[LINK] Re: [2600-AU] "Restricting DVDs "illegal": ACCC"

[Irene Graham]

On Thu, 29 Mar 2001 16:17:55 +1000 "Andrew Garden" <clo@bigpond.com> wrote:

>Perhaps I should have made my response more clear, 

Often a good idea on Link and on various other mailing lists. ;-)

>as the question re media
>was between DVD, video etc.  With film classification, it doesn't matter
>whether the 'media' is DVD, cinema film, video, CD-Rom etc, the content is
>treated the same.  Publications are classified under the publications
>guidelines.  The guidelines are different between film and publications,
>essentially on the premise that images on film has a higher impact on a
>viewer than in a publication.

Yes, so imo the OFLC should be telling Censorship Ministers that the
definition of a film should be changed so that text on a computer screen is
not treated as if it's a picture. It will be interesting to see if there's
anything about this issue in the OFLC film/computer games guidelines review
package that's due for issue for public comment soon.

>Text on a web page is classified as a film because the definition of a film
>is (paraphrasing) material from which a visual image can be projected,
>including a computer generated image.  What you see on the screen is an
>image 'projected' form a film, in that case a hard drive.

Thanks for that confirmation. A couple of people, not on Link, have
questioned statements that text on a web page or in a newsgroup posting
will be covered by the SA Net censorship Bill and classified under film
guidelines. While I was told verbally of the reason for treating text as if
a film some 18 months ago by a person in the Comm. A-G's department, it's
good to see someone from the OFLC willing to state/confirm it in writing.

Perhaps one day info about how the OFLC actually applies the Act and
guidelines will become available on the OFLC web site. This would be
helpful to ordinary Australians who are required to comply with vague and
obscure laws being introduced by State governments.

>Under s22 of the Comm. Act, the Board cannot classify a film if it contains
>an advertisement for a film that cannot be classified.  Usually,
>distributors have edited these ads off videos etc pre-release, but that
>cannot be done with a DVD.

So, under the amendments to the Act recently passed, now the OFLC will be
able to give a DVD a classification based on the contents of advertisements
in it, irrespective of the contents of the feature film on it. We can only
hope that DVD manufacturers/distributors overseas are able to accurately
guess how advertisements are likely to be classified, else we could see a
DVD containing an M rated feature film classified R (or even RC) in
Australia because of the content of the advertisement of another film. I
grant that that particular amendment to the censorship Act is probably an
improvement over the previous situation. OTOH, the combination of
Australia's censorship laws and new technologies appear to have the
potential to further restrict what Australians are "free" to view on the
media their choice, depending on the guesswork of o/s suppliers of films on
DVD.

Irene