Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

UnblockOz: Helps Australians reclaim their unfiltered Internet access

unblockoz.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 121 posts

Re: UnblockOz: Helps Australians reclaim their unfiltered Internet access

#81

Post by vacri »

ue_ wrote: post #80
watbe wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only a guess, but I think it means "the government knows what is best for its citizens".

That is hardly unique to Australia. Britain, Canada, NZ all have no problem at all with censorship, so much that they will even censor fiction. These countries, one of whuch I am a citizen of, have not a single strand of libertarianism in government nor populace, and it's a shame.

Yeah, how shameful. Aus/Can/NZ routinely top quality-of-life measures along with the nordic countries.

Libertarianism is codified selfishness, and it's not conducive to healthy societies.

Re: UnblockOz: Helps Australians reclaim their unfiltered Internet access

#82

Post by exodust »

madshiva wrote: post #41

this is really a bad news. Yes ok tpb can be used to download pirated content but there's also some content that are not pirated content on the site too. Nobody should be allowed to shutdown site or flag as illegal without true charge. It sad where in 2017 we still live and lose time with people that don't wont go forward and do 5 step back. What next? blocking bitcoin because this ruin the bank economy?

Doesn't matter that much. This move was to deter the mainstream downloaders who have TPB saved as a bookmark and don't know how, or can't be bothered to learn how to access it other ways.

Blocking the "click to download this new release movie" users probably did prevent a few downloads.

Re: UnblockOz: Helps Australians reclaim their unfiltered Internet access

#83

Post by akjainaj »

apk17 wrote: post #79
akjainaj wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not about the government "suppresing part of a film that is considered obscene" or "removing news articles that are politically unacceptable". This is about you wanting to download movies or series without paying money to the people who made them. Movies or series that are completely legal to watch and sell in Australia, as long as you pay the people who worked to make them. Too many people masquerade their f…

> This is not about the government ... "removing news articles that are politically unacceptable". That's actually part of the problem. The government should close down illegal establishments, and not just be blocking access to them. The other part of the problem: Once the gov can tell the ISPs what to block (a) the block list must be secret and (b) the process can be very easily abused, with 'overblocking' being the…

Your government can't close down illegal websites in other countries, that's why they're blocking them.

Re: UnblockOz: Helps Australians reclaim their unfiltered Internet access

#84

Post by wycx »

ue_ wrote: post #80
watbe wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only a guess, but I think it means "the government knows what is best for its citizens".

That is hardly unique to Australia. Britain, Canada, NZ all have no problem at all with censorship, so much that they will even censor fiction. These countries, one of whuch I am a citizen of, have not a single strand of libertarianism in government nor populace, and it's a shame.

Others would disagree that libertarianism is absent, and that its absence is a shame, e.g. [1]. Indeed, they say that the influence of libertarianism is responsible for some of Australia's governmental problems, most conspicuously on display this past week.

[1] https://www.crikey.com.au/2016/06/01/rundle-the-liberal-part...

Re: UnblockOz: Helps Australians reclaim their unfiltered Internet access

#85

Post by exodust »

akjainaj wrote: post #71
nickonline wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you understand censorship? This clearly fits within censorship as it's considered politically unacceptable. censorship, noun: the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security.

This is not about the government "suppresing part of a film that is considered obscene" or "removing news articles that are politically unacceptable". This is about you wanting to download movies or series without paying money to the people who made them. Movies or series that are completely legal to watch and sell in Australia, as long as you pay the people who worked to make them. Too many people masquerade their f…

I get what you're saying, but blocking websites via the courts is a clumsy and expensive workaround which obviously has minimal impact and probably zero revenue benefit to the people who make those TV shows.

Further more, to watch shows in Australia we must first find who has that show. It might be Foxtel, so you must sign up to Foxtel to watch that one show. That is not practical.

iTunes is better because you can buy one single episode for $3.50, but it's a shame that it's iTunes and not simply the people who made the show, able to offer it directly to consumers without needing to go through Murdoch's "sign up for our entertainment package" or Apple's "we only take 30%" bullshit.

