Save the planet? According to Kevin Rudd, why bother?!

Just a quickie this morning -- I'll be back later with something significant to say, but right now I have something rather significant to show! It's been a long time since I supported Kevin Rudd and the Australian labor government, even though [sounds of retching] I actually voted for them, because at the time it seemed that any change from "Jackboot John" Howard would have to be an improvement. A lot of people thought that way, which is why KRudd rode into office so easily. But time (and it didn't take much of it) proved us dead wrong. Like so:

Obviously, click the pic for the lare, readable version -- it's the ad which is circulating down here right now ...

Right now, you've got a rampaging Christian in the Responsibility Seat, who takes a dim view of gay marriage rights, is ambivalent about foreign policy, wants all of Australia to drop off the Internet to save a handful of parentally neglected children from the faint possibility of blundering into disgusting websites ... and frankly he doesn't give the proverbial stuff about the environment.

And I voted for this guy. Gee-Zeus. I swear it, I'm going back to voting for Daffy Duck, even though Brendan Fraser said he was (and I quote), an a$$hole to work with...

TTFN,
MK

Aussie internet filtering: score one for the good guys!

Don't start celebrating just yet -- it's far from over, but Reason and Logic have scored a major point for Australian Internet users:

Xenophon opposes mandatory ISP filtering, but fight not over yet

That's Senator Nick Xenophon using his vote to effectively -- though temporarily -- block the impending Internet filtering package which has been bearing down on Australians like Darth Vader and his TIE fighters closing in.

However -- Sen. Xenophon's motives could be somewhat less than pure: he's playing the power politics game, where you support the government in something it desperately wants to do, if they offer you what you desperately want/need in return.

However, the block, however temporary it may be, remains good news because it's a time-buyer ... and time is what has been needed to prove that the whole Internet filtering concept is ludicrous and patently unnecessary.

We don't have the infrastructure to carry the system -- bandwidth is thin on the ground downunder. Too thin. The web is already slow as a tired snail; slow it down yet again by imposing upon everyone the measures needed to protect the children of a few, and the www will do a face plant. With broadband running at the speed of the old dial-ups, most of the web will vanish between the time-outs; and as for dial-up accounts (on which rural areas rely), those users won't be able to "get on" at all. The web would be reduced to the simplest email accounts; and I've heard rumblings about the Aussie government wanting to filter email content too -- as if they think that having robots spy on people is acceptable, while the human spying preferred in countries like China is dreadful. I put this to you: what are the robots looking for, and to whom do the little cyber-buggers report?! And what happens next??!!

Also ... is it just me saying this? PARENTS ought to be the ones responsible for protecting their offspring. They were given the opportunity, over the space of years, to get a free Net Nanny. Few bothered; of those, only a handful are still using the thing. What's going on here? Don't they care if their little ones are exposed to adult content? The numbers say -- they don't.

Therefore, the government must ride to the rescue ... but why don't they just make it an offence worth a fine of up to $25,000 to have an unprotected computer in a home, school, office, church or whatever, where kids are likely to be present? This should light a fire under the brainless, careless individuals who were ready to a) make babies and b) buy computers, but don't have the intelligence or decency to protect A from B. Said individuals would then hurry out and buy a bloody Net Nanny license and run the damned software -- out of fear of getting caught red-handed and fined within an inch of their mortgaged homes. There: problem solved.

But I must be the only one saying this. Maybe I'm not saying it loudly enough or to the right people?! And of course it doesn't help that Google zeroed out my page ranking, so the only people reading this column are the Regulars (yourself!) ... and you'll all be saying, "Find a different song, Keegan, we've heard this one so often, we could sing it for you!"

And you're absolutely right, of course.

I'll find something fresh to ramble on about tomorrow.

Cheers,
MK

Mel at the Movies: talking dollars and sense

What a nice outcome at the Oscars! A sorta-kinda gay movie right there in the spotlight ... the award for Best Actor bestowed upon a performer in a gay role -- and richly deserved. Is the cinema-going public changing? Is there a shift in the mindset of your average popcorn-muncher in the fourth row?

Could be. Here's an interesting quote:

Jim Carey and Ewan McGregor play love interests in the upcoming movie I Love You Philip Morris which is based upon a real life incident about a man who falls in love with his cell mate while in jail and escapes four times in order to be with his lover. Some critics worry that the film will be a problematic sell given that it is an overtly gay love story. However, they do like the film.

Several straight actors have played gay, lesbian or trans characters over the last few decades without incident, and without any problem in their careers.

For Carey, this movie makes his first foray into doing so, but McGregor is an old hand at playing gay characters. Adding into that list are Tom Hanks, Julianne Moore, Nicole Kidman, and a much longer list. The notion that audiences may not like a movie due to a gay, lesbian or trans story line may be old thinking. While Milk has not been a blockbusting success the same way, say, The Dark Knight has been, it certainly has achieved a certain amount of commercial success, and a great deal of critical acclaim.
http://lezgetreal.com/?p=922&cpage=1

From what I've learned about Philip Morris, I have a feeling the movie might be a tad bit too explicit for the average audience -- and this would explain the reticence of distributors to be involved. It costs a ton of money to strike the prints to get a movie out on the road; exhibitors have to believe they can break even or better.

Now, sometimes it's impossible to second-guess movies. Australia was initially supposed to rival Titanic, and then it was supposed to be the world's biggest ever flop, and now -- hey, it's showing critics and audiences alike that it has enough staying power to be out there earning, long after it was supposed to be getting stamped into the surfaces of a few million DVDs. However, it's not going to magically transform itself into a boxoffice success, though it might break even -- in which case, all the DVD dollars are frosting on the cake. And like The Man From Snowy River, his one will probably "go platinum" on disk.

Why? Well, because Australia cost the grand total of $130m to make, which is a fleabite these days, by comparison with the budgets of "big movies" like the Pirates of the Caribbean films. In the days of yore, it used to be that $1 in $3 of the boxoffice made its way home to the studio that put up the financing, so a movie that cost $130m to make would have to earn $390 to break even...

These days it's very, very different. To begin with, it's $1 in $5 of the boxoffice that dribbles back to the investor ... but increasingly, the studio, the distributor and even the exhibitor are all branches of the same company which, in any case, is owned by something like Gulf Western, Coca Cola, whatever.

So while various divisions of the company might be showing a loss, the parent "machine" that drives this multi-national juggernaut is sitting pretty ... and it gets better.

The DVD revenues associated with movies can, and do, outstrip their boxoffice potential. You have global boxoffice to think about; plus the network TV premier; cable TV; pay per view; the DVD release; the BlueRay release; the TV rerun(s); the Netflix subscription service; and whatever merchandizing you've been able to scare up along the way.

Any way you slice it, movies are huge business, even though box office figures the world over are far from attractive. There's a site which makes fascinating browsing: BoxOfficeMojo.com ... enter in, and prepared to be astounded.

Russel Crowe in A Good Year ... directed by Ridley Scott, himself a legend. Total boxoffice gross: just under $7.5m ... you're not reading that wrongly. Nor did I mistype it! $7,459,300.

Kathleen Turner in her absolute hay day in V.I. Warshawski -- if she can't put bums on seats, who can? $11,128,308.

Johnny Deep and Charlieze Thieron (and I wouldn't be in the slightest surprised if I don't know how to spell that!) ... same bums-on-seats remark. The Astronaut's Wife. $10, 672,566.

