[censorship to the absurd]

[The Dark force of dance]

Y-ellow Bud.
	Oh you've just woken up have you. Didn't see you at the protest on Sunday.

FYI. It has not been passed exactly. It is due to entre debate in the upper
house this afternoon. Assuming the other debates before it do not take up
the time. Last chance to throw it out is now!

We've already seen one 56 million dollar contract go off shore to Canada
along with 20 jobs just at the mere mention of this legislation. Senator
Richard Complete-mind-numbing-shit-sucking-idiot Alston is flying out to
silicon valley today to try and tell them what great opportunities exist in
the Australian IT industry. Since he's proposing to cut us off from the
rest of the world, one would assume the IT industry in the US will more or
less laugh in his face. I am told we are already the laughing stock of the
world's IT industry. Making to the front cover of some IT journals as a big
joke of the free world.

We are talking about legislation that is more draconian than the policies
of Singapore or Malaysia. We are right up there with countries such as Iran
for censorship now. If they vote for it this afternoon, we will effectively
be cut off from the rest of the world.

Already ISPs, mine in particular are looking at shifting their servers off
shore. It will no longer be viable for us to have web pages hosted within
this country. But even so we won't be allowed access to our own web pages.
It is a 27,000 dollar offence to do so.

Australia has no Freedom of speech set in stone in it's constitution. In
fact up until the net took off here, the only people with the freedom of
speech were the media proprietors. Now we are about to loose our freedom of
speech entirely. As all those who mentioned Beryllium oxide in their posts
will attest recently. The bounce messages and warning of
subversive/offensive content from some UK person subscribed to this list
will be common place for Australians when the new legislation kicks in fully.

We are not talking about client end filtering. We are talking about
server/bearer end filtering. But filters which are so dumb that they even
filter out the holy bible because of it's violence and sexual content.

We shall know by the end of the day whether we should bend over and kiss
our collective asses goodbye.

Be absolutely Icebox.

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