Archive for the ‘Web Surfing’ Category

Australian Sex Party tells politicians what it wants

Friday, November 21st, 2008
Australian Sex Party tells politicians what it wants
November 20th, 2008

The Australian Sex Party (previous IPR coverage here) has now issued its policies:

    * To bring about the establishment of a truly national classification scheme which includes a uniform non-violent erotica rating for explicit adult material for all jurisdictions and through all media including the Internet and computer games.

    * To overturn mandatory ISP filtering of the Internet and return Internet censorship to parents and individuals.

    * To bring about the development of a national sex education curriculum for secondary schools as a first step in preventing the sexualisation of children.

    * To enact national anti discrimination laws which make it illegal to unfairly discriminate against people or companies on the basis of job, occupation, profession or calling.

    * To hold a referendum to create mandatory equal numbers of women in the Senate and State Upper Houses.

    * To enact national pregnancy termination laws along the same lines as divorce law — which allow for legal, no-fault and guilt-free processes for women seeking termination.

    * The listing of Viagra, Cialis and other drugs used to treat sexual dysfunction, on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

    * To create total equal rights in all areas of the law for gay, lesbian and transsexual couples.

    * Ensure that the introduction of paid maternity leave is fair and equitable for small businesses.

    * Abolish sex slavery and sexual servitude by introducing non morality-based immigration policies that allow bona-fide sex workers to work legally in Australia.

    * Overturn racist laws that ban Aboriginal people from possessing erotic and sexual media in the Northern Territory.

    * Ensure the sexual rights and freedoms of the disabled and elderly in institutions.

    * Convene a Royal Commission into child sex abuse in the nation’s religious institutions.

    * Develop global approaches to tackling child pornography which focus on production of the material rather than its distribution.

    * Overturn restrictions on aid to overseas family planning organisations that reference abortion.

There was also a media release:

    Eros Launches The Australian Sex Party

    Amidst a rapidly changing political landscape and an increasing resistance to ‘nanny state’ politics, Australia’s national adult industry association will today announce details of a new force in the Australian political landscape - the Australian Sex Party. The party launch will be held in conjunction with the opening of Sexpo, Thursday 20th Nov, at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre.

    Eros CEO and party convenor, Fiona Patten, said the party was a sign of the times and an acknowledgement of the importance and scope of sexual issues in ordinary people’s lives these days. “People want their House of Reps members to balance the budget but increasingly they want their Senators to look after their rights and freedoms”, she said. “The Sex Party is the beginning of a new chapter in Upper House politics.”

    The party is a sex and gender party that will run candidates in the next Senate election and in some state Upper House elections over the next few years. Its first priority would be to alert Australians to the unprecedented censorship of legal material that Senator Conroy’s proposed internet filtering scheme represents. “Senator Conroy’s plans actually threaten the existence of the Sex Party online which represents a real challenge to political free speech”, she said.

    Ms Patten said that anti-sex politicians had managed to get themselves elected to key balance of power positions in the Senate and state Upper Houses for many years and had created a real climate of wowserism in Australian politics that was not shared by the community. “Community attitudes to sex and censorship have been shown over and over again by community opinion polling to be more relaxed than ever and yet in politics, the opposite is the case. When was the last time you heard a politician say something positive about sex?”

    She said the party would co-opt Australia’s 1,000 adult shops as individual branches of the party and the four million Australian adults identified in the La Trobe University’s Sex in Australia survey (2006) who regularly purchased X rated films, vibrators, adult books and lingerie, would make up its initial audience.

    She said that discrimination against sex industry workers and companies was rife in the community and that the party would work to replicate ACT laws which outlawed job and occupation discrimination. “The Victorian government and the Melbourne Exhibition Centre Board have thrown Sexpo out of the MEC next year because they don’t want to offend overseas countries who are shy around sex and want to hire another part of the building”, she said. “Why should 70,000 ordinary Victorians miss out on their show because 100 Indonesian dentists or a thousand Iranian potters want the building. Its discrimination on the basis of profession and occupation and it should not be allowed to happen in a free country.”

    Fiona Patten: 0413 734 613 www.sexparty.org.au info@sexparty.org.au

Australian Sex Party tells politicians what it wants

Based on the comments from the source site above - I think this debate is going to be both a serious fights as well as humorous one. Discussions from both sides I suspect will be intense.

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Australian adult industry flirts with politics - International Herald Tribune

Thursday, November 20th, 2008
SYDNEY, Australia: The name may seem like a joke, but the Australian Sex Party is serious — serious about sex, according to their slogan.