Let's face it: if only the top 2% of movies ever broke even, Hollywood would have collapsed by now! The truth? Boxoffice is only part of the picture, and not even a large part.

Australia is at just under $50m, and still earning at the boxoffice before they get stuck into all the rest. Hey guys ... it's not that bad, really.

Little is happening in this neck of the woods. The big news (and terms are relative!) is that I did two posts to Legends today, and here they are:

http://mel-keegan-legends.blogspot.com/2009/02/chapter-nine-conclusion.html
and
http://mel-keegan-legends.blogspot.com/2009/02/oracle-knows.html

I haven't been able to look at Digital Kosmos for a week, and in this week I'll have to make a decision: gee, do I get five titles up on Amazon Kindle, or do I post to the photo blog. Duh. I'll get back to DK when time permits. Till them -- bear with me, guys!

Ciao for now,
MK

Thursday in Keegan Country

It's just odds and ends today, with life, locally, as a flat calm. The weather remains cool, with this as the forecast for the next few days:


If we were not so dry, dessicated, it'd be not-too-bad, not at all. What worries you is the fire danger ... and the knowledge that several fires were lit by some lunatic in Belair National Park a couple of days ago!

I'd give you the update on the fire season situation, but Dave has already done this, and I'm going to give you the links instead:

http://alaskandavedownunder.blogspot.com/2009/02/australian-bushfire-updates.html
http://alaskandavedownunder.blogspot.com/2009/02/australian-bushfires-2009.html
http://alaskandavedownunder.blogspot.com/2009/02/adelaides-deadly-heat-wave-of-2009.html

The LEGENDS launch has been a terrific success. The ClusterMap at the foot of the page is taking forever to update, I have no idea why, but the true story is this -- depicted on a may generated by Statcounter instead:

You can enlarge the map with a click on it -- I uploaded it with enough pixels to make it readable. Not bad at all, for about 40 hours since the site opened. That's over 600 page loads.

The only thing people have to do now is to cotton on to the fact that they should notice the advertising and click something occasionally. (Thanks to those two people who did indeed, uh, click something. Now, if the other 200 would be as helpful --! Heaven only knows, it's not going to cost you anything...)

In fact, no one would be happier than me if the digital novel concept proves out -- and there's every reason to believe it will. Very, very early days, as yet, and already nice traffic. I received an email just this morning from someone asking if I'd be interested in this:

http://www.writer4me.com/ -- "Writer 4 Me," being the "World's most popular ghostwriter hire service." In fact, it's most interesting; it's also depressing, when you dig into the details and find that some illiterate twit of an entrepreneur can hire (!!!) an ICON writer for $25/hour.

An icon writer is a known name, long published, with a fan following ... who's so short of cash, s/he is hiring out for $25/hour, which is less than is earned by laboring hands.

Still, they have it rich by comparison with the website developers, who'll get $100 to build someone a small website (no shopping cart), and an extra fifty bucks for the time and sweat it takes to add the shopping cart. (Anyone here speak MYSQL gibberish?! Joomla?) There's talent out yonder working for $5 an hour -- sweatshop wages. I find it sad.

So let's talk about something happier: penguins. Seriously, penguins! Have you seen this:

http://www.bgay.com/news/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=759&Itemid=23

This little story ran on BGay.com a few days ago. Let me give you the teaser:

A pair of gay penguins at the Polarland Zoo in Harbin, China, turned out to be such a great parenting pair that their keepers thought they deserved a reward and let them marry.

I must be getting sentimental in my old age, because I gotta love that. A happy ending for a change. Go ahead, read the whole story -- it's short, and worthy of a smile.

And now I have to go back to work, so I'll leave you with these links to keep you up to date with my other posts to the other blogs:

LEGENDS, Chapter Five:
http://mel-keegan-legends.blogspot.com/2009/02/chapter-five.html
and, at DIGITAL KOSMOS:
Colonial Memories
Seward, Alaska: Where the boats come in


Cheers,
MK

Australian bushfires ... changing the face of the nation

The news from Victoria continued to intensify as the afternoon and night wore away ... it's official: this is the worst firestorm in the country's history -- and we've had some bad ones. You might have heard of the Ash Wednesday fires in 1983, which affected both South Australia and Victoria; and before that, Black Friday, in 1939 (before my time, but I know the stories). The death toll right now is quoted as 109, but you know it's going to be worse; and I don't think the cost of suffering can ever be counted. Emergency services are so far stretched, you'd think this country was at war.


1983 -- Ash Wednesday -- is "loud in my head." This season is worse, but '83 was so close to home, I could still cough on the smoke. What concerns many of us is that 11 of the 12 hottest summers on record have fallen in the last 12 years ... and there is no reason to suppose this trend won't continue. There's the dreadful feeling in the pit of the belly, that heatwaves and fires which used to be the event of the decade, or quarter-century, will become commonplace.

The cool change came through SA without rain, and have a look at the forecast for the coming weekend:

(Here's the whole page at Bureau of Meteorology, if you're interested...).

Back up into the heat at the weekend; next week? There's cause for concern, because SA is already so dry, we're like a stack of tinder, kindling ... and traditionally, historically, our bad, bad bushfires are usually in late February or March. In other words, we're not out of any wood yet.

Check out the FireMap which is being constantly updated:
http://mapvisage.appspot.com/fires/FireMap.html">


What the above map doesn't reflect is that there are 46 fires burning in New South Wales:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/02/09/2485754.htm?section=australia

At this point, South Australia is getting off lightly (this being a relative term). We've had numerous fires, but they've all been contained. We have another four or six weeks to get through before bushfire season is over for 2009, and the fingers, toes and eyes are crossed. Memories of 1983 are haunting me: don't want to go there. I could swear that every summer is hotter and dryer than the last one ... and I find it so hard to believe that we have a Labor government that's shilly shallying, playing silly buggers with its policies as per carbon reduction.

Or was that last week? PM Kevin Rudd looks like the proverbial stunned mullet at this point. Perhaps he just had his personal epiphany? We can hope.

Mr Rudd: get your head out of the Internet, drop the whole stupid nonsense about Internet filtering, worry less about what a handful of precocious, badly brought-up children might be seeing on the WWW if they deliberately go hunting for p*rn ... and worry more (a lot more) about what real, live kids (and their parents) are suffering in the real world, where the country's emergency services and infrastructure will need to be strengthened -- a lot -- if the local climate is going to go on getting hotter, dryer, every year.

More later --

Cheers,
MK

Adelaide heatwave, Victorian bushfires and ... summer can go away now. Soon, please.

Many thanks to the folks who swung by to check out the book launch (If you're looking for it, just scroll down to yesterday's post), and in particular many thanks to the readers who invested in a copy, be it electronic or paper. Your support is greatly appreciated.

Today, work continues on the LEGENDS project, and I hope to have it ready, and up, in the late afternoon. If all goes according to schedule, look out for a newsletter later today, or tomorrow.

In the meantime ... this is going to be a little brief. The cool change did "come through" and made a big difference to the temperature; it also dumped a tonne and a half of tropical humidity on us. Add this to about 10 drops of rain and some crash-bang-boom thunder and lightning before dawn, and then the sun came out, and -- where's my scuba diving tank?! Breathing ain't easy.

If you've been following the news from downunder, you'll know we've been having a torrid time of it. I have a couple of links for you -- slideshows: the Victorian bushfires, and the baby koala in the tub of water, which has been appearing in newspapers around the world.

