It’s been said before, but it’s worth saying again. Communications and media is one portfolio where over regulation, sweetheart political deals for corporates, and counterproductive and ill thought out policy have reigned under the Howard government. After the turkey slapping scandal on Big Brother last year, Ministers and other proponents of intrusive censorship were horrified to find that they had no power to rate or censor comment streamed over the net. So, as was no doubt predictable, we now have a completely confused and misdirected draft bill to remedy this omission. As you might expect from a government characterised by control-freakery, the bill seeks to regulate content far broader than just streaming video from reality tv programmes.
Follow the link to legal academic Peter Black’s blog Freedom to Differ to read a comprehensive critique of the bill (and if you’re game, the bill itself). The onus falls on providers of online content to either introduce some form of restrictive access or to submit material for censorship if the content is likely to be MA15+. Potentially it could be more difficult to post material online than to sell it in a newsagent or bookshop. Complaints aren’t necessary for offences to be committed. The bill is unclear as to who is covered (apparently user-gen sites like YouTube will be excluded) but it’s quite possible that blogs would be brought within its net. It’s a ludicrously heavy handed measure, and as Peter argues, a gross over-reaction. It’s hard to disagree with his conclusion that rather than being re-worked, the bill should just be junked.
Trackback — check out Bernice’s excellent point in the Comments about bookshops.
In the US, we are fighting a measure, that proposes to receive high speed internet access to your sight, you pay a fee, or your site loads slower.
Good blog.
Renegade: Eh? Can you expand..
I think Renegade Eye is talking about the proposal to do away with Net Neutrality, so email and traffic from people who pay a higher fee (i.e. corporations) will take precedence over the sites and emails of mere peons in the Internet hierarchy.
I don’t really get the purpose of this bill. It’s not as if children spring from the womb with a 3G mobile phone. Someone has bought them the phone and someone is paying the bill. As someone who doesn’t have kids, I am really tired of having to keep thinking about them. Perhaps parents should parent (don’t get your 12 year old a 3G phone where they can access adult content, let young kids online unsupervised, etc) rather than slapping a blanket restriction to protect the kiddies and frustrate everyone else? It reminds of the platform of both parties to have some kind of ISP-level filter of adult content to save the kiddies that you can opt out of only by writing to your ISP. If that day ever comes, my ISP will be receiving a letter that simply says GIVE ME MY G-DDAMN P-RN.
Tony,
The GOP refer to the proposed legislation as “Net Neutrality”, which is what it’s not. Not sure, but I don’t think it’s gonna pass(passed?) muster with the Dems controlling both houses.
Here, Old Man Coconut has control of the Senate for the next nine months till full-term. His marginal horses have flared nares and wide white eyes and their stables smell real bad.
Yahoo and Google have ChinaWeb stitched up tighter than a carp’s arsehole. Effective Sino-Citizen dissent is vestigal.
This is the Roe v Wade of cyberspace Oz. Are you Pro Net-life or Pro Censor’s Choice?
The draft is an enormously cumbersome apparatus to prosecute anyone rash enough to flash a glimpse of a fellah waving his flaccid pink bits about.
Ratty’s moral guardians appear to be in the kind of punitive mood that’d cause considerable shrinkage to any turkey slapper flasher with an ounce of nous.
Oh, wait…
This bill requires providers to review content and judge whether it’s appropriate or not before uploading it. How the hell are they supposed to do that exactly? If the legislation applies to blogs, for example, are wordpress, blogger et al supposed to hire armies of censors to review each post before it goes online?
So, what’s to be done about the Content Services Bill? Is it just a bargaining counter, a way for the Government to appear to be doing something? Or is something they intend to push?
Several strategies spring to mind:
1) Lobbying MPs (including Liberals/Nats who might be receptive, since the Government controls the Senate).
2) Setting up fighting funds for potential court cases.
3) Finding people willing to test the boundaries of the new law.
I think it’s important to remember that this is entirely consistent with the philistine, censorious, and authoritarian strain in Australian culture that exists in both major parties, and as well as people like us who regard it as absurd, there are people who regard a bill like this as simple common sense.
Lobbying MPs will be just about as effective as ignoring the bloody thing altogether- and laughing at them for trying. Most governments just haven’t grasped how the internet works (it’s not a truck, nor even a series of tooooobs
).
If restrictions are placed upon Australian content providers, no wucking furries- providers will host whatever they friggin’ well want- in Lower Slobovia.
Course when that happens, our less sparkling wits down in Canberra will suggest that “WE will decide what bytes and packets come to Australia- and the manner in which they come!”
Yeah, ok…
Lobbying may well be ineffective. Ignoring it may possibly be just as ineffective, and if so, dangerous if this is a real attempt to restrict free speech on the Internet.
To quote from the Freedom To Differ blog, linked to by Mark above:
Also, get in touch with the Australian Branch of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. They are good.
And also: one word, people: TorPark.
I think it’s certainly worthwhile lobbying MPs.
As David points out, the bill as drafted seeks to capture the creation of content in Australia, and thus close off any loopholes where the server and domain are physically and virtually overseas.
What some call control freakery I call fascism. And fascism is not specific to the lunar right – Its also intrinsic to Marxist-Leninism and strains of absolutism associated with the far left embodied in the unilateral decision by Bob Brown to take advice from Salt Shaker types and then commit the poor Greens to net censorship. Brownshirted Bob has now , not only voted once for net censorship but threatened to again.
Censoring the OOOs and 111s we are using to speak freely here can only be described as a fascist act taken by a conscious fascist. We are way beyond mere control freakery or micro-management now. Only a full blown STASI like fascist police state could censor the web. One similar to that in red fascist China today.
For the sake of getting a plan together, i won’t go over everything I disagree with in professor rat’s statement, but I don’t think it’s especially helpful or meaningful to use ‘fascist’ to mean ‘anything I don’t like’.
Australia has almost always had stuffy, restrictive and paternalistic ‘we know better than you’ censorship policies. This is not the same as fascism, and nor is this current plan.
To call the plan ‘fascist’ when it is merely censorious and authoritarian helps to repel potential allies who support free speech but don’t regard the current governmetn as fascist.