Back in June, Bettina Tizzy raised the possibility of Australians being banned from Second Life.
A few months later, Tateru Niro expands on Australia’s major ISP and their intention to halt free-access to Second Life.
Today, the Australian government accepted plans to censor internet content. Today, BigPond is also closing their access portal.
There are reports of Australians packing up and leaving SL due to Telstra/BigPond’s actions. To provide an example, an Aussie remaining in SL on a metered connection would cost an additional $169 AU each month.* One resident in particular had liquidated his full-perm sim for exactly L$1.
Regardless of whether the internet censorship succeeds or fails for Australians, there doesn’t seem to be any guarantee that BigPond’s portal would re-open. Apparently, providing unlimited bandwidth is cost-prohibitive for an internet-service-provider with 50% of the nation’s active internet users. I am curious to know what alternatives, if any, are available for SL-Australia.
*- calculations provided by Melbourne resident, B.R. – thx.
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What Telstra used to offer its users was unmetered access to SL only. This was particularly attractive to people, who for various reasons, did not have sufficient income to pay for a heftier download limit.
For most people, there are a number of IPs that will have varying rates and download limits, but to play SL extensively, you’d probably need to fork out about 60 dollars a month for decent download limits (Telstra is one of the most expensive providers and Aussies should be encouraged to shop around!). Unfortunately for those in rural areas, Telstra may be their only option. Do remember that something like 85 percent of Australians live in cities, so most will have options.
The censorships laws that are coming through, at this stage, will deal with blocking illegal content such as kiddie porn and ‘how to make a bomb’ kind of websites. Whether or not they extend the reach of the law in the future is another matter, but at this stage, they will not extend to SL.
The real threat to players of SL is actually in Australia’s game classfication system. At this stage, Australia does not have an “Adult” rating, so anything that is deemed too violent or too sexual for teens is refused classification. This effectively means that game cannot be sold in Australia without modification.
Presently, this does not extend to online/downloadable games, but who knows?
There is a push both ways: Gamers want the classification system to be modified to add an Adult rating and others want it to be more restrictive.
A good place for Australians to visit regarding broadband options and who are the decent providors is:
http://whirlpool.net.au/
Christ, where is Australia, Russia, that’s ridiculous
Actually, in the good news front, the Australian government has just released a discussion paper for the adult rating issue http://www.news.com.au/technology/australians-get-their-say-on-video-game-ratings/story-e6frfro0-1225810592521
Bigpond only provided unmetered access to Second Life if you stayed on their sims. Not much of an SL experience, and I don’t know of any really active Aussie SLers who relied on the Bigpond portals to access SL. Internet access in Australia is extremely expensive compared to many other countries, and there are very few options for unmetered access, and certainly no affordable ones. I pay $180 a month for a 200 gigabyte download limit. It’s just the way it is here. If you want to access SL, you have to pay for the privilege.
At this stage, online games will be excluded from the mandatory internet filtering. In terms of censorship of websites, that will be easy enough to get around. The main concern is that the filtering will result in an overall slowing down of internet speeds here.
Holy Crap Stephanie! you must do a lot of downloading, 200 gigs I didn’t even know such a plan existed…do you have 2 accounts?
I was with Bigpond for years, and only just recently switched to iinet. The meme about Bigpond only allowing free download from the Bigpond Islands is just that, an urban myth.Free SL download applied to most of SL, I don’t spend any time at all on mainland or on Bigpond, and saw substantial free download from SL on my plan almost all of my SL download was free, I checked it regularly! thats huge amount, and I was on SL for over 2 years on Bigpond. I moved to iinet cause I got a deal with phone and plan included, and got sick of Bigpond/telstras woefull non customer service. Now I have the same gig download, which I manage to stay within, with the same SL usage, that has on and off peak, and a phone line thrown in. So I’m better off, and if I need help I get it and with a real customer service person! not a robot…The problem was that Telstra Bigpond locks you into a plan as you know, Steph, and those that were still in plan, might have to pay a fee to opt out of it early, as the plan they were in was far to expensive to run SL on… however I did read recently that Bigpond, after a protest, waived that, and agreed to let people out of their plan. So yes they will lose a few customers but in the large scheme of things they will care less…and so will we, as we in Aust can get a much better deal paying for download in SL with other providers.
