4 ms·

I just don't know what to say anymore. As an Australian, I am ashamed and baffled at the way my government has been handling Internet policy lately. Their trea

I just don't know what to say anymore. As an Australian, I am ashamed and baffled at the way my government has been handling Internet policy lately. Their treatment of the issues betrays a astounding naivety that I find of increasing concern. On the face of it, it's always for a good cause... won't somebody think of the children! We need to censor all the bad sites on the Internet! Some guy feels slighted by a racial slur on some website that no one takes seriously! We must ban it from Google! We can't be seen to be endorsing racism! The sentiment is always admirable but the reaction betrays an complete misunderstanding of both the online culture and the technological infrastructure that supports it. The sad thing is I know first hand that there are people in the Australian Government who can and do give better advice that should ostensibly lead to better government decisions in the online space. It just seems like their voices are being disregarded. I suspect the main reasons for this are: a) Certain politicians refusal to accept that the reality of the Internet does not fit their limited understanding of it. b) Politician's desire to use the Internet as a political football. Perhaps it really is time to move to Estonia.

daniel-cussen 17y ago
Consider Chile.
etherael 17y ago
Your last line had me blinking. Is there a mass exodus of Australians to Estonia planned or did you just happen to stumble across my earlier post my plan to do exactly that?
- jonny_noog 17y ago
  I remembered your earlier post. You made Estonia sound pretty good. :)
  - etherael 17y ago
    Approximately twelve days to launch, I'm quite excited, will be sure to keep the news flowing as the project develops, Nice to know people are listening. :) I don't know if you're a Sydneysider also but I just finished finding an apartment out there, you have to have a look at this; http://www.kv.ee/uurile-anda-uus-kahetoaline-taielikult-sisustatud-954040.html?nr=216&search_key=82832473b55a5f20abd8415b76e57be1&largeimages http://www.kv.ee/uurile-anda-uus-kahetoaline-taielikult-sisu... Link to English version is top right of the page, 7500 Kroons is $747 AUD. That price is monthly, also. I'm not sure if you're from Sydney or not but the difference in real estate prices / bang for the buck is utterly astounding to me. Probably not that big of a deal if you're someplace else here more sane, but, yeah. Also note the included amenities etc (internet, cable, phone) all in the base price.
    - jonny_noog 17y ago
      Prices sound awesome, man. Apartment looks great. Good luck with your move! Will you have a blog or something? No I'm not in Sydney (I was born there though), but I know what you mean, housing prices are pretty screwed up in many places around the country these days. I'm lucky that I found a pretty good deal for myself, but good deals are getting harder to come by, that's for sure.
  - borism 17y ago
    Welcome to Estonia, although a word of warning - you might get slightly disillusioned with our government (well, actually it's EU) policies once you get here. Incidentally, .au is a favorite place for a lot of estonians to go for (temporary) work lately.
    - etherael 17y ago
      Is it really an 18% flat tax rate? I can tolerate a lot of incompetence for cutting my tax burden to lower than half the current. :)
zmimon 17y ago
The answer is b). I suspect they fully know how stupid their policies are (Stephen Conroy has pretty much admitted it on live TV). What they are attempting is classic 'wedge politics': pick an issue on which your opposition is passionately divided 50 / 50 and take an extreme position on one side or the other. The internal damage it causes in the other side far outweighs any damage it causes to your own.
illumen 17y ago
hello, I do agree with you mostly, and in general I think that censorship is hardly ever good. In this particular case censorship was a force for good. As an aside, Google was running 'used aborigines' adverts from ebay for quite a while. Do you think these adverts should also be allowed to run? Australian society mostly takes a very dim view of racism, and especially racism towards the aborigines. Our elected representatives and the people of australia put in place laws such that this type of thing does not happen. However the government and politicians did not make this particular case of censorship happen - the courts of law made it happen. I think most of society agree that it is a shit thing that google was doing in this instance. Google has in place limits to stop things like pornography showing up, with it's safe search feature. This is already a form of censorship based on the values of countries like the USA. Where do we draw the line? Obviously sociopaths shouldn't be able to say whatever they like to millions of people if their words will cause harm. How about spammers bent on selling their products? Google already blocks some of the spammers. As do they block malware serving sites, and sites that don't play by googles rules of what constitutes a good web page. Make a website more google friendly, and google will reward you with higher rankings. Put more google messages (adverts) on your pages, and get more people to see them, and google will pay you more money. How about companies abusing trademarks or abusing copyright? Are those censorship too? Do we take the values of a multi national corporations(ie google)? Isn't that a form of cultural imperialism? What is to stop the courts abusing their power? There are many processes in place to try and let all sides of society have their input into what the courts do. What is to stop google from abusing their power and imposing their views on people who do not want them? ... glibly, I guess the answer to that is adblock. I don't think you can have a 'censorship is always wrong' approach, or a 'totally abusing censorship in terrible ways' approach either. Reasoned arguments by courts of law are an answer - to find out where censorship is appropriate and where it is not. The people who made that site should get a dog up em.
- pwmanagerdied 17y ago
  It's satire. If you can't cope with that, please off yourself for the good of the rest of us.
  - 17y ago

daniel-cussen 17y ago

Consider Chile.

