Can Linux be banned in .au? 238
cpt kangarooski writes "Well, an enterrising reporter over at Salon has found that certain blue comments in some Linux source code may make it eligible to be censored in Australia. Take a look here " Mmm...fun with censorship. Congrats go to Jamais Cascio (known as cynical around here), Slashdot reader, and author of the Salon article.
Welcome to our hell :| (Score:1)
The thing that makes me sick is that this is partially feasable - Telstra (our telco, government owned) bought AARnet a few years ago, which also had the only major non-telstra overseas link. All content coming in goes through either telstra lines, or an ISP's satellite. Telstra can monitor all traffic in over their stuff (approx 80%?), and put ridiculous fines on all non-telstra ISP's (there's another rant about telstra forcing out competitors to its own isp by hiking up its dedicated line charges).
And yes, i'm considering moving overseas
Censor themselves?? (Score:1)
In conclusion, they must not be using a keyword block or they run real risk of looking really silly. Therefore, they must have planned to block by IP address or by sitename. Though I wonder what would happen if you spoofed www.whitehouse.gov for a few hours, they block it by IP, and then 'oops.'
Q - What happens if someone hacks a site and puts naughty language up on it? Does that site get banned forever?
-B
It makes me sick (Score:1)
As was said in a previous post, the government has quickly pushed the new law through the senate and completely ignored the *experts*, the nation wide protests, and the general opinion of anyone who gave a damn - oops don't want to get slashdot banned.
We really need some drastic action down here. I don't know how a law is *removed* but I imagine it's not a quick process
What do you do when the government ignores you ? I'd be interested to find out what I can do to help our seemingly hopeless situation.
I've got a better plan.. (Score:1)
well just go through http://www.anatomy.usyd.edu.au/danny/freedom/cens
Re:Welcome to our hell :| (Score:1)
Besides, it would make for GREAT tv over here in the US!
:)
Re:Canada should protest (Score:1)
Let's see (Score:1)
1. Serbia violates civil rights of Kosovar citizenry.
2. US & NATO bombs the crap out of Serbia.
The Case:
1. Australian Government violates civil rights
of Australian citizenry.
2.
Coffee and a fruit? (Score:1)
WTF?
"Ve muzt pertekt zhe citishenry vrom foreign fewds!!?!?!"
'Reasonable' is defined (Score:3)
It is extremely well defined, "reasonable" being
a precise legal term, much like hackers regard
"word" as a precise CPU term. Three clauses of
the legilsation deal with "reasonable".
Essentially, reasonable effort is the blocking of
access to the site using the best available,
commercially viable technology within 6pm of
the next business day after the ABA notifies
you that an overseas site is to be blocked.
More worrying is that the same deadline is
attached to an ABA direction to prevent
access to "all similar material"!
You miss the point with the Linux source. It
will be rated M if it contains the word
"fuck". The guidelines of the Office of
Film and Literature Classificaton are clear
(and on the web at www.oflc.gov.au).
Linux distributors are currently breaching the
law: (1) they are selling M-rated software
on CD without a classification appearing on
the CD and (2) they are selling M-rated
material to people under 16.
When the Broadcast Service Act amendments
pass the House of Reps then major Linux
sites such as mirror.aarnet.edu.au will
also be M-rated. This isn't of much
concern, as the age-verification steps are
only required for R-rated material.
None of the above means that I agree with
the govt's stupidity (and I have been interviewed
on AU TV and radio saying as much). But it is
important to get the facts right, especially
in a forum like slashdot that seems to contain
more emotion than the considered logical
thought that programmers are notorious for.
People sprouting the wrong facts simply undermine
the case for those of us arguing with the
correct facts.
Cheers,
glen.turner@adelaide.edu.au
...and names such as "Pamela" (Score:3)
I guess they don't want to hear about the international space station project (one of the Astronauts is Lt. Col. Pamela Ann Melroy [nasa.gov]).
There goes Australian Women's Lib history, where Pamela Denoon [pcug.org.au] was apparently a major player.
I wonder if it will also filter out info on the PAMELA Magnetic Spectrometer [uni-siegen.de], scheduled for launch two years from now.
Do these censors have any idea how stupid they look when they suggest things like this.
They'll have to ban FreeBSD too then... (Score:1)
./i386/isa/aic6360.c:
- A.P.
