Australian internet censorship plan is stealth agenda to ban Linux!

Comment: Will the Australian government provide antivirus software and firewall software to Linux users, or will they ignore Linux users and therefore prevent Linux users from using the internet? Think that can’t happen? Think again. Scott “sk0t” McCausland pleaded guilty in 2006 to uploading Star Wars III and was told by his probation officer that he had to install an OS which would support and run the monitoring software which he was required to install and use if he wished to use the internet. If Scott McCausland can be forced to abandon Linux and use Windows, it can happen to millions of Australians.

Australian Government To Force Internet Users To Install State-Approved Software

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Tuesday, June 22, 2010

The Australian government is set to intensify its war against Internet freedom by forcing web users to install state-approved anti-virus software. If they fail to do so, they will be denied an Internet connection, or if their computer is later infected, the user’s connection will be terminated.

“AUSTRALIANS would be forced to install anti-virus and firewall software on their computers before being allowed to connect to the internet under a new plan to fight cyber crime. And if their computer did get infected, internet service providers like Telstra and Optus could cut off their connection until the problem was resolved,” reports News.com.au.

A 260-page report released by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Communications outlines a plan to mandate Internet users to install government-approved software before their Internet connection can be activated.

Of course, the vast majority of Internet users already use anti-virus software, but by creating the precedent of having to conform to government mandates simply to get online, this opens the door to later requiring government permission to use the Internet at all, as well as a Chinese-style ID verification system which will prevent “undesirables” from using the web.

It also makes it easier for the government to use the law to subsequently demand that a mandatory Internet filter also be installed as part of the software package that blocks websites deemed “offensive” to the authorities.

Efforts to place restrictions on the internet are unfolding apace in Australia where the government is implementing a mandatory and wide-ranging Internet filter modeled on that of the Communist Chinese government.

Australian communication minister Stephen Conroy said the government would be the final arbiter on what sites would be blacklisted under “refused classification.”

The official justification for the filter is to block child pornography, however, as the watchdog group Electronic Frontiers Australia has pointed out, the law will also allow the government to block any website it desires while the pornographers can relatively easily skirt around the filters.

Earlier this year, the Wikileaks website published a leaked secret list of sites slated to be blocked by Australia’s state-sponsored parental filter.

The list revealed that blacklisted sites included “online poker sites, YouTube links, regular gay and straight porn sites, Wikipedia entries, euthanasia sites, websites of fringe religions such as satanic sites, fetish sites, Christian sites, the website of a tour operator and even a Queensland dentist.”

The filter will even block web-based games deemed unsuitable for anyone over the age of fifteen, according to the Australian government.

Senator Joe Lieberman on Sunday called for the United States to move towards a a Chinese-style system of Internet control. Under Lieberman’s 197-page Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act (PDF), President Obama would be given a ‘kill switch’ to shut down parts of the Internet.

Constant fearmongering about cyber attacks is the cover for a global assault on Internet freedom by authorities. The web is being overtaken by independent media outlets which are now beginning to eclipse establishment news organs. This has enabled activists and the politically oppressed to expose government atrocities and cover-ups at lightning pace, something the system is keen to curtail.

FCC plan to regulate the internet – a backdoor internet tax

Comment: If the FCC is given the power to regulate the internet as a telephone system, that means that they will tax your internet. Look at your telephone service bills. You should see an FCC tax on there. You will have to pay an FCC tax on top of your internet subscription. This is nothing but a backdoor internet tax.

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http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/05/06/phil-kerpen-fcc-genachowski-net-neutrality-obama-free-press-mcchesney/
Updated May 06, 2010
The FCC Goes for the Nuclear Option

If FCC Chairman Genachowski announces his intention to reclassify the Internet as a telephone system, he will be reversing 30 years of precedent

By Phil Kerpen – FOXNews.com

As I have repeatedly warned and noted on www.ObamaChart.com, when Congress blocks the Obama administration, the White House always finds a way to get around the normal policy-making process and pursue its agenda by other means. Today’s reclassification assault on the Internet is the latest-and perhaps the most egregious-example.

In its effort to imposing crippling net neutrality regulations on the Internet-an idea with very little support from the American public or Congress-the Obama administration first turned to the FCC simply to pretend Congress has given it authority to regulate.