Click here to see the whole slideshow on ABC News.

The other story that has been making people just shake their heads is the tale of the little koala (a baby) who was apparently abandoned and came in out of the bush seeking shelter and water. Now, it's common knowledge that koalas don't drink. Ever. All the moisture they get -- or, at any other time than this, need -- is derived from the eucalypt vegetation they eat ... and they eat ONLY the foliage of bluegums and river redgums. So you can imagine how hot and dry it would have to be to make a koala actually drink:

Click here to see the whole slideshow on Channel 9 News
(starts with the koala in Hahndorf with his head in a garden sprinkler!)

As hot as it's been in Adelaide (45.5C at our hottest; 115F), your heart goes out to the people of Victoria, where Melbourne suffered 46.3C yesterday. SA suffered the bushfires a few years ago -- get me to tell you that story; we had a view that was way too close for comfort -- but this time is Victoria's turn, and they have my sympathies.

And, the weather outlook for the next week? Four days of respite, of which this is one; and then 37 by Saturday. Sunday? They're not saying ... all bets are off, but I know what I'm hoping for!

Have you seen Jade's post on Digital Kosmos? Check this out: Waiting For Rain. Yep, this is what we're hoping for!

Cheers,
MK

Australian Internet Filtering ... almost upon us

Internet filtering is about to descend upon us ... and Keegan might be in limbo very soon. What to do about this is a good question. We'd originally thought that only the X-rated sites would vanish. Then it was the R-rated sites too. Then...

Well, here's the news on All News Web:

Australia: North Korea style internet censorship plan moves ahead.
Australians can’t deal with free access to the internet as far as Australia’s Minister of Communications Stephen Conroy is concerned. This month his office announced that live trials of a far reaching internet filter will begin.

Australians will have to get used to an internet devoid of X-rated, R-rated and even M-rated websites and ultimately possibly have to get used to no internet at all, according to some observers. The plan is supposedly about protecting Australians from the ‘evils of the net’ and cracking down on child pornography but evidence suggests that the censorship program will go much further than that according to many observers.
‘Sadly the kids will end up suffering for this….and vulnerable women’ noted one psychologist we spoke to.’ Borderline abusers are currently fulfilling their fantasies vicariously through the kind of porn legal in most countries (not Australia). Once this stops the action will shift to shady file-sharing groups and go offline altogether. They will get of the net and hit the streets’

IT experts fear that the plan will interfere with the internet so much that it will effectively take Australia out of the information age. ‘Yep Australia will be going offline’ one IT professional active on the online group ‘No internet censorship’ told us. ‘The filter will slow down speeds to the point that the net will be rendered completely useless’

On the other side of the coin many Christian activists are applauding the move. ‘The net is a receptacle of filth and it’s going to get a good scrubbing behind the ear’ commented Dorothy, a middle aged Mum affiliated with the Australia's Evangelical community.

Australia's few free speech activists are horrified by the plans ‘This is the end of free speech in Australia if it ever existed at all. In the end the filter will be used to cut out any websites that don’t conform to the likings of any lobby group that is seen as having voting power. When this plan comes to its logical conclusion you will be lucky if you can get on and read the daily news.’ Commented one well known free speech activist.’ Australians will lose on all fronts, abuse will be up and the net will be down’ she concluded.
http://www.allnewsweb.com/page1881881.php

Is this a far-fetched, extreme case scenario? We don't think so. This appeared on Crikey!:

So Conroy's Internet filter won't block political speech, eh?
"Freedom of speech is fundamentally important in a democratic society and there has never been any suggestion that the Australian Government would seek to block political content," intoned Senator Stephen Conroy on Tuesday.

Yet the very next day, ACMA added a page from what's arguably a political website to its secret blacklist of Internet nasties.

The page is part of an anti-abortion website which claims to include "everything schools, government, and abortion clinics are afraid to tell or show you". Yes, photos of dismembered fetuses designed to scare women out of having an abortion. Before you click through, be warned: it is confronting. Here's the blacklisted page.
Mandatory Internet filtering, says Senator Conroy, is only about blocking the ACMA blacklist. The blacklist, he repeatedly insists, is "mainly" child-abuse and ultra-violent material. He's protecting us from ped-philes, stopping terrorists, that sort of thing. It's like the regulation we have for TV, films and books. Except it's not. It's not even close.

As always, Irene Graham's meticulously-researched Libertus.net explains how Internet censorship actually works now and what the Rudd government has been planning.
http://www.crikey.com.au/Politics/20090123-So-Conroys-internet-filter-wont-block-political-speech-eh-.html

It's not the blockage/filtering/censorship of the x-rated stuff and the r-rated stuff that bothers most ordinary folks (like self). It's the blockage of everything down to the M-rated material ... because after that, all that's left is G and PG. This is kiddie stuff. Even Lord of the Rings is rated M and MA15+. There's not a lot of the big movies out there that are PG. The Dark Knight is MA15+, for example ... Batman is about to vanish from Australia's web; Wolverine will never even appear upon computer screens here. The filtering will be in before it's released.

We can expect to lose YouTube, Wikipedia, Flickr, Photobucket, MySpace, FaceBook, Amazon, and a whole lot more; because you can see M-rated stuff on all of these sites; and you can buy it from Amazon in the form of DVDs and --

Books. Which is where Keegan stands to turn into the invisible gay novelist very soon. When the government's blacklist is completed, rounded out to include everything except G and PG material, well ... this blog will still be there at Blogger -- you'll be able to see it! -- but I won't -- meaning, I can't update it, post to it, edit it, or even check back to see what I wrote a few months ago! It'll have vanished because I'm a political and gay rights activist, and I cover topics which are in the M rated bracket. I run artwork that's as "revealing as underwear commercials --

You realize that Victoria's Secret and so forth will be vanishing? The automatic, robotized photo filters are fine-tuned to detect skin. Any skin, anywhere. Not genitalia: they're not that smart. SKIN. (How do you think Google Safe Search works?) The text filters are set to detect four letter words ... but it gets worse: "damn" and "blast" and "hell" and "bugger" and "death" and "kill" will get you rated R. This blog IS rated R, because I keep saying heinous things like, "This heat wave will be the death of me yet," and "Somebody kill the power before this computer melts down," and "There was a blast of cold air from the a/c," and ... so on.

So, given that the only things left on the Internet will be Disney oriented, kiddie entertainment and shopping at stores that do NOT sell books and DVDs, who in the he...ck is in favor of the Internet filtering?

This is also running on Crikey!:

Who supports compulsory Internet filtering, exactly?
Senator Conroy tries to portray the filter-fighters as "extreme libertarians". But with GetUp!'s "Save The Net" campaign having already gathered 95,000 signatures and $50,000, it's starting to look pretty mainstream. That, plus a new survey by middle-rank ISP Netspace, starts to paint the supporters of compulsory filtering as the minority.

Netspace isn't taking part in the trials because the Expression of Interest contained "insufficient detail, unrealistic timeframes and unclear funding arrangements".
http://www.crikey.com.au/Media-Arts-and-Sports/20090128-Who-supports-compulsory-Internet-filtering-exactly.html

Uh...huh. Well, Senator Conroy would probably contest that less than 100,000 Internet users are not a big enough group to compromise the security of the legions of children whose parents are allowed by law to practise criminal negligence.

