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FWIW there were never "blocked" sites in Australia (this may be a first). The only impact of the blacklist was to penalise those who posted links to banned site

by smegel 13y ago

FWIW there were never "blocked" sites in Australia (this may be a first). The only impact of the blacklist was to penalise those who posted links to banned sites (this was an actual offence), even though the list was secret. In fact, the whole point of the backdown from Conroy was that the actual blocking never went into effect.

nwh 13y ago
There are certainly blocked sites. At one point there was a mistakenly blocked shared web server; traceroutes to it mysteriously hit a dead end from my residential connection but not my server.
- smegel 13y ago
  I meant blocked in respect to Conroy's blacklist. Your ISP may be blocking other sites on behalf of other parties (or for their own reasons)...it would be most interesting to find out for who and why.
  - nwh 13y ago
    The blocked site was from government list, and applied to Optus, Telstra and Exetel (maybe more). There seems to be disinformation in the media about it; the ISPs claim that the government told them to block a particular site, and the government says they didn't. I'm inclined to believe the former. http://delimiter.com.au/2013/05/14/it-wasnt-us-ags-dept-denies-massive-filter-false-positive/ http://delimiter.com.au/2013/05/14/it-wasnt-us-ags-dept-deni...
    - smegel 13y ago
      This is all very recent...changes are apparently afoot. My guess Conroy is trying to have one last, desperate stab at trying to reign in the Internet before he gets tossed out in September (good luck with that). The guy seems to be unable to grok the concept of a free, open and wild space for the unrestricted exchange of information and ideas that exists outside the realm of government censorship and control.
josephb 13y ago
Yes, there are a number of sites blocked by Australian ISPs Those ISPs have been given a directive to block sites on the "worst of the worst" Interpol list, it's DNS blocking, not at the IP level. Read the article again :)
- smegel 13y ago
  Well it has been done voluntarily by some ISPs...others have refused. There is no way the AFPs tactics would survive a supreme court challenge when/if the ISPs start kicking up a real stink when they are requested to block more generic material under this farcical "assisting police" nonsense. Its a clear abuse of a law aimed more at providing wiretapping/snooping services not censorship.
ghshephard 13y ago
The article makes it pretty clear that Australian Government has has been blocking sites, "The ‘voluntary’ filter only blocks a set of sites which international policing agency Interpol has verified contain “worst of the worst” child pornography "..."Under the Act, the Australian Federal Police is allowed to issue notices to telcos asking for reasonable assistance in upholding the law. It is believed the AFP has issued such notices to Telstra and Optus to ask them to filter the Interpol blacklist of sites." Notice the quotes around voluntary. Do you really think Telstra and Optus are going to refuse a request to block child porn sites from the Australian Government?
- Maxious 13y ago
  The word "voluntary" was removed and the notices reissued after non Telstra/Optus ISPs declined http://delimiter.com.au/2012/11/14/iinet-internode-implement-conroys-new-filter/ http://delimiter.com.au/2012/11/14/iinet-internode-implement... Again it must be made clear that the Interpol filter the police demanded is DNS based, the filtering ASIC demanded to shut down one unlicensed financial advisor is IP based.

by smegel 13y ago

nwh 13y ago

There are certainly blocked sites. At one point there was a mistakenly blocked shared web server; traceroutes to it mysteriously hit a dead end from my residential connection but not my server.

smegel 13y ago
I meant blocked in respect to Conroy's blacklist. Your ISP may be blocking other sites on behalf of other parties (or for their own reasons)...it would be most interesting to find out for who and why.
- nwh 13y ago
  The blocked site was from government list, and applied to Optus, Telstra and Exetel (maybe more). There seems to be disinformation in the media about it; the ISPs claim that the government told them to block a particular site, and the government says they didn't. I'm inclined to believe the former. http://delimiter.com.au/2013/05/14/it-wasnt-us-ags-dept-denies-massive-filter-false-positive/ http://delimiter.com.au/2013/05/14/it-wasnt-us-ags-dept-deni...
  - smegel 13y ago
    This is all very recent...changes are apparently afoot. My guess Conroy is trying to have one last, desperate stab at trying to reign in the Internet before he gets tossed out in September (good luck with that). The guy seems to be unable to grok the concept of a free, open and wild space for the unrestricted exchange of information and ideas that exists outside the realm of government censorship and control.

josephb 13y ago

Yes, there are a number of sites blocked by Australian ISPs Those ISPs have been given a directive to block sites on the "worst of the worst" Interpol list, it's DNS blocking, not at the IP level. Read the article again :)

smegel 13y ago
Well it has been done voluntarily by some ISPs...others have refused. There is no way the AFPs tactics would survive a supreme court challenge when/if the ISPs start kicking up a real stink when they are requested to block more generic material under this farcical "assisting police" nonsense. Its a clear abuse of a law aimed more at providing wiretapping/snooping services not censorship.

ghshephard 13y ago

The article makes it pretty clear that Australian Government has has been blocking sites, "The ‘voluntary’ filter only blocks a set of sites which international policing agency Interpol has verified contain “worst of the worst” child pornography "..."Under the Act, the Australian Federal Police is allowed to issue notices to telcos asking for reasonable assistance in upholding the law. It is believed the AFP has issued such notices to Telstra and Optus to ask them to filter the Interpol blacklist of sites." Notice the quotes around voluntary. Do you really think Telstra and Optus are going to refuse a request to block child porn sites from the Australian Government?

Maxious 13y ago
The word "voluntary" was removed and the notices reissued after non Telstra/Optus ISPs declined http://delimiter.com.au/2012/11/14/iinet-internode-implement-conroys-new-filter/ http://delimiter.com.au/2012/11/14/iinet-internode-implement... Again it must be made clear that the Interpol filter the police demanded is DNS based, the filtering ASIC demanded to shut down one unlicensed financial advisor is IP based.