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Yep, as usual a half-assed comment from someone who hasn't bothered to consider all the implications. Just what we don't need.
For a moment, I sat here thinking "what implications didnt i consider? what is this guy havin' a go at me for?"
then i realise the half-assed comment your referring to was from the oh so wise Dr Gregory :)
The point is that you shouldnt HAVE mandatory filtering, because thats what a bunch of fascists such as the chinese government, or in this case a right wing religious extremist would like to have so that they can mandate what we read.
Its bloody disgusting, give it five years and you'll have all internet sites criticising Opus Dei, our beloved ministers church gone because he finds them "morally challenged"
Basically, it doesnt matter that the majority havent given the mandate, as long as a religious moron has a chip on his shoulder and some power.
Great democracy.
And I thought the Chinese were communists, but apparently they are fascists?
I had him for a couple of classes while going to RMIT. He was a giant tool to say the least. I failed to see how someone who seemed so out of touch with technology was trying to teach us.
People who make a career out of academia are usually far too idealistic. No one is against EFFECTIVE filtering of child pornography and ILLEGAL material Mark. But this solution is completely out of the realms of reality and has a painfully obvious hidden agenda.
VPNs are encrypted. Simple. Move the content over the VPN, and the activity can no longer be detected.
Dr Gregory is running a thoroughly dishonest argument, IMO.
ISPs provide a carrier service. They don't foist particular material on the public - not porn, at any rate. If porn is a significant share of the traffic, that's because of consumer demand. The ISPs don't know or care what consumers want to download - nor should they. It's not a carrier's job. No-one claims Christmas cards are a Post Office conspiracy.
I notice Dr Gregory has a military background. Perhaps he's one of Jim Wallace's old buddies? (Ex-SAS Commander and passionate proponent of the invasion of Iraq, Jim Wallace, is currently Managing Director of the Australian Christian Lobby)
According to his website, "Mark Gregory was born in Melbourne Australia in 1963. He went to Guildford Grammar School where he matriculated in 1979 and moved to the Royal Military College Duntroon as an officer candidate in the Australian Army. He graduated from the Royal Military College Duntroon in 1983 as an officer in RAEME. He completed a BEng (Elec)(Hons) in 1984 at the UNSW (Royal Military College), a MEng in 1992 at RMIT Univeristy and a PhD in 2008 at RMIT University. Mark is currently the Program Leader for Network Engineering in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at RMIT University in Melbourne Australia. Mark is the founding director of two companies; Graphics Technologies Pty Ltd provides data, VoIP and IT support and Pipercove Software Pty Ltd provides software development."
See http://www.uanmi.com
His publications include "Tactical Command, Control and Information System for the Australian Army", which was co-sponsored by the US Department of Defence.
None of this, of course, is illegal or necessarily untoward. Dr Gregory is as entitled to comment on the Government censorship plans as anyone else. But it's nice to know a little about a commentator's background and sometimes it may be relevant. :-)
"No-one claims Christmas cards are a Post Office conspiracy. "
Not to be picky (and I do agree with you about everything else), but Christmas Cards could certainly be seen as a post office conspiracy.
From Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_cards):
"The first commercial Christmas cards were commissioned by Sir Henry Cole in London, 1843 ...the idea was shrewd: Cole had helped introduce the Penny Post three years earlier. "
ok, lets change the analogy.
Can you sue the post office for someone sending you anthrax in a letter?
Does that make the postie who delivered it a terrorist?
of course it doesnt.
How can someone be taken seriously when they think that detectable illegal content is a large enough proportion of traffic to affect the profits of ISPs. If it is such a high proportion, why aren't the Federal Police doing their job? And what, if anything, does *spam* have to do with this filter?
On another note, you'd think that since the ISPs don't host the traffic and are merely a transport medium, if this sort of traffic was that high a proportion then once it's blocked (and let's assume completely unavailable via any means) then traffic levels in turn would drop.
With lower traffic levels ISPs would no longer need those big expensive outgoing links, so they could drop those back and save $'s in the process.
That reminds me...what's the name of the company that's going to be performing the actual testing for the Filter Trial, working with the ISPs?
Oh, yeah, it was Enex Testlab, wasn't it?
"Enex TestLab was founded in 1989, originally as part of RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia"
http://www.testlab.com.au/index-1.html
But I'm sure that's purely a coincidence...
I wonder what it is about this issue that brings out academics making baseless claims with none of the scientific rigour expected of people in those positions...
I normally hate this comment, but it seems pretty true with this guy. What a complete tool! Yes, I know this is ad hominem, but his argument is such a load of garbage, that it barely rates a considered response.
I am sure iiNet are cursing the fact that their customers might soon be prevented (sort of) from accessing ~1000websites out of how many million? Think of all that revenue gone in an instant.
Like I said... what a tool.
I am surpirsed that noone has commented on the fallacy about data being paid for by the ISPs. Data transmission COSTS ISPs monry (unless it is internal on their own network). The CONSUMER is the one paying for the data. I guess that explains why I pay MORE for a 50GB plan than I do for a 10GB plan.
