7 ms·

Australian senate passes controversial anti-piracy, website-blocking laws

71 points by PebblesHD 11y ago

PebblesHD 11y ago
With these laws passed it will be a matter of weeks before the first cases of rights holders wanting websites blocked begin to appear, meanwhile there have already been statements by various right wing groups of wanting to expand the use of these new laws to cover other things they find objectionable such as pornography, violence etc. which will without doubt have a significant effect on free speech.
- 9762384 11y ago
  Source for that bit about "statements already made about blocking porn"? Surely no politician would be stupid enough to ever think blocking porn is a good idea.
  - sdrothrock 11y ago
    > Surely no politician would be stupid enough to ever think blocking porn is a good idea. It's not a new idea at all. Here's a separate example. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/03/david-cameron-internet-porn-filter-censorship-creep http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/03/david-c...
  - PebblesHD 11y ago
    Fred Nile - Head of the Australian Christian Lobby. The wording of the new laws is so open that purpose creep is almost intended.
    - windowsworkstoo 11y ago
      Just a nit, but Nile isn't the head of the ACL, which is a lobby group - he is the head of the Christian Democratic Party.
      - PebblesHD 11y ago
        Quite right, They seem to be almost interchangeable these days
  - darylteo 11y ago
    "But think of the children"
  - JupiterMoon 11y ago
    > Surely no politician would be stupid enough to ever think blocking porn is a good idea. You really really need to read a little more mainstream media (with a sceptical eye obviously). In the UK this has been debated for years now - and when one gets a new internet connection one has to (theoretically) decide whether to opt in or opt out of porn.
shahocean 11y ago
Metadata? They need to understand the concept first!
gonzo41 11y ago
I think a lot of people are going to start using tor.
- JupiterMoon 11y ago
  Unfortunately this sort of braindead legislation seems to be a global trend. Where will the exit nodes be in 10 years time?
  - gonzo41 11y ago
    Exit nodes as we know them now may not exist, but the pressure that is being placed on this technology is going to caused newer better ideas to pop up. Australians like stealing content. Nature finds a way!
    - daemin 11y ago
      Australians have until very recently had no easy and convenient access to content like comparable first world countries have had. We have seen the USA and other countries get all of these services offered to them but they've always skipped us by, leaving us to one hugely expensive provider.
      - rktjmp 11y ago
        They will even pay above the going rate in those other regions (VPN + exchange rate + currency fees). Only to have the content providers come back with "No, we don't want you're money." I think this is changing now though as Netflix et al. become available, though I'd expect their libraries to still be relatively anaemic compared to the overseas counterparts.
        JupiterMoon 11y ago
        Netflix are at least on record as saying that they want content to be global. However, they are also on record as saying that in principle using a vpn to access US Netflix is piracy (but that they don't think it is important). I am however curious what happens when some copyright troll decides to subpoena them for their records on who might be connecting from known vpns.
dil8 11y ago
Mandatory data retention, website blocking... Things are defintely headed the wrong way in Oz
bayesianhorse 11y ago
From what I hear from afar about Australian politics is that the Australian government can essentially do whatever it wants, unrestricted by minor details like a constitution, citizens or international law. Surveillance, website blocking ... And not to forget the new definition of "asylum", where refugees are kept against their will in camps, "unfit for human habitation". One former government psychiatrist called it "torture". Including, of course, children. But the system works reasonably well. I mean, why flee to Australia from political persecution, when Australian refugee camps are worse than most cases of political persecution?
- NeutronBoy 11y ago
  > From what I hear from afar about Australian politics is that the Australian government can essentially do whatever it wants, unrestricted by minor details like a constitution, citizens or international law. No, all that applies, it's just the current government thinks it can ignore it.
  - PebblesHD 11y ago
    Indeed, the 'liberal' party (which by the way is actually the more conservative one for some reason) has been rather overstepping its mark in terms of legislation lately. I have to say though the Labor guys aren't all that much better.
    - toyg 11y ago
      They follow European conventions, where "liberal" follows from the original "liberalism", i.e. the XIX century movement asking for trade liberalization (in a context of widespread protectionism by absolutist nation-states), a pro-business but socially conservative aggregation. Most "liberal" parties in Europe are right-wing in a similar way. It's only in the US that "liberal" came to mean "socially progressive" for some reason, and only relatively recently (i.e. at least post-LBJ, I would say, if not later).
      - eru 11y ago
tonteldoos 11y ago
Meh...offshore VPS with Squid3. And that's just the easy way of getting around anything - it astounds me that the government seems to think everyone is as shortsighted as they are.
- nness 11y ago
  The Government is expected to include VPN's used explicitly for evasion of anti-piracy measures in this law. The Government even tried debating the definition of VPN, since that's obviously where a lot of people are headed with this recent change. Not to mention, VPN's are essential for Australian business and the Government can't blanket ban everything since A. its hard to even define what a VPN is, and B. even harder to capture and block that traffic.
  - JupiterMoon 11y ago
    To these legislators (and their backers) this is not a tricky question. They will (eventually) (attempt to) simply block all foreign VPN providers via DNS or IP and furthermore make using one illegal for private use. This will not affect BigCorp because they would be using VPN to connect to their own servers which would not be on the block list.
    - kuschku 11y ago
      And that’s when you rent the 4$/year VPS from 1und1.de and use it as SOCKS proxy
      - JupiterMoon 11y ago
        In the eyes of the administrator managing the block list (not sure what judicial oversight is planned but going on the UK's approach it will be minimal or non-existent) this would look like a dodgy foreign company and it would simply go on the block list....
        meric 11y ago
jen729w 11y ago
