Australians deserve an Open Internet
By Sam PascuaElectronic Frontiers Australia today launched a new campaign against the Rudd Government’s mandatory Internet filtering plan.
The Open Internet campaign emphasises that Australians want an Open Internet that is free from an impractical and costly policy of Government imposed mandatory Internet filtering.
“This policy has caused considerable anxiety amongst Australian Internet users,” said EFA Vice-Chair Colin Jacobs. “The idea that the Government will be inserting itself in every Internet connection in the country is a tough one to swallow, especially without a workable policy goal behind it.”
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Internet Censorship Protest Shuts Down Australian Government Websites
By Sam Pascua
Hackers protesting government censorship of the Internet have shut down several Australian government websites in a demonstration against the announcement that filters would be imposed to block access to websites deemed offensive by the authorities.
The campaign was launched by the anti-Scientology group Anonymous in response to plans to implement a mandatory and wide-ranging internet filter modeled on that of the Communist Chinese government.
This is not the first time the group has attacked government websites, having launched a similar stunt last September.
“The main government website, www.australia.gov.au, and parliament’s www.aph.gov.au were both affected along with the sites for Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Communications Minister Stephen Conroy,” reports AFP.
“No one messes with our access to perfectly legal (or illegal) content for any reason,” said a statement released by the group.
The Australian government attacked the campaign as “not a legitimate form of political statement.”
Read moreGoogle baulks at Conroy’s call to censor YouTube
By Sam PascuaGoogle says it will not “voluntarily” comply with the government’s request that it censor YouTube videos in accordance with broad “refused classification” (RC) content rules.
Communications Minister Stephen Conroy referred to Google’s censorship on behalf of the Chinese and Thai governments in making his case for the company to impose censorship locally.
Google warns this would lead to the removal of many politically controversial, but harmless, YouTube clips.
University of Sydney associate professor Bjorn Landfeldt, one of Australia’s top communications experts, said that to comply with Conroy’s request Google “would have to install a filter along the lines of what they actually have in China”.
As it prepares to introduce legislation within weeks forcing ISPs to block a blacklist of RC websites, the government says it is in talks with Google over blocking the same type of material from YouTube.
YouTube’s rules already forbid certain videos that would be classified RC, such as sex, violence, bestiality and child pornography. But the RC classification extends further to more controversial content such as information on euthanasia, material about safer drug use and material on how to commit more minor crimes such as painting graffiti.
Google said all of these topics were featured in videos on YouTube and it refused to censor these voluntarily. It said exposing these topics to public debate was vital for democracy.
In an interview with the ABC’s Hungry Beast, which aired last night, Conroy said applying ISP filters to high-traffic sites such as YouTube would slow down the internet, “so we’re currently in discussions with Google about … how we can work this through”.
“What we’re saying is, well in Australia, these are our laws and we’d like you to apply our laws,” Conroy said.
“Google at the moment filters an enormous amount of material on behalf of the Chinese government; they filter an enormous amount of material on behalf of the Thai government.”
Google Australia’s head of policy, Iarla Flynn, said the company had a bias in favour of freedom of expression in everything it did and Conroy’s comparisons between how Australia and China deal with access to information were not “helpful or relevant”.
Google has recently threatened to pull out of China, partly due to continuing requests for it to censor material.
“YouTube has clear policies about what content is not allowed, for example hate speech and pornography, and we enforce these, but we can’t give any assurances that we would voluntarily remove all Refused Classification content from YouTube,” Flynn said.
“The scope of RC is simply too broad and can raise genuine questions about restrictions on access to information. RC includes the grey realms of material instructing in any crime from [painting] graffiti to politically controversial crimes such as euthanasia, and exposing these topics to public debate is vital for democracy.”
Asked for further comment, a Google Australia spokeswoman said that, while the company “won’t comply voluntarily with the broad scope of all RC content”, it would comply with the relevant laws in countries it operates in.
However, if Conroy includes new YouTube regulations in his internet filtering legislation, it is not clear if these would apply to Google since YouTube is hosted overseas.
“They [Google] don’t control the access in Australia – all their equipment that would do this is hosted overseas … and I would find it very hard to believe that the Australian government can in any way force an American company to follow Australian law in America,” Landfeldt said.
“Quite frankly it would really not be workable … every country in the world would come to Google and say this is what you need to do for our country. You would not be able to run the kind of services that Google provides if that would be the case.”
This week the Computer Research and Education Association (CORE) put out a statement on behalf of all Australasian computer science lecturers and professors opposing the government’s internet filtering policy.
They said the filters would only block a fraction of the unwanted material available on the internet, be inapplicable to many of the current methods of online content distribution and create a false sense of security for parents.
CORE said the blacklist could be used by current and future governments to restrict freedom of speech, while those determined to get around the filters and access nasty content could do so with ease.
Source: theage.com.au
Google to stop supporting ie6
By Sam PascuaHere is a new article from IDG News Service.
Google will phase out support for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6 Web browser starting in March, the company said Friday.
“Many other companies have already stopped supporting older browsers like Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers. We’re also going to begin phasing out our support, starting with Google Docs and Google Sites,” Rajen Sheth, Google Apps senior product manager, wrote in a blog post Friday.
The announcement comes more than two weeks after Google reported that its servers had been the target of attacks originating in China. Those attacks targeted a vulnerability in IE 6, for which Microsoft has since issued a fix.
Support for IE6 in Google Docs and Google Sites will end March 1, Sheth said in the post. At that point, IE6 users who try to access Docs or Sites may find that “key functionality” won’t work properly, he said.
Sheth suggested that customers upgrade to Internet Explorer 7, Mozilla Firefox 3.0, Google Chrome 4.0 or Safari 3.0, or more recent versions of those browsers.
According to StatCounter, IE6 has 18 percent market share among browsers.
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UN agency calls for global cyberwarfare treaty, ‘driver’s license’ for Web users
By Sam PascuaThe world needs a treaty to prevent cyber attacks becoming an all-out war, the head of the main UN communications and technology agency warned Saturday.
International Telcommunications Union secretary general Hamadoun Toure gave his warning at a World Economic Forum debate where experts said nations must now consider when a cyber attack becomes a declaration of war.
With attacks on Google from China a major talking point in Davos, Toure said the risk of a cyber conflict between two nations grows every year.
Read moreClient Focus: Australian Physiotherapy Association
By Sam PascuaWe are extremely pleased to announce the launch of a recent website – Australian Physiotherapy Association (APA)
Top 10 E-mail Trends of 2009: Return Path
By Sam PascuaE-mail deliverability and reputation-management firm Return Path has released what it has deemed to be the top 10 e-mail trends of 2009.
The Top 10 Emails Trends in 2009, according to Return Path, were:
1. Spam growth continued – Reports in early 2009 estimated daily spam volumes are more than 117 billion emails every day. In addition, image spam increased in 2009, a problem for enterprises and ISPs using outdated email security software.
2. False positives increased – “False positives” are when a legitimate, requested, and wanted email is mistakenly blocked outright or delivered to a bulk folder by a spam filter. Receivers increased their use of trusted whitelists in an effort to identify legitimate email.
3. Phishing impacted everyone – Criminal enterprises increased their phishing in 2009 – sending forged emails from banks, social networks, and brand marketers to gain account access. Return Path believes that a coordinated effort, including government (policy and enforcement), educational, infrastructure operators, financial institutions, and more must participate in coordinated efforts toward a solution.
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