Australia: Government censorship legislation blocked

[Hermit]

Good news.

Web censorship plan heads towards a dead end

Asher Moses
February 26, 2009 - 2:54PM

The Government's plan to introduce mandatory internet censorship has effectively been scuttled, following an independent senator's decision to join the Greens and Opposition in blocking any legislation required to get the scheme started.

The Opposition's communications spokesman Nick Minchin has this week obtained independent legal advice saying that if the Government is to pursue a mandatory filtering regime "legislation of some sort will almost certainly be required".

Senator Nick Xenophon previously indicated he may support a filter that blocks online gambling websites but in a phone interview today he withdrew all support, saying "the more evidence that's come out, the more questions there are on this".

The Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, has consistently ignored advice from a host of technical experts saying the filters would slow the internet, block legitimate sites, be easily bypassed and fall short of capturing all of the nasty content available online.

Despite this, he is pushing ahead with trials of the scheme using six ISPs - Primus, Tech 2U, Webshield, OMNIconnect, Netforce and Highway 1.

But even the trials have been heavily discredited, with experts saying the lack of involvement from the three largest ISPs, Telstra, Optus and iiNet, means the trials will not provide much useful data on the effects of internet filtering in the real-world.

Senator Conroy originally pitched the filters as a way to block child porn but - as ISPs, technical experts and many web users feared - the targets have been broadened significantly since then.

ACMA's secret blacklist, which will form the basis of the mandatory censorship regime, contains 1370 sites, only 674 of which relate to depictions of children under 18. A significant portion - 506 sites - would be classified R18+ and X18+, which is legal to view but would be blocked for everyone under the proposal.

This week Senator Conroy said there was "a very strong case for blocking" other legal content that has been "refused classification". According to the classification code, this includes sites depicting drug use, crime, sex, cruelty, violence or "revolting and abhorrent phenomena" that "offend against the standards of morality".

And last month, ACMA added an anti-abortion website to its blacklist because it showed photographs of what appears to be aborted foetuses. The Government has said it was considering expanding the blacklist to 10,000 sites and beyond.

Xenophon said instead of implementing a blanket mandatory censorship regime the Government should instead put the money towards educating parents on how to supervise their kids online and tackling "pedophiles through cracking open those peer-to-peer groups".

Technical experts have said the filters proposed by the Government would do nothing to block child porn being transferred on encrypted peer-to-peer networks.

"I'm very skeptical that the Government is going down the best path on this," said Xenophon.

"I commend their intentions but I think the implementation of this could almost be counter-productive and I think the money could be better spent."

The policy has attracted opposition from online consumers, lobby groups, ISPs, network administrators, some children's welfare groups, the Opposition, the Greens, NSW Young Labor and even the conservative Liberal senator Cory Bernardi, who famously tried to censor the chef Gordon Ramsay's swearing on television.

This week, a national telephone poll of 1100 people, conducted by Galaxy and commissioned by online activist group GetUp, found that only 5 per cent of Australians want ISPs to be responsible for protecting children online and only 4 per cent want Government to have this responsibility.

A recent survey by Netspace of 10,000 of the ISP's customers found 61 per cent strongly opposed mandatory internet filtering with only 6.3 per cent strongly agreeing with the policy.

An expert report, handed to the Government last February but kept secret until December after it was uncovered by the Herald, concluded the proposed scheme was fundamentally flawed.

Even Labor has previously opposed ISP-level internet filtering when the Howard Government raised it as a method for protecting kids online.

"Unfortunately, such a short memory regarding the debate in 1999 about internet content has led the coalition to already offer support for greater censorship by actively considering proposals for unworkable, quick fixes that involve filtering the internet at the ISP level," Labor Senator Kate Lundy said in 2003.

Sydney Morning Herald

[charlou]

Good news, indeed.

[Faithfree]

That is good news!
Maybe my letter worked?

[Hermit]

That is good news!
Maybe my letter worked?

If you addressed it to NIck Xenophon, that was probably it.

[soul_biscuit]

Well done! I remember hearing about when they started up the talk about that. Glad to see it over for now.

[CP]

Brilliant!

[Trolldor]

It's over because I made it so.

[Faithfree]

That is good news!
Maybe my letter worked?

If you addressed it to NIck Xenophon, that was probably it.

Actually I sent it to Stephen Conroy, so it probably did no good at all. I got a nice form letter response thanking me for my concerns, then basically saying that he would go ahead with it no mater what.

[Sparticle]

Mr Sparticle was on ABC Radio National's "Background Briefing" this morning, albeit briefly, having been interviewed by Wendy Carlisle a week or so ago.