etherael 17y ago

Your last line had me blinking. Is there a mass exodus of Australians to Estonia planned or did you just happen to stumble across my earlier post my plan to do exactly that?

jonny_noog 17y ago
I remembered your earlier post. You made Estonia sound pretty good. :)
- etherael 17y ago
  Approximately twelve days to launch, I'm quite excited, will be sure to keep the news flowing as the project develops, Nice to know people are listening. :) I don't know if you're a Sydneysider also but I just finished finding an apartment out there, you have to have a look at this; http://www.kv.ee/uurile-anda-uus-kahetoaline-taielikult-sisustatud-954040.html?nr=216&search_key=82832473b55a5f20abd8415b76e57be1&largeimages http://www.kv.ee/uurile-anda-uus-kahetoaline-taielikult-sisu... Link to English version is top right of the page, 7500 Kroons is $747 AUD. That price is monthly, also. I'm not sure if you're from Sydney or not but the difference in real estate prices / bang for the buck is utterly astounding to me. Probably not that big of a deal if you're someplace else here more sane, but, yeah. Also note the included amenities etc (internet, cable, phone) all in the base price.
  - jonny_noog 17y ago
    Prices sound awesome, man. Apartment looks great. Good luck with your move! Will you have a blog or something? No I'm not in Sydney (I was born there though), but I know what you mean, housing prices are pretty screwed up in many places around the country these days. I'm lucky that I found a pretty good deal for myself, but good deals are getting harder to come by, that's for sure.
- borism 17y ago
  Welcome to Estonia, although a word of warning - you might get slightly disillusioned with our government (well, actually it's EU) policies once you get here. Incidentally, .au is a favorite place for a lot of estonians to go for (temporary) work lately.
  - etherael 17y ago
    Is it really an 18% flat tax rate? I can tolerate a lot of incompetence for cutting my tax burden to lower than half the current. :)

zmimon 17y ago

The answer is b). I suspect they fully know how stupid their policies are (Stephen Conroy has pretty much admitted it on live TV). What they are attempting is classic 'wedge politics': pick an issue on which your opposition is passionately divided 50 / 50 and take an extreme position on one side or the other. The internal damage it causes in the other side far outweighs any damage it causes to your own.

illumen 17y ago

hello, I do agree with you mostly, and in general I think that censorship is hardly ever good. In this particular case censorship was a force for good. As an aside, Google was running 'used aborigines' adverts from ebay for quite a while. Do you think these adverts should also be allowed to run? Australian society mostly takes a very dim view of racism, and especially racism towards the aborigines. Our elected representatives and the people of australia put in place laws such that this type of thing does not happen. However the government and politicians did not make this particular case of censorship happen - the courts of law made it happen. I think most of society agree that it is a shit thing that google was doing in this instance. Google has in place limits to stop things like pornography showing up, with it's safe search feature. This is already a form of censorship based on the values of countries like the USA. Where do we draw the line? Obviously sociopaths shouldn't be able to say whatever they like to millions of people if their words will cause harm. How about spammers bent on selling their products? Google already blocks some of the spammers. As do they block malware serving sites, and sites that don't play by googles rules of what constitutes a good web page. Make a website more google friendly, and google will reward you with higher rankings. Put more google messages (adverts) on your pages, and get more people to see them, and google will pay you more money. How about companies abusing trademarks or abusing copyright? Are those censorship too? Do we take the values of a multi national corporations(ie google)? Isn't that a form of cultural imperialism? What is to stop the courts abusing their power? There are many processes in place to try and let all sides of society have their input into what the courts do. What is to stop google from abusing their power and imposing their views on people who do not want them? ... glibly, I guess the answer to that is adblock. I don't think you can have a 'censorship is always wrong' approach, or a 'totally abusing censorship in terrible ways' approach either. Reasoned arguments by courts of law are an answer - to find out where censorship is appropriate and where it is not. The people who made that site should get a dog up em.

pwmanagerdied 17y ago
It's satire. If you can't cope with that, please off yourself for the good of the rest of us.
- 17y ago