--
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
Re:...and names such as "Pamela" (Score:1)
My fiancee's friend in Australia would be unable to read her poetry, because the page is called "Pamela's Book of Poetry" and each one of the pages has her name on it, in the copyright statement.
Incidentally, we once had her picture up on our page in an image file called "pamela.jpg". We started getting tons of hits on that one image file, probably from people looking for images of Ms. Anderson-Lee. I solved this problem by renaming the image file...
Eric
--
Re:the wonders of patch..... (Score:1)
What's next, running strings on all binaries looking for obscene material?
Well... the word 'binaries' itself is on the banned list ( here [usyd.edu.au]), so I guess that would be unnecessary. If they do decide to allow linux, it would have to be source-only distributions. Wonder what Microsoft will say about this.... :)
Ah well. Other horrible (and thus banned) words: mushroom. toys. leather. newsgroup. doom. web. shy. search. fist. glamour. beer. jenny...
Ouch. My head hurts.
Re:The Mystical Land of Oz (Score:1)
Re:I wonder... (Score:1)
Why stop there? (Score:1)
What, only reasonable means? What about nice, unreasonable means such as revolution.
Unfortunatly, Australia does not (AIUI) have a liberal democracy. Australia is like a giant prison and the politians are prison wardens. The only thing that has changed in the 211 years since its colonization is it is no longer ruled by England and the prisoners get to vote (not that it does them any good). The deomocracy is a facade.
Thankfully, I managed to escape after 7 years `imprisonment'. actually, it wasn't quite that bad, but I could feel the oppression. I've now been in NZ for almost 5 years, and though I rather like it here, I'm starting to wander. Our `esteemed leader', Jenny Shipley (haha, she'll be banned to:), seems to be very pro oppression. She may be NZ's first female primeminister, but from what I've heard, she's very unpopular amoungst the NZ women. My point here is I'm worried about NZ following in Australia's footsteps (she's very pro christianity too (as in the oppressive sort, I realize there are more liberal sorts out there)).
Censoring to much... (Score:1)
`Jag
I wonder... (Score:1)
My personal favorite... (Score:1)
./arch/sparc64/kernel/ptrace.c:/* Fuck me gently with a chainsaw... */
Mostly sparc (Score:1)
Have you noticed most of the greps are from the sparc part of the source tree? Hehehehe..
-= NJV =-
Re:Nothing sed cannot cure (Score:1)
Actually:
sed s/fuck/fsck/g would do even.
Maybe AOL should move there... (Score:1)
I mean, they have the same censorship laws. Austrailia Online?
--
Brendan Byrd AKA SineSwiper
Computer techie, PERL master, and all-purpose Internet guru
So long to the TABs (Score:1)
In the June 1999 issue of Linux Journal [linuxjournal.com] they had an article(page 82) about the Totalisator Administration Board(TAB) of Queensland using Linux for their betting booths. Now wouldn't censorship put all of these guys and gals' hard work to nothing? I'm sure the representitaves in Austrailia like to indulge in a little betting after the daily round of votes...but I could be wrong.
later,
Kilbert
The Mystical Land of Oz (Score:1)
Re:The Mystical Land of Oz (Score:1)
I sure hope the kids don't have to do a report on architecture. I wonder how long it will take for sentences like "Our representatives behave like Nazis" to become offensive?
the wonders of patch..... (Score:1)
-
+
What's next, running strings on all binaries looking for obscene material?
hehe... my personal favorite - linux 2.2.9 (Score:1)
:)
as for the censorship laws over here... well heh. i think there are going to be some very red faces
smash
Fight back wit FreeNet! (Score:1)
--
jd (Score:1)
Re:Nothing sed cannot cure (Score:1)
Re:List of Banned words, anyone? (Score:2)
Scary shit, huh?
Re:Dont even joke. (Score:1)
Hey, if his kid is 14 and reading the Linux sourcecode, something is wrong...
Or maybe right...
Who knows.
Re:Dont even joke. (Score:1)
There's a difference between using Linux and reading the Linux source
I've been using Linux for a year and a half or so, and the most I've done is glaced at small parts of the source code once or twice.
God help the University of Sussex (Score:1)
Hmm.. I wonder if any of the Australian cricket team are playing for Essex this year?
Re:OK here's the story for all you non-AU types... (Score:1)
Your computer has been Alstoned.
HAHAHAHHAHAH (Score:1)
kerlel32.dll:8
kernel32.dll:9
kernel32.dll:11
hah hah hahh
coding is by nature a violent act - getting the machine to do what you want, how you want. A few explatives are bound to erupt from any given programmer.
