It's certainly been a busy week in the 'cleanfeed' debate. First a copy of what purports to be the ACMA blacklist is leaked on wikileaks. It was allegedly devised from an ACMA-approved filtering product, but Conroy denies its authenticity because, inter alia it's longer than the actual ACMA blacklist. The filtering vendor in question must have then cleaned up their act, because a few days later another version leaked, the length of which closely matches the known size of the ACMA blacklist, and which contains URLs which are known to be on that blacklist. This latest version looks pretty authentic, as far as I'm concerned.
Wikileaks is currently down due to the amount of traffic generated by people wanting to look at this list, and the list itself isn't a good look for the government. It confirms a lot of people's fears about the accuracy of the list and the political nature of the blacklisting process. Internet gambling websites, euthanasia websites, abortion websites, and websites containing ordinary run-of-the-mill adult nudity feature on the blacklist, as well as more bizzare examples, such as the inclusion of a dentist's website on the first version of the blacklist.
Here's one website which is on the latest leaked version of the blacklist: http://blog.beliefnet.com/astrologicalmusings/2007/02/astrology-and-the-false-identi.html
Let's take a look at the content of this page, which is titled 'Astrology and the False Identity':
Susan has a post today that reminded me of an experience I had before I was married. She writes:
I know astrology works. I have made mistakes in casting charts that have proved to me that it is valid. When I cast the wrong time, the charts didn't fit the person, and the timing of events was off. When I corrected the chart, it made more sense and the timing was correct.I experienced this also with a clients once; I began the reading and the client could not relate to anything that I said. I double checked her birth data I found I was off by ten days. The reading then was accurate.
Years ago, I met a gentleman that I was interested in, and since I was an astrologer when we started to get closer I asked him for his birth information. I did his chart, and was mystified. The chart did not reflect the person that I was getting to know. The chart using the birth data he gave me was for a more aggressive individual than the sensitive person I was getting to know; the chart had a strong Mars and Aries component and lacked a watery complement. I related my confusion to him, whereupon he admitted that he had gone underground in the 1960s and taken on a false identity in order to avoid the draft for the war in Vietnam. To this day I think that that I am the only person who knows his true identity and the story behind his adopted birthdate....
Yes, truly this website is amongst the worst of the worst of the Internet. Senator Conroy says that if anybody is going to equate free speech with access to astrology, the Labor party is going to disagree. Bernadette McMenamin doesn't know how any decent person could oppose the blacklisting of astrology material. Clive Hamilton says that astrology is destoying people's lives and the government has to do something about it. The Australian Christian Lobby probably thinks that astrology is heresy and leads people away from the One True God - i.e. "theirs". (this from the same type of open-minded people who wanted to burn Harry Potter books for introducing children to 'witchcraft')
The same people have been accusing their critics of fear-mongering and hysteria about the risks of ISP-based filtering (i.e. cleanfeed), including the risk that innocent websites will be wrongly blacklisted by a secret and unaccountable system, with no possibility of appeal. The leaked blacklist shows that us 'hysterical' critics were right, and that they are - at best - naieve.
Oh, and if the ACMA wants to pick a fight with me for linking to a blacklisted page, by all means, bring it on.
Clive Hamilton, 'Professor of Public Ethics' at CSU recently published an opinion piece which reeks of hysteria, even by his standards. Rather than engage in genuine debate about the issues in play here, he seems content to justify his position with farcical hypotheticals and ad hominem attacks on his opponents. EFA and Mike Meloni have done a very good job of responding to Clive's opinion piece as a whole.
Clive's position boils down to this: he claims that a certain class of material on the Internet - namely so-called 'extreme' pornography - is so inherently harmful that the government must spend tens of millions of dollars implementing a technical solution which purports to prevent access to that material, regardless of the collateral damage. That collateral damage can be broadly divided into accidental collateral damage, and intentional collateral damage. (I acknowledge that last term is something of an oxymoron, but bear with me)
Accidental collateral damage occurs when material which ought not to be blocked, is blocked. According to an independant report commissioned by the ACMA showed that of the six filtering products tested, they wrongly blocked access to between 1.3% and 7.8% of websites tested, with an average over-blocking rate of 4%. In other words, the filters evaluated, on average, wrongly blocked access to 1 website in 20.
