"Clean Feed" Censorship, Gaming Updates (and theory), Other News

[tcpip]

Communications Minister, Senator Stephen Conroy, is embarking on a mad venture to spend tens of millions of dollars to cripple Australian Internet speed and increase consumer costs through conducting deep packet inspection to filter out "objectionable material" from Australian homes. The filter will be mandatory; there is no opt-out; in other words, the State will determine what adults are allowed to see or read - I'm sure we feel a lot safer now. Electronic Frontiers Australia have put together an informative website and action plan. Parody and ridicule is a fair option in these circumstances. I have written a fairly blunt (and open) letter on the subject to the Senator.

Michael ran another excellent session of Middle Earth Role Playing on Friday night. On Sunday after I followed up with the final session of Dyksund Caverns for RuneQuest's Shadows on the Borderland (I must write a more comprehensive review), which involved negotiations with mad ghosts (with one possessing a PC), discovering that they trapped in the caverns and their supply team had been eaten by ogres, finding a magic crystal that was powering a dormant demigod, launching an attack on a homestead inhabited by said ogres and ogre children (nasty little buggers; rather like the Children of the Corn) and giving chase to a number who escaped into the wilderness (for future plot developments - bwahahaha!). A good roleplaying session involves all the players throughout the session, provides both motivations and conflict (internal and external) for all the characters and occurs within a plausible (albeit often exotic) setting with a consistent sense of narrative flow. Most of my gaming sessions manage to do this reasonable well; this one however worked extremely well. I have also been working an article "Improving Mongoose's RuneQuest" for The Grimoire, which is initially inspired by a thread I started on rpg.net with the title Armour in Mongoose RuneQuest Considered Harmful.

The new rodents have settled in and are proving themselves to be a source of great amusement with 'Trouble' proving to be most social. Most things workwise are just fine, although I'm having a small war getting the Shibboleth module for Drupal to play nice, and ditto for the source version of SciLab. On a health-related issue, I seem to have acquired (goodness knows how) a minor case of pyelonephritis, which I do not recommend to anyone; antibiotics have been prescribed and blood tests are pending.

Comments

[amarafox.livejournal.com]

What the hell, Australia >.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Australia has never understood the importance of freedom of information. The FOI acts, federal and commonwealth, have so many holes in them they're just an advertisement.

[laura-seabrook.livejournal.com]

Glad the new ratties are settling in.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Yeah, they're pretty happy - at least one of them has decided he like showers!

[zey.livejournal.com]

Glad the new ratties are settling in.

You know, I initially read this as a comment on Australian political events rather than about tcpip's new family members ;-).

[ultraviolencia.livejournal.com]

I wrote a letter. God knows what good it will do, but it seems like a reasonable thing to do.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

That's very good of you. I hope the Senator has the brains (he should be used to counting numbers) to see the stack of opposing letters is greater than the stack of supporting letters.

[trayce.livejournal.com]

Nicely said on the letter to Conroy.

I for one dont care less if they dont want us to see that which 99.99% of us already dont (and usually cant!) find anyway, eg pedophilia and the like - but like everyone points out if this is going to cripple our internet performance, what kind of "digital revolution" are we aiming for, exactly?

It really sounds like they dont have enough IT savvy people involved right up at the highest levels.

Last time this came round in '99 I recall the testing we did at Conn3ct... it all failed miserably - porn was easy to get at and the performance stank. Remember how quietly it went away? I am hoping the same will happen here, that they'll realise how costly and pointless and muddled this is and just drop the idea.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I share your sentiments. Like yourself any interest on material that is probably going to be blacklisted is purely academic. My political concern is that the blacklist will be expanded and as such our democratic rights are reduced.

After all, the State hardly has a good reputation on such matters, as recent (and local) reports make clear. Basically, I don't really trust this government and I certainly don't trust future governments not to misuse the technology.

As for performance metrics, there have been some recent "improvements" but despite the glowing PR-like responses, it still deserves a fail.

[demonhellfish.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's almost American grade destructive moralizing.

[amarafox.livejournal.com]

Except the americans don't have a firewall like this - that we know of.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Australian governments are increasing capable of destructive moralising.

[fwuffydragon.livejournal.com]

Get well soon!

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I'm pretty sure I'll be OK.

I really don't want my kidneys to pack it in. That would suck.

[ironed_orchid]

Oh for fuck's sake. I thought we'd see the end of stupid internet laws.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

The forces of the State are terrified of the Internet... Especially in Saudi Arabia, China... Australia.

[ironed_orchid]

Awesome letter, btw.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

That's me seething with rage.

[severina-242.livejournal.com]

You´ve got the male version of pussy flu! Hugs sweetheart!

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

*snicker* Yes, I do. caseopaya has been teasing me endlessly about it :)

[shehasathree]

oh dear. hope the antibiotics do the trick with a minimal of drama!

nice letter. this stuff is really worrying.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

hope the antibiotics do the trick with a minimal of drama!

I'm surprised nobody has made a pun about me needing a clean feed of my very own :)

[phasmaphobic.livejournal.com]

Your Minister Conroy sounds like a real spot-on fella. I seriously wonder what events in one's life drives someone to make such grand leaps of logic and abuses of their civil authority?