Well at least our Attorney General understands the concept of metadata. Oh, wait. http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/george-brandis-in-car-crash-interview-over-controversial-data-retention-regime-20140806-101849.html http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/george-... [Edit: transcribed from about 1:40] Brandis: "What the security agencies want to be retained is the electronic address of the website, that the web user..." Interviewer: "So it does tell you the website?" "Well it tells you the address of the website" "That's the website, isn't it? It tells you what website you've been to?" "Well when you visit a website, people browse from one thing to the next, and that browsing history won't be retained, or there won't be any capacity to access that." "Excuse my confusion here, but if you are retaining the web address, you are retaining the web site, aren't you?" "Well, the ... every website has an electronic address, right?" "And that's recorded?" "When a connection is made between one computer terminal and a web address, that fact, and the time of the connection, and the duration of the connection, is what we mean by 'metadata' in that context." "But that is telling you where I've been on the web." "Well it ... it ... it records what electronic web address has been accessed." "I don't see the difference between that and what websites you've visited?" "When you go to a website, commonly, you will go from one web page to another, from one link to another in that website. That's not what we're interested in."
- serf 11y ago
  is that a show of ignorance, or a politician avoiding a potentially damaging sound bite? I'm not familiar with Australian politics, but in the politics I am familiar with I would be more apt to accuse someone of deception than ignorance. The politician in the video seems to be purposely ignorant in such a way that drives a stake between the folks watching, posing the question "Well, IS there a difference between addresses and web sites? Maybe the man knows something the reporter doesn't!". Check out practically any Dick Cheney interview to see that tactic used ad nauseum.
  - flashman 11y ago
    That is the sound of a very smart man who is very out of his depth and has not been properly backgrounded in a fairly technical policy.
byteface 11y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Pirate_radio https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Pirate_radio
- byteface 11y ago
  jump to second paragraph starting. "Radio "piracy" began with the advent of regulations of the public airwaves..." I guess eventually everyone in Oz will be only allowed to visit abc.com.au and then be programmed to blame poor people or immigrants for everything
  - kuschku 11y ago
    Eh, the regulation of airwaves is necessary, though. Only one person can send at one time on one frequency, and often you also have interference on the frequencies around it.
    - byteface 11y ago
      licences and content regulation come later. change happens over long periods of time. Governments change a few laws, then the next generation accept that as the norm, so they change a few more until they get what they want. ur right tho. this is a cool graphic. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/United_States_Frequency_Allocations_Chart_2011_-_The_Radio_Spectrum.pdf https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/United_S...
  - stephen_g 11y ago
    It's http://abc.net.au http://abc.net.au, and they are actually one of the best news organisations in the country (constantly having their budget cut by the party that is currently in Government because it's 'too left wing' or not 'on Team Australia' because they have often reported the truth about the Government...). With this current Government, it's actually the Murdoch papers that look like propoganda straight from the politician's spin doctors. Especially Sydney's Daily Telegraph.
    - 11y ago
russdill 11y ago
So are pretty much all of Amazon EC2 going to be blocked? Or all the DDoS mitigation services?
nness 11y ago
Just for those reading, the bill introduces an injunction power for the Courts to order ISP's to block access to foreign sites. The important note here is that the blocking isn't done by the Government, as you might expect by those concerned about censorship, but through individual hearings to hear the impact and whether blocking the site would be a proportionate response in the circumstances (blocking an entire VPN provider might be disproportionate response for example) Also it applies to foreign-hosted sites only, since running a hosting provider in Australian is already tenuous given we do not have anything similar to the US' safe-harbour provision. If you ran a torrenting site in Australia, there are already other laws which you can be tried under well before your site is blocked. A explanatory memorandum was issued which has a lot of insight to the effects of the law. Check for the ID "legislation/ems/r5446_ems_1599ec23-c036-4dee-9562-a8a2e4d3d6fe".
- PebblesHD 11y ago
  At this point it is aimed 'entirely' at minimising access to copyrighted materials, but as is mentioned elsewhere, the text of the bill is written so vaguely that it is almost designed to ensure future scope creep. Not to mention the habit of the current Aus government to disregard pesky courts because 'They might not do what we want'[0] [0] http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/courts-might-let-suspected-terrorists-off-says-tony-abbott-20150619-ghs1il.html http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/courts...
  - kuschku 11y ago
    We had a similar situation here in Germany, first they wanted to make an internet filter against child pornography, then they decided to add some filters for piracy... And then the politicians got voted out.
    - retrogradeorbit 11y ago
      That won't work here in Australia as the two major parties are, for all intents and purposes, identical. They both voted for all these recent draconian bills. We _could_ vote for the third party, who stands against all these things. But generally we are too smug and stupid to do something like that. If you knew Australians (remember, we have compulsory voting) you would know that there is no hope in the ballot box. The sheer size of the bogan [1] voting block will make sure that any election will go to whichever party cracks down hardest on dole bludgers/boat people/sex workers/terrorists/dual citizens/Internet pirates/etc. At the end of the day, as they say, we get the government we deserve. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogan
Vintila 11y ago
How does website blocking work with https as the dns queries are encrypted. The only thing they could block is the ip but that could be shared with 'innocent' sites. I may have a fatal misunderstanding in my understanding in how a browser accesses a website...
- rktjmp 11y ago
  Heres the punchline: you don't have a fatal misunderstanding. The policy makers do.
flashman 11y ago
Here's the text of the bill (under Schedule 1): http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22legislation%2Fbills%2Fr5446_aspassed%2F0000%22;rec=0 http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w... Basically "the primary purpose of the online location [must be] to infringe, or to facilitate the infringement of, copyright," which gets around things like "we only host torrent magnet links" while shielding search engines, general discussion forums, and the like. It's a reasonably well-drafted law (by the standards of such things) and relies on the judiciary (which is more than it sounds like considering our immigration minister, a former drug cop, wants extra-judicial power to remove citizenship), but falls down on technical merit.

