet content their kid can access? 2 maybe 3%? Why?
Because I believe they, parents, can not be bothered learning. Government has provided free of charge software ” Net nanny” that can be installed on single computer. I know mine only access what I let them and 2 hours per day.
Why can’t other parents do the same? Government can not get way with this otherwise we will end up like China.
By Rastko Petrovic on Nov 2, 2008
also on, gore porn, i point out that it is somehow legal in cartoon form (the elfen lied anime, it is pretty much as close as you can get to being gorn wihout being an actual porno), yet apparently illegal to actualy own. (from what I got on laws regaurding gorn, and Australian laws dont seem to differentiate between drawn art and photographs)
Also, would the site rotten.com (the top page is safe for work, though every time someone says something about NSFW websites, I am reminded of the cat macro featureing a siamese cat saying “you know what else is not safe for work? NOT WORKING!”) be included on the block list, despite being made up of material from news sites, medical journals and reader submitted stuff. (which makes me think that snopes may be banned too, as it also has a photo collection that could be considdered illegal by an automatic filter)
By adam on Nov 3, 2008
It is well known that the most vocal advocates of censorship are those that have something to hide. One must ask what is it that the Australian Family Association are so desperate to hide,behind a shield of lies, disinformation, half truths and now mandatory censorship of innocent speech?
By Stevian on Nov 3, 2008
Too bad there’s nobody at home on their web site. I tried Google for the press release but failed to locate it.
By Allan Lewis on Nov 3, 2008
Yes 3% is fine as long as its not our site that gets filtered out.
By Sean the Blogonaut on Nov 3, 2008
Refer also to this opinion piece …
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/11/04/2409508.htm
Online filtering recognises families’ concerns
By Anh Nguyen
“Keep in mind that the first part of the proposed scheme is used to filter illegal material, hardly an infringement of civil liberties and more a protection of those same liberties. ”
Anh Nguyen is a researcher with the Australian Family Association.
The question Anh is “what constitutes illegal material both now and into the future ?”
Bestiality (for example) is legal to own and purchase in New South Wales. So do I say “Bestialtiy is legal” (which it is) or do I say “Bestiality is illegal” on the basis that it’s importation and sale is illegal.
I’ve seen plenty of Bestiality on sale in New South Wales. It is now illegal in the Netherlands where they have seemingly decreed that it’s now only legal where it depicts sexual activity with “consenting animals” (such as dogs).
…. and as the former Deputy Censor of the Commonwealth of Australia noted in 2004 “I’ve never seen an unhappy dog in a porno film.” (although the context was never made clear).
Reference:
http://ausnocensorship.blogspot.com/2008/09/fiona-giles-and-david-haines-talk-at-in.html
“David seems turned off by violence and notes that there are some portrayals that clearly shouldn’t be on the agenda (I may disagree with him on aspects of that) noting that child porn was one, but he also noted that he had never seen “an unhappy dog in a porno film” (which is also my [limited] experience. Dogs take great pleasure in sex with humans)”
By Bob Bain on Nov 4, 2008
Thanks for that Bob. I must say I’m not familiar with the laws in QLD with respect to bestiality.
By Mike on Nov 4, 2008