So using the same logic that the esteemed Doctor has applied, that means Telstra, or for that matter, any telephone company that provides a mobile / telephone service, should be censoring our telephone conversations as well. They are after all profiting when people have a lewd discussion over the telephone, and are apparently involved in any crimes discussed over their network.
My guess is that this is the only muppet conroy could dig up in support of his argument.
This is just from my personal experience in working in the technical side of an ISP for five years, but I think you'll find your average ISP hates spam passionately. I know that with us it was a constant headache that caused (major) complaints from customers, mail servers occasionally being taken down, etc.
An ISP without a halfway decent spam filter will probably lose more from customers getting annoyed and going elsewhere than it could possibly expect to earn from the minor amount of extra data the users were paying for.
I also wasn't aware that this censorship scheme would have any influence on spam whatsoever.
Besides: If an ISP really wants to encourage downloading, all they have to do is encourage people to use torrents. (Which will be unaffected by this)
I didn't see Mininova on the ACMA blacklist. ISP data will continue to rise. This article is a joke.
"if you take away this traffic, they lose money, and they don't want to lose that money. They will argue against it and they will continue to argue against it as long as they can."
Mr Gregory fails to take into account that most plans are set up on a cap, and that those plans are shaped after that cap is exceeded. The reason ISPs do this is because it costs them to route bits through the nextwork. ISPs would like everyone to pay for an Internet connection and never use it, which would result in maximum profit, ergo, ISPs do NOT want people downloading huge amounts of child pornography, simply because it costs them money to route that traffic.
Once J Random Pervert hits his 50GB quota of CP, he gets shaped to prevent him from costing the ISP any more money.
Makes me wonder why I even bother to vote for Labor in the first place. I actually believed that Conroy was more suited for this job than Coonan was.
I regret voting for Labor!
You can try and filter, but there's many proxies, many P2P users, many VPN options.
Internet Filtering will not work. It will waste a lot of money, and won't get any results, because of technology being too advanced for it.
And just as they find ways to tackle the above, further advancements will be made before, and therefore completely destroying the point.
A filter is useless. It won't be immune to preventing access to Child Porn, it won't actually achieve anything - because it won't be able to scan encrypted VPN tunnels, it won't scan SSH data, and it won't scan traffic occurring in other countries, such as remote desktop.
There is no problem with the internet as it presently stands.
Parents can filter content already to safe guard children. Adults can decern for themselves which content to visit.
I will be demanding, as an Australian citizen, thea right-to-know that my content is not filtered in any shape or form.
The goverment will slow down the internet and simple spend my tax payer money on something that has an arguement as transparent as Grad-Wrap.
You have just given a good example of why the use of filters, censorship if we're gonna call a spade a spade, are a bad idea wrapped up in good intentions.
'"It is possible" to regulate the internet' this is what is at stake here. I thought this was about the children? Or do you think you have enough ignorant computer illiterate scared parents on board now the true colours of the filter can be showen?
If this filter is implemented within 10 years it will be nothing more than a censor tool for loud minority groups to 'regulate the internets'
So Dr Mark Gregory really expects us to believe that ISPs make a significant amount of money from the download of child pornography over the HTTP protocol, as well as visits to a Qld Dentist's website?
That's a pretty long bow he's drawing...
ISP's would love it if we DIDN'T download porn or music or movies. It would help their bottom line because they have to pay for every Mb we download. Their ideal customer is one that does not use that download.
I wonder which school of economics he learnt from?
Also as many others have mentioned the effectiveness of the proposed filter system is totally voided with a VPN.
"It is possible"
yes, filter almost EVERY packet of data, decrypt EVERY bit of encryption in real-time (or worse render it pointless and make secure transactions impossible).
Anything short of that ludicrous feat and people who want to, will always find a way around any filtering system.
However, somebody has to appear to support Conroy so he can salvage some of his political career, although all it is doing is lessening any prestige RMIT has.
I am glad every single day for the proposed filtering idea in one respect, it clearly highlights those who should have nothing to do with Australia's digital economy.
Well that's the thing isn't it?
"Though ACMA is funded through the federal budget, it also collects substantial revenue on behalf of the Commonwealth of Australia. Revenue is collected through telecommunications carrier and radiocommunications licence fees and charges, as well as through charges on telecommunications numbers. ACMA also collects revenue from price-based allocation of spectrum." -wikipedia.
Maybe I'm just disolusioned by all the recent lies (just one after the other isn't it?) but for some reason this just digusts me just that little bit more.
- It's been deceitful all the way so far ((and I call shenanigans on the whole thing just quietly...))
And please, porn and spam is brought to us via web hosting and servers not ISP's. What kind of Dr. is this guy anyway??
- If I want to use MY bandwith (purchased from an ISP) to look at porn and spam then that is my own business.
If you filter the internet to the point where it crawls along slower than dial-up and is devoid of content NO ONE WILL WANT IT.
It will be WORTHLESS.
- I will not want it
- an ISP will not be able to sell it to me. Epic FAIL.
You have to question the motivation of ZDNet to publish this story without doing the research that some comment posters have - this professor is out of touch, spouting nonsense and clearly has a vested interest in doing so.
