Back in October it was revealed that the tidy sum of $125.8 million AUD would treat Australia to the world’s first nationalized internet content filtering in a democratic first-world nation. Under the terms of the plan, Australian residents would be forced onto a nationally-mandated blacklist that filters illegal content at the ISP level. Users would be further given the choice to opt into an “unsuitable content” filter that panders to everyone’s love of children in filtering of pornographic and other “sensitive” content.

Fast-forward to today where an executive of iiNet, Australia’s largest ISP, has elected to opt into the program only to demonstrate how terrible an idea it is. Describing the filter as “ridiculous,” iiNet exec Michael Malone has nothing but bad things to say about the national filter.

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A note from the editor: The content trapped behind the jump is potentially NSFW and does not represent the views of Icrontic, its editors, its owners, or even the author. People just like to read ridiculous talking points get run through the mud. Someone has to deliver the goods.

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The 2008 amendment to the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 gave telecoms retroactive immunity from lawsuits related to assisting the government in its domestic wiretapping program. Since it was signed into law, there has been significant controversy over the constitutionality of the act which is said to deprive citizens of due process in cases where privacy has been violated. The EFF, long in agreement with this stance, recently filed a brief in the US District Court of San Francisco that hopes to challenge the legality of the FAA.

The EFF alleges that the FISA Amendment Act of 2008 is illegal because it permits the executive branch to reject lawsuits filed against telecoms for participating in the wiretapping program. It contends that this is a responsibility that should fall on the judicial branch, thereby respecting the constitutional notion of checks and balances.

Set to be heard on December 2, the Hepting vs. AT&T case is one of many the ACLU and EFF now oversee as coordinating stewards of the 47 outstanding wiretapping-related cases. If they should successfully prove their case, this will be a tremendous victory for both the rights and privacy of American people.

China’s Orwellian “Cultural Law Enforcement Taskforce” officers are set to ramp up plans to snap pics of any person who patrons one of China’s sundry internet cafes. Apparently the free-thinkers, Falun Gong, anti-Communists and other pesky dissidents like to use the hip hangouts as a place to do their evil.

The decision conveniently alleges that it is to verify the age of cafe users who must, by law, be 18 years are older. But we suspect that such hooligans and crusty jugglers are clearly preventing China from becoming the best village, so the guv hopes to put a stop to any such rousing of future rabbles.

Scientific proof that an unfiltered internet harms children

An Australian software firm called Brilliant Digital Entertainment has developed a tool that can scan every file that’s sent or received on a customer’s ISP. While it has attracted the New York attorney general’s attention, we can all be safe in knowing that this tool is really to protect the children who might become sociopaths immediately upon seeing an errant tit.

Apparently the NY AG is on this child-protection bandwagon and would love to open the slippery slope by empowering censor-happy ISPs with a tool to block whatever they desire.

Right.

A note from the editor: The content trapped behind the jump is potentially NSFW and does not represent the views of Icrontic, its editors, its owners, or even the author. People just like to read ridiculous talking points get run through the mud. Someone has to deliver the goods.

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Either way, you’re a criminal.

Since the addition of Joe Biden to the Democratic Presidential ticket, some in the IT industry have expressed fears that Obama’s progressive IT policy would be hampered. Biden, long a supporter of domestic FBI spy technology and the RIAA’s legal tactics, was expected to drastically alter Obama’s less restrictive views. Such fears may have been confirmed this morning as Versionista picked up on sweeping changes published after September 17 that have significantly blunted the Obama technology plan.

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The other day Cliff Harris, an independent developer of games such as Democracy 2, Kudos, and Starship Tycoon, asked an honest question on his blog: Why do you pirate my games?

He got a flood of earnest and insightful responses.

Answers ranged from “I’m poor and can’t afford games but I love them” to quasi-political rants about the philosophy of intellectual property. He also got some answers that gave him immediately actionable items to address, such as removing DRM from his games, lowering the price, and making his demos longer.

It’s a very interesting approach that makes one step back and say “Why don’t the big companies do that?”

Mr. Harris closed his report with an equally honest prediction of the effect his experiment has on the larger industry.

So it was all very worthwhile, for me. I don’t think the whole exercise will have much effect on the wider industry. Doubtless there will be more FPS games requiring mainframes to run them, more games with securom, games with no demos, or games with all glitz and no gameplay. I wish this wasn’t the case, and that the devs could listen more to their potential customers, and that the pirates could listen more to the devs rather than abusing them. I don’t think that’s going to happen.

One bold software dev asked why people pirate. They responded in droves, and he listened. Shock.

In October of 2007, the combined research of the Associated Press and other news outlets announced that the US ISP Comcast was engaging in unscrupulous traffic management of the web. The EFF, internet users, and other civil liberty groups were furious over the revelation. While the United States has no official net neutrality legislation, Comcast’s practice was generally regarded as a de facto horror. The proceedings that were spun from these findings have breathed new life into net neutrality with the bi-partisan signing of a new enforcement order.

The new order will legally oblige Comcast to cease and desist in further traffic manipulation and force them to disclose the methods they used to manipulate internet traffic. While this is not a law, it sets a relieving precedent regarding traffic management in the days to come.

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin likened the manipulation of web traffic to the manipulation of traditional mail.

“Would you be OK with the post office opening your mail, deciding they didn’t want to bother delivering it, and hiding that fact by sending it back to you stamped ‘address unknown – return to sender?’” he said.

“Or if they opened letters mailed to you, decided that because the mail truck is full sometimes, letters to you could wait, and then hid both that they read your letters and delayed them?” he continued.

This decision sends a clear warning to other U.S. ISPs considering illegitimate manipulation of American — and to a lesser extent, global — web traffic. Hands off.

What seems to be standard practice for memory makers Rambus, has seen them filing a lawsuit against Nvidia for patent infringement.

In claiming infringement on 17 of their patents they seeking monetary damages and an injunction to stop Nvidia from selling products that include chipsets, graphics processors and memory controllers.

They not new to this type of thing it seems with Rambus having taken many rival memory makers to court for similar infringements. The competitors however have cried foul, alleging that Rambus deceived the Joint Electron Device Engineering Council (JEDEC)by not disclosing its DRAM patents and trying to win them over to avoid high royalty payments.

Having won a victory against their rivals earlier this year, with a court ruling that they had not run afoul of the JEDEC, as alleged by Micron Technology, Nanya Technology and Hynix Semiconductor, it seems they have turned their attention to Nvidia.

According to Tom Lavelle, senior vice president at Rambus, they have been attempting to negotiate a licensing agreement with Nvidia for the past six years but it seems they are no closer to an agreement.

With Nvidia having seen it’s fair share of troubles lately, this couldn’t have come at a worse time.

If the RIAA doesn’t like how a case is going, they just halt it and file another one.

Remember the raid on Pirate Bay? Turns out the lead police officer was employed by Warner Bros. AT THE SAME TIME.

MediaDefender initiated a DoS attack against Revision3.