Put it like this: you have a stash of porn magazines, tapes and books in the house. The kids know where the stash is. Do you leave them alone with it? The answer is -- no, you don't. The same applies to the computer and Internet connection ... no more, no less. The responsibility is on the shoulders of the PARENTS to filter their own damned Internet and protect their own damned children.

Meanwhile, some ISPs are so disgusted, they won't even be involved in the trials. I'm with Telstra-Big Pond, and this is fortunate, because this is one of the disgusted ISPs. Another is the giant Netspace.

In fact, Netspace officially has this to say:

Netspace customers rail against ISP filtering
Netspace has released the results of its customer survey on ISP level filtering, which shows strong opposition to the federal government's plan.

The survey found that 78.9% of the "almost 10,000" respondents disagreed with the federal government's plan to mandate ISP level filtering for all Australians, with 61.8% of those "strongly" disagreeing.

Over 70% of Netspace customers also showed strong opposition to the potential for increased broadband prices and a reduction in Internet performance as a result of filtering.

Netspace also asked customers if they would "opt-in" to a clean-feed service if it were made available. 64.9% of respondents said they would not sign up, while 26.1% said "maybe". It's worth noting however that some comments by the government have suggested the clean-feed service would be opt-out rather than opt-in.
In related news, iiNet says it is "unsure" when the filtering trials may start, and is not yet sure if it will be asked to participate. iiNet told customers in its newsletter that its "belief is that these trials will only highlight filtering as ineffective in addressing the issue".

"We're also more than a little concerned with the Government's failure to clearly outline the level and types of censorship that will apply to subjects other than child pornography, in addition to the impact this filtering could have on internet performance", it said.
http://whirlpool.net.au/news/?id=1831

O...kay. As you can see, at this moment's it's chaos, with only one thing being certain: a minority of people (like the Aussie Christian Evangelical Mum above) are in agreement with making the web a G and PG environment. But --

When you lose Amazon, and Wiki, YouTube and Flickr, sites that sell swimwear and lingerie, sites giving information about AIDS prevention, safe sex and the right way to use condoms; sites that argue the political environment, and contend with matters of human rights...

Do the evangelists have the right to dictate terms to the community as a whole? Isn't this the gateway to the Sharya system of law?? Why can't these religious enthusiasts just protect their own children, and leave the rest of us be? Take a leaf out of the Gospel According to Ned Flanders, and look after your own damned kids, don't wait for the country to do it for you! And then --

Why do these religious bods assume that their kids WANT to see porn on the web? If they've raised them in their own pure and holy image, wouldn't the kids turn off, switch channels, run back to something nice and safe?

Here is where it gets interesting, because --

Children's groups Save the Children, and the National Children's and Youth Law Centre, said they were yet to be convinced of the effectiveness of a mandatory filter but would wait until children were properly consulted before making a judgement.

"We're agnostic about the mandatory filtering trials," Save the Children Australia child rights adviser Holly Doel-Mackaway said.

"If it's an opt-in filter we would agree," she said.

She also called on the Government to take children's input seriously when forming policy.
The Government has established a youth advisory group based on 15 schools to guide it on cyber-safety matters.

"We've been advised by the department that the consultation process with the children will start in March," Ms Doel-Mackaway said.

"We want the children's comments to be documented and made public."
http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24967191-15306,00.html

This is where it starts to get a leeeetle bit idiotic. In March, they're going to start talking to "children" to get their take on the situation. In context, "children" means anything under 18. They'll be talking to a six foot, hungover, beard-shadowed guy who lost his virginity five years ago, and whose girlfriend is expecting his baby while he finishes out his matriculation, ready to go to TAFE or whatever. Question: are you frightened, troubled or offended by nudity and sex education pages on the Internet? We couldn't think of a sillier bloody question if we held a national competition. Or, they could be talking to the girlfriend, same age, same situation, except that she's at home, six months pregnant. And oh, does she wish she'd looked at the condom advisory service page seven months ago!

Except that page won't be there if she behaves like a Good Little Girl, and tells the bastar--nice people from the government, "Oh yes, I think the Internet should be "scrubbed behind its ears."

Or will they talk the the 13 year olds whose piles of Playboy and Hustler magazines are in the old breadmaker box behind the bike, under the dripsheets, in the back of the garage? Which kid in his or her right mind will admit to having a stash of porn at home? They KNOW what to say, to make the adults happy -- "adults" being a collective term which includes their parents, who don't know about the stash under the dripsheets, and who do control the purse-strings!

The situation is getting to the point of utter absurdity, and there is not one thing the ordinary voting Australian can do to stop it happening.

There's a lot more to this story, but I'll have to leave it there for today ... it's too hot to think much less write, and we're expecting rolling power outages in the afternoon, hitting random locations, as the local power station practises "load sharing" to meet demand. The forecast is for 109F today ... the problem is, it's already that hot in the yard here, and it's only lunch time!

If you found this post interesting or useful, PLEASE EMAIL THE URL to your friends! Remember that Google still has my page rankings set to zero, for no good reason. It is impossible for people to find this page with any kind of Google search. Help Keegan be heard -- especially because this is an important subject! Thanks in advance for emailing this url, and perhaps bookmarking it on your favorite sites.

Cheers,
MK

Sizzling in South Aus

If you're wondering about the weather in Adelaide, you can check the forecast here:

http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDS10034.shtml

And we're making headlines:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/01/29/2476856.htm

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24975111-12377,00.html
http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,27574,24975204-2682,00.html

This is a choice quote:
Commuters were warned last night that the city's public transport system is "not out of the woods yet" after it literally buckled under the strain of extraordinary 45C heat yesterday.The closing of the Noarlunga train line and tram services sparked confusion on North Terrace during the afternoon city peak hour.

A section of the line at Clarence Park buckled in the extreme heat and repair crews were last night trying to straighten the line for the first service this morning.

Acting Transport Minister Paul Holloway said "similar issues may occur on rail services over the continuing unprecedented heatwave over the coming days".
http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,27574,24975204-2682,00.html

They're not kidding. Check out the tracks:

Now, that's just begging to have a train derail. And the authorities have closed the national parks:

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/local/news/general/heatwave-shows-climate-scientists-are-right-wong-says/1419596.aspx

...and we're dreaming of winter. Or New Zealand.

Ciao for now,
MK

The Adelaide Heat, the Icelandic MP, and the Gay Oracle of 1996

The Adelaide heat is making headlines -- as well it should. We had the hottest day since 1939 yesterday ... 45.5C, which is something in the order of 115F, and remember, that's a shade temperature. In the sun it was ... much hotter.

The forecast for today? The same. They forecast 44 yesterday, and we're going to the same again, and there's little in the way of relief for the next week. Click this to get a version large enough to read:

It's a question of survival ... and trying to get some work done on the side. For this reason (!) you'll forgive me if I'm a bit brief!

Two items landed on my desk late yesterday, and one gives cause to rejoice while the other has that sepulchral sound ... like the thuddd you hear when the door closes on a tomb.

The good news is that Iceland is, by all accounts, about to elect an openly gay PM, who's a woman to boot. Fantastic. See the story on Huffington: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/iris-lee/icelandic-pm-would-be-wor_b_161311.html

I could wax rhapsodic about this, but -- today? I'll just give you think link and defer the celebrations!

