Tuesday, November 02, 2010

Tangled-up tubes!

You know those people who write gun legislation to eliminate the scourge of drive-by bayonetings and ban the shoulder thing that goes up?

Well, they're at least that savvy about this great big series of internet tubes, too. But do they let that stop them from legislatin'? Heck, no!


Incumbents Delenda Est.


(H/T to War On Guns.)

10 comments:

Fuzzy Curmudgeon said...

Too stupid...and trivially easy to circumvent.

These people don't think. Thank goodness.

Old NFO said...

But it's a law... so they 'think' people will obey it... OR this is a step in the criminalization of average people to the point that everyone becomes a criminal for 'some' violation of some law...

Ferret said...

Like so many other of the "essential tools necessary for law enforcement to combat (BLANK)", this will easily and promptly be abused much in the same way as the "no-fly" list has been.

No one knows who is on the list, access to the list is forbidden to all save a chosen few, and getting on the list is a one-way trip. No one comes off.

This legislation is easily recognizable as the proverbial camel's nose under the tent - easily expanded over time to encompass other offensive sites such as child pornography, news sites beyond the mainstream media, and bloggers' sites whose ideology runs counter to that of the current regime ruling us.

The fact of the matter is, I'm surprised they're trying to sell this as protecting against piracy instead of waving the child porn flag again. After all, that's what got the alt.binaries newsgroups all but shut down entirely.

NotClauswitz said...

Whatdfw? Idjidts!

word: nobness - they need the "k".

Noah D said...

This legislation is easily recognizable as the proverbial camel's nose under the tent - easily expanded over time to encompass other offensive sites such as child pornography, news sites beyond the mainstream media, and bloggers' sites whose ideology runs counter to that of the current regime ruling us.

Uh...

Steve Skubinna said...

Oh yeah, well if the Internet is some sort of "right," then why isn't it in the Consti-wossname-thingy? Huh?

John A said...

So, how is the Australian approach working? There is supposed to be a "whitelist" - everything is [supposedly] blocked until registered (fees!). Somehow, I do not think many news sites or bloggers are rushing to sign up.

TimP said...

John A, that's not how the Australian filter is going to work. I uses a blacklist similar to this setup. Though I think the point where they block it is a bit different; technical details are a bit scarce. Also it hasn't actually been implemented yet, and hopefully never will be.

The interesting thing is that it is already a failure. The blacklist of child pornography sites has [probably*] already been leaked, so any one who actually wants child porn has easy access to a list of web sites provided to them free of charge by the Australian government, and using a proxy to get round the filter will be trivially easy.

* There is some debate as to whether it's the real list from the government, but it is a list of lots of child porn sites. Of course the only reason to believe it' s not the official list is the government denying that it's the official list.

Justthisguy said...

This will really bother me if they block asstr.org, the absolutely best site for free nasty text when doing single-handed web browsing

John A said...

Tim P, thanks for the info - hope it is indeed consigned to the memory hole.