71 points by PebblesHD 11y ago

With these laws passed it will be a matter of weeks before the first cases of rights holders wanting websites blocked begin to appear, meanwhile there have already been statements by various right wing groups of wanting to expand the use of these new laws to cover other things they find objectionable such as pornography, violence etc. which will without doubt have a significant effect on free speech.

9762384 11y ago
Source for that bit about "statements already made about blocking porn"? Surely no politician would be stupid enough to ever think blocking porn is a good idea.
- sdrothrock 11y ago
  > Surely no politician would be stupid enough to ever think blocking porn is a good idea. It's not a new idea at all. Here's a separate example. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/03/david-cameron-internet-porn-filter-censorship-creep http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/03/david-c...
- PebblesHD 11y ago
  Fred Nile - Head of the Australian Christian Lobby. The wording of the new laws is so open that purpose creep is almost intended.
  - windowsworkstoo 11y ago
    Just a nit, but Nile isn't the head of the ACL, which is a lobby group - he is the head of the Christian Democratic Party.
    - PebblesHD 11y ago
      Quite right, They seem to be almost interchangeable these days
- darylteo 11y ago
  "But think of the children"
- JupiterMoon 11y ago
  > Surely no politician would be stupid enough to ever think blocking porn is a good idea. You really really need to read a little more mainstream media (with a sceptical eye obviously). In the UK this has been debated for years now - and when one gets a new internet connection one has to (theoretically) decide whether to opt in or opt out of porn.

shahocean 11y ago

Metadata? They need to understand the concept first!

gonzo41 11y ago

I think a lot of people are going to start using tor.