Re:not exactly.. (Score:1)
While this more or less answers my question about restricting Linux -- which will probably be the first operating system to be rated MA for coarse language [...]
The US ratings system and the Aussie system are not exactly comparable. Aus-MA is *roughly* like the US-R, except that it's 15 and up (US=17/18 and up), and US-R can include harder stuff than it sounds like Aus-MA can. The US doesn't have an M rating, but it does have a PG13 rating, which seems to be a little more restrictive than an Aus-M.
The Australian R is the weird one, because -- as I point out in the article (yeah, I'm the one who wrote it) -- it's so ambiguously broad. The entire legal description of the Australian R rating for film is:
Film (other than X or RC) containing material that is unsuitable for minors.
How does that apply to web content? What is "unsuitable", and who decides? My article was really just an attempt, in a semi-humorous way, to show how ridiculous censorship laws are.
--Jamais Cascio
My home page, with links to other articles [well.com]
Re:Dont even joke. (Score:2)
Most of the people here are intelligent and have a meaningful job and are not spineless polititions trying to cover up their own lack of morals under the heat of religious nuts.
Sometimes colorful language is a form of expression and conveys meaning that would otherwise be difficult. From the engineers I have known, the words "fuck" and "shit" and anything else you can imagine usually describes something out of the ordinary. As George Carlin would say about several bad words, "they must be outrageous to be seperated from a group that large"
I might say that censorship is fucked. I'm expressing a strong viewpoint, not an act or depicting procreation in any evil or good form.
Re:The Mystical Land of Oz (Score:2)
Ha ha! That basically prevents people in Australia from studying
As usual, the pols royally fuck up anything they do. (If I was then, I would ban any discussion of that law - just to make sure) mAx
Deja vu all over again (Score:2)
There is nothing more effective in disabling the restraint I usually exercise in my use of language than fucking political morons trying to regulate what their tiny minds cannot comprehend, and thus fear.
The List of Banned Words (Score:5)
adult
alcohol
amaretto
amateur
anarchy
anus
aryan
available
babe
banging
bangle
bare
bastard
beaver
beer
bikini
binaries
blonde
bloody
bomb
bottom
bra
bud
buxom
chat
cherry
chicks
cigar
circumcise
conception
condom
destined
doom
dynamite
enema
eros
escort
explosive
fantasies
fist
flesh
fondle
free
frigid
geisha
gin
girlie
girls
glamour
gothic
grenade
gun
hack
hacker
heroine [no more female heros?]
hole
homo
incest
intercourse
jenny [???]
kill
killer
kissing
klan
klux
knights [???]
knives
ku
latex
leather
lesbian
lingerie
liquor
lover
well, you get the picture... it's f***ing outrageous.
)O(
the Gods have a sense of humor,
Re:Deja vu all over again (Score:1)
In my Intro to C class (Dammit Jim, I'm a graphic designer, not a programmer!) I tended to refer in my comments to certain parts of code being bitches to write properly, etc.
Never figured out recursive loops until halfway through the exam at which point my eyes were opened and i aced that part of the test. Good timing that.
Anyhow, I got marked down by one of the assholes^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H TA's for this. I couldn't believe it!
So I have personal experience with this. Knocked me out of my socks when I saw it on Salon.
Re:The Mystical Land of Oz (Score:1)
Re:Please Help! (Score:1)
There's a good version of it for modern times by Alara Rogers that I like, and have hanging around somewhere:
Google is really useful, let me tell you.
Re:Usenet and /. agree... (Score:1)
The two routes that the state tends to drive rebels down are to either make the burden placed on the people so great that it crosses a threshold, or to take away anything that was holding him back. A classic example: Luke is unwilling to even go to Mos Eisley with Obi-Wan, until he discovers that his aunt and uncle are dead. Then he helps bring down the Empire. Me, I'm on the threshold route myself, and while I am majorly pissed off at the government, corporations, etc. I'm not doing anything. Yet.
Anyhow, as for Civil Disobedience, there's one thing that really cheeses me off about that. A *good* practicioner of it will break the law, and willingly accept his punishment. That's what keeps it civil, people. To break the law because the law is not just, but to accept the law because the law still deserves some respect in a general sense.
OTOH you do get a receipt (Score:1)
.au? (Score:1)
rOD!
