Major Australian telcos block access to Liveleak, 4chan & others

[Enstage]

Quote

Several websites including 4chan have been blocked by major Australian telcos for continuing to host footage of the Christchurch terrorist attack.

Telstra on Tuesday blocked access to 4chan, 8chan and Voat, the blog Zerohedge and video hosting platform Liveleak.

 

"We understand this may inconvenience some legitimate users of these sites, but these are extreme circumstances and we feel this is the right thing to do," Telstra networks and IT executive Nikos Katinakis said in a statement.

 

Optus and Vodafone declined to name which domains they blocked but the same platforms also failed to load on their networks on Tuesday afternoon.

Source: https://www.9news.com.au/2019/03/19/16/47/telcos-block-access-to-4chan-liveleak

 

As someone living in Australia I'm truly worried about a number of sites if Telcos can just decide to censor an them because it hosts something they don't like -- never liked the idea of some company deciding what I'm allowed to watch online. What I find even more interesting (and unsurprising) is the fact that the platform used to spread the video the most has been left untouched (Facebook...) Wouldn't want to lose customers while we're busy virtue signalling would we.

[RejZoR]

Aussies, the new gestapo.

[Levent]

1 minute ago, RejZoR said:

Aussies, the new gestapo.

Aussie ISPs*

[Unclescar]

7 minutes ago, Enstage said:

this may inconvenience some legitimate users of these sites, but these are extreme circumstances

"we are punishing masses because of the misdeeds of a few"

[RejZoR]

9 minutes ago, Levent said:

Aussie ISPs*

I guess it was the Aussie ISP's that made it a law to make secure encrpytion insecure by design in Australia...

[leadeater]

2 minutes ago, Enstage said:

As someone living in Australia I'm truly worried about our future if Telcos can just decide to censor an entire site because it hosts something they don't like -- never liked the idea of some company deciding what I'm allowed to watch online.

Hosting and distributing/sharing video like that is illegal in your country, the ISPs don't have much choice as doing nothing about it brings in all sorts of potential liability issues for them. As a business you generally don't want to run a foul of a government or push them towards passing legislation that would be even more harmful to your business. This is ass covering.

 

The ISPs aren't actually hosting the videos but they are providing access to them, that puts them in that difficult position of being directly in the spot light where inaction could lead to law change. You can bet ISPs don't want any more liability and responsibility than they already have.

 

You should know all too well the Australian government is more than willing to try and pass internet legislation laws, they've done it before.

 

6 minutes ago, Enstage said:

What I find even more interesting (and unsurprising) is the fact that the platform used to spread the video the most has been left untouched (Facebook...)

Facebook is doing more than meager attempts to remove any videos of it. Plus they aren't not getting immense political pressure either, it's not sun shine and rainbows over at Facebook.

[duncannah]

Should've just blocked everything tbh.

[Taf the Ghost]

The fact it's this that gets all of the Chans and LiveLeak banned is darkly funny. The chans have literally gotten Airstrikes called in before, and this causes action to happen "independently".

 

Which means two things pretty straight-forwardly:

 

1) This isn't an independent action, though whether it's a Push or String-Pulling is an open question.

2) Something has a significant chance of blowing back on a major player. (99% of these are "Known Wolf" events. So some Intelligence Agency has a lot of connections to stuff into a black hole.)

[Cheezdoodlez]

Time for the Aussie people to change DNS-settings then. 

[DrMacintosh]

“B-b-but Net-neutrality harms competition!”

 

Come on, what possible justification is there to censor news? What if Comcast and TWC just decided it wasn’t gonna allow coverage of 9/11 back when it was happening because they felt it was the right thing to do? 

[Brooksie359]

16 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

“B-b-but Net-neutrality harms competition!”

 

Come on, what possible justification is there to censor news? What if Comcast and TWC just decided it wasn’t gonna allow coverage of 9/11 back when it was happening because they felt it was the right thing to do? 

If it's illegal. If their was a new video that included child porn in it would be blocked for pretty obvious reasons. I am unsure about what the video in question contains and the legality of its contents but if it is illegal then that would be one reason to block it. 

[Kumaresh]

I hope they know that there's something out there called a VPN. Most users of those sites are probably technically adept enough to get one. This is just an emotional knee jerk reaction which isn't going to serve any purpose whatsoever and sets a poor precedent.

Australia seems to be going downhill in terms of responsibly handling technology. Ridiculous censorship, attempting to water down data security, a callous attitude towards privacy, truly a sad situation.

If they want to deal with any such situations in the future, it would be by finding and apprehending suspects beforehand, better law enforcement response or higher proliferation of guns in the hands of the public.