Clive's article itself is a perfect example of material which is likely to be blocked by a filtering system. Filtering products make judgments about whether a particular piece of Internet content is 'good' or 'bad' by various methods, including looking at the textual content and searching for 'bad' words or phrases. Clive's article is lousy with 'bad' words and phrases - 'teen blow-jobs', 'fisting', 'incest', 'golden showers, 'gang bangs' etc - it is highly likely that filtering software would block access to it (assuming that news.com.au isn't white-listed) based on the quantity of smutty words it contains. This is the reality of Internet filtering - difficult calls requiring an interpretation of context are made in a split-second by fairly simplistic computer programs, and often those calls are wrong.
Other examples abound of legitimate material which would probably be wrongly blocked by filtering software - god knows what a computer program would make of the Australia Institute's report entitled 'Corporate Paedophillia'
This is a fact that proponents of the government's proposal, including Clive, have utterly failed to deal with, preferring instead to accuse their opponents of interpreting the statistics in the ACMA report in the way most favourable to their arguement. It's hard to see how this argument holds water - saying that a given benchmark ranged from X to Y with an average of Z isn't cherry-picking the statistics, it's the cold hard statistical truth. By comparison, the type of spin on these figures which is circulated by Conroy et all is positively misleading - along the lines that the filters tested had accuracy rates 'as high as' the most favourable statistic, and speed impacts 'as low as' the most favourable statistic, while ignoring the fact that those figures came from two different products, and that a fair reading of the ACMA's results shows that speed is generally inversely proportional to accuracy!
Clive is, in fact, supporting a system which will probably result in some of Clive's own writings being wrongly censored.
Intentional collateral damage occurs where the filtering system blocks access to a class of material which the government has determined ought to be blocked, but which people (such as Clive) who are otherwise proponents of the filtering scheme maintain ought not to be blocked. Material relating to or promoting suicide or euthanasia is one such class of material. Material relating to abortion is probably another - we've recently seen the ACMA ban an abortion website.
Clive's public position is that this type of material should not be censored by the government, yet it's a virtual certainty that it will be censored by the proposed filtering scheme - the Commonwealth government have already made it a criminal offence punishable by imprisonment to publish or even access this type of material on the Internet. I'm sure there are other classes of politically controversial but non-pornographic material which are likely to be banned under the proposed filtering regime, which Clive would support the availability of.
Bernadette McMenamin is another case in point; she has adopted the position that child pornography - and only child pornography - should be blocked by the filtering regime. It is abundantly clear that this is not what the Commonwealth will do with it, yet she maintains her support for it.
It is intellectually dishonest of Clive to maintain his outspoken support for Labor's proposed filtering regime without:
- acknowledging that the government will probably also use it to block out other types of material (such as suicide-related material) which he supports the availability of; and
- explaining why, in the circumstances, he still supports it.
If Clive has decided that the filtering of material which he supports is an acceptable price to pay for the filtering of the material which he opposes, so be it, but he should say so. At the moment he is offering unqualified and unequivocal support for a filtering regime which will be used by the government to suppress information which he supports the availability of.
Perhaps all this collateral damage is a price which Clive is willing to pay. More to the point, it's a price which he's willing for us all to pay.
Last night my monitor died in the arse. This annoyed me greatly, as I was expecting to have to purchase a new monitor on Saturday, at a cost of several hundred dollars.
For the purposes of checking my email and so forth tonight, being the uber-geek that I am, I figured to just turn my PC on and connect to it via remote desktop from my other half's computer. Which is all fine and dandy.
Except now the <adjective> <verb> piece of [disney character] <noun> won't even <verb> turn on!
Yes, I can still use my other half's computer. Thankfully she's out of town for a couple of days, but it's just not the same. And using mutt to browse through my email still sitting on my server is, frankly, a pain in the backside.
