I wonder how many fellow Aussies who frequent FA actually realise that if the Australian government gets its way with the national MANDATORY net filtering (or "censorship") laws then it will probably result in sites like FA being completely banned from Australian net users.

If you're interested, here is a list of what's being filtered:

The definition of illegal content has never been defined by the government. Some content that will be on the list under ACMA's guidelines include:
Refused Classification (“RC”) content is any content which depicts:
- paedophilic activity
- child abuse
- instruction on drug use
- instruction on how to commit a crime
- bestiality
- sexual nudity involved minors
- excessive and frequent violence
- sexual activity involving minors or descriptions of it
- violence during sex
- fetish activity
- incest fantasies
- exceeds lower classification categories
- video games that exceed MA15+
- Actual sexual intercourse between consenting adults
- No violence, sexual violence or coercion
- Fisting
- Candle wax
- Bondage
- Spanking
- Golden showers
- Depiction of people over 18 as minors

There are plenty of things that I deplore that people use the internet for, and I think that those people should be stopped, but I seriously don't think systematically blocking sites is the right thing to do nor do I think it will it work.

FA ticks many of those boxes listed above and at the end of the day it doesn't matter why you go here, unfortunately its obvious that this site will be blocked under this regime.

I consider this a massive attack on peoples freedom, the overwhelming majority of people seem to deplore this action, we have experts saying it won't solve anything. I'll be certainly be looking out for ways that I can contribute to help protest what our government is doing and I hope that any other Australians who are as pissed off as me about this will also make their voices heard.

This doesn't even limit itself to "protecting the children" either, this goes much further. Australia has a very strict rating system and this will essentially block content that the government refuses to classify. Other things that you'll see blocked could be:

* Support sites for problem drug users if they instruct on the safe ways to take drugs (harm minimisation)
* Pro euthanasia sites
* Hunting sites (that instruct on how to use weaponry, etc)
* Most porn sites (the porn industry already needs to edit their content before they release in Australia as it is)
* Pro abortion sites (I hate abortion, but believe peoples opinions need to be heard)
* Sites for people with political opinions that differ from the general populace
* Anything bit torrent, file sharing, etc
* Message boards (people talk about anything and everything on message boards, user posted content could trip a filter)

In the trials that have already taken place, there have also been several false positives, several legitimate sites have accidentally been blacklisted, so if you're the owner of an accidental blacklisted site, how long does it take you to un-blacklist your site? (wade through the bureaucracy of it all) Hours? Months? how much will it cost your business if you rely on your web site? Will you be compensated?

The deep packet filtering that they use on all traffic will also slow down the internet, and while they "claim" it's almost not noticeable, I don't believe a word of that, the people making these claims to the public probably know nothing of technology.

Anyway enough ranting... I am just really pissed off about this, it's not how a democracy works!