JupiterMoon 11y ago
Unfortunately this sort of braindead legislation seems to be a global trend. Where will the exit nodes be in 10 years time?
- gonzo41 11y ago
  Exit nodes as we know them now may not exist, but the pressure that is being placed on this technology is going to caused newer better ideas to pop up. Australians like stealing content. Nature finds a way!
  - daemin 11y ago
    Australians have until very recently had no easy and convenient access to content like comparable first world countries have had. We have seen the USA and other countries get all of these services offered to them but they've always skipped us by, leaving us to one hugely expensive provider.
    - rktjmp 11y ago
      They will even pay above the going rate in those other regions (VPN + exchange rate + currency fees). Only to have the content providers come back with "No, we don't want you're money." I think this is changing now though as Netflix et al. become available, though I'd expect their libraries to still be relatively anaemic compared to the overseas counterparts.
      - JupiterMoon 11y ago
        Netflix are at least on record as saying that they want content to be global. However, they are also on record as saying that in principle using a vpn to access US Netflix is piracy (but that they don't think it is important). I am however curious what happens when some copyright troll decides to subpoena them for their records on who might be connecting from known vpns.

dil8 11y ago

Mandatory data retention, website blocking... Things are defintely headed the wrong way in Oz

bayesianhorse 11y ago

From what I hear from afar about Australian politics is that the Australian government can essentially do whatever it wants, unrestricted by minor details like a constitution, citizens or international law. Surveillance, website blocking ... And not to forget the new definition of "asylum", where refugees are kept against their will in camps, "unfit for human habitation". One former government psychiatrist called it "torture". Including, of course, children. But the system works reasonably well. I mean, why flee to Australia from political persecution, when Australian refugee camps are worse than most cases of political persecution?

NeutronBoy 11y ago
> From what I hear from afar about Australian politics is that the Australian government can essentially do whatever it wants, unrestricted by minor details like a constitution, citizens or international law. No, all that applies, it's just the current government thinks it can ignore it.
- PebblesHD 11y ago
  Indeed, the 'liberal' party (which by the way is actually the more conservative one for some reason) has been rather overstepping its mark in terms of legislation lately. I have to say though the Labor guys aren't all that much better.
  - toyg 11y ago
    They follow European conventions, where "liberal" follows from the original "liberalism", i.e. the XIX century movement asking for trade liberalization (in a context of widespread protectionism by absolutist nation-states), a pro-business but socially conservative aggregation. Most "liberal" parties in Europe are right-wing in a similar way. It's only in the US that "liberal" came to mean "socially progressive" for some reason, and only relatively recently (i.e. at least post-LBJ, I would say, if not later).
    - eru 11y ago

tonteldoos 11y ago

Meh...offshore VPS with Squid3. And that's just the easy way of getting around anything - it astounds me that the government seems to think everyone is as shortsighted as they are.

nness 11y ago
The Government is expected to include VPN's used explicitly for evasion of anti-piracy measures in this law. The Government even tried debating the definition of VPN, since that's obviously where a lot of people are headed with this recent change. Not to mention, VPN's are essential for Australian business and the Government can't blanket ban everything since A. its hard to even define what a VPN is, and B. even harder to capture and block that traffic.
- JupiterMoon 11y ago
  To these legislators (and their backers) this is not a tricky question. They will (eventually) (attempt to) simply block all foreign VPN providers via DNS or IP and furthermore make using one illegal for private use. This will not affect BigCorp because they would be using VPN to connect to their own servers which would not be on the block list.
  - kuschku 11y ago
    And that’s when you rent the 4$/year VPS from 1und1.de and use it as SOCKS proxy
    - JupiterMoon 11y ago
      In the eyes of the administrator managing the block list (not sure what judicial oversight is planned but going on the UK's approach it will be minimal or non-existent) this would look like a dodgy foreign company and it would simply go on the block list....
      - meric 11y ago

jen729w 11y ago

Well at least our Attorney General understands the concept of metadata. Oh, wait. http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/george-brandis-in-car-crash-interview-over-controversial-data-retention-regime-20140806-101849.html http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/george-... [Edit: transcribed from about 1:40] Brandis: "What the security agencies want to be retained is the electronic address of the website, that the web user..." Interviewer: "So it does tell you the website?" "Well it tells you the address of the website" "That's the website, isn't it? It tells you what website you've been to?" "Well when you visit a website, people browse from one thing to the next, and that browsing history won't be retained, or there won't be any capacity to access that." "Excuse my confusion here, but if you are retaining the web address, you are retaining the web site, aren't you?" "Well, the ... every website has an electronic address, right?" "And that's recorded?" "When a connection is made between one computer terminal and a web address, that fact, and the time of the connection, and the duration of the connection, is what we mean by 'metadata' in that context." "But that is telling you where I've been on the web." "Well it ... it ... it records what electronic web address has been accessed." "I don't see the difference between that and what websites you've visited?" "When you go to a website, commonly, you will go from one web page to another, from one link to another in that website. That's not what we're interested in."