The second item is a strangely oracular feature article dating back about 12 years now:
http://www.qrd.org/qrd/www/media/print/bookstores/glbrhtml.html

It's an old article, and permission is granted on it to forward, copy, and so on, so I'll save you the trip over to the above url, and will paste the whole thing in below. Remember: this was 1996! And every word the article said has come true in spades. The feature was a call-to-arms for readers in the GLBTI community to "support your local," and I fear, too few of us heeded it. At the same time -- late 1990s -- along came Amazon, and suddenly we had access to used (gay) books for .70c, and the rest ... is history.

Fact: used books and remainder stock hurt publishers. Publishers and writers only earn their grocery money and rent money when a brand, spanking new copy is sold. Used book stores (of which Amazon is the King) don't do the traditional publishers, and their contract writers, any favors. Amazon is great for used book vendors, and utterly indispensable for POD publishers! This is the way of the future ... and part of the process of evolution is the gradual, unavoidable atrophy of the deadwood: the traditional publishers who brought the rot on themselves by seeking ever-greater profits via the business model of Mergers and Conglomeration.

In fact, I was just saying all this yesterday, in my response to a wonderful comment from Mark Coker of Smashwords, on a previous post of mine. If you're undecided about POD -- and particularly if you're a fresh, (largely) unpublished writer hoping to break into the market today, you owe it to yourself to read Mark's comment, and my response: http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2009/01/pod-publishing-writers-dilemma.html

(Also, if you're just happening upon this post, it might be useful to read this -- On any Saturday ... except this one -- my post for January 24, in which I fielded a reader's question, "How difficult is it to sell books on Amazon.")

And now, that oracular feature article ... read this and shiver. It all came true:

Gay and Lesbian Words Are In Danger Today

Please consider this before you make your next book purchasing decision. Gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered bookstores exist in a fragile ecosystem made up of the members of our community who support them with their purchases, the small gay, feminist, and lesbian publishing houses which supply them, the authors who write the books, and the stores themselves. This living web is very fragile and easily disrupted. It could possibly even be destroyed if we let the large "discount" chain stores influence us into "discounting" the efforts of all these people and saving a few cents on the purchase of a book, even the latest Times bestseller, at the expense of our sisters and brothers and friends.

Make no mistake, our bookstores are under attack, as are all independent bookstores. The large chains (and there are only a very few) want to control all our book-buying decisions and are deliberately targeting areas where large independent stores have a loyal customer base. You'll pardon me, I'm sure, if I say that I believe feminist, lesbian, and gay stores are under particular assault. A recent issue of Ms. Magazine (May/June, 1995, Volume V, Number 6) had a graphic illustration of this in the form of a photograph of the new Borders Bookstore which "just happened" to open up directly across the street from Sisterhood Bookstore in West Los Angeles, California. Look it up if you haven't seen it. It's scary.

Fight back! If you're browsing in a big chain store and see an interesting title your local store might not carry, jot down the name and author and have your local gay and lesbian bookstore order it for you. They need the business and you need them. Many of these stores,and the publishing houses and authors who depend on them to sell their books, may not be there when you want and need them unless you continue to support them with your purchasing power and with your time.

If you can't buy a book today, do something! Volunteer to help out with publicity, help with a book table at a local Pride Festival, or any other needed task; at least tell another woman or man about our stores and ask them to buy their next book from one of our stores and keep our stories being told.

Community Losses
Old Wives' Tales in San Francisco, CA
Judith's Room in New York, NY
31st Street Street Bookstore Cooperative in Baltimore, MD
ClaireLight in Santa Rosa, CA

All these stores share in our common problem, in spite of large and active gay and lesbian communities in their immediate neighborhoods they have closed their doors and can no longer serve us. There are others whose names do not appear on this short list who are also gone or are in serious trouble. The people who run these stores share a common dedication to making it possible to find gay and lesbian books, to support our common community, to furnish a forum for those who want to publish works that might not find a ready market outside our community. There's not much money in it.

The large chains don't care whether gay and lesbian publishing of our thoughts and issues continues or not. They're really only in it for the money. They're glad to skim the "cream" off the top of our literature, the most popular titles, but won't be there to support us when it counts. The gay and lesbian publishing houses cannot survive if the only titles they sell are the one or two most "mainstream" every year. Think of what our world of books would look like with no Seal Press, no Knights Press, no Cleis, no Firebrand, no Naiad, to name only a few of the small presses dedicated to publishing gay and/or lesbian words.

Our words make a difference. They count. Please make your money and effort count by putting it where it can do us all some good, into the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered community.

Hopeful Note
I didn't want to end this in a completely gloomy vein. There are still people opening new gay and lesbian bookstores and I don't know about all the gay and lesbian bookstores there are. I'm sure I've missed a few, maybe yours. If you know a store I've missed that carries a large selection of books that empower lesbians and gay men (and doesn't carry books that oppress them), please tell me so I can share it through this list. These new stores are part of our common hope for the future.

Most of the books sold in this country are purchased by women; doesn't it make sense that we could support any kind of publishing business we really wanted, if only we all worked together?
These stores, and the many other stores already on my list, are here to serve us now. Please help keep them open and make them a success.

Return to Canada/USA Bookstore List.
Return to Worldwide Bookstore List.
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Lee Anne Phillips4200 Park Boulevard - Suite 250Oakland, CA 94602
Please include a self-addressed and stamped envelope (or enclose two International Reply Coupons) if you would like me to reply by mail.Thank you so much for your help and support.
This file may be freely copied on the Internet or mirrored if the copyright notice below is retained in its entirety, if the text is unaltered in any way (except for minor modifications to URLs, file names, and the like, and/or inserting additional links to make it fit into a local file structure or web site), and if no charge is made for its use.

...Chilling, isn't it?

Cheers,
MK

Grilled gay novelist with ketchup and onions

The sounds you hear issuing from the hills area of Adelaide right now are squidging, squodging noises ... the kind of sound a piece of cheese makes when it MELTS as it sits on its cracker, and slips off the plate and slithers onto the floor and goes ... squodge. It's a technical term from the Latin, meaning "to be reduced, by inescapable outside influences, to a goo-like consistency which has little or no potential for life functions to continue within."

It's not just Keegan making these sounds. It's most of the city.

The weather forecast for yesterday was 41C, and we actually suffered 43.2C.

The forecast for today is 44C. If the Bureau of Meteorolololology misses its collective guess by the same margin, we shall be stewing in 46.2C degrees. Let me do the math for you, using the rough old rule of thumb calculation to convert Celsius (or Centigrade) into Fahrenheit (or Real Temperatures.) You double the number, subtract the first digit, and add 32. Therefore, 44C is 112F. And 46C is 115F.

And just to make quite sure US and Canadian readers are in no doubts, the sadistic morons the the B of M measure temperatures down here IN THE SHADE. Whenever you see a weather forecast for Australia, those are SHADE temperatures. You can add anything from 30F to 50F to that, to get the sun temperatures.

And the news is, this "hot spell" continues for the foreseeable future.

Hence the squidging, squodging noises. We went out for groceries at eight in the a.m., and the parking lots were already fairly full; by the time we walked out of the mall, they were full. The problem was, the overnight "minimum" temp was 95F, so it was like an oven outside at dawn.

Fortunately, this doesn't happen more than a couple of times in the year, and if it's going to happen, bet your bottom dollar it'll be in January and/or February. The rest of the year is more or less fine and dandy --

Hold that thought! Now I'm going to give you a link back to a post I, uh, posted, on Tuesday, August 5, not much under six months ago: On strike for a shorter winter. Click back to that. Go on, I dare you.

