The war against censorship rages on.

The website of Australia's Classification Board has been hacked by an unknown individual in opposition to plans to "control and sheepify the nation".

The site's regular introductory text was replaced with a satiricial message likening the Board's conduct to that of the Chinese government and threatening the Board's critics with death by "A LARGE MELON(S)", among other things, and remained on the website for several hours before the site was closed for "maintenance".The entire message can be seen below:

Untitled

Australia's Classification Board, responsible for classifying all forms of media including video games and movies, has recently come under widespread public criticism for its attempts to introduce a mandatory ISP-level internet filter. The hackers were prompted to attack due to the leaking of a top-secret "internet blacklist" from parachute organisation ACMA (Australian Classification and Media Authority), which somewhat incongruously listed an online poker site, an art gallery and a Queensland dentist amongst various websites hosting legal and illegal content. The list confirmed the suspicions of anti-censorship advocates who had long claimed that the filter was an attempt by the Australian government to unreasonably dictate what information can and cannot be accessed by the public.

Investigations into the viability of the proposed filter by both the government and the country's leading ISPs have consistently proven it to be highly unreliable and a crippling detriment to Australia's somewhat primitive internet infrastructure. The latest tier of ISP-level filtering, in the works since 2007, has cost the taxpayer $89 million and is a replacement for the previously-announced $116 million home filtering software that was famously disabled by a young child in a matter of minutes during a press release.

Attacks like these are an effective means of bringing media attention to the argument, but serve as little more than validation to the radical conservatives and Luddites who are pushing for such censorship measures against the mainstream wishes of the Australian public. We gamers might be emotionally-stunted children with an insatiable lust for depravity and gore but I'm sure we're capable of just a little tact.

[source abc.net.au]