The question here isn't "why is this idiot saying these things", its "why is ZDNet writing one-sided articles like this without doing adequate background research or providing alternative opinions of real experts who do not have vested interests in the outcome of the filter trials themselves"?
hey there,
in any debate ZDNet.com.au has to remain objective and publish both sides of the story. We've certainly published a lot from experts saying the filter won't work and there isn't a need for it, check out the list of our stories here:
http://bit.ly/faDb
The publication of this article represents one of the alternative points of view.
Kind regards,
Renai LeMay
News Editor
ZDNet.com.au
'Alternative' is certainly one way to describe the Dr's point of view. My comment in no way suggested that ZDNet should not provide alternative points of view, on this or any issue. What I'm criticising is ZDNet's failure to adequately research the motivation behind someone with such a radically different point of view and to present this along with the Dr's opinion. Remember the majority of people are not trained researchers, they don't understand that what is said in the news media should not be absorbed verbatim. If this is the only story on the subject that they read, their opinion will be solely based on this.
As you've said, it is the responsibility of journalists to remain objective, to provide objective view points and not bias a story in the telling. However it is just as important to be unbiassed and objective with what's omitted, not just with what is said. By omitting facts such as the potential affiliation with Enex TestLab and not asking for input from ISPs in response to the Dr's baseless accusations that ISP's profit from copyright infringement (and spam, of all things), you've essentially written a sensationalist opinion piece, not a news item. If the Dr's points were addressed by anyone who actually knows what they're talking about, everything he has been quoted as saying would be shown as the baseless misinformation that it so obviously is.
So why has ZDNet written so biassed an article? Was it simply a poor decision to publish a piece of sensationalist editorialism thinly disguised as news, or was the decision to publish it in this way taken deliberately, to generate outrage and thus web traffic?
to be fair to zdnet they did include counter args at the end under the heading "Shambles from the start"
still, i'm shocked at the balls on Gregory going about this as if he doesnt have a conflict of interest and it would of been nice if ZD had picked up on that when researching this piece.
Many people that have been through RMIT will know of Dr Mark Gregory, and most will realise that most of what he says, cannot be substantiated and is based on his warped sense of reality. I have not yet met any student post or undergaduate that has not questioned this mans motives for been in education other than to make himself look good. It is definately not for the benefit of the student, he is out of touch with all aspects of Project Engineering, yet is in a principle role for this discipline at RMIT. In regards to the comments on ISPs is yet another reason of this guys lack of industry knowledge i.e. reality. RMIT should take a long hard look at its acadamics, and ensure when they script comments for public release they are well founded, based on fact and are not just academic notions.
ISP's only made money from spam when we paid $5/hour for dialup. With a 10/50/unlimited Gbyte plan it's just a pain for both custpmer and ISP.
Net filtering sounds good until you address the practical issues. Exteme porn etc is relatively easy to define but then it gets really hard. My definition of porn will seem lax to some and extreme to others etc etc
This guy is an absolute fool. If he thinks that the amount of child porn is buffeting the profits of ISP's he's seriously wrong - if it was the Federal Government would have a few more creeps in jail by now. Just because he has a phD (ladeeda) in networking or whatever doesn't mean he understands what he's talking about - effective filtering is not something that is invented yet. To filter out images of child porn you would need someone in a small room to sit down and examine every single image on the internet for pictures containing children, then find the naked ones, determine whether or not they were art (and haven't we had enough controversy about that!) and then flag them and THEN push an update across the incredibly slow internet connection he will be by then working on because he will have exceeded the monthly cap that telstra provides him.
This will NOT work. I will go 3G. i will move countries to get out from under this stupid ruling. Mr Rudd you will not have my vote next election if you continue this insanity.
If it wasn't for ZDNet we wouldn't know what this tool is saying. And from his point of view, his pathetic bid for publicity seems to have been successful.
Of course, what we think of his academic rambling might be another matter. . .
I tell you, this Dr gregory is on the right track, but he doesnt think it all the way through, as people have noticed, filtering wont work, pervets will VPN their child porn fix, as they already probably do... what we must do, and i believe this is the only workable solution to achieve what the government wants to happen here, is get a really massive axe. or some form of super laser cutting device (perhaps we can call the cost of it economic stimulus?), and sever all international communication cables, and then flood the air with weather balloons to prevent all satellite transmissions, also required would be to broadcast white noise on all possible transmittable frequencies to prevent radio transmission of naughty pictures,... also all newspapers would also have to be carefully vetted by the government, to make sure no1 slips in a naughty word somewhere on the opinion page...
or if this proves too expensive perhaps we could just run around poking peoples eyes out with a spoon? that would stop those damn pervets!
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I dont understand how a Dr of an Electrical and Computer Engineering school cannot recognise, or at least acknowledge, that truly effective filtering would mean the end of privacy via encrypted VPN's. They are mutually exclusive technologies.
The article puts across that he thinks there would be no opposition to the plan if ISP profits were not involved. Me thinks he needs to take a trip to the whirlpool forums.