[AusNOG] Conroy censoring dissent?

[Mark Newton]

On 12/11/2008, at 1:28 PM, Sean K. Finn wrote:
>
> Yes, the members of this list are able to get around it in a  
> thousand creative ways, but for Joe average are they really going to  
> be bothered setting up a VPN or workaround, or just say 'stuff it,  
> off to the pub', and commit their sins in Meatspace instead?

Reading that, I'm guessing that you're over the age of 35 or so.

Gen-Y is sufficiently jacked-in that circumvention methods will spread
like wildfire.  They won't be complicated, they'll just be "point and  
click"
methods to bypass the censorware systems.

(I know this because some of them will be written, published or  
documented
by me :-)

Every single person who ever encounters something incorrectly blocked
will realize how easy it is to unblock it, and once they've done it
nothing will ever be blocked for them again.  This stuff will spread
through social networking communities like wildfire.

A few weeks after the censorware systems enter production, their only
effects will be to slow everything down and cost ISPs lots of money.
Their actual censorship capabilities will be moot.

The Government has committed the same misunderstanding that you've
exhibited, believing that the threat model they need to defend
against is the canonical "motivated attacker."  Nope.  It'll be the
"inconvenienced amateur" following a link that someone sent her via
Twitter after she complained about not being able to reach her
favorite website.  It won't be "someone with a clue who cares,"
because "clue" will be completely optional.

(they've made the same mistake with computer games, believing that
only committed smugglers would dare import Refused Classification
games such as the various banned incarnations of Grand Theft Auto.
And yet these games are rife throughout the Australian gaming
community.  Idiots.)


   - mark


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