The country’s newest political party is also serious about a number of other issues: quashing a government proposal for a national Internet filter that would block 10,000 Web sites; instituting a new national sex education curriculum; and pushing for the legalization of gay marriage.

The party — launched Thursday at Sexpo, an annual sex exhibition in Melbourne — has already gathered the required 500 members and plans to register with the electoral commission next week.

“We’re concerned about the Australian government becoming a nanny state, and about this conservative creep in politics,” party convener and Eros head Fiona Patten told The Associated Press by phone.

Patten called the federal government’s proposal for an Internet filter “the last straw.”

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy told Parliament earlier this month that his mandatory Internet filter would block 10,000 Web sites on a government blacklist of “unwanted content,” including sites showing child pornography, excessive violence, drug use or instructions in criminal or terrorist acts.

But Patten said the filter targets a far wider range of sites.

“If they were aiming to block child pornography, no problem,” she said. “But they’ve identified any adult site, things like playboy.com, a site that shows material that you can buy in a news agency or rent or buy in an adult video shop. It was an incredible shift back 30 years.”

The Australian Christian Lobby has already condemned the Sex Party.

“Pornography and prostitution do enormous damage to women and children, and the idea of mainstream political parties giving this trade seats in our nation’s parliaments … would offend the sensibilities of most Australians who believe women should be respected,” the lobby’s Managing Director Jim Wallace said in a statement.

The party, whose slogan is “We’re serious about sex,” plans to run candidates in Senate and state upper house elections.

Australian adult industry flirts with politics - International Herald Tribune

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iTWire - Copyright police drag Australian ISP iiNet through the courts

Thursday, November 20th, 2008
Australia’s copyright police have used the cover of the internet filtering debate to launch a surprise attack on ISPs, with seven movie houses filing an action against progressive ISP iiNet - claiming it harbours pirates.

The action against iiNet was filed in the Federal Court today by Village Roadshow, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, 20th Century Fox and Disney, as well as the Seven Network.

The companies want an order forcing iiNet to prevent its customers from engaging in copyright infringement over its network and are expected to claim damages. It’s a move that’s likely to send a chill through Australian internet service providers who already have their hands full with the Federal government’s plans for force them to implement mandatory ISP-level content filtering.

iiNet is one of Australia’s largest ISP and no stranger to controversy, with managing director Michael Malone recently volunteering to participate in the internet filtering trials just so the ISP can help point out how stupid the idea is. You don’t need to be a conspiracy nut to question the timing of this week’s legal action - coordinated by the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT).

There’s an old saying; my enemy’s enemy is my friend. Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, is facing an uphill battle to implement his mandatory ISP-level filtering, which critics say is unworkable and heavy-handed censorship which has the potential to be abused. The plan’s conservative supporters in the Senate are already calling for the filtering to be expanded to encompass “illegal” content. ISPs such as iiNet are leading the fight against the plan. iiNet has also publically slammed the federal government’s efforts to build a National Broadband Network.

Meanwhile the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft is facing an uphill battle to stop Australians downloading copyrighted material via peer-to-peer networks such as BitTorrent. AFACT and its supporters want ISPs to monitor their customers’ usage and enforce copyright law, a job ISPs say is best left to the police. The head of the Internet Industry Association, Peter Coroneos, has been previously quoted as saying ISPs won’t step in unless forced to do so by law.

With the copyright police and the moral minority in the Senate attacking ISPs on two fronts, it forces ISPs to divide their efforts between two fights. Should Conroy get his internet filtering wish, you can bet AFACT will be first in line calling for the plan to be expanded to encompass illegal movie downloads. At this point ISPs will have no choice but to comply, and thus be burdened with the task of censoring what all Australians can do online.

Expect Australia’s ISPs to circle the wagons and plan an orchestrated response to this two-pronged attack designed to hit ISPs when they’re most vulnerable.

iTWire - Copyright police drag Australian ISP iiNet through the courts

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YouTube - Internet Content Filtering in Australia - Why It Sux

Tuesday, November 18th, 2008


YouTube - Internet Content Filtering in Australia - Why It Sux

This is one of my friends having a rant on the censorship issue.

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More on the Australian Internet Censorship saga….