That effort suffered a major setback when the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals emphatically smacked down the FCC’s regulatory proposals in Comcast v. FCC. President Obama and his close friend and FCC chairman Julius Genachowski, however, refuse to back down. Instead they’re escalating to the regulatory equivalent of a nuclear attack on the free-market Internet: Chairman Genachowski will announce today his intention to reclassify broadband Internet as an old-fashioned telephone system as a pretext for pervasive regulatory control.

Broadband Internet service has never been regulated like old-fashioned telephone lines — classified as “Title II” under the Telecommunications Act. The FCC settled the matter definitively in 1998, when Clinton-appointed FCC Chairman William Kennard demolished the same reclassification arguments being made today in that year’s Report to Congress :

Our findings in this regard are reinforced by the negative policy consequences of a conclusion that Internet access services should be classed as “telecommunications” … Classifying Internet access services as telecommunications services could have significant consequences for the global development of the Internet. We recognize the unique qualities of the Internet, and do not presume that legacy regulatory frameworks are appropriately applied to it.

If Chairman Genachowski announces, as expected, his intention to reclassify the Internet as a telephone system, he will be reversing 30 years of precedent starting with the Carter administration FCC’s “Computer II” decision and definitively settled with respect to broadband Internet access by the Clinton FCC in 1998. Turning sharply left from Carter and Clinton indicates a pretty extreme shift beyond the mainstream of American politics.

Such a shift is unjustified, because free-market Internet policy has been a tremendous success. The Internet — in the absence of regulation — has flourished into a remarkable engine of economic growth, innovation, competition, and free expression. Such triumph argues in favor of continuing existing successful policies, but with today’s announcement the FCC shows it is more interested in satisfying a left-wing political constituency than continuing sound policy.

Consider the words of one of the leading advocates of Internet regulation, Robert McChesney, founder of the left-wing group Free Press. McChesney said to SocialistProject.ca: “What we want to have in the U.S. and in every society is an Internet that is not private property, but a public utility.”

He went on to explain: “At the moment, the battle over network neutrality is not to completely eliminate the telephone and cable companies. We are not at that point yet. But the ultimate goal is to get rid of the media capitalists in the phone and cable companies and to divest them from control.”

Not surprisingly, Free Press put out a statement yesterday just minutes after the story leaked that the FCC would pursue reclassification. Remarkably, they openly stated that even the nuclear option of total regulatory control under a utility-type model is not enough for them, saying: “This is extremely welcome news. We reserve judgment, however, on whether the FCC has gone far enough.”

The communications industry is, like health care, roughly one-sixth of the U.S. economy. Unlike health care, however, the FCC seems to believe it can take over the communications system with just three votes at the Commission. If they insist on trying, Congress needs to step in and stop them.

Phil Kerpen is vice president for policy at Americans for Prosperity and director of its www.NoInternetTakeover.com project. He can be reached on Twitte, Facebook, and throughwww.PhilKerpen.com.

$100 million question: Where’s Broadband In U.S.?

$100 million question: Where’s Broadband In U.S.?
14 September 2009, by Joelle Tessler,AP Technology Writers Peter Svensson,AP Technology Writers (Product Design & Devolpement)
http://www.pddnet.com/news-one-hundred-million-dollar-question-wheres-broadband-in-united-states-091409/

Congress may have been too enthusiastic funding project on Internet access and availability.

(AP Photo/Toby Talbot, file) Broadband_stimulus, In this May 30, 2007 file photo, Craig Santos of Eustis Cable in Brookfield, Vt. installs fiber optic cable for Comcast in Ira, Vt. The stimulus package championed by the Obama administration set aside up to $350 million to create a national broadband map. That struck some people in the telecommunications industry as excessive.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The national stimulus package passed by Congress in February may have been too enthusiastic about spending money on one particular project: figuring out where broadband Internet access is available and how fast it is.

The $787 billion stimulus bill championed by the Obama administration set aside up to $350 million to create a national broadband map that could guide policies aimed at expanding high-speed Internet access. That $350 million tag struck some people in the telecommunications industry as excessive, compared with existing, smaller efforts. The map won’t even be done in time to help decide where to spend much of the $7.2 billion in stimulus money earmarked for broadband programs.

Now it appears the final cost won’t be as high as $350 million — though just how much it will be is unclear.
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To ensure the mapping money is used “in a fiscally prudent manner,” the National Telecommunications and Information Administration signaled Wednesday it would initially spend more than $100 million, and then reassess the program.