It makes for interesting listening: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/backgroundbrie ... 512171.htm

The show seemed fairly firmly skewed in our direction, that is, the anti-filter lobby, despite Jim Wallace's best attempts to convince people that viewing pornography causes people to become paedophiles and/or rapists (luckily he was only talking about guys - shhhh, he hasn't realised that women look at porn too, so don't say anything okay?). In fact, the show opened with him and closed with him, neatly bookending his ridiculous and baseless rantings with clear and lucid discussion with several people including Senator Nick Xenaphon and Senator Cory Bernardi. Now, I don't agree with Cory Bernardi on pretty much everything he stands for, but I admire someone who has actually thought the issue through and realised that the whole thing is unworkable and that it simply amounts to nothing but censorship.

Highlights of the broadcast include Conroy's last public press conference on the issue (in September 08 - he hasn't spoken publicly on the issue since - listen to him baldly state what his intentions are ) and the US academic watching with interest as Australia teeters on the brink of becoming the world's first democratic nation to have a government-censored internet, as well as Geordie Guy's quite sinister (?hoax or not) threat after he wrote an OP in The Australian a while back.

Personally, I was a bit disappointed that after the interview with the two guys who work for the AFP Child Protection Taskforce and what they do, there wasn't a mention of the fact that the government has cut the AFP's funding quite substantially and then contrasted this with the obscene $44 million earmarked for this ridiculous censorship filter. I would have liked that aspect given some airtime. Maybe next time.

The issue is generating a lot of interest (particularly since Mr Sparticle submitted the anti-abortion website to ACMA and the fallout since then) - we've been contacted by Insight, Media Watch, The Australian and various podcasts. He's not thrilled with being thrust into the limelight about it all but he's happy to step up for what is right and to highlight the truth of what is really being proposed here. This filter has nothing to do with "saving the children" or stopping paedophiles, and has everything to do with our government attempting to censor our internet with secret lists, religious agendas and bully-boy politicking. People like Mr Sparticle and many others are happy to expose the lies being peddled to a largely unsuspecting (and, I daresay, uncaring in many cases) public, many of whom will only start bitching and moaning once they can't access all sorts of sites and their internet speeds drop to dial-up proportions.

For anyone interested in following the discussion, the Whirlpool forum is an excellent way to learn about the intricacies of the matter. The thread moves fast (up to Part 31 now) but it's worth dropping in to keep up with events. You can find it at:
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-re ... 58941&p=40
This thing isn't dead in the water yet, so we can't celebrate just yet. But there is some hope that it may yet be put to bed.

[Trolldor]

Catchy music, infuriating report.

[Sparticle]

Catchy music, infuriating report.

What was infuriating about it? (other than Jim Wallace's insane ramblings of course!)

[charlou]

Thanks for that (your commitment and spunk on this issue, mainly), Sparticle, and the links ...

It makes for interesting listening: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/backgroundbrie ... 512171.htm

*click*

[Trolldor]

Elected officials are supposed to be better than the public, not as stupid as it.
It took the censorship of an anti-abortion website before people became concerned about free speech. It took a politician inability to access information about himself before he thought 'gee there might be a problem'. I wonder what would have happened if the site censored had been one of, say... tentacle hentai.

[Sparticle]

Elected officials are supposed to be better than the public, not as stupid as it.

Operative words here being "supposed to be". I rather think that's long gone by the wayside, at least as far as Federal politics go ...

It took the censorship of an anti-abortion website before people became concerned about free speech.

Well, not the many who have been quietly (and not-so-quietly) fighting this thing for a long time but what it did was highlight the stupidity of the whole thing. The exercise was brilliant in its simplicity though and caught many filter fans right where they expected it least. See, to them, a pair naked boobs and adults engaged in consensual sex is far more offensive than a heap of Photoshopped pics of allegedly aborted foetuses. They could scarcely believe that what they were cheering for (the filter) might actually have the power to bite them on their smug and sanctimonious arses. Gotta love it!

It took a politician inability to access information about himself before he thought 'gee there might be a problem'. I wonder what would have happened if the site censored had been one of, say... tentacle hentai.

Again, as above.

But mostly we don't care how they arrive at the destination of filter = censorship = not good, but that they get there at all. The more people who come to realise this, no matter what their political/religious views, the better.

Likewise, the fact the mainstream media has been crawlingly slow to take up the issue, although hugely frustrating, is tempered by the fact they finally DO have hold of it now and people are talking more about it and learning about it. I don't care if anti-filter proponents came on board five minutes ago or 10 years ago when the Howard Government first floated the idea - the point is to educate people about it as much as possible. The more who learn about it and understand what is truly being attempted here, in our supposedly open and democratic country, the better.

[Trolldor]

Oh I agree slow progress is better than no progress, but it just aggrevates me that we have so many ordinary elected officials.
What I'm curious about is whether they'll actually listen to the public.
So far I've not just been unimpressed with the current Labor Government, I've been disappointed.
We need a viable third party.