serf 11y ago
is that a show of ignorance, or a politician avoiding a potentially damaging sound bite? I'm not familiar with Australian politics, but in the politics I am familiar with I would be more apt to accuse someone of deception than ignorance. The politician in the video seems to be purposely ignorant in such a way that drives a stake between the folks watching, posing the question "Well, IS there a difference between addresses and web sites? Maybe the man knows something the reporter doesn't!". Check out practically any Dick Cheney interview to see that tactic used ad nauseum.
- flashman 11y ago
  That is the sound of a very smart man who is very out of his depth and has not been properly backgrounded in a fairly technical policy.

byteface 11y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Pirate_radio https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Pirate_radio

byteface 11y ago
jump to second paragraph starting. "Radio "piracy" began with the advent of regulations of the public airwaves..." I guess eventually everyone in Oz will be only allowed to visit abc.com.au and then be programmed to blame poor people or immigrants for everything
- kuschku 11y ago
  Eh, the regulation of airwaves is necessary, though. Only one person can send at one time on one frequency, and often you also have interference on the frequencies around it.
  - byteface 11y ago
    licences and content regulation come later. change happens over long periods of time. Governments change a few laws, then the next generation accept that as the norm, so they change a few more until they get what they want. ur right tho. this is a cool graphic. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/United_States_Frequency_Allocations_Chart_2011_-_The_Radio_Spectrum.pdf https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/United_S...
- stephen_g 11y ago
  It's http://abc.net.au http://abc.net.au, and they are actually one of the best news organisations in the country (constantly having their budget cut by the party that is currently in Government because it's 'too left wing' or not 'on Team Australia' because they have often reported the truth about the Government...). With this current Government, it's actually the Murdoch papers that look like propoganda straight from the politician's spin doctors. Especially Sydney's Daily Telegraph.
  - 11y ago

russdill 11y ago

So are pretty much all of Amazon EC2 going to be blocked? Or all the DDoS mitigation services?

nness 11y ago

Just for those reading, the bill introduces an injunction power for the Courts to order ISP's to block access to foreign sites. The important note here is that the blocking isn't done by the Government, as you might expect by those concerned about censorship, but through individual hearings to hear the impact and whether blocking the site would be a proportionate response in the circumstances (blocking an entire VPN provider might be disproportionate response for example) Also it applies to foreign-hosted sites only, since running a hosting provider in Australian is already tenuous given we do not have anything similar to the US' safe-harbour provision. If you ran a torrenting site in Australia, there are already other laws which you can be tried under well before your site is blocked. A explanatory memorandum was issued which has a lot of insight to the effects of the law. Check for the ID "legislation/ems/r5446_ems_1599ec23-c036-4dee-9562-a8a2e4d3d6fe".

PebblesHD 11y ago
At this point it is aimed 'entirely' at minimising access to copyrighted materials, but as is mentioned elsewhere, the text of the bill is written so vaguely that it is almost designed to ensure future scope creep. Not to mention the habit of the current Aus government to disregard pesky courts because 'They might not do what we want'[0] [0] http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/courts-might-let-suspected-terrorists-off-says-tony-abbott-20150619-ghs1il.html http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/courts...
- kuschku 11y ago
  We had a similar situation here in Germany, first they wanted to make an internet filter against child pornography, then they decided to add some filters for piracy... And then the politicians got voted out.
  - retrogradeorbit 11y ago
    That won't work here in Australia as the two major parties are, for all intents and purposes, identical. They both voted for all these recent draconian bills. We _could_ vote for the third party, who stands against all these things. But generally we are too smug and stupid to do something like that. If you knew Australians (remember, we have compulsory voting) you would know that there is no hope in the ballot box. The sheer size of the bogan [1] voting block will make sure that any election will go to whichever party cracks down hardest on dole bludgers/boat people/sex workers/terrorists/dual citizens/Internet pirates/etc. At the end of the day, as they say, we get the government we deserve. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogan

Vintila 11y ago

How does website blocking work with https as the dns queries are encrypted. The only thing they could block is the ip but that could be shared with 'innocent' sites. I may have a fatal misunderstanding in my understanding in how a browser accesses a website...

rktjmp 11y ago
Heres the punchline: you don't have a fatal misunderstanding. The policy makers do.

flashman 11y ago

Here's the text of the bill (under Schedule 1): http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22legislation%2Fbills%2Fr5446_aspassed%2F0000%22;rec=0 http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w... Basically "the primary purpose of the online location [must be] to infringe, or to facilitate the infringement of, copyright," which gets around things like "we only host torrent magnet links" while shielding search engines, general discussion forums, and the like. It's a reasonably well-drafted law (by the standards of such things) and relies on the judiciary (which is more than it sounds like considering our immigration minister, a former drug cop, wants extra-judicial power to remove citizenship), but falls down on technical merit.