Slippery Slope 101: this is what happens in a country with voluntary Internet filtering

If this is what happens in a country with voluntary ISP-level Internet filtering, (and where government is not actively participating in blanket domestic Internet censorship) what on earth can we expect from our own increasingly rabid Rudd Labor Government?

Below is the transcript of a message displayed when attempting to access a COP15 spoof site which had been taken down at the request of the Canadian Government:

Website suspended

Serverloft blocked the IP-range for this server because of the content of the client's website and would only unblock the IP-range if we suspended the website. The website was used in a spoof by The Yes Men.

Serverloft blocked the IP-range without a warrant and without calling us and thus affecting servers hosting 4500 of our customers' websites until we ourselves discovered the problem, and convinced Serverloft to unblock. Serverloft did send us an email explaining that they would not unblock the IP-range until the websites were taken offline. The email was sent 5 minutes after they cut of the access to the mail server, so we only received the email after the 4500 websites were back online.

Convincing Serverloft that their systems had blocked access on purpose was hard because Serverloft frontline support claimed that all their systems were working fine and they therefore assumed that the problem was a configuration problem on our server. They refused to help troubleshooting the issue.

Serverloft could simply have called us and asked us to deal with the situation. We would then have asked the Canadians for a warrant. If the Canadians had shown us a warrant we would have taken down the site immediately. As others have pointed out the Canadians could probably just have gone through CIRA and have the domain suspended, which would not have affected any of the other 4500 websites.

As we cannot go through every single page that our customers put on their websites we anticipate a similar situation may arise again. We have therefore asked Serverloft to revise their procedures so we at least would get a phone call before they cut our connection. They have so far refused to do so. They have answered:

your net was blocked because of hosting phishing sites. I've attached the information, we have, below our signature. I'm sorry, but we cant call every costumer for abuse. In some cases we've to respond very fast and have to block the net or server.

While I appreciate Serverloft respond fast, it is no good if the collateral damage is more than 1000 times as big. Had they called I am sure we would have found an arrangement that would satisfy both of us.

For more information: contact Ole Tange ole@tange.dk

The HuffingtonPost on the story

Google cache of Environment Canada spoof site.

The Yes Men post on website takedown.

Snapshot found at aviary.com

The Australian Christian Lobby believes in censorship, but is perhaps a trifle sceptical about man-made climate change

Every time I turn around in cyberspace it seems that the Australian Christian Censorship Lobby is lurking behind the next Google search result concerning the Rudd Government's plan to impose blanket censorship on the Internet as seen in Oz.
If the ACL is for excising all the naughty bits from television, radio, print, film and now the Internetz, what is it actually against?
To find out I went to its inaugural edition of Viewpoint online magazine which purports to give perspectives on social policy (this is a second ACL magazine as it also launched Debate in 2007) and, first cab off the rank was a six-page article by that prominent climate change denialist Bob Carter which tells all good believers that anthropomorphic climate change is bunk and a nasty national emission trading scheme is unnecessary.
It follows that with a piece on the problems with climate change denialism just to balance things out a bit and then both opposing authors battle in out in reply articles, as though there really was a genuine international debate about whether man-made climate change exists.
The magazine goes on to give house room to articles about how religious freedoms are at risk and then a final article on censorship which it rather slyly refers to as "classification standards".

Of course it comes as no surprise that more censorship is recommended. It seems that Australia's already strict standards need to be strengthened to save our souls from vile corruption.
ACl media releases show that this lobby group is also opposed to same-sex marriage, the supposed ease with which women can obtain abortions, any formal charter of human rights, ABC Broadcasting self-regulation, GetUp advertising, Bill Henson, the Sex Party, The Greens social policies, lesbian parents, euthanasia, and the powers of High Court judges.

I've a sneaking suspicion that the ACL is really only in favour of the 'rights' of Christians and feels the rest of Australia is composed of morally bankrupt, undeserving morons.

Graphic from Google Images

Animalia......(6)

Nicole and Warren Lloyd took this snap at their Waterview Heights home, then passed it on the The Daily Examiner 30 December 2009. It's definitely uncommon for a spider to have a young snake over for a festive season bite. The Redback Spider's unusual size can be compared with the Eastern Small-eyed Snake's approximately 200 millimetre length.

I can almost hear the theme music to Arachnophobia playing in the background.

Australia Says No!

From No Clean Feed