--
I should add... (Score:1)
When I read Stallman's paper ( The URL again [fsf.org]), I got the impression that when he removed the obscenities from the GNU Emacs source code, he wasn't really afraid that he'd face a quarter-million-dollar fine and five years in prison if he failed to do so.
I thought it was pretty obvious that he was more making fun of the stupidity of the law, as well as, more seriously, arguing how truly bad it was, by pointing out what anybody, even Senator Exon, must see as an absurd consequence.
I am partly responding to a couple of posts above, which seem to be responding in genuine fear to the possibility that the Linux source code would be banned in Australia. This is obviously absurd, and I got the impression that this article also was using this example to show how awful the law is, but not actually suggesting that it would happen. It's not "When we put in these filters, Linux source will be blocked," but rather "If we were to put in these filters, Linux source would be blocked, so we clearly cannot do that."
Then again, it often happens that just when I think I've become entirely disillusioned, something happens that shocks me anyway, showing that I still had some ideals left -- something that I thought was plain common sense actually turns out to be idealism. Could this be the case here? I mean, what kind of idiots have you got running things down there? Or do I not want to know?
David Gould
CDA forced RMS to censor Emacs (Score:2)
Check out Richard Stallman's response to the USA's Communications Decency Act of 1996:
Censoring My Software [fsf.org]
He found himself in the same situation. The gist is that the GNU Emacs package includes a copy of Weizenbaum's Eliza program, which has a feature to detect profane and obscene words and admonish the user to "watch your language, please". Of course, in order for this to work, the code has to contain a list of such words, which makes it obscene.
So, RMS distributed a special CDA-compliant version, whose Doctor program had that feature removed. Ironically, this means that if you swear at the new version, it will swear back at you, where the "obscene" version would not.
I suppose this would have applied to Linux source as well, but GNU Emacs is the example that he chose to focus on at the time, and it works for the Australian situation now, as well. In a way, it is an even better example than the Linux source, because in Eliza, the obscenities are actually integral parts of the program's function, and especially because of the irony of the fact that removing them actually makes it possible for the program to output obscenities.
David Gould
Re:Let's see (Score:1)
Value of Serbian Economy to US economy...
Value of Australian Economy to US economy...
The US tends to not strike out against trading partners...
...which explains why we sit on our hands while Pakistan and India (with China in the wings) with WWIII, as we'll be sucked in one way or the other...
They banned gothic ?!? (Score:2)
http://www.incubation.demon.co.uk/
... should show why.
But anyway, what about gothic architecture?
Literature? I know some Ann Radcliffe (18th
century novelist) is a bit arse, but this is
plain daft.
Chris Wareham
Nothing sed cannot cure (Score:1)
I'm a bit shocked to find out that words such as tattoo, pierced and even Pamela are on the to-be-blocked lists though. I see the relation between those words and the filthy material.. but then we could block almost every word including Bill, Monica, cigar, president, beach... and of course all biological references to certain bodyparts.
Censorship based on words only is not only wrong, but also stupid.
Re:The 2-Linux crew tour: Banned in Austral-I-A (Score:1)
Re:It makes me sick (Score:1)
I don't know, but when you figure it out let me know because our government in the US doesn't listen to a word I say--I'm not in the majority you see.
In fact... (Score:1)
Re:char *fuck; (Score:1)
Re:MS Source Code! (Score:1)
Usenet and /. agree... (Score:1)
But how many have the guts to smoke a joint or shoot heroin on the courthouse steps? Or give out free needles/food/bibles/whatever without a "permit"? Or help human beings escape from tyranny to potential freedom? Or stand in front of the tanks even when they know their chances are Slim to None?
Victimless crime laws encourage general disrespect for law, and deservedly so. The more petty and harmless the "crime", the more the public is treated like a child, the more it will start acting like one; and the greater the crackdown, the greater the numbers and extent of the backlash. But when it comes to the big issues, it takes an explicit gun in the face for some people to Just Say No...and all too many meekly, willingly cooperate in their own enslavement and destruction. As James Donald said on Cypherpunks [alt.cypherpunks], if just one "tax serf" out of every hundred said No to the IRS and backed it up when pushed to the wall, the house of cards would collapse.
This reminds me of Jamie McCarthy's [mccarthy.org] take on modern-day "civil disobedience" in (Computer Underground Digest? Politech? Can't find the article offhand). Instead of taking the risks of getting hammered with firehoses and tear gas, today's rebels try to overload web servers and scribble/urinate on the pages contained therein. How long before "civil disobedience" becomes a banned search term somewhere? What about places where people WISH that was all they had to worry about?