[LAwLz]

Why is this video illegal exactly?

[yian88]

Meanwhile videos of whitey getting slayed in all over the planet dont even get removed, no one cares, there is so much terrorism footage from middle east, europe, africa, south americas on such sites no one cares about them.

[leadeater]

3 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

I am unsure about what the video in question contains and the legality of its contents but if it is illegal then that would be one reason to block it. 

It's the footage of the live stream by the attacker on the Deans Ave mosque.

 

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

Why is this video illegal exactly?

https://www.acorn.gov.au/learn-about-cybercrime/prohibited-offensive-and-illegal-content

[DildorTheDecent]

5 hours ago, Taf the Ghost said:

The chans have literally gotten Airstrikes called in before

>a Vietnamese rug weaving board is responsible for the deaths of terrorists

 

Never forget 04/04/2016, 30/05/2016.

[Salv8 (sam)]

dude the second 4chan gets wind of this they will go ape shit, the really don't like being censored...

Optus and others have no idea what they have done....

[Arika S]

... 

[LAwLz]

1 hour ago, leadeater said:

It's the footage of the live stream by the attacker on the Deans Ave mosque.

 

https://www.acorn.gov.au/learn-about-cybercrime/prohibited-offensive-and-illegal-content

Seems kind of extreme to make it illegal. Do things like TV have to follow the same laws? For example can't news show footage or pictures of violent acts? And I mean, if an sites posting it need to be blocked then should Facebook, reddit, Twitter and some other sites be blocked too? 

[Arika S]

25 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

should Facebook, reddit, Twitter and some other sites be blocked too

According to this action, yes. But I guarantee they have been looking for a reason to ban these sites for years, this gave them the boon they were hoping for to do just that. 

 

Because anime tiddies and shitposting aren't against the law..... Yet, we are becoming china2 after all 

[PlayStation 2]

Ah, the actions of a single person should influence how the whole country can access certain sites.

Nice call Australia. Keep on proving that the only thing that came out of the country that was worthwhile was the Pontiac G8 and the Chevrolet SS.

[Real_PhillBert]

 

I know this is ISPs not politicians, but this still seems applicable. 

 

Personally I find it disgusting that a video of factual events would be banned, regardless of how awful the actions within the video are.

[leadeater]

46 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Seems kind of extreme to make it illegal. Do things like TV have to follow the same laws? For example can't news show footage or pictures of violent acts? And I mean, if an sites posting it need to be blocked then should Facebook, reddit, Twitter and some other sites be blocked too? 

Short version no news can't show it either, there are special rules/exceptions for news to be able to report on such things but there are limits to what they can show. But it's not violent acts that are not allowed, it's 'very high-impact violence', something that would be above a typical R18 rating.

 

As you know the act of blocking those sites is ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. Those sites are failing to remove the content, they aren't actually subject to Australian law (far as I understand) but are facilitating Australian citizens in breaking laws so they got blocked.

 

The modern day issue of are you breaking local laws using internet resources out of country, you are within the nations boarders physically so what actually does apply? If you got on a plane and went to another country then viewing and sharing that video is not breaking Australian law. Australia has passed laws to address that but it doesn't apply to the internet resources outside of the country, how could it? It applies to the citizens within the country using it.

 

Should internet services comply to local laws to be allowed to offer services in the country, generally speaking Australia says yes.

 

Specific to the issue of the video itself, we all agree video of child pornography is not acceptable? That happens to be international law as well. Is footage of a person killing 41 people up close, in full view and detail any less worse? It's not footage of person(s) getting killed but from a distance, or remote camera footage i.e. drone strike, it shows it point of view arms length with the attacker also going back to his car, getting more weapons, returning to scene, standing over the people and shooting them again. Is that less worse than child porn? And should that be shown on day time news, or freely accessed all ages on the internet?

[Andreas Lilja]

3 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Specific to the issue of the video itself, we all agree video of child pornography is not acceptable? That happens to be international law as well. Is footage of a person killing 41 people up close, in full view and detail any less worse? It's not footage of person(s) getting killed but from a distance, or remote camera footage i.e. drone strike, it shows it point of view arms length with the attacker also going back to his car, getting more weapons, returning to scene, standing over the people and shooting them again. Is that less worse than child porn? And show that be shown on day time news, or freely accessed all ages on the internet?

Torture is worse than murder, especially children. 

 

 

[leadeater]

14 minutes ago, Raskolnikov said:

Torture is worse than murder, especially children. 

May I point out children were killed and injured in the video..... of extremely young ages. Regardless this isn't an ethics study so I'm going to leave it alone, other than to say I disagree, they are equal, as callous as trying to rank things like that is.