The Australian government just added Wikileaks, a wiki project devoted to forcing government and corporate transparency, to a list of websites that Australians cannot publish links to. Violations could cost you up to $11,000 for every day the hyperlink is up.
It makes me wonder what the Australian government is afraid of and what they’re trying to hide. No innocent government would ban an organisation that strives to hold all governments accountable for their actions.
I have a lot of readers in Australia. If you ever need to link to Wikileaks from your own blog or site, feel free to link to this post—which is saturated in American freedom and bald eagle shit—which links to Wikileaks. Your local readers can’t click through, but at least you’ found a way around the link ban.
You’ve got the right idea. whats to say that people can’t run the links through redirectors like tiny url? Its technically not a strait link. The Australian gov’t are dumbasses. srsly
Comment by Ann — 18 March 2009 @ 2:40 pm
Thank you for bringing this sinister piece of internet legislation to my attention. I would have expected this kind of thing from the UK gov and am disappointed it is happening in this otherwise fair play country. G’donya, as they say Down Here x
Comment by hedgemonkey — 18 March 2009 @ 9:16 pm
k
Comment by Tom — 25 March 2009 @ 5:09 am
Er, whoops.
You aren’t going to believe this, but Wikileaks is accessible in Australia at the time of writing, without using redirectors and whatnot.
I’ve just tried it — perhaps the site was down.
Comment by Tom — 25 March 2009 @ 5:10 am
Tom, it’s not that it’s inaccessible, it’s that it’s blacklisted and illegal to link to.
Comment by Rev. Reed Braden — 25 March 2009 @ 11:16 am
Although there is talk that it may become banned in the future.
Comment by Rev. Reed Braden — 25 March 2009 @ 11:17 am
Hmm. Thanks for clearing that up. I thought the blacklist was a list of already-blocked URLs. More importantly, the Media minister Stephen Conroy said that this list was a fake.
Now, if it is illegal to link to certain sites, then obviously the government would be publishing them, so that people know not to link to them — it would be grossly unfair to fine them $11,000 a day for linking to site without informing them beforehand. They’d get a lot of stick from the public for it.
Obviously, the government want the list of sites to be known, and wouldn’t try to “hide” it by calling the leaked list a fake. There is no reason or motive for them to keep the list secret, so when Conroy calls the so-called leaked list a fake, I’m betting that he’s telling the truth.
I hope so, since ED is on the list.
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Also, I’m guessing that since it’s illegal to link to Wikileaks, they almost certainly WILL block it.
Why has it not been done already, though, I wonder?
Comment by Tom — 25 March 2009 @ 7:46 pm