The Inquisitr » conroy

Australian Government To Prohibit Infrastructure Competition for National Broadband Network

Duncan Riley — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 03:30:56 +0000

A document tabled by Stephen Conroy, Australian Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy today shows that the Australian Government is considering crippling infrastructure competition in an attempt to make its National Broadband Network (NBN) viable.

The “Assessment of Proposals, National Broadband Network Process” document compiled for the Government’s NBN Expert Panel by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) recommends that parts of the Trade Practices Act, the primary law in Australia regarding competition, be amended to allow for “an express statutory prohibition against overbuild in the roll-out and cut-over period.” That is, that no private provider could lay FTTN cable in Australia that competes with the NBN during the 8-15 years it will take for the NBN to be built.

The report notes that the requirement to prohibit competition is necessary so as to assure that the AU$42 billion NBN is commercially viable. Page 111:

However, if access seekers in metropolitan areas have no other option but to purchase access services from the NBN operator — that is, if there is no possibility that the NBN will be bypassed — averaged access charges may be sustainable.

Ironically perhaps, the report argues that prohibiting infrastructure competition by creating a universal wholesale monopoly of next-generation internet access should be coupled with new regulations to encourage retail competition. Pg 245:

One of the Commonwealth’s objectives for the National Broadband Network (NBN) is that it:
Facilitates competition through open access arrangements that ensure equivalence of price and non-price terms and conditions, and provide scope for access seekers to differentiate their product offerings.

The concept of Government owned infrastructure combined with multiple retail suppliers isn’t unprecedented in Australia, for example in some states consumers have a choice of retail suppliers for water and power. The difference though is simple: the deregulation of those markets occurred with the infrastructure already being owned by the Government, infrastructure that was not already subject to competition.

The formerly Government owned telco Telstra is often labeled the monopoly wholesale provider, and to many homes that remains true. But the telecommunications industry in Australia has been deregulated for years, and already some markets offer competition away from Telstra’s copper to the home network. Anything from Optus Cable through to smaller scale cable rollouts in places like Geelong on Canberra. It’s not just Telstra who is unable to compete with the NBN, it’s anyone with a cable in the ground who wants to upgrade it over the next 10-15 years, on the grounds that forcing everyone onto the NBN is the only way to make it viable.

What the report does overlook though in its consideration of forcing NBN uptake is that it presumes that the only delivery method is a competing FTTN network. As noted many times previously, technology is already starting to turn existing infrastructure into high speed alternatives, such as the next generation of ADSL tech. As much as cutting out competition in FTTN infrastructure may seem harsh, it may be irrelevant in the years ahead as technology bypasses the Australian Government’s attempts to force everyone onto the heavily censored NBN.

Confirmed: Second Life, online adult games to be banned outright in Australia

Duncan Riley — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:44:19 +0000

The Australian Minister for Censorship has today confirmed what I’ve been reporting for nearly two years: online adult games including Second Life will be banned in Australia.

A spokesman for Censorship Minister Stephen “Goebbels” Conroy confirmed to Fairfax newspapers that “under the filtering plan, it will be extended to downloadable games, flash-based web games and sites which sell physical copies of games that do not meet the MA15+ standard.” In Australia, the MA15+ rating means that the content is restricted to those aged 15 and above. Australia does not have a R 18+ or similar rating for computer games, with all adult games automatically being classified as RC (Refused Classification.)

I wish I hadn’t been right here, so I take no delight in being so. However I was derided by more than a few bible bashing ALP voting Conroy lovers (in a platonic sense of course, cock sucking will be banned under the censorship regime) as being extreme and wrong in the past, so here’s two examples of things I’ve written previously about what Conroy was planning to do:

December 2007
To be censored by the Australian Government is “pornography and inappropriate material.” X rated pornography is illegal online in Australia, as are casino style internet gambling, certain forms of “hate” speech and R rated computer games.

January 2009
We know that among other “unwanted” things, the following falls into the censorship regime: porn, R rated games, certain types of political speech (for example discussion of methods of euthanasia) and possibly copyrighted content.

I am though surprised this is news today, as the policy was ALWAYS THERE in the fine print from day one. Conroy has waffled and avoided ever giving a direct answer about until now, but he’s also very good at that.

That at the half way point of 2009 this is even still on the agenda in Australia is a fucking disgrace, and the more the Government confirms the details, the more totalitarian the proposal becomes, and even China starts to look more open and free.