So instead on catching up on blogging tomorrow, I'll be pulling my PC to bits (and resisting the temptation to reduce it to its sub-atomic components) trying to isolate the fault. Hopefully it's just the power supply and not something more fatal, but its very strange that the monitor and the PC's power supply should both die in the arse simultaniously, especially since both are protected by a UPS.
$vexed++
Things have slowed down again on the blogging front, due mainly to the fact that things have speeded up in all areas not related to blogging.
As those who've been paying close attention to the "About the Author" section would have noticed, I have recently completed my law degree, although I'm a little unclear as to whether I'm currently entitled to use the postnominals "LLB", given that the actual graduation ceremony won't be until ~March 2009.
I'm also no longer working as a researcher at QUT. As of about a month ago, I've been gainfully employed in the Real World™ as a graduate lawyer with an Australian telecommunications carrier. This shouldn't really come as a surprise to anyone, considering that I worked in the IT/ISP/telco sector in technical/management roles before I started the law degree. I'm really enjoying my new position, as it offers challenges, opportunities, respect and recognition which my research work at QUT just couldn't provide. This is not to say that I'm discontinuing my research. I'll still be conducting research and publishing, except that now it will be on topics I choose, with co-authors I choose. A Master of Laws by thesis is on the cards for 2010, but first I have to find somewhere to do it. I had my eye on the University of Melbourne but they've recently deprecated their LLM by research in favour of an M. Phil and I have reservations about the worth of the latter degree.
I think my new employers are grateful that they've got an almost-but-not-quite lawyer about who knows all the technical stuff. A typical law graduate would probably get lost in this job, or at least would face a very steep learning curve - a lot of questions like "what's [dark fibre|duct space|ethernet|telehousing]?" would be asked.
A couple of other short-medium term projects are being devised at the moment - watch this space for details.
I've thus far - thankfully - avoided the temptation to engage in off-topic rants on my blog. But I found out something this afternoon that has me so upset, and so incensed, that on this occasion I'll digress somewhat. My knowledge of the facts here is necessarily based on second-hand information, so I can't vouch for its veracity, but I believe it to be reliable.
This afternoon I was volunteering at an organisation where I spend many of my weekends volunteering. I was working with a woman who I've known for a while now - I'll call her Sally (not her real name). A few months ago, Sally suddenly became fatally ill and almost died. From the lay-terminology explanations I was given, it sounds like she suffered an aortic dissection. She survived, against the odds.
However, the treatment costs and ongoing expenses for various anti-hypertensive drugs put a severe strain on Sally's finances. They were stretched to the point where Sally could no longer afford to feed her two cats, Sandy and Zorro, and she made the heartbreaking decision to surrender them to the RSPCA for adoption. Sally took them to the RSPCA in the town where she lives, along with their food, their litter, and their favourite blankets. The RSPCA told her that because they had both been desexed, and were current with their vaccinations and so forth, they had an excellent chance of being rehomed. This morning, Sally was telling me about how much she missed them and how hard it would be to go home and not hear their bells as they ran to greet her.
Today, Sally's children became worried about Sandy and Zorro. Her ex-husband (who I assume had custody of the children today) rang the RSPCA to check on them.
The RSPCA had already killed Zorro - he was killed the same day that Sally surrendered him.
He was a beautiful mackerel tabby kitten, only 9 months old. Sally bought him earlier this year after one of her other cats was mauled to death in her back yard by her neighbor's dogs.
Yesterday brought news that a long list of copyright holders, under the banner of the 'Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft' (AFACT) have sued iiNet for copyright infringement - their argument seems to be that iiNet have failed to take reasonable steps to prevent their users from downloading movies online. In one sense, the claim against iiNet is that they have 'failed to do their utmost' (see also John Byng) to prevent piracy, which fits rather neatly given that the motivation of the copyright holders is undoubtedly pour encourager les autres.
But something about the situation smells. Not just that AFACT have chosen to take on iiNet instead of larger ISPs such as Telstra Bigpond, who would be better able to defend the action - although this choice has been characterized as 'gutless' by others.
