Banned hyperlinks could cost you $11,000 a day

Banned hyperlinks could cost you $11,000 a day

www.smh.com.au

Banned hyperlinks could cost you $11,000 a day

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Asher Moses
March 17, 2009 - 11:48AM
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The Australian communications regulator says it will fine people who hyperlink to sites on its blacklist, which has been further expanded to include several pages on the anonymous whistleblower site Wikileaks.

Wikileaks was added to the blacklist for publishing a leaked document containing Denmark's list of banned websites.

The move by the Australian Communications and Media Authority comes after it threatened the host of online broadband discussion forum Whirlpool last week with a $11,000-a-day fine over a link published in its forum to another page blacklisted by ACMA - an anti-abortion website.

(visit the link for the full news article)



Mod Edit: No Quote/Plagiarism – Please Review This Link.


[edit on 17-3-2009 by mrwupy]

This really shows the extent of censorship out there today in so called free countries I really cant understand why wikileaks is targeted here.

Has any members heard of this site and what it stands for before.

Wikileaks?

I will not hyperlink it as I dont know if it is legal or not here.

$ 11,000 dollar fine will keep many in the dark.

is this the start of things to come with censorship?

please flag this for fellow members to comment on, as we must fight further senseless censorship.
Peace& health
SM

www.smh.com.au
(visit the link for the full news article)

[edit on 17-3-2009 by smokingman2006]

Will everyone be getting a list of websites that are off limits? Or will everyone just start receiving warnings and fines after the fact?

It amazes me that it's gotten this far, I haven't kept up with Austrailian censorship nazis lately but, jeez. What the heck is going on down there?

Originally posted by smokingman2006

This really shows the extent of censorship out there today in so called free countries I really cant understand why wikileaks is targeted here.

Has any members heard of this site and what it stands for before.

Wikileaks?

Yes, I'm familiar with the site. It's been going a few years now and has been pivotal in a lot of big stories.

Chilling Effects is a similar(ish) archive or depository.

These kinds of places are targeted because censorship really only seems like censorship if you're aware of the censoring itself. If you don't know it's happened, then you're not aware or reminded of the censoring; almost like 'out of sight, out of mind'. Censors like to cover their tracks as much as they enforce censorship. Remove evidence of censorship in the first place and you're living in a 'Free World'.

It's sites like Wikileaks, Chilling Effects et al that stop the tracks being covered &c.

Unbelievable!
What right do they have, to tell people what they can and cant look at?
Unless its totally illegal, who tells them they can do this?
Whirlpool, unbelievable.
$11000 a day?
Someone needs to take up a class action against the ACMA.
Im sick of this crap honestly.
So what about the Simpson's cartoon child porn thing?
I was searching for normal Simpson's pics the other day, and Google is showing results of that.
Apparently just displayed on the Google search, im breaking the law?
But how can I determine what will come up in a search?

Hmm, well I live in the US., but if I lived there you know, I don't even make that much a day. I don't even make that much in a month. Guess you can't take money from me I ain't got. Might as well hyperlink away then. Come get me gov. Put me in jail and give me free hot meals and a cot to sleep in if you want. I didn't have anything better to do anyway.

Whoever this communications regulator is. A few thousand or hundreds of thousands of people should just get together and go into that guys office or building and tear that place completely apart and let the gov know that they won't be needing anyone to fill that position anymore or ever again. If you won't fight your gov on this, you won't fight them on anything. Might as well just go back to sleep.


[edit on 17-3-2009 by tinfoilman]

Wikileaks is what all journalism SHOULD be doing, and occasionally does when they want to look like they still function as the fifth estate.

Regulation should not be the same thing as being like the Great Electronic Wall of China. When and if it starts to look like it, it is time for the populace to slap some policitian pee-pees.

This Australian communications regulator needs to be JAILED.

The last hope we have for true freedom is INTERNET.

Those traitors who serve wishes of the elite to control everything,
including the net, need to placed in JAIL for treason.

This is cray. I can't believe people are going along with this. Why aren't there protests and strikes over this? Why aren't ISP's boycotting the government services in protest of this?