Right now, it's long COLD, RAINY GRAY DAYS I'm dreaming about, while the country bakes like a potato on the grill. The garden is getting charcoal broiled.

This is what we want, and keep it coming:



Well, you can dream. This particular dream will come true in something like May -- possibly even April. There's an annual horse race meeting locally, at a place called Oakbank. It takes place as a family camping event on the Easter long weekend, and there's such a tradition of the weather breaking with a monster storm at Easter, the Oakbank Races are affectionately known as Croakbank, because it's paradise for, uh, frogs.

Roll on Easter.

Cheers,
MK

Gay ... in the global sense

It's too hot to think, much less blog, so this might be short ... and not as coherent as Keegan is usually inclined to be! Summer. Australia. Still waiting for the new a/c to be installed. You get the picture. So this is going to be a ramble through the labyrinth of my thoughts -- and in hot weather they tend to ramble far, and unpredictably!

The Internet can be a really weird place. Chasing links from place to place, I stumbled into the online edition of a Nigerian newspaper which is preaching from the pulpit against gay marriage, while their ad server is cheerfully plugging in contextual ads that must have raised a few eyebrows back home in Nigeria. Give this a click -- I uploaded it at 1000 pixels wide so you can actually read:

Gay Cupid on the front page of a Nigerian newspaper?! Somebody put their foot in it, somewhere. I wonder if anyone's noticed yet?

On the other hand, the Internet can be a place of painful truth. There's a feature running on China Daily: Body of Lies, about the plight of being gay and HIV+ in China at this time. It's an eye-opener. The cultural "great wall" the GLTBI community is up against in China is as daunting as anything occidentals knew in other decades. Well worth a look -- and it's not a long read. Just a disturbingly poignant one:
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2009-01/12/content_7387119.htm

Meanwhile, over the water in Japan, it's a very different story, and as a writer I'm fascinated both by the incredible complexities of Japanese gay culture (take a quick peek right here: http://www.geocities.com/bjcjapan/japan.html) and the new wave of Japanese gay publishing, which isn't at all what you'd think.

You've heard of Yaoi, which is "boy love," or m/m romance mostly aimed at a readership of young women. There's also Yuri, which is "girl love," mostly aimed at (you guessed) guys ... and a lot of the Yaoi is written by guys, for the gals, and a lot of the Yuri is written by gals for the guys. Cool.

This echoes back to a post a made a few days ago: Gay books rock, but who's reading them? In that post, I was looking at my readership in response to a question I'd received from a visitor to this blog, and it all got around to speculating about not about who's reading gay books these days -- but who's writing them. Interesting stuff (and many thanks to Alex Beechcroft to adding to this discussion with her own observations).

So -- who's writing male gay books? Guys and gays. Who's writing lesbian books? Same story. Interesting, no? If you're interested, the most convenient place to start is on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_Japan ... from there, you're off on a ramble that will amuse, entertain and surprise!

And now I have to go find somewhere cool, or at least cooler than this corner wher my computers live!

Ciao for now,

MK

The website reappears!

The big news this morning is: we're back up. The domain came back online in bits and pieces -- some functions appeared twelve hours before others -- and various proxy servers around the world took their sweet time updating, but ...

If you were to click on this right now, you'll get ...

...and a great sigh of relief is being heaved by all. Oars are back in the water. We were down for about three days, or less, and I'll tell you, it felt like months. Shows you how web dependent we've become -- and how much it's going to smart when the Internet filtering starts, "the Great Aussie Firewall," and the www is suddenly close to inaccessible due to its grinding slowness and the probability of everything, everywhere, timing out before it can be loaded. It's scheduled to begin in a few days now.

There's a story running on Crikey!-dot-com today:
http://www.crikey.com.au/Politics/20090109-Brooklyn-Law-School-study-highlights-net-censorship-problems.html

The world smirks at Conroy's censorship plan
The rest of the world has been smirking at Stephen Conroy's ill-conceived plan to censor Australia's Internet for a while now, but a new study published by Brooklyn Law School entitled "Filtering in Oz: Australia's Foray Into Internet Censorship" is a serious embarrassment.

This report is important. Not only is it authored by a reputable and neutral foreign observer but it also focuses more on the legitimacy of the scheme than the technical concerns, and it finds some serious problems. Despite the sober language, phrases like "troubling", "worrisome", "politically motivated" and "unaccountable" are common.

Contrary to persistent claims by the Minister, the study finds that Australia "will likely become the first Western democracy to block access to on-line material through legislative mandate."
The world smirks at Conroy's censorship plan
http://www.crikey.com.au/Politics/20090109-Brooklyn-Law-School-study-highlights-net-censorship-problems.html

Here's the abstract of a report published just before Christmas:

Filtering in Oz: Australia's Foray into Internet Censorship
Derek E. Bambauer Brooklyn Law School
December 22, 2008
Brooklyn Law School, Legal Studies Paper No. 125
Abstract:
Australia's decision to implement Internet censorship using technological means creates a natural experiment: the first Western democracy to mandate filtering legislatively, and to retrofit it to a decentralized network architecture. But are the proposed restrictions legitimate? The new restraints derive from the Labor Party's pro-filtering electoral campaign, though coalition government gives minority politicians considerable influence over policy. The country has a well-defined statutory censorship system for on-line and off-line material that may, however, be undercut by relying on foreign and third-party lists of sites to be blocked. While Australia is open about its filtering goals, the government's transparency about what content is to be blocked is poor. Initial tests show that how effective censorship is at filtering prohibited content - and only that content - will vary based on what method the country's ISPs use. Though Australia's decisionmakers are formally accountable to citizens, efforts to silence dissenters, outsourcing of blocking decisions, and filtering's inevitable transfer of power to technicians undercut accountability. The paper argues Australia represents a shift by Western democracies towards legitimating Internet filtering and away from robust consideration of the alternatives available to combat undesirable information.
Bambauer, Derek E.,Filtering in Oz: Australia's Foray into Internet Censorship(December 22, 2008). Brooklyn Law School, Legal Studies Paper No. 125. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1319466



It's an incredible waste of time and money, at a moment when the climate is crashing, people are out of work and losing their homes, whole populations are starving, and disease is on the rampage worldwide. Against all this, we're going to throw better than a hundred million dollars at doing a job which parents could be compelled by law to do for themselves. Buy and install bloody Net Nanny. It's that simple. But nooooo, we have to be The Righteous Christian Nation, waddling along in the footsteps of the American religious right loonies like an arthritic little lap dog.

The fact is, we've been toadying to the White House for so long, one would have thought a change was due; but we elected ourselves a clueless, self-confessed "cradle Catholic" who is more interested in placating the religious lunatic fringe downunder than in making adults (parents!) take responsibility for the children they conceived by accident, and are now so wantonly neglecting that these kids could cruise porn sites all day long, if the little monsters wanted to ... and it turns out, the little monsters do!

All that is needed is legislation, making illegal the "wilful supply of pornography by parents to minors." If it were a motoring offence, it would be termed "driving without due care and attention," the kind of driving that leads to fender-benders, flattened gateposts and roadkill pets. This would be "operating a computer without due care and attention, in the presence of minors," the kind of surfing that leads to sex, coarse language, violence, hate, racism, sexism, drugs and underage models in compromising situations, all being freely displayed.

Make it a law. Slap a $5,000 fine on it. Hit the parents, hit them hard where it hurts -- the pocketbook. It's clobbering time. But leave the Internet alone. The business community depends on it to work and trade, and the rest of us depend on it to communicate. You know, they're looking into ways to filter chat?! What comes next, censored emails?