Having said all that, as someone else (Will Rodgers?) said, "Profanity is the crutch of the ignorant, but every once in a while you've got to talk to one of those ignorant motherfuckers."
Re:Usenet and /. agree... (Score:1)
Each situation and person are different, so we each look at our circumstances (and sometimes our principles) to make a decision. Sometimes it's best to be as public as possible, go along with the system except where it would egregiously violate other rights you have in the courtroom, and "work within the system". One can always make a case for a given situation that the utility and/or morality of remaining free to continuously "break the law" is greater than that which might be served by fighting a public battle against both the guns of the government and the tides of public opinion, depending on the offense in question and how one's chosen physical community views the "crime" -- witness the end of the movie _Homegrown_ -- the pot growers lose their stash before selling it, but the actions of the crowd of bystanders save them from being apprehended as they are "absorbed into" the crowd. Very nice, effectively shot scene; on the other hand, the average geek who doesn't talk much to his neighbors would have few friends to help him out if he's accused of pirating/warez/viruses/etc. Also, some people may not care about how their freedom affects the rest of the world in any positive way -- all they want is the negative, to be left alone and return the courtesy -- but the impulses of charity and cooperation are just as strong, and actually burn brighter when not forced upon us.
I do think that public resistance is more often than not both more effective and more appropriate, but I wouldn't begrudge anyone else to choose differently as long as they were harming none through their actions. "Juris precepta sunt haec: honeste vivere, alterum non laedere, suum cuique." (These are the precepts of Law: To live honorably, to hurt no one, to render everyone their due.) It also helps that if done properly, legal battle can have a very effective cost-benefit ratio; the downside is that generally it only makes a difference for the specific individual in that case, since most really juicy cases get thrown out one way or another before advancing high enough to set any real precedent of substance for the populace at large.
But then again, there really isn't one person in a hundred that really wants to be free. Anarchy and chaos without "the right laws"? Poppycock. Just more respect for law, and more lawful behavior... all it takes is reversing the trends of the "law enforcement growth industry" (more laws, more laws, until everyone's a criminal).
No typesetting languages? (Score:1)
This would be funny if it wasn't so incredibly stupid.
Linux not on web servers (Score:1)
The article states that the new law will apply content served by web servers, or this yet another case of people assuming that "web" and "internet" are synonymous?
Re:My feeling is... (Score:1)
>someone smart enough to kernel-hack has such a small vocabulary.
At my job for a now-defunct telephony equipment vendor, one of the engineers showed me some source code with ``unprofessional" comments in it. In a nutshell, one of the programmers had used potty-language in the opening comments to vent frustration about some aspect of the project.
And a friend of mine, who writes Cobal for a living, once told me a tale or two about the comments he found in the code he had to maintain.
And then there was some suspicion that one reason it took Netscape so long to release the source code to their browser was that they had to grep for naughty words in the comments. Anyone want to bet that DOS/Windows/Windows NT is entirely free of said comments?
When's it's 3:00am after an 18- or 20-hour shift, & a programmer has spent half of that banging your head against a wall, I sincerely doubt he (or she) will mince his/her words in the documentation. Just be glad he or she has commented the difficult spots!
Geoff
Re:Ooh, I'm banned! (Score:2)
Meanwhile, I am an amateur musician. The cables running around my keyboards and synths look like anarchy itself. I don't play that much anymore. We have a friend living with us who has a babe of 10 months who just loves banging on things. She crawls around in her bare feet and likes watching leave it to beaver.
I'm afraid I have a bit of a beer belly, so I don't wear the bikini style swimsuits I did in high school. I guess that's what happens when you sit around compiling source code into binaries instead of throwing a long bomb on the football field. Oh well, I haven't hit bottom yet, while my wife is no blonde bombshell, she's pretty good looking.
My bud and I were chatting the other day about how he should get one of those bra things for the front of his cherry red corvette. Then his twin girls came out to show us pictures of the the baby chicks they had hatched at school.
I'm kinda glad I don't live in Oz -- I'd never be able to put out the San Francisco Free List [sinasohn.com].
Re:The List of Banned Words (Score:2)
Unless the government bans foreign search engines, the filter list is not a problem. Sites will be banned based on ratings by the ABA (i think). Also, AFIK the legislation doesn't mention filter lists anywhere.