The agency, which is part of the Commerce Department, said it has received requests for $107 million in funding for projects that would map broadband in individual states over the first two years. The states want another $26 million for various purposes over five years, including steps to encourage broadband demand. On top of that, the NTIA will have to spend more money to collate the statewide maps into a national one.

But while the map should run much less than the $350 million cap set by Congress, the total still looks like it will be far higher than estimates based on the costs of smaller mapping programs in individual states.

In North Carolina, for instance, state broadband authority e-NC spends at most $275,000 per year on maintaining a map of broadband availability in the state, detailed enough to list individual addresses, according to executive director Jane Smith Patterson.

Rory Altman, director at telecommunications consulting firm Altman Vilandrie & Co., which has helped clients map broadband availability in some areas, said $350 million was a “ridiculous” amount of money to spend on a national broadband map.

Even $100 million might be high. The firm could create a national broadband map for $3.5 million, and “would gladly do it for $35 million,” Altman said.

Dave Burstein, editor of the DSL Prime broadband industry newsletter, believes a reasonable cost for the map would be less than $30 million.

The map should reveal what most individuals already know: whether their homes can get broadband, and how fast it is. Officially, the goal for the map is to help shape broadband policy and determine where best to invest government funds. It may also help consumers shopping for Internet service.

However, the map won’t be ready in time to influence the first round of broadband grants and loans funded by the stimulus package. That money will start going out this fall. And the map likely won’t be finished before February’s scheduled release of a national broadband plan being developed by the Federal Communications Commission, which is also mandated by the stimulus bill.

About two-thirds of U.S. homes already have broadband. It’s available to many more, perhaps 90 percent of homes, but the figure is uncertain because of the lack of authoritative nationwide studies. The cable industry alone says it covers 92 percent of U.S. households.

When the Pew Internet and American Life Project surveyed people who didn’t have broadband in 2007 and 2008, it found that most of them aren’t interested in it, find the Internet too hard to use, or don’t have computers. Lack of available broadband was the third most common reason.

Still, there is concern that the U.S. is falling behind other countries in the reach and speed of its Internet connections, and that this might hinder economic growth. Advocates of expanding broadband also worry that some rural areas might never get high-speed Internet because service providers don’t see a payoff in extending their lines there.

Identifying those areas will be a major thrust of the mapping project. The maps will show broadband availability, type (phone or cable, for example) and speeds for each small cluster of homes, roughly equivalent to a city block in urban areas.

Each state’s grant for mapping will go to either a nonprofit or a government agency. Internet service providers have already committed to handing over data about where they have broadband coverage, so the main job will be to collect and translate that information into a map.

Mark Seifert, who is overseeing the broadband grant and mapping programs at the NTIA, offers several reasons why the federal government may spend proportionally more on mapping than some states. For one thing, he said, most efforts that have been done in states have focused on so-called “last-mile” connections that link homes and businesses with the broader infrastructure of the Internet. The NTIA also wants extensive data on that behind-the-scenes Internet infrastructure.

What’s more, since much of the mapping data will come from phone and cable companies, the NTIA wants the information to be independently verified — which could involve knocking on doors to confirm where broadband is and is not available and conducting other on-the-ground checks.

“You can spend less money on a map … but you get what you pay for,” he said. “Data costs money.”

Although the map will not be done in time to guide this round of broadband funding in the stimulus package, it could prove useful for later broadband deployment programs. And it could help set priorities in the years ahead for huge federal programs such as the Universal Service Fund and the Rural Utilities Service, which spend billions of dollars annually to subsidize telecom services.

In addition to the NTIA’s mapping project, there’s a parallel push at the FCC to gather more detailed data on broadband subscribers. Both efforts are designed to aid the Obama administration’s goal of “data-driven decision making” in setting telecom policy, said Colin Crowell, a senior counselor to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski.

“There is a voracious appetite for all kinds of broadband data,” said Crowell, who helped write the broadband mapping legislation as a staffer on a House subcommittee overseeing telecommunications. “Policymakers have been wringing their hands for several years that we don’t have accurate data on broadband deployment and adoption.”

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Peter Svensson reported from New York.

$100 Million Question – http://bit.ly/Of2Rl – #Congress may have been too enthusiastic funding project on Internet access