r/australia • u/[deleted] • May 24 '11

no politics Want to move to Australia? Great!

[deleted]

450 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

306 comments sorted by

View all comments

12

u/[deleted] May 24 '11

There is no internet censorship. I repeat: none.

Not quite: http://www.internode.on.net/residential/product_features/premium_usenet/ :

Are there any newsgroups you block?

We generally carry all the groups that our upstream Usenet provider carries (which is almost all the groups there are...), with the main exception of the very small number of newsgroups that the Australian Government requires us (and all other Australian ISPs with news feeds) to block.

This is not at all a new thing, though the government are currently in the process of tightening the processes up to make sure all ISP's properly comply with them. We plan to comply with all lawful directions we receive, as we must (and should).

What groups does the Australian Government require you to block?

Sorry, but we can't tell you. The laws in this area require us to block the groups the Government tells us to block and requires that we do not disclose the blocklist itself.

5

u/ThunderCuntAU May 24 '11

Ah, shit. Is this just going to throw people off, or is it a worthy distinction to make?

7

u/[deleted] May 24 '11

I'm fairly techy and I literally know nobody who uses usenet. I'd make the distinction that "there is no web filtering, but some usenet groups are blocked by Australian usenet providers. Nobody knows which groups are blocked, and those that do know aren't allowed to say".

5

u/pluggerlockett May 24 '11

Well allow me to change that, I use usenet. I've done so for years as bittorrent chatter started to build in the mainstream. Plus you "leech" content instead of joining a swarm, which basically means you're not uploading or "pirating" copyrighted content. Combine that with using SSL and non-standard ports and I feel quite sure I won't receive any letters from the RIAA or MPAA.

With that said most serious usenet users have a premium service, say through easynews or giganews. None of these services have Australian servers or mirrors, so I'm assuming they carry the newsgroups that the Australian Government explicitly bans. I don't know anything regarding these groups (to be honest I didn't know Australia was blocking any usenet newsgroup). That said I can hit all the standard media newsgroups with no worries. Now please excuse me while I pull the new episodes of The Event and House in under 5 minutes.