Bottom line: I don't want to pay Apple or Murdoch in order to pay the TV production company who made the show. That just means the price will always be inflated, and I don't use those services enough to justify that cost.

Re: UnblockOz: Helps Australians reclaim their unfiltered Internet access

#86

Post by _coldfire »

dndln wrote: post #58
sspiff wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't using a VPN make you liable in two jurisdictions instead of just one? (The exit point of the tunnel, and the location where you are actually connecting to the VPN) I understand that it is technically more challenging to detect and prove the user is participating in privacy or whatever it is that they're using a VPN for, but really it's just a matter of applying pressure to the VPN provider to cough up any det…

Sure, that's why the choice of VPN provider is important. You need to choose a provider which doesn't keep logs, and has the character to shut down their business before being legally compelled to reveal users, like lavabit did. You can read this thread for an example: https://airvpn.org/topic/15396-does-airvpn-log-its-users-ip-... For additional protection, you can also run Tor over VPN.

Please don't use Tor for torrents.

https://blog.torproject.org/blog/bittorrent-over-tor-isnt-go...

Re: UnblockOz: Helps Australians reclaim their unfiltered Internet access

#87

Post by exodust »

akjainaj wrote: post #83
apk17 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is not about the government ... "removing news articles that are politically unacceptable". That's actually part of the problem. The government should close down illegal establishments, and not just be blocking access to them. The other part of the problem: Once the gov can tell the ISPs what to block (a) the block list must be secret and (b) the process can be very easily abused, with 'overblocking' being the…

Your government can't close down illegal websites in other countries, that's why they're blocking them.

There are no "illegal websites", only some illegal activity on legal websites. Just like there's some illegal activity on legal roadways, but we don't block the roads do we?

Re: UnblockOz: Helps Australians reclaim their unfiltered Internet access

#88

Post by zo1 »

wil421 wrote: post #77
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, not yet then ... ah, you meant a legal slave using nation ...

Article is about Australia yet people still have to take jabs at the US. I'm not really sure what you mean anyway.

I believe he is implying that there is still slavery on-going in the US, and will be going on for 15 more years at least.

Re: UnblockOz: Helps Australians reclaim their unfiltered Internet access

#89

Post by cylinder »

mmjaa wrote: post #63
gravelc wrote: post #47

Much, much more frightening than website blocking in Australia is this: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-05/telco-industry-pushes-... Our esteemed government told us universal metadata collection was for fighting terrorism. Then, over the Christmas period when the public is disconnected from politics, a sham enquiry was held to open up metadata to civil courts (i.e. for copyright, divorce cases etc). Needs a bit mo…

Australians simply don't care about this shit. They've lived in an industrialised colony, with all its rewards, for too long - as long as they're still able to live the good life, who cares what the government gets up to .. Its a shame, because Australia has, in many ways, a culture that could produce great things. But its still ham-strung by its dependence on colonialist thinking in the halls of power.

Australia survived and prospered due to government. It's the only way a million people on a giant remote continent could. What is the opposite of "colonialist thinking" anyways? American sociopathy?

Re: UnblockOz: Helps Australians reclaim their unfiltered Internet access

#90

Post by akjainaj »

exodust wrote: post #87
akjainaj wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your government can't close down illegal websites in other countries, that's why they're blocking them.

There are no "illegal websites", only some illegal activity on legal websites. Just like there's some illegal activity on legal roadways, but we don't block the roads do we?

Roads are used for a legal purpose by >99% of their users, and even though you could upload Creative Commons content to The Pirate Bay, most of it is illegally shared software/entertainment.

The same they would not block Telegram nation-wide just because some users are using it to upload movies to public gruops (yes, it happens) because most of the users just use it to talk to their friends.

Post reply on HN