In particular, what smells is this:
- October 29: Kevin Bermeister (sued for squillions by the global music industry in the Kazaa litigation) and Michael Speck (former head of Music Industry Piracy Investigations, who were heading the lawsuit against Kazaa) announce that they are flogging a magical new filtering technology allegedly capable of removing both porn and piracy from peer-to-peer networks;
- November 11: iiNet announce that they will participate in a trial of Internet filtering technology; and
- November 20: iiNet sued by the copyright holders.
This has certain parallels with what has occurred overseas, where at least some companies who are selling anti-piracy prophylactics have connections, financial or otherwise, with the copyright industry. I don't think its entirely kosher for the copyright holders to be threatening to sue ISPs, schools and colleges, etc, unless they introduce anti-piracy measures, and gee whiz, here's one that they're selling!
This is the inevitable result of forcing ISPs to police the content that traverses their network - everybody with an agenda which involves or would be furthered by the blocking of content that they believe unlawful or find objectionable will want their agenda catered to.
A lot of work obviously went into this. Posted for the benefit of everybody who needs a good laugh after dealing with far too much clean feed-related stupidity:
It seems that Senator Conroy doesn't confine his cheap stunts and grandstanding in the Senate to the issue of Labor's proposed clean feed scheme. Last Wednesday, the Senate was debating during the second reading of the bill to establish Labor's pet 'fuelwatch' scheme. The coalition opposed fuelwatch, leaving Labor needing the vote of the five Greens senators, plus Fielding and Xenophon, else the bill would fail. As it turned out, Senator Xenophon voted against it and the bill was defeated. But not before Conroy engaged in some theatrics which I'm beginning to suspect are typical of the man. From the Hansard: [at p 9]
Senator Xenophon: Over the past few months the issue of Fuelwatch has been debated extensively in this parliament, in the media and in the broader community.
Senator Conroy: Why do you hate Australian motorists?
There you have it. The best that the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, the Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate, and the Minister representing the Treasurer in the Senate can come up with, is that if you vote against fuelwatch, you hate Australian motorists.
If this wasn't so weak, it'd be funny. Presumably if and when the legislation implementing clean feed comes up for consideration in the Senate, it'll be 'why do you hate Australian children?' or 'why do you support paedophiles?'
Surely Labor can find someone better to take over his portfolio? Give it to Senator Lundy - at least she understands the technology. It's becoming apparent that what Conroy knows about the Internet could be written in foot-high letters on the head of a pin.
Its pretty sad when the Minister for the Internets is taking debating tips from South Park.
Jack Marx has written a very good piece on news.com.au about the need for censorship of the Bible. As the article points out, the Bible contains many passages which promote or instruct in matters of crime, or would be regarded as offensive by reasonable adults - including advocating the murder of homosexuals:
If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them. - Leviticus 20:13
Putting aside for one moment the substantive content of the Bible, as a document it is highly likely to be censored by any dynamic filtering system that relies on the presence of 'naughty words' as a basis for filtering. The King James version of the Bible, for example, contains:
- 65 passeges containing the word 'whore' (or derivitaves);
- 37 passeges containing the word 'murder' (or derivatives); and
- 33 passeges containing the word 'adultery' (or derivatives).
Other versions have even naughtier words - the New International Version has seven passages dealing with 'rape'.
This demonstrates where the wheels will come off the 'filtering' system that Labor are proposing. Software is good at trivial tasks such as comparing the next of a web page against a list of 'naughty words', but it's bad at determining things such as context. A website dealing with breast cancer could get censored because it contains the word 'breast' too many times. A website which is against child pornography, or child sex tourism, might get censored because the filter can't tell the difference between a website which is against those things, or is promoting them. Websites talking about the novel Lolita or any of the film adaptations of the novel would probably get censored.
But if the Bible gets banned, that's a small price to pay. I'm sure that the Christians will think it's an acceptable level of collateral damage. This is about saving the children, people.
Besides, the Book of Revelation might give them nightmares.