Still on the subject of the Internet -- I've been invited to take part in the class action against Google Book Search. Glance at this: http://books.google.com/booksrightsholders/. I can't say I've been directly affected, since I write niche fiction rather than whopping great research text books. But I'm looking into it, with an eye to seeing what The Goog intends doing with ebooks and so forth. I'm still reading, without much real idea of how this involves Keegan at this point, but you have to admit, it's interesting!

But today's big news is ... Mel Keegan OnLine is back on line!

Still waiting for the proof copy of Harbendane. Still waiting for Google to explain why they zeroed out the page rankings of this blog, and maybe rectify the situation. *sigh* Patience.

Cheers,
MK

Happy New Year! Start rolling out those barrels...

There's not much to say today except HAPPY NEW YEAR! The old year has seven or eight hours left in it, as I write this. I find myself looking both backward and forward, at the events that surprised, disgusted, delighted and grieved us during 2008, and at the events that ought to get us up on the soap boxes next year.

Ought-eight was the year everybody got rid of George W. Bush; it was the year Americans elected a president of color ... it was also the year when people were hoodwinked by the religious right, into voting against civil liberties and human rights. However, it was also the year when the aforementioned religious right well and truly shot their bolt, and "all came out in the wash." Their lies and perfidy became common knowledge, and as they saying goes, "they can't pull that trick again." Gay marriage rights will be back on the ballot sheet very soon, and this time the people of California will go to the polls with their eyes wide open.

It was the year Heath Ledger died; the year the recession hit the whole world broadside. The Olympics went to China ... China could no longer disguise its air pollution problems. The global climate went bung some more, and did it faster than anyone had ever expected ... but record snowfalls are being taken by some idiots as a sign that there's no such thing as global warming! Apparently, we need to start building "proper" power stations as fast as we can. I read a feature article in the UK's Telegraph online; I read it because I thought the teaser line promised a great joke, and was two thirds through it before I realized, this buffoon is deadly serious, and so are the pea-brains who left comments on the page: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/3982101/2008-was-the-year-man-made-global-warming-was-disproved.html ... don't you love the title? "2008," it says, "was the year man-made global warming was disproved." O...kay.

Well, it certainly was the year that The Dark Knight showed how much money a movie can make at the box office! It also showed that there's a disturbing large part of the audience that's identifying with the psychos, not the heroes. Woah.

But 2008 was also the year when the Vatican said it was fine and dandy to believe in aliens (http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D90KSE100&show_article=1), and at the same time, gay athletes decided not to come out! Of 10,500 athletes in Beijing, only 10 were out, and only one of those was a guy (http://www.theage.com.au/news/off-the-field/10500-athletes-and-only-10-of-them-gay/2008/08/18/1218911546077.html). Statistically, it's far more probably that about a thousand of these athletes were gay or bi, but with the hurricane of Prop 8 going on in the background, who was going to come out?! The time isn't right, not yet, not quite.

Because this was also the year the Dominionists came within tickling distance of the White House. Don't get me started on Dominionists.

It was the year John Barrowman published his autobiography (!), and Aussie TV decided they couldn't show season two of Torchwood because (so they said) there was material which would offend viewers. If you believe a syllable of that.

This year, our prime minister was demonstrated to be a "cradle catholic" with aspirations to build "the great Australian firewall," meaning Aus becomes one of only five countries to deliberately and vastly censor the Internet. The others are China, Iran, Egypt and ... England. Go figure.

The year Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman starred in a major flop: Australia ... and Kidman has been blamed for it. Well, who could blame Hugh Jackman when the poor man just can't help looking like this:




See what I mean? Not his fault. Couldn't be his fault. Blame Kidman. It's all her fault anyway. (And yes, even Keegan decided to wait for the DVD ... and I'm not usually swayed by critics. I'll talk about the movie when I've rented the disk!)

It was also the year Will Smith was outed, whether he liked it or not! Kewl. Unless you're Will Smith, of course. Then, well, maybe not so kewl. The year Brad had twins ... I expect he had help there somewhere. The year Michael Jackson's nose fell off -- or was that last year? One loses track. The year Whacko Jacko ... and Mel Keegan ... turned 50. Good golly, what happened to time? The last time I looked at a calendar, it was 1997, and I'll bet Jacko would tell you the same.

It's actually been one hell of a year, and the next one will be just as weird and wonderful.

We live in "interesting times," to borrow from the old Chinese curse!

H a p p y N e w Y e a r ! I'll be back next year,

Cheers,
MK

Christmas is here -- Internet filtering is around the corner!

Christmas is upon us (Christmas Eve already on this side of the dateline ... warm, overcast, perhaps a little muggy, with stores that were crowded by 7:30 in the am), and the Internet still works.

So, where's the Internet filtering what was supposed to be "in place before Christmas?"

According to statements made yesterday, it's being delayed till January. And unless I miss my guess, the Aussie government is (as usual) running around feverishly in Damage Control Mode.

PC Magazine's website said on Monday, "Australia's broadband ministry on Monday defended the country's upcoming Internet filtering pilot, and acknowledged that the plan could include P2P traffic like BitTorrent. It is understood that technology exists to filter peer-to-peer networks," according to an FAQ posted online. "If such technology is proposed as part of the pilot by an ISP it will be considered." http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2337430,00.asp

But by the time you and I have found the time to go look at the FAQ -- it seems to have been edited. There is no mention, none whatsoever, of the term "P2P."

Here's the FAQ, see for yourself, any reference to a futile attempt to filter torrents, P2P, is gone: http://www.dbcde.gov.au/communications_for_consumers/funding_programs__and__support/cyber-safety_plan/internet_service_provider_isp_filtering/isp_filtering_-_frequently_asked_questions#q18

Which leaves them (officially, at least) with The Blacklist. Now, Australia has been sorta-kinda filtered for a long, long time. I remember when the censorship system came in -- a lot of lame, tame, fairly innocuous websites vanished overnight, when they were taken down by their owners who feared coming to the attention of government, and ending up with a Federal Police record for publishing stuff that was unpopular with said government!

Here's PC Magazine again: "Australian ISPs are already subject to restrictions based upon the country's rating system for movies, computer games, publications, and other online content, [Broadband Minister Stephen] Conroy said. That system, dubbed the National Classification Scheme, allows the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) to issue take-down notices to objectionable material. All the government is now seeking to do is to examine how technology can assist in filtering internationally-hosted content," Conroy wrote."

Urk. I mean, seriously. Did you catch the furore just a few weeks ago, when the UK's Internet Watch Foundation cut UK users adrift from being able to add to or edit Wikipedia? They filtered (read: crippled) Wikipedia, for chrissakes -- and were allowed to do it! -- over ONE PICTURE. It was apparently a punk-type CD album cover featuring a nekkid child. Why didn't the IWF pick up the phone, call Wiki or their representative, and have the page taken down? But, nooooo. They had to filter-cripple Wikipedia, probably to demonstrate the fact that 1) they could do it, 2) the technology exists to do it, 3) they're permitted at a political level to do it -- even if they're made to UN-do it faster than you can say "Dudley Do-Right." Here's more: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2337430,00.asp

So here we get to the crunch: where does this stop? Why don't watchdog organizations employ out-of-work people to surf the web, find trashy material and report it, and then another bunch of unemployed people can be gainfully employed making phonecalls to the ISPs or website owners, getting pages taken down. The Aussie government is spending over $100 million on this filtering nonsense. MAKE JOBS FOR PEOPLE FOR GODSAKES!! (Pardon me for shouting, but I actually did feel like shouting that; and it's worth shouting.)