Under the proposed censorship deal for Australia SL use for us is not really as yet an issue, yes SL does not technically fall into a classified area, it is as yet classified as UC unclassified Content, yes SL is for over 18 only but it has to have a proper Classification like other games if it is to be passed. the Aust govt as Wistfull said has not yet talked about online games, only hard copy games, but that will come….
However although the Aussie contingent is small in SL, there are a lot of Govt funded universities with very strong presences here in SL, and many artists and performers. I feel pretty sure it won’t be caught up in the net, but I’m watching the news and the feeds very closely though to see what is going to happen…it sounds a bit like antibiotics to me, In order to get the bad guys some good guys might be killed off…Im concerned very concerned how many good guys will be killed off…This proposition is at the moment being proposed to combat child porn rape sites and some gambling sites and bomb making sites ect….the Australian Govt has not been transparent in really revealing which sites are allready on the trial banlist and this leads a lot of pepole to wonder what the categories really are. Do we need to ban gambling? when one of states really stops working for one day every year in November for a horse race? isn’t that a little hypocritical? Apparently there are allready bans placed on bomb making sites and pedo sites anyway? so what is this all about?
Personally I think that Facebook use and Myspace for kids and IM’s and YouTube is far more dangerous, not porn. I want to stop child porn, but putting a filter on that is a very flimsy bandaid…very flimsy when you look at the lengths people go to, to get that sort of content…
I have 2 kids who are on YouTube all the time and games ect…they don’t have facebook they are not of that age yet. I have educated them about the internet, the risks and the predators ect…they are very very aware about it. and if they ever get a weird IM or unsolicited Skype call they tell me, I’ve shown them how to block and bann, The computers are in our family room next to the kitchen Im always over their shoulder looking and besides they really are not interested in the “bad” sites, I have far more issues with the time they spend on the computer and the type of “kids” games they play and we just use basic parenting to control them no big deal.
I understand that most parents don’t have the savy I have, and don’t have the ability or the understanding to empower their kids. But I don’t realistically think that kids unless their parents are into it are exposed to porn that much if at all to create such a filter. If mum and Dad are pedophiles, well no filtering is going to help them. And if Dad gets porn on his family computer, or mum for that matter well thats the most likely way they will see it…and if Dad can’t get it online well there’s always the News agency right? the porn mags right out where the kids can see them next to the Simpsons comics…
Most Aussie ISP’s have pretty good spam filters ect..on them anyway.
This proposal if it goes through, will go through in about March 2010 apparently, and if it gets anywhere near going through its going to be a shit storm over here…someone already hacked the Prime Ministers Site, in protest….
The problem seems to be that the people implementing this plan arn’t internet savvy at all…which seems very very odd…the powers that be behind this are moralists or think they are, and aren’t really aware of what is really possible and they think its all going to be much easier than it seems we are being advised that it will be by the real experts…….the last implementation this lot introduced was a sort of Free Net Nanny which was cracked by a 15 yr old within about 5 mins…you know how? I did it to.. roll back on XP….simple…so idiotic…any basic user could have figured that one out. Dad puts on the Net Nanny ….kid does a roll back on Windows and there you have it by= pass Net Nanny total joke….so that was totally broadly ridiculed and sent packing. And this proposal has the same smell about it. A bunch of moralist pollies with absolutely no clue about the internet, proposing a filter that will use up millions and millions of our taxes that basically will be a toothless tiger, won’t work for the reasons its supposed to, stopping Kiddy porn and bomb making anyway because of Peer to Peer, and creating a situation where people can get their sites banned out of spite, and lots of mistakes will be made at the cost of the innocent. Not to mention just taking the Nanny State too far…
I think this is a political move, to be seen to be doing “something” Where the real money needs to be spent is on child protection in the larger social environment to protect kids who are victims of Child Porn and abuse. As far as Bomb making goes…sigh…well look we all did chemistry at some point, I could make a bomb Im sure…..one of my Sunday Roasts will probably do it!