Australia commits $43b to network that will be redundant before it’s finished

Duncan Riley — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 01:33:55 +0000

The Australian Government has committed AU$43 billion (US$30.4 billion) to rolling out a national broadband network (NBN) that will be redundant before it’s finished in 2018.

The NBN will be rolled out by the Australian Government directly, after it decided that private companies who had applied for the work weren’t up to scratch. The network itself was a policy promise made by the Australian Government in 2007, and was due to start originally in 2008.

The NBN rollout will now start in 2010, and take 8 years to complete. The fiber to the home network will provide “up to” 100mbps internet access to 90% of Australian homes. The remaining 10% will get lower access speeds through other technology including wireless and satellite. The network will be managed by a new company, The National Broadband Network Corporation, and will eventually take private investment, although the Government will maintain a minimum 51% controlling stake.

The problem with this huge investment is that the network will be redundant before it is completed. Australia’s largest telco Telstra is already rolling out a 100mbps network in capital cities, beginning with Melbourne this year. Technology in use in Japan offers 160mbps internet access over existing cable networks (details here); Telstra does have the largest cable network in Australia, although there are competing systems in large cities. Notably the cost of rolling out this technology isn’t excessive; in Japan, it has been rolled out at the cost of US$20 per connection.

But those are before we get to the holy grail: telephone lines. 100mbps over copper with DSL is already a possibility. 500mbps VDSL2 over copper (that is, the telephone connection into a home) is already being tested (details here)

By 2011, most Australian’s will already have access to a 100mbps connection via a variety of technologies, while the Government will only be one year into the NBN rollout.

Imagine the competing technlogies and services on offer by 2018? South Korea is rolling out 1gbps over 3 years today; with some advances in technology, 1gbps or even faster may be the norm in Australia when the NBN finally finishes its 100mbps rollout 9 years from now.

Google soon to be banned in Australia under draconian censorship laws

Duncan Riley — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 06:37:38 +0000

Recent action by the Australian Government may see Google and many other popular websites banned in Australia under existing censorship laws.

Under the Communications Legislation Amendment (Content Services) Act 2007 sites that link to content that is Refused Classification (RC) are considered themselves to be RC, and if hosted in Australia, site owners can be ordered to remove the link(s), or fined AU$11,000 a day.

The problem is that the provisions potentially make most sites on the internet illegal. Take for example the leaked Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) blacklist on Wikileaks we wrote about earlier. Given that the list was published after ACMA banned a similar list from Denmark, it’s fair to say that linking to the Australian list will be illegal as well from Australia. Note at this point that the content in the list consists entirely of URLs and does not in itself publish pictures or video; under the act, the links in the list are illegal content (RC) because of what they link to. Likewise, linking to that list is illegal because the list itself is now illegal. Any site that links to the list of links then becomes prohibited content. Most sites would have a front page with internal links, so any page on a site that links to the post that links to the list of links becomes illegal. Keeping up?

If I was linking to XYZ blog, and XYZ blog was linking to ABC blog who had linked to the list, all the pages in the chain are illegal, because each one links to prohibited content. Any site linking to me then becomes illegal, and so on.

But it gets better, because it took 1 second for me to bring up a page in Google which links to the Denmark list. If the Denmark list is prohibited content, then Google is in breach of the act as well, and could well end up being banned. And that’s before you even consider that Google itself takes copies of pages through Google Cache (I’m not allowed to link to it, but it is there, in full in Google.)

This is the stupidity of what is essentially a thought crime: criminalizing a list of links which are text and do not in themselves constitute child porn or other physical illegal activity. The law sets off a chain that could potentially result in most, if not all of the internet in Australia being banned by the Government.

Sounds extreme? well so is making laws that say sites are refused classification for a link and not content. Fascism in Australia has a very wide bow.

Australian Censorship Regime could block over 20 million websites: Testing therefore Useless

Duncan Riley — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 01:35:44 +0000

As the debate around the proposed Great Firewall of Australia censorship scheme in Australia continues, the Government’s long awaited censorship trial is due to begin shortly.

While some ISP’s are participating only to prove that the filter is flawed, it’s the testing procedure itself where things are completely wrong. The number of sites to be filtered in the trial: 10,000.

