[LINK] ACMA Internet Filter List Leaked

[Paul Brooks]

Stilgherrian wrote:
> On 20/03/2009, at 12:44 AM, Leah Manta wrote:
>   
>> What is curious though is at the very bottom of the list is a link
>> for medical-systems.info which is nothing to do with anything that
>> could be banned.  Go figure.
>>     
>
> Most likely explanation: There was content on that web server other  
> than stuff about medical systems -- either placed there deliberately  
> by the site owner or, more likely, when the site has hacked.
>
> I've been amused to see so many people commenting on this forgetting  
> that the words in a URL needn't bear any relationship to the kind of  
> data made available.
>   
Stil, in this last para you've hit on something thats been bothering me 
about  all this as well.
I don't have any specific data on this, and those that legitimately do 
won't - and arguably shouldn't - speak in detail publicly about it, 
however...
    I highly doubt that the kind of material that we might universally 
like to see blocked is likely to be made available on a publicly 
accessable website. Surely the last thing somebody with a library of 
this nature would want is for it to be stumbled across - apart from 
being illegal, it would also be very valuable to other like-minded 
people, so I naively expect its more likely to be hidden behind many 
layers of secrecy and private networks to avoid the 'club' being 
penetrated by law enforcement agents and to protect the scarcity and value.

I'm sure there is a continuous spectrum of degree of 'abhorence' 
(completely ignoring how this is subjective to the viewer), and it seems 
to me that the worse the material is, the less likely it is to be found 
on a publicly accessable site, especially one with an obvious name. You 
don't advertise if you really don't want to be found - so it makes more 
sense to me that this material would be located on a hidden page on an 
otherwise respectable-seeming website for a fruitshop, a shoeshop - or 
dentist - and not on a URL screaming 'kiddie-pr0n-here', if it was 
available through a URL at all.

With that explanation, I'm surprised there aren't a greater proportion 
of respectable-looking URLs on the list.


P.