ALL ISP-level filtering is opt out. Methods to follow
Posted by Aaron in Filter Circumvention, Internet censorship on 29 April, 2009
The Australian government’s plan to censor the internet is now opt-out. That’s right. Well, it’s still mandatory for ISPs to implement for all customers (as far as I know. Conroy might change his mind. Again) but since bypassing it will be trivial, as I will discuss in future posts, it is effectively opt-out for anyone who doesn’t want it.
I will rank the difficulty of these bypass methods as easy, moderate, or technical. Easy methods will be easy for even an Internet newbie who doesn’t know a URL from a URI. Moderate should be able to be done with anyone who knows how to install software on their PC. Technical-level methods will require knowledge of unix and windows command lines and remote access to a server in a non-filtered country.
Now I know that a mandatory blacklist is pointless
Posted by Aaron in Internet censorship, Ranting, at stupidity, at the Australian Government on 14 April, 2009
- The blacklist will contain “almost exclusively RC material”.
- RC material (excluding “child abuse material”) is legal to possess and view within Australia, in addition anything classified is definitely legal to view and possess.
- Child pornography websites rarely exist for more than a couple of weeks.
- The filter is/will be trivial to bypass.
- Bypassing the filter will not be illegal.
These are all facts. Given that adding sites to the blacklist can take months, it will be ineffective at stopping access to the illegal content (child abuse material). In addition, access to any other blacklisted content is not illegal and can be done easily.
The government knows all this, but is pressing ahead nevertheless. I must wonder: Is there something else that the government wishes to do with this filter?
The only thing I can conclude is that the government actually wants scope creep to occur, but won’t say so in public. It wants to silence its political opponents. It wants to stop access to all pornography. It wants to stop so-called “copyright theft” (even though internet filters cannot hope to achieve this). If it didn’t want to do this, it would have no reason to keep the blacklist secret. The blacklist contains “the worst of the worst” no sane person would want to access stuff on it if the blacklist was only CP.
Above all the government wants to be seen to be “doing something” for all the lobby groups screaming out pleas like “won’t somebody think of the children?”
What can we do about mandatory Internet filtering?
Posted by Aaron in Internet censorship on 11 April, 2009
This blog post raises a valid point: “if we don’t start offering an alternative workable solution as part of our strategy, we will ultimately fail.”
So what is a workable solution? Education isn’t a solution in itself. The problem is that no good technological solution exists. Accessing the kind of material that is supposed to be on the mandatory blacklist is illegal anyway, so there are disincentives there already.
As Mark Newton stated on Insight: “Remove the mandatory, and we can all go home”. It’s not the idea of ISP-level filtering we’re against, it’s the mandatory part.
Reasons we’re against it include:
- The power it places in the hands of an unaccountable, secret organisation to choose what is and what isn’t apropriate for all Australians to view.
- The mandatory blacklist will be ineffective at achieving its stated goals (ie. blocking access to RC and above content)
- A static blacklist cannot hope to address the dynamic nature of the world wide web.
- The people who are pushing the filter don’t fully understand the possible implications of what they are asking for (Censorship has no friends)
- The technical ability of censorware will always lag behind internet technology by a significant margin, and the margin will grow as the Internet moves towards new technologies.
These are all arguments against mandatory filtering, but what solution can we offer in its place? Not a technological one, we know there’s no technological solution. More funding to the AFP would be nice, but that wouldn’t have a very obivous or immediate affect and the Government wants to be seen to be doing something. So the question is: Does a workable solution to the “problem” exist?
Why the iiNet case scares me and why movie and music publishers need to evolve to survive
Posted by Aaron in Random ramblings on 9 April, 2009
It scares me because iiNet have done nothing wrong, despite claims by the AFACT that they “allowed distribution of copyrighted material”. iiNet cannot, by law, monitor what it’s users do with their connections without a court order. The AFACT seem to be assuming that because they believe a user is downloading movies or music via bittorrent, iiNet should know too. After all, they are the ones providing the internet connection. However, conclusive proof needs to be given, and unless iiNet monitors its user’s connections, it cannot confirm or deny any claims by AFACT. So iiNet rightly forwarded the allegations to the police. The AFACT, however, do not like this. They want iiNet to disconnect infringing users. But iiNet does not want to lose customers on a baseless accusation, and they cannot comfirm the AFACT’s claims without breaking the law. How can anyone expect them to act any differently?
The number one reason it scares me, however, is if iiNet loses the case it could mean that ISPs will be forced to disconnect users if they are accused of downloading copyrighted material, regardless of whether they have or not. I don’t want my internet disconnected just because I connected to a torrent tracker to download perfectly legal data, for example: linux distributions, movies for which copyright has expired, etc.
The AFACT shows just how ignorant they are about how the internet works. If they block one medium of distribution, many more will arise from the ashes; look what happened with Napster: it was taken down, but the came Kazaa, and Limewire and the gnutella network, and bittorrent, and so on. The industry needs to adapt to the Internet age if it is to maintain the profits it has supposedly been losing to piracy. It is its unwillingness to let go of past business models that has got it into its present mess.