Of course having said that, We're still fucked hdown here. (of course the definition of ISP in the legislation is one that supplies content to the PUBLIC. Setup a private ISP and you shouldn't have filtering problems. I don't think the Legislation mentions filtering on the backbone...
Please Help! (Score:1)
We'll need plenty of public proxy servers to get around this law and prove to these dickless people that you can't censor the net.
You'll be doing yourself a favour too if you help. Think what would happen if censorship in Australia actually worked: it'd become a precedent for other countries to follow suit, and before long you may find yourself also under censorship.
This is much bigger than just Australia!
Re:Censor themselves?? (Score:1)
Needless to say, the site was blocked by nearly all of the programs.
Re:Linux not on web servers (Score:1)
Re:not exactly.. (Score:1)
Then perhaps some X rated JPGs need to be encoded in the Linux source so it IS deemed offensive.
As I see it, Linux is a big economic benefit to Australia right now. Causing Linux to be illegal in Australia would slap some idiot legislators upside the head with the realities of their stupidity.
Re:aarnet is not telstra! (Score:1)
A state ISP and a "supposedly not state" academic network. All eastern europe countries used to be like that
I will not comment on how did this influence their Internet development
Shhhhh... They may be listening (Score:2)
-josh
Re:My feeling is... (Score:1)
Use of vulgarities is not an indication of a small vocabulary. It is use of expressive words. Nothing more, nothing less. You obviously don't know enough people with large word lists.
tattoo is filtered? (Score:1)
Re:...and names such as "Pamela" (Score:2)
Re:My feeling is... (Score:2)
CONFIG_I_AM_A_BROKEN_BSD_WEENOR (Score:1)
-Rich
What's more important to you? (Score:2)
"Blasphemy!" and "That's censorship!" you may say. But what's more important to you? To get source code out into more hands, or your right to cuss? I like cussing too, but one day when your kids ask you what you did when you were young, do you want to tell them that you got source code out into the hands of programmers worldwide, or that you fought for your rights to put cusswords in source code?
Re:The List of Banned Words (Score:1)
Hell, I thought "fucked" *WAS* a valid engineering term! Like, "This unit is totally fucked."
But there's no excuse for using bad language. Mommy Govt will wash you widdle mouf out with soap, kiddies...
Re:Netscape Anyone? (Score:1)
quiet lately - all their programmers, looking through the source of Win95 for evidence for their lawsuit have died laughing.
Re: Well, only 15 years overdue (Score:1)
Re:The List of Banned Words (Score:1)
Eric
More banned parts of linux (Score:1)
Can still FTP source - doesn't help democracy (Score:1)
I believe our politicians think the Web and the Internet are the same thing so although Slashdot might be blacklisted we should still be able to FTP or email kernel sources.
I don't think there will be many people left to download linux after the cultural revolution. Without freedom of speech that is where we are headed.
Still if we had a true democracy, shit like this wouldn't have passed into law in the first place.
Re:.au? (Score:1)
---
Ilmari
Remove the capital letters from the e-mail-address
Deja vu (Score:1)
Imagine if the inclusion of the w*rd fuck were a reason for banning something in the eyes of these bastions of democracy. We'd see e-texts of Lady Chatterly's Lover being banned while the print version is readily available. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to think of myriad other examples of this sort of asininity (if that's a word).
Re:jd (Score:1)
Just my 2 cents. (Give or take a penny.)
Rev. Lewellyn
Re:My personal favorite... (Score:1)
Damn, just wasted another 2 cents that I don't have...
Rev. Lewellyn
BTW, my favorite line is:
arch/mips/kernel/irixioctl.c: * irixioctl.c: A fucking mess...
not exactly.. (Score:4)
From what I've read over here in Aus the legislation isn't exactly well put together. An ISP only has to make a "reasonable effort" to block a site when requested. "reasonable effort" is undefined I believe.
Also, for a site to be blocked/taken down (depending if it's overseas or australian), the Australian Broadcasting Authority has to receive a few complaints about the content on a site. It will then ask the Classification Board to give the site a classification - same as used for films. If the site is given R (18+), then some form of adult verification must be installed.. again, undefined. If the site is rated X, or RC (banned), then the site is to be taken down if Australian, or blocked if overseas.
It's fairly obvious that this is unworkable, and I think it will die fairly quickly. All you'd need to do is send the output of an Altavista search on "free XXX" to the ABA and claim it offends you, and the ABA now has a few years of work ahead of them. I don't exactly think they'll appreciate it either..