Paisley Beebe
Paisley Beebe states:
“I understand that most parents don’t have the savy I have, and don’t have the ability or the understanding to empower their kids.”
Elitist much? Do you honestly think you are amongst a small minority of parents who actually take parenting their children responsibly, or that they don’t have the ability or understanding to empower their kids? Isolationist much? Perhaps if you take a really close look outside your world, you might see that many parents take this role quite seriously, and do have skills and abilities that–gosh–might even outweigh yours. If not, then you live in a country with a very sad state of affairs. Perhaps you might consider running for public office with all of your talents. I’m sure they’d let you bring the kiddies and computers with you on the job.
Oh, it’s THIS thread again.
Now unless i’m mistaken, and I don’t think anything has changed to make that so, this is still just another sensationalist headline to get people talking about stuff without actually doing any research first.
To Summarize: (and im quoting here: http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1229264#r4)
some computer games are exempt from classification not refused classification. This was covered in the News Ltd press many months ago.
Here’s an article all about it using WoW as the subject.
http://www.ausgamers.com/features/read/2614953
Exclusively online games are not submitted to the OFLC for classification.
My original question (sent to the OFLC on August 22, 2005) was answered today when the OFLC’s Ron Robinson called me to discuss this topic (I sent a followup email a couple days ago after the GTA stuff jogged my memory of this ancient request).
Ron let me know that World of Warcraft was not rated by the OFLC – in fact, was never even submitted for classification – it was a “waste of time” as the game is exclusively online, exclusively multiplayer, and has no defined start and end. Thus it is inherently unclassifiable.
But ultimately:
Australia has a functional Democracy.
So: if someone does something to piss off the increasingly politically aware population of users who are now increasingly sensitive to restriction and censorship…Action from a large informed population of previously fairly passive internet users/suppliers/technicians will ensue.
The people run this country.
Given that we have never really seen what can be done to mobilize our users against threats to our interwebz.. the results should be interesting.
Methinks a sleeping giant has been awoken.. and that might have been a part of the plan from the beginning.
Also, keep in mind theres a large corporate/power transition in play here at the same time. The not-so long ago ex-government and now privatized Telstra is being forced by the government to split its various businesses so as to eliminate the gross conflict of interests where they are in the position of leasing infrastructure to it’s competitors (AND, obviously, competing with them in the same marketplaces)…
Theres also a significant government broadband initiative responding to our demands for better, faster, cheaper internet provision. Lotsa debate, big moneys.
So it’s interesting times.
She’ll be jake mate.. and if it’s not, well then someone will just have to get a clip behind the ear till its fixed.
LL should make a PG grid for our friends in Australia.
I’m an Australian…one of the many who DON’T, and never have, used Telstra as their ISP. For those of us who don’t, we’ll continue to do what we always have, which is pay for a plan big enough to cover our SL usage.
I for one will be very interested to see how what was until now, a very small, cliquey group of people, who stayed on their own Pond, will manage, now that they actually may have to *shock horror* integrate with the rest of SL.
As for the new filter and games ratings, I’m not sure that SL will be included in these in the forseeable future. Yes, the filters (which by the way are totally useless for the purpose they are intended for) will block porn, and games ratings may change; but in regard to the ratings, its actually a push towards having an R classification, which currently we don’t have; many games available in other countries are considered too violent/sexual/etc, and are banned here. In all likelihood, the range of games available to us may actually increase in the end.
I certainly don’t see them being successful in any sort of attempt to take away games that are already allowed in.
No idea who your resident B.R. is but they’re appallingly bad at finding an ISP if they believe that to stay in SL you’re going to have to pay and ADDITIONAL $169 a month. Just about all internet plans in Oz are metred though you can get certain exemptions from various ISPs. I’m not even paying close to half that for full access. I’ve been in SL for 3 years and have been hearing about the “demise of SL in Australia” for the last two.
As for the censorship issue, it won’t affect SL. As others have said, online gaming is exempt from classification.
Storm in a stubbie.