But no, it's got to be done with invasive, crippling technology ... and when the model is in place, it will far far too easy for consecutive governments to nip, tuck, tweak, amend, it. Here's how it works. According to PC Magazine (same link as above), "The ACMA currently maintains a list of 1,300 blacklisted URLs. The filtering pilot will expand that list to 10,000 URLs – none of which will be released publicly."

A blacklist is dead simple. It's like blocking an email contact, or a poster to a forum, someone who's gone off the deepend and needs to be muzzled; or blocking a certain telephone number from calling your phone.

A blacklist is automatically read by the system ... and all you gotta do is add urls and IP addresses to it.

How easy would it be to sneak 1,000 political urls onto the list? And another 1,000 addresses for sites where people take religion to pieces and display its nekkid bones? And another 5,000 addresses where bloggers speak out against the system. Not to mention the thousands of sites where gay people campaign, and communicate, and publish.

The whole thing is sickening, and the worst of it is, the ordinary, innocent Internet user will be the one hurt most, when broadband becomes as slow as a dial-up, and dial-up accounts become utterly unusable.

Here's a quote from yesterday's feature on news.com.au. "Government rejects negative internet filter report: A REPORT showing a mandatory internet filter will not work has been dismissed as untested by the Rudd Government. Senator Stephen Conroy yesterday made available the ISP Level Content Filtering Feasibility Study he received in February, commissioned by the Howard government. The report found content filtering as proposed by the Rudd Government would not work or be economically viable using current technologies, will slow internet speeds, block legitimate websites and be easily circumvented. One of the report's key findings said "it could be expected that allowed content would be blocked". "If all pornographic content is to be blocked, other content with a 'resemblance' in features will also be blocked; eg. sex education, medical information, erotic content etc," the report said." http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,24839172-953,00.html

I can tell you that, from my perspective, any filtering will be disastrous: we HAVE broadband, and it's sluggish at the best of times. It can take several minutes to load something like Hotmail or YouTube, and a minute to load even Gmail, or a story from Huffington Post. Slow this down by a factor of five, and all we'll be doing is timing out.

The chaos continues to grow. This was posted yesterday by iWire: "Earlier this morning, Australian Shadow Minister for Communications, Senator Nick Minchin, put out a press release accusing the Minister for Communications, Senator Stephen Conroy, of “burying” a report into ISP filtering – but surprise, surprise, the report is now available for anyone to read. The news concerning Internet filtering and censorship in Australia just keeps getting worse, with the Federal Government now proposing to include (P2P) peer-to-peer and BitTorrent into the filtering trial, something that could greatly impact on legitimate uses of these services. There are also reports that ISPs such as iiNet, who have volunteered to be part of the ISP filtering trial, haven’t yet received any instructions from the Government on how to participate, despite the Government saying it wanted the trial to start before the end of 2008, a date that draws ever closer with each passing day. It’s also a date that has now been scrapped entirely, with the live filtering trial now due to begin in mid-January[.]" http://www.itwire.com/content/view/22440/127/

What did I say about the buff-heads running about in a frenzy of damage control right now?

Get this (also from iWire, same link as above): "This morning, Senator Minchin said: “It would seem the report, 'Feasibility Study of ISP Level Content Filtering', which was a joint Government and industry initiative, has been kept secret because it casts further serious doubts over the centralised Internet filtering system that Senator Conroy is looking to mandate.”Senator Minchin’s statement noted that the report said “centralised mandatory filtering will "significantly slow Internet speeds", inadvertently block acceptable content and be ineffective against peer-to-peer file sharing networks, chat rooms, email and instant messaging.”In addition, the report said: “entire user-generated content sites such as YouTube and Wikipedia could be blocked because of a single suspect posting.”

The UK Internet watchdogs already blocked Wikipedia a few weeks ago, to demonstrate that it can be done, and they're allowed to do it.

My question is, why does Internet censorship have to involve $100 million's worth of technology? Why not have 1,000 sensible adults surfing, looking for kidp*rn, and making phonecalls to have the pages taken down from responsible servers like Wikipedia, YouTube, Flickr, and so forth??? MAKE JOBS.

Or, put another way, follow the money: who's getting stinking rich now, out of the new filtering technology that's about to cripple the Internet? Find that person, or company, and you'll find the root of this problem.

These bozos are actually looking for ways to censor chat, email, and instant messaging! And what's more, they appear determined to engineer themselves into a position where they can, and must do it:

"It must also be highlighted that on 31 December the Rudd Labor Government will recklessly close the online safety program established by the previous Coalition Government, which sees Australian families given the option of obtaining free, PC-level filters, which can be tailored to the needs of individual households," Senator Minchin concluded. (iWire again.) http://www.itwire.com/content/view/22440/127/

In other words, the "free Net Nanny" will be withdrawn, and the whole country will be smothered by Kevin Rudd's idea of a Net Nanny For Grownups. As if he has some idea that significant numbers of Australians are drooling, tongues hanging out, for kidp*rn.

There's an online petition being organized right now, and as soon as I hit "publish" here, I'll be clicking over there and signing it: "If Internet users would like to help Australia avoid becoming the “Soviet Socialist Republic of the South” complete with its own “Great Barrier Firewall Reef” it might be an idea to visit the GetUp! website and take part in its campaign to “Save the Net!”.

When we know more, I'll post again, but for now --

Christmas Greetings to readers all across Australasia, New Zealand, Oceanaia, and Asia!

Cheers,
MK

If you found this post interesting or useful, please email the url to your friends! Google still has my page rankings zeroed out, so I can't win a Google search or blog search, no matter how well my posts are crafted. I'm in contact with the company, but it's a long, slow process to find a resolution. How can you help?! By email the urls of useful posts! Thank you kindly.

Seasonal miscellany

We're a day ahead of you guys in the north, remember: the dateline. So we're already looking at CHRISTMAS EVE TOMORROW. If it ain't wrapped and under the tree, it won't be landing there. If it ain't bought and in the freezer, it won't be miraculously appearing there. Christmas is going to be all about cooking and eating (probably too much), some very good drinks and company...

The weather is not really cooperating, mind you: http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDS10034.shtml ... 32 with increasing cloud ahead of a cool change. It isn't quite the kind of weather where you jump in the pool. And for those spending Chrissy on the beach, they'll need a windbreaker because the temperature drops 10 degrees, close to the water. For me -- perfect weather. I don't like the heat too much (okay, I'm abnormal. I was also bred and born in a cold region ... the UK).


Locally, the stores are going gang-busters on the one hand, and on the other hand there are glassy-eyed bankers on TV, talking in hushed whispers about the phenomenal amount of debt that's being run up ... as if they expect the retailers to be rescued by massive holiday shopping without the credit cards taking a pasting! Sheesh. The words "get real" leap to mind.

Work continues to get THE LORDS OF HARBENDANE to Amazon in the new year ... work also continues on the coding for the first of the digital novels which will keep me busy in 2009. It's, uh, looking good.

Now, I have to run and do stuff -- Christmas stuff -- that isn't going to get itself done. I'll try to post again later in the day, because four or five people have lately asked me the same question, and I've been promising an answer for three weeks! So --

Ciao for now,
MK