The filter software mentioned in the article is what was presented to govt to show them that it was all possible.. No one actually has to use that software afaik.
Oh and I don't think the linux sources are in much danger. The ABA is pretty tolerant of swearing in film and tv in Australia - much more than in the US. It would take a fair bit of language alone to get given an R rating here
This Salon article [salonmagazine.com] has a bit more info..
Glyn.
Re:Welcome to our hell :| (Score:2)
> This whole bill was smuggled though while there > was a tax debate.
A similar ploy was recently adopted by the European Union to enable people accused to pan-European fraud to be arrested and taken to any other member country. The law was created in a mainland country and totally undermines one the basic tenants of British (and virtually any other country who's judicial system is based on it) common law - Habius Corpus (badly spelling attack).
What this means is that somebody can be arrested in Britain or Ireland can face illegal imprisonment, be succeptible to "guilty until proved innocent".
How did they do it? They hid the documentation amongst a load of boring Budget proposal, and all the British MEPs who no doubt had a big fat lunch on expenses to go to, just signed it away.
Ah... And we pay for these fuckwits.
Mark.
Anything can be offensive to eye of the beholder (Score:1)
i remember looking for 'swearwords' in the dictionary at school when i was eight.. should the school be closed down for allowing me to see this...
no!
because I found out that all the words had meanings (duh) which have no relevance to slang.. eg bloody etc. perhaps something might be refering to the act of intercourse (oh no.. the censor police are coming) (not that i'd see any use in source code).
I feel if they're not going to ban every word the oxford dictionary. they shouldn't ban any at all.
cos how about if i find the word 'cup' offensive will they go about banning that too?
even tho this article is about Ozzie, all[?] countries have their own censorship laws and they are getting worse...
its sad, when we like to call outselves 'free' we have so many restrictions
How true... (Score:1)
Speaking of proper engineering terms... (Score:2)
Besides, you are complaining that kernel hackers have small vocabulary -- so you want to restrict it further?
Kaa
Isn't that great relief to all of us! (Score:2)
Kaa
Maybe not exactly, but think of lawsuits (Score:3)
This is similar to making a hard car speed limit of 20 mph. Sure, it's unenforceable and will not work, but now the police will have full justification to stop anyone whom they did not like (as in "he didn't look at us with proper respect"). Pissed at an Aussie ISP or just think that sex for pleasure should be banned? Call the police and complain that you searched for "Jenny" and found Jennycam. Why wasn't it blocked? Repeat at will and soon there would be great incentive for the ISPs to block everything but disney.com.
Kaa
Re:My personal favorite... (Score:2)
/* Only Sun can take such nice parts and fuck up the programming interface like this. Good job guys...
* These chips are basically fucked by design, and getting this driver
* to work on every motherboard design that uses this screwed chip seems
* bloody well impossible. However, we're still trying.
* within a buffer or sub-buffer should not upset us at all no matter
* how bad the target and/or ESP fucks things up.
*/
* data transfers if we try to flush the fifo now.
* irixioctl.c: A fucking mess...
/* Fuck me gently with a chainsaw... */
* it (conveniently) fails to mention any of these in the
* translations property.
English is not my 1st language, but AFAIK these are common expressions of frustration
Too Much Free Time (Score:2)
I mean -- I've been bored before, but I would usually read a book or something.
Some would say... (Score:2)
(Ok, ok, it's not the
Braindead Filter (Score:2)
So if my name happens to be Pamela, I'm going to find my content banned in Australia? If I mention that my office environment is "total anarchy", the message will be silently dropped? This is why I find net censorship abhorant. This is as braindead as when an early version of the CDA tried to ban the word breast.
If the name Pamela is in the filter, I vote we also put in the names of a few Australian government officials that I find offensive.
Thad
aarnet is not telstra! (Score:2)
aarnet [the australian academic research network] is a high-speed network linking the universities in australia together. since about two years ago they switched to buying their bandwidth from Cable & Wiress Optus [2nd biggest telco in australia].
C&W Optus have their own very fat pipes out of australia. Since getting into the wholesale bandwidth game you'll find C&W Optus actually have a pretty substantial market share [they're Ozemail's upline provider for one].
So hey, relax. And stop looking at all that
OK here's the story for all you non-AU types... (Score:2)
Fuck is so an engineering term (Score:2)