If you voted for Rudd and internet censorship, shame on you.

Do they then ban links to other websites, in other countries that link to these evil sites? Do they outlaw Google searches, because they might turn up a verboten link? How do they enforce this without closing off Australia? Why aren't government buildings collapsing? Oh, right, they tried that in the US, and it didn't work out so good...

nenothtu out

HA!
Please, let them try and fine people.
It won't go through. People will go berserk.
I think a lot of us have forgotten that we hold the power.
We can go to any g'd website we want to.

any one know a way to spread text's around the internet really fast? would be awesome if we could start mass linking these sites in mockery of these bull* laws

I'm in Australia.
If there's one thing I hate about it here ( and i'm not sure how it compares with other countries really ), is that theres too much political correctness, trying not to offend people, and censorship here. It can get stupid at times.
Normally it's not too noticeable at all and it's not too bad, but sometimes we are prone to stupidity on this topic.

Sometimes the less a country has to worry about, the more it will get fussed up over small matters.

Actually it may sound strange but I think it may come down to this -
Australians can get too worked up over sensitive matters, so the politicians take extra care as to not offend anyone. Hence the at times stupid and over the top censorship.

That's just my take on it anyway.

reply to post by T0by


This has nothing to do with political correctness and everything to do with censorship. Wikileaks is a place for documents to be put that the public should be able to see.

Great OP, S&F!

The only good censors are dead censors. If Aussies had any sack they'd decapitate the censors and put it up on YouTube or maybe just trigger a few earthquakes as a warning.

[edit on 18-3-2009 by verylowfrequency]

Nice post OP. That is off the wall. I can't believe it's come to that?

Originally posted by Scarcer
any one know a way to spread text's around the internet really fast? would be awesome if we could start mass linking these sites in mockery of these bull* laws

Hmmm now that I think about it, a "hyperlink" is something you click on and is underlined and written in blue, but you don't have to use a "hyperlink" to give someone a web address. You can just write it out like plain text. www.yahoo.com.... Plain text and hyperlink aren't the same thing. The plain text has to be copy and pasted in the address bar. Now, some sites auto convert plain text URLs into hyperlinks. I think ATS does this so my plain text posing there might get turned into a hyperlink anyway. so you might have to put something like HT W3 yahoo dot com. There, that's not a hyper link, but it still gets the information across.

Also, if you get a redirect link from tinyurl.com or sites like it, then it is not a link to the banned site. It's a link to tinyurl and then tinyurl may or may not direct you to some other more desirable location. That's really up to tinyurl now isn't it? lol.

Now, if they start to go after things like that then perhaps some open source hackers/coders could develop something that didn't use hyperlinks, but it's not that far yet. For example, you could just compile a list of all the banned URLs and put them in a file and put that file out on Bittorrent or simply just email it to your friends if you want.

Anyway, there's way to get around it, but you shouldn't have to get around it in the first place. Censorship like this is ridiculous and anybody that would even try it is just pure evil in my opinion.

Untill ACMA decide to publish a list of sites that I'm not allowed to visit with an explanantion as to WHY , then they can go jump.

10,000 sites is a lot and they will have to disclose them sooner or later.

You can't fine people for going to a site when they have no idea that it is prohibited....if you have problems you just presume it is a virus that's making it stuff up....

How many people are wasting time and money on anti-virus software, thinking they have a comp problem, when it's just prohibited sites that you are trying to access and you don't know??

ACMA site....somewhere to vent your spleen.

www.acma.gov.au...

Edit: Reason for edit....problem fixed.


[edit on 18-3-2009 by Flighty]

[edit on 18-3-2009 by Flighty]

From OZ and it works for me.

Anyway, this whole censorship thing is bad news and it WILL get passed because the general public DO NOT know about it. Which is great for the Government.

reply to post by Nventual


Okay, will go and find out what the prob is on my end.

The reason I put the link up was for anyone from Oz to send off an email and COMPLAIN LOUDLY or we just might as well roll over and take it where the sun don't shine..