recent decision by MNHQ

I had a PM from a regular poster today who has decided to leave MN on the bases that they no longer wish to be associated with MN in view of MN support for this legislation.

My reply was that the irony is that MN it self may end up being blocked anyway.

MN will also have the finger pointed at it, as a instigator of the inevitable shambles resulting from the block and the resulting censorship abuse from government.

Baroque your right about the fact that there are still alot of people who are not able to cope with IT stuff.Alot of my Gen got turned off by the spectrum ZX81 and never wanted to get near one again.

Wouldent it it be great if there was somewhere where people could take there devices and computers to have it installed on for them. Some big company like PC world could do it as a promotional free service. While people are in there they may purchase a mouse mat or two while waiting.

Network don't mention printers, my faithful cannon of 7 years has finally given up.

Im quite sad, I have a pet name for my computer.

PS

Yep, you read that right Wikileaks was on the blacklist.

@Networkguy, I have a feeling that MNHQ relise now they have been sold a pup.

I?m glad to see that some really good idea?s as to the solution has been sited on this thread today. A booklet with CD of prebundled open source soft wear with step by step guide is an excellent one.

An ongoing live thread with the likes of networkguy on MN would add one part to the need to keep up with the constantly evolving state of thing.

Someone posted earlier that the Australian trial worked well, I thinking that?s a extremely subjective way of looking at it.

I?m going to apologies now for a ridiculously long post this will be, but it?s the Wikipedia entry on the Australian Communications and Media Authority who were involved with the trial block , I think it makes for interesting reading.

"Since January 2000, internet content considered offensive or illegal has been subject to a statutory scheme administered by the ACMA...... The regulator has been criticised for its role in examining internet censorship in Australia and how it is enabled and might further be enabled.

Particular criticism has been leveled at the regulator's technical understanding of what is involved overall in internet regulation and censorship

On 10 March 2009, the ACMA issued the Australian web-hosting company, Bulletproof Networks, with an "interim link-deletion notice" due to its customer, the Whirlpool internet community website, not deleting a link to a page on an anti-abortion web site.

The web page, which is the 6th of a series of pages featuring images of aborted foetuses, had been submitted to the ACMA, who determined it was potential prohibited content, by the user whose post on Whirlpool containing the ACMA's reply was later subject to the link-deletion notice.[5] This came with an $11,000 per day fine if the take down was not actioned after 24 hours. In order for other URLs contained on the same website to be 'prohibited', a separate complaint would need to be submitted and reviewed by the ACMA.[citation needed]
[edit] ACMA blacklist leaked

On 19 March 2009 it was reported that the ACMA's blacklist of banned sites had been leaked online, and had been published by Wikileaks.[6] Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, obtained the blacklist after the ACMA blocked several Wikileaks pages following their publication of the Danish blacklist. Assange said that "This week saw Australia joining China and the United Arab Emirates as the only countries censoring Wikileaks." Three lists purporting to be from the ACMA were published online over a seven day period.

The leaked list, which was reported to have been obtained from a manufacturer of internet filtering software, contained 2395 sites. Approximately half of the sites on the list were not related to child pornography, and included online gambling sites, YouTube pages, gay, straight, and fetish pornography sites, Wikipedia entries, euthanasia sites, websites of fringe religions, Christian sites, and even the websites of a tour operator and a Queensland dentist.

Colin Jacobs, spokesman for lobby group Electronic Frontiers Australia, said that there was no mechanism for a site operator to know they got on to the list or to request to be removed from it. Australia's Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy later blamed the addition of the dentist's website to the blacklist on the "Russian mob".[8]

Associate professor Bjorn Landfeldt of the University of Sydney said that the leaked list "constitutes a condensed encyclopedia of depravity and potentially very dangerous material". Stephen Conroy said the list was not the real blacklist and described its leak and publication as "grossly irresponsible" and that it undermined efforts to improve "cyber safety". He said that ACMA was investigating the incident and considering a range of possible actions including referral to the Australian Federal Police, and that Australians involved in making the content available would be at "serious risk of criminal prosecution".