While 10,000 may be 10,000 too many, it’s also no where near close to how many sites the filter will have to block to comply with the Government’s guidelines.

We know that among other “unwanted” things, the following falls into the censorship regime: porn, R rated games, certain types of political speech (for example discussion of methods of euthanasia) and possibly copyrighted content.

We can’t count every category, in part because we simply don’t know exactly how the Government will define what stays and what gets blocked, but we can estimate block rates for porn, because we know R and X rated porn (R Rated stays only with strict age verification, which 99.99% of sites won’t meet) is out.

According to Netcraft, there was 182,226,259 sites online in October 2008. “Active” sites (not defined) come in at around 73.6 million.

Estimates of the number of porn sites online vary from 1% through to a massive 35% of all sites online. The most common figure used is 12% (one ref, but common figure)

12% of pages to be blocked by the Great Firewall of Australia would total:

All sites: 21,867,151
“Active” sites: 9.12 million (est).

Even if we take the minimum figure of 1%

All sites: 1,822,263
“Active” sites: 736,000 (est)

Do any of these figures sounding anything close to 10,000 sites?

I’m told that the more sites listed on a blacklist, the slower the filter becomes because each website requested must be checked against the list. 10,000 sites vs 21.9 million: there is no way the trials can give a representative result of what the implementation of the Great Firewall will do for internet speeds in Australia.

The Government may well say in response that they will not be filtering that many sites, and that may be the case. But if true, how will the firewall be effective if some sites are blacklisted, and others aren’t? And that’s ignoring finer points like the filter not blocking non-web content, and only maybe blocking P2P, but with filtering technology in its infancy.

The stupidity of this plan goes from bad to worse. If this does occur, god help everyone in Australia, because we might be returning to internet speeds closer to dialup than our already sorry excuse for broadband.

And a little perspective: the number of sites blocked in Iran is said to be up to 20 million, and the figure isn’t known for China (and censorship isn’t centralized there to complicate things) it is believed to be at a similar level. Soon we’ll be adding Australia to the list.

(image via Queen of the Desert on Flickr).

Australian censorship minister tries to censor critic: time to go Conroy

Duncan Riley — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 00:35:57 +0000

Australia’s ongoing debate over internet censorship has taken an interesting turn, with the Minister in charge of implementing internet censorship attempting to censor a critic of the Government’s proposal.

The Labor Government elected in late 2007 promoted a policy that would make it mandatory for internet service providers to offer a “clean feed” to homes, that blocked content deemed illegal, pornographic and inappropriate. Until recently, Minister Conroy had publicly stated that internet users would be able opt-out of the filter, but in a backflip has since disclosed that the filter will be compulsory, with two levels: one for children, and one for adults. Australia’s strict and sometimes bizarre censorship regime would see online adult games blocked (such as Second Life) because Australia doesn’t offer an R (adult) classification for games, and would also see soft pornography banned online despite being freely available a petrol (gas) stations.

The latest drama was reported by the Fairfax newspapers, who obtained copies of an email, and details of a phone call from the Ministers office directed towards a critic of the Government’s plan.

Mark Newton, an engineer at Australia ISP Internode, has heavily criticized the Government and its filtering policy on popular Australian broadband forum Whirlpool, and went as far as saying that the censorship regime would enable child abuse by ignoring non-web applications which are will not be censored under the plan (the tech behind the censorship plan doesn’t block P2P and chat for example).

The Ministers office wrote to the Internet Industry Association (IIA) board member Carolyn Dalton based on Newton working for Internode, despite his criticism being offered in a personal capacity.

“In your capacity as a board member of the IIA I would like to express my serious concern that a IIA member would be sending out this sort of message. I have also advised [IIA chief executive] Peter Coroneos of my disappointment in this sort of irresponsible behaviour ,”

The email was accompanied by a phone call demanding that the message be passed on to senior Internode management.

As Asher Moses points out in The Age, the irony in the Ministers response is that the Minister himself has constantly branded critics of the censorship plan as being in favor in child pornography.

Although this shouldn’t come as a great surprise, it is none the less unacceptable in a democratic country that a Minister would seek to censor critics who are doing nothing more than exercising their rights to publicly disagree.

Enough is enough. I call on the Minister to resign, or should he not do so, I call on the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, to sack the Minister at the first available opportunity. This abuse of power has no place in a modern, free and democratic society in the 21st century.