Wednesday, November 12th, 2008

Looks like some activists are getting on the non-censorship bandwagon…

A parody take on related advertising

Here’s one that screams it to ya…

And after taking a few deep breaths…

Some related Links:
http://nocleanfeed.com/
http://www.efa.org.au/
http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;1399635276;fp;16;fpid;0
http://www.netalarmed.com/

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Time To Join The Torch Light Parades….. - John Linton’s Personal Musings

Wednesday, November 12th, 2008

Someone else’s rant/opinion of the Australian internet filtering dramas - pretty much sums up the viewpoint from those who oppose the planned national internet filtering.

….and burn some books Mein Fuhrer.

We, along with all other ISPs I assume, received the ‘courtesy’ email asking us to visit the Fourth Reich’s official sub site where we could find the details of how to participate in Herr Krudd’s and Obersturmfuhrer Conroy’s scheme to purge the Fatherland of the filth emanating from the diseased brains of the untermenscen.

I skim read it to the point that my understanding is that Herr Rudds Schutz-Staffel has drawn up an initial list of the undesirable sites that he wishes consigned to the flames as a first pass and will add to the list as further sub human filth is discovered in the future. His object in to cleanse the Reich of anything he designates as undesirable so that the kinder can safely be indoctrinated in the preferred ways that he deems any citizen of the Fatherland should think and act.

Towards the end of one of the ‘documents’ I seemed to gain the impression that there was a shuttered and locked goods wagon with Exetel’s name on it waiting at a disused railway station which, as almost all of Sydney’s railway stations under Gauleiter’s Carr, Iemma and now Rees ’stewardships’ are now disused, was hard to pin down exactly attached to a train leading to a recently renovated ‘camp site’ outside Wagga if we didn’t do exactly “vot you are tolt”. Not wishing to make the acquaintance of Dr Irmried Eberl (while not ideal - I would prefer my internal organs to remain arranged in their current ways) and having as much freedom in my daily work as I can currently cope with I’m inclined not to be as ‘independent spirited’ (and for the pedants - yes - I know I’m combining the commandant of one camp with the gate sign of another) as I would usually be when confronted with the madnaess of bully boys and psychotics.

Following Fuhrer Krudd’s recent invasions of ABC Learning and his breathtaking Anschluss of the four major banks it just seems one more step on the way of creating more leibensraum for der Fuhrer’s grand vision for a greater Australia and according to a recent poll (which some people say is actually independent of der Fuhrer’s personal supervision - though I’m not sure how that’s possible as it seems to indicate that some people don’t agree which is beyond an acceptable standard of conformity) that 63% of us are in total agreement with our glorious leader’s visions - or maybe we just smoke the same weed?

Enough of such disloyal thoughts - wait a minute - is that the sound of a heavy truck screeching to a halt and the sound of jackboots on the drive? Bear with me while I carefully open the black out curtains a ‘crack’  - Whew - no thank goodness its just the next door neighbour’s kids quietly running out in their carefree way looking a picture of smartness in the Krudd Youth uniforms to get their lift to school in someone’s recently fully armoured 4 x 4 - apparently the vehicle of choice on the rutted and flooded unpaved roads Mosman women are forced to navigate every day of their lives .

So back to what can be done in these totalitarian times by a small company struggling for survival under the burdens imposed by the ever increasing interference by the State in every aspect of what used to be our lives. We appear to have two options

- ignore the sheer stupidity of this latest piece of doctrinaire madness from the Labor Loonies and put up with whatever the outcome is as best we can?

- attempt to participate in showing these morons that this is one castle in the air too far - even for total idiots?

It seems the words ‘proxy’ and ’P2P’ are incomprehensible to the brain dead stupid Stephen and the even loonier Krudd so the trick is to find a way of getting through to the wads of cotton wool that occupy the space between their ears where other people have a grey, jelly-like substance.

Steve believes that a silver bullet like ‘null routing’ would demonstrate that (forgetting about proxies, P2P etc) der Fuhrer’s dreams of invading and then controlling cyber space can become a reality with far less loss of men and tanks (oops, sorry, money) than his current wild ideas about super filter hardware and massive slow downs in transmission speeds.

We will see if we can easily demonstrate this to them at no cost to us or our users in some vain hope that they will eventually grab at such a straw to save millions of useless deaths on the Russian front - I mean tens of millions of money wasted on slowing down every Australian’s internet experience.

Come to think of it maybe they aren’t as stupid as I think they are - maybe they DO realise they can’t stop the internet from giving us access to Radio Britain’s subversion so they’ve moved to plan B - if you can’t stop it completely then at least slow it down and ‘garble’ the signal?

Now where did I put my swastika armband?

Time To Join The Torch Light Parades….. - John Linton’s Personal Musings

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