Conroy initially denied that the list published on Wikileaks and the ACMA blacklist were the same, saying "This is not the ACMA blacklist." He stated that the leaked list was alleged to be current on 6 August 2008 and contained 2,400 URLs, where the ACMA blacklist for the same date contained 1,061 URLs. He added that the ACMA advised that there were URLs on the leaked list that had never been the subject of a complaint or ACMA investigation, and had never been included on the ACMA blacklist. He was backed up by ISP Tech 2U, one of six ISPs involved in filtering technology trials.[9]

Conroy's denial was called into doubt by the Internet Industry Association (IIA), who publicly condemned the publishing of the list, chief executive Peter Coroneos saying, "No reasonable person could countenance the publication of links which promote access to child abuse images, irrespective of their motivation, which in this case appears to be political."[

Conroy later claimed the leaked blacklist published on Wikileaks closely resembled the official blacklist, admitting that the latest list (dated 18 March) "seemed to be close" to ACMA's current blacklist.
In an estimates hearing of the Australian Federal Government on 25 May 2009 it was revealed that the leak was taken so seriously that it was referred to the Australian Federal Police for investigation.

It was further stated that distribution of further updates to the list have been withheld until recipients can improve their security. Ms Nerida O'Laughlin of the ACMA confirmed that the list has been reviewed and as of 30 April consists of 997 urls".

Right Im going to shut up now, thats quite enough from me.

Lennin - a lot of people still don't use anti virus and security updates now......

I can testify to that having had to removed 9 tojan horses from the church laptop (which is passed around various people who need to use it).

I would yes - but others maybe not.

Let me give you an example (my poor BF again ).

She was inserting pictures into a powerpoint slide show she was doing (a very basic one). She told me that it told her the image was too large and if she wanted to insert then it would be compressed and the quality possibly reduced. She didn't know what it meant, so she cancelled, tried again, got the same message, so gave up and didn't use the image she wanted in the end.

There is no way she would install anything on her computer, or play around with programmes that no-one had sat down and shown her. She's simply too scared to mess around with settings etc incase something goes wrong and she doesn't know how to undo it.

THAT is how little many parents know about how to use/utilise their computers.

agree marzy - if I said to my BF (she is absoltuely lovely by the way - just not very techy)."there's a new app that comes pre-bundled" she'd be

ironically all of the information I've ever seen for parents on internet safety..........is online.

Which in my mind kind of defeats the purpose of doing an "idiots guide to internet safety/filtering" as the person looking for it is assumed to have a level of "non-idiotness" to be able to find the information and understand it

IF you're wanting to cover as many parents as possible surely there's need to be pre-printed information ready - otehrwise it's like putting a non-driver in a car and expecting them to already be able to drive it. Or giving a reception age child just learning to read, a copy of a Tolstoy work and expecting them to understand it. It's all mixed up

"has given up on educating parents to make them competent to use controls and set limits on which sites DCs can visit"

That is a sad if that's true - this thread alone has taught lessons. Further up with the xBox question, then this afternoon with the information about proxy access.

I think the reason if (at all) that education isn't working is

1. Because parents don't care - well if they don't care then then chances are they would probably have any ISP filtering lifted anyhow.

1. There just isn't education available for parents.

Our school had an internet safety evening recently - after they signed up to the iamlearning website and encouraged children/parents to use it at home. They deemed it important enough to give parents who wanted to know more about protecting their children online to attend. As I mentioned earlier - I didn't go - but I know it was well attended.

Looking for, and setting up a filter poses a major challenge for many parents as it's such a minefield of information, and then once you do find something they're often quite complex (if you're not really a regular coputer user yourself) to set up.

It's easy to assume that all parents that don't currently have filters and blocks set up just don't care/don't have time/are too lazy. But the fact is that not all parents know how to do it, and have no idea how to get guidance on how to do it.

I can find information fairly easily - though even then it's an awful lot of stuff to wade through for someone less experienced.

Justine on a practical note I would ask if they are confident that they could block porn whilst allowing pictures/video on eg breastfeeding positions and latch through.