[AusNOG] Conroy censoring dissent?

[Sean K. Finn]

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

Not at all, I'm smack in the middle of Gen-Y, have you met or socialised with any of mainstream Gen-Y lately?

> 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.

True, but more than half of Gen-Y think that the iPhone is an outstanding piece of pocket technology. It doesn't even have proper GPS. (Hence why everyone's getting lost, they can't find their way home from the pub).

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

Until your efforts are blocked, too. I hope they aren't, but there will be attempts at blocking the circumvention too.

> 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.

Or just not bother, you missed out that bit. If they want to get around it, then they will, but you'd be surprised how easily real people just give up rather than try, and go do something else.

> 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.

I agree completely.

> 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." 

I didn't realise I had shared their viewpoint here, but I feel that you failed to grok what I had said:

>> 'Low' circumvention probably means 'anyone with a clue and who cares'

Which was my (Attempted) humourous way of taking the piss. Low here meaning 'probably about two to three million aussies', or their friends and family who care enough to ask.

The other 18 or so million being the ones that will go to the pub.

>  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.

Lets hope it never gets to the stage where they block 'normal' sites such as twitter. It inevitably will, but lets hope that it doesn't.

> (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.)

Commited smugglers being the same few million plugged in Aussies, and their mates that aren't down the pub.


All in all, this will serve to separate Australians quite clearly into three categories:

1. Pirates and/or hackers.

2. Drunks

Or my favourite.

3. Drunken Pirate Hackers.


;) -S