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

The desire for power. Mr. Conroy loves power in a special deep and creepy way. And so did his predecessor... Different parties, same shit.

[mrteufel.livejournal.com]

I wonder if "illegal material" would include things like euthanasia information sites?

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I think that would be Senator Fielding's plan.

[rogue-scholar.livejournal.com]

I just sent the below email to the Minister. I expect I'll receive a cookie-cut autoreply sometime today, probably thanking me for my interest and support in this issue.

---

Dear Senator Conroy,

Please accept my profuse thanks for your efforts in introducing the Clean Feed for Australian internet users! I am so relieved that this plan is on the way to being implemented. When I heard so-called "experts" of the IT industry claiming that it was impossible to filter all internet content without significantly reducing internet speeds all across the country, I was sure the goverment would back down on this pressing issue. I thought the Labor Government would be afraid to stand up to the selfish elements in the community who would bleat and moan if their Facebook pages took an extra few minutes to load or if their access to naughty pictures required them to put their name on an official Pervert List. (I don't have a problem with adults accessing any kind of legal content, but ordinary working families and their government have a right to know which seemingly normal members of their community are harbouring these deviant tendencies.)

It's pleasing to see that this plan will combat not just one but two disturbing trends in online media in recent years.

First, obviously, the online proliferation of exploitative images such as the work of that paedophile Bill Henson. (Art is one thing, when properly framed and displayed in a respectable gallery, but computer graphics are quite another; I do remember members of your own government demonstrating with reference to scientific factual research that interactive media such as internets and video games are much more harmful to children than traditional, more wholesome forms of media, such as classical AM radio and drive-in movies.)

Second, it's an added bonus that this Clean Feed will help to rein in the ever-increasing speeds attained by internet users over the past fifteen years. Don't they know that speed is dangerous? For all the talk about how Australia needs much faster internet speeds to remain functional and competitive in "tomorrow's globally connected world" (and other such nonsensical buzzwords), I find the internet already quite dizzyingly, threateningly disorienting as it is. Why is it that, after five television channels has been plenty for so many years, nowadays every youngster with a video camera and pretensions to creativity wants to have their own television channel on these You Tubes? And who is watching to make sure these youths are not using curse words or describing sexual acts on these online television channels?

It can't be a coincidence that the pace and sheer chaos of the internet have increased just at the same time as the youngest generation started to grow up as "digital natives". Today's children barely have the single-mindedness to sit through a single afternoon of television, instead bouncing around between this social networking site and that online encyclopedia and some other touch-screen telephone as though they expect us to believe they feel comfortable using such patently unnatural and frankly suspicious media forms. We must never forget that the internet is interactive: how can we trust a media form which lets our private internet use (or our children's) be interfered with by any crank, loon or thick-headed busybody out there with an axe to grind or a moral crusade?

Which is why I am so sincerely grateful that the Federal Government and its bureaucracy is, has always been and always will be free of cranks, loons and thick-headed busybodies with moral crusades or axes to grind.

Insincerely,

Fraser Allison
Flemington, Victoria

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Not only will you get a cookie cut reply, they will probably count it as a letter in support of the proposal.

Politicians don't get humour, unless it is obvious abused hurled against their opponents.

As a whole, they really are quite a stupid breed of person.

[must-sew-faster.livejournal.com]

Please consider drinking a lot of cranberry juice (do you even grow them Down Under?); barring that, lemon-aid. Both will help flush the bacteria from your kidneys. Hope you feel better.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Doing that. No fresh cranberries, but quite a few tablets that contain cranberry extract. Helps a great deal with the symptoms.

[tzunder.livejournal.com]

I know many people talk of Australia as 'classless' and 'open' and all that, but when I visited I also got a very strong feeling that it was also the UK 'Home Counties' in Oz, with all the petty English restrictiveness that we can bring to bear in our worst days. Sidney felt a little like a huge version of Torquay or Eastbourne and the casual racism was quite surprising.

That isn't to say that I don't also recognise the left/liberal/tolerant Australia, but like all countries there are many facets, and I saw one I dislike so much in England that it put me off Australia.

After all, this is the kind of nonsense that the Dail Mail in the UK might preach, before someone sensible slapped them down, possibly inside the same paper.

I do sometimes think that the older and more liberal I get that I'd be better off in Canada.. but hey.. I bet they have odd right wing moments too.

Tom

PS: Shadows in the Borderlands is, IMHO, one of the best set of gaming adventures since, well, the original Borderlands.. and probably better.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Sidney felt a little like a huge version of Torquay or Eastbourne and the casual racism was quite surprising.

Sydney has quite a lot of racism for the reasons that Melbourne doesn't. For much of Melbourne (but certainly not all) different cultural groups mix quite freely in the various suburbs. That sort of intermingling reduces tensions.

But yes... There is a terrible wowser element in Australian politics. It is mocked, it is a minority, but dammit they keep getting politicians elected too.


PS: I actually think Shadows is better than Borderlands, although it doesn't quite have the same extensive background. I've been switching scenarios between the two for some months now and it's been working very well.

[kremmen.livejournal.com]

I noticed that your open letter regarding the net "filter" appeared in today's Age online.

It was a pleasant surprise that in over 100 comments, there is only one guy supporting the government on this. It's astounding. I thought Conroy's spin might have worked on a few more naive people than it has.