It looks like ACMA really do have no idea about the Internet
Posted by Aaron in Internet censorship on 26 March, 2009
From this, it looks like ACMA haven’t actually looked into circumvention techniques for bypassing ISP-level filtering. They ignore VPNs and HTTP/SOCKS proxies (which are ineffective against PC-level filters) not to mention SSH tunnels or tor (also ineffective against PC-level filters) nor any other kind of tunneling protocol…
So, people with servers in the US, you stand to gain a great deal of money if you were to maybe sell access to a VPN or proxy (web, SOCKS or HTTP) that you have set up on your server…
After all, the Streisand effect will definitely take much greater hold after the sites on the blacklist are actually blocked
Copyright… Theft?
Posted by Aaron in Copyright, Random ramblings on 26 March, 2009
How can you steal copyright? This makes no sense whatsoever. I could walk into a shop and steal a DVD (copyrighted material) but the penalties I would face would have nothing to do with whether or not the content on the DVD was copyrighted. Conversely, downloading copyrighted material from the internet is not theft, because i am simply making a copy of data that exists elsewhere. This is copyright infringement. They are 2 very different things. So when I see a name like AFACT (Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft) I believe that it is simply an attempt to confuse the issue. I’m certainly confused…
Conroy’s finally said something…
Posted by Aaron in Internet censorship on 25 March, 2009
Conroy seems to be changing tack a little :No more accusations about opponents’ supporting CP.
But as my posts on whirlpool have indicated, he is digging himself into a hole. I still have several arguments against the filter:
- The list does contains political content and could be used to limit free speech
- The filter will have an impact on general internet performance
- The government cannot achieve its goals with a filter
Now Conroy has come out and publicy lied about the political content on the list: “It is completely untrue that the leaked blacklist contains political content. This is a list which contains sites that promote incest, rape, child pornography and child abuse.”
Nuh-uh, Conroy. Sites expressing any view on euthenasia or abortion are political in nature and there are sites expressing political views about both on the blacklist. The list absolutely contains political content.
I won’t post links to either the sites I’m talking about or the blacklist, as I don’t want this site to be added too.
However, if you’re curious I’ll give you a hint, if you’re curious, crikey has a recent article about a euthenasia site on the blacklist and wikileaks hosts the leaked ACMA blacklist. That should be enough for an internet-savvy person to verify my information.
And now for something completely different… a non-rant post O_O
Posted by Aaron in PC hardware on 13 March, 2009
My desktop PC’s case is a Thermaltake Xaser VI MX which, while it looks pretty and is nice to work with, does not have the quietest fans. The most recent Atomic magazine has woken me up to the multitude of cheap fan controllers, and because more (preferably LED-lighted) cooling fans would relatively inexpensive (and hassle and power-tool-free) way to add more orsm to my case. This will also inevitably add noise as the vibrations are tranferred to the case (rubber mounts are an option but do not completely eliminate noise and are more money to spend). In addition, I don’t really need my hard disks running below room temperature except on hot days (like the ridiculous 45+ degree days we’ve had this summer) so a fan-controller could be a good addition.
EPIC RAGING RANT TIEM! THIS IS FUCKING RETARDED!!!
Posted by Aaron in Internet censorship, Ranting, at stupidity, at the Australian Government on 13 March, 2009
In quick succession, there are 2 more news articles that further reduce my faith in *any* australian government.
This and this are what I am talking about.
Now, I’m NOT FUCKING SURE HOW HARD THIS IS TO UNDERSTAND CONROY. HOW IS THIS A SCARE CAMPAIGN?
The filter
- Has no judicial oversight or appeal
- The blacklist is maintained by an unaccountable government-controlled body?
- You cannot opt-out of this mandatory filter
THESE ARE FACTS! I DO NOT LIKE THESE FACTS. I AM NOT TRYING TO SCARE ANYBODY, JUST TELL THE TRUTH BEHIND YOUR AND CHAIRMAN RUDD’S LITTLE MORAL CRUSADE AGAINST THE INTERNET.
Sorry Conroy Conjob, I can’t have any faith in you filter while you continue to ignore these 3 very valid facts.
It doesn’t help that while you claim that the xFOADx’s anti-abortion page submission was not about political speech, you can’t argue that ACMA’s takedown request wasn’t. There is NO FUCKING REASON TO TAKE DOWN A LINK, BECAUSE IF YOUR FILTER WORKS, PEOPLE WON’T BE ABLE TO GET TO THE PAGE ANYWAY, RIGHT? OH, RIGHT… YOU KNOW THAT THE FILTER WON’T WORK…
I just realised how stupid some people are…
Posted by Aaron in Internet censorship, Ranting, at stupidity, at the Australian Government on 13 March, 2009
During a energy-drink fueled all-nighter I had a great idea for a blog post. But I forgot what I was going to write. Here is what I remember: The law is does NOT stop people breaking the law. It seems obvious, but some people don’t seem to realise it (I’m looking at you Clive Hamilton, Conjob, Jim Wallace and Michael Atkinson). Just because there’s a law about something does *not* mean that people CAN’T break it. The point of laws is not to prevent people breaking them. That is the point of criminal courts. The laws themselves are not meant to stop people breaking them. If that was the case, we wouldn’t need the courts for criminal trials. So, making a law like this: “Video Games (that would be) rated R18+ cannot be sold in Australia” or “ISPs must prevent their customers accessing illegal/unwanted content” MISS THE ENTIRE POINT OF HAVING LAWS. Yes, laws can be broken, but that is the responsibility of the one who breaks them and there are consequences for it. THAT is the point of laws.