Australia's Internet filter ruled by a single bureaucrat

Wake up Australia!

Your freedoms are being stolen. Bums and tits are always used as the excuse to remove politically sensitive material, but make no mistake, vital messages will be suppressed along with the porn. The example in this case, legitimate political expression against one contentious moral and political policy, proves how damaging and foolhardy this filter is. Shame on you Labor, shame!

They didn't change the process much

While the ACMA might have changed their processing procedures to not provide the URL in the response, they do include the complaint id.

For a complainant who has made multiple complaints, they just need to record the complaint id given as they click submit and compare it to the processing result.

ACMA are required to give a response on the outcome to the complainant so it's pretty hard to make that go away even if it is politically uncomfortable.

Little Hitlers

So basically, as long as one single complainant appears to be morally outraged by something, and one anonymous public servant feels a personal hunch that it might be controversial, it can be irreversibly banned from the entire Australian population without reason or review, under threat of costly State punishments if its ever discussed or publicly mentioned.

Certainly sounds like an unelected dictatorship to me!

prediction

Aside from a global shortage of pizza boxes, I predict the old media companies will (ethically of course) use ACMA to undermine their perceived competitors. They simply won't be able to resist the temptation. They will do their best to stem the flow of psychological piracy, much to the Rudgime's delight.

Sad, but your fault anyway. Now FIX IT...

Every time some sorry bunch of people give their government the duty to keep them safe and protected from evil they find soon after they need yet another hero to save them from the government... I don't think you'll like it, but you broke, you fix it. And do it the proper way, changing whatever regulations or laws needed.

Assuming, of course, you get the required votes. Otherwise get used to "Daddy knows best, child".

It's your life - don't give some else the rights and wrongs about your own life.

The govenment cant censor the internet!.

This is what the govenment does not want the australian people to see.... We are no longer allowed our own beliefs and opinions.

Australia: Land of pathetic wimps? No!

How long until Vogue, Womens weekly, and the Herald-Sun are all banned for having similar content? Aside from the technical idiocy of the project and the governmental mishandling of the procedures, the base concept is flawed. The issue is protection of "the people" for their own good. Back in the day we had enough confidence in our own abilities as human beings to cope with things we might not like. All of the data proposed for blacklisting has to be seen by someone for it to be subsequently banned. Do we assume this is a high-risk occupation and that the staffers who do this work need mental therapy each evening before going home. Of course not; they, like us are quite capabable of assimilating the information and honestly I expect most quite enjoy it.

Wiki link NOT removed

The abortion site link is NOT removed from the wikipedia entry, it was just moved to the bottom of the page in the external links section.

Ah, but you forget the practice of being two-faced in the circles of bureaucracy and politics. If only sex workers were as verbose as politicians, then the truth would be out. The supposed moral high ground would turn out to be a hole.