[LINK] Telco act to outlaw euthanasia sites?

[Irene Graham]

On Tue, 20 Apr 2004 14:26:20 +1000 Robin Whittle wrote:

>I heard something on the ABC Radio news last night - Philip Nitschke
>saying that proposed amendments to the Telco Act would prevent
>Australian euthanasia sites from publishing their views on websites.

He's right. It's not re the Telco Act, it's in proposed amendments to the C'th
Criminal Code 1995 which are set out in the 'Exposure Draft of the Crimes
Legislation Amendment (Telecommunications Offences and Other Measures) Bill
2004'
http://www.law.gov.au/www/agdHome.nsf/Alldocs/RWP28614E7E165BD55DCA256E55000B56F6?OpenDocument

It contains new criminal offences concerning distributing, accessing, etc etc
"suicide promotion material" which means
"material that, directly or indirectly: 
(a) promotes, counsels or incites suicide; or
(b) provides instruction on how to commit suicide."
 
As EFA remarked in its submission 
http://www.efa.org.au/Publish/efasubm-agd-teleco.html
to the C'th A-G's Dept re the draft Bill:
The "definition is so broad it could be used to silence the speech of
advocates of laws such as the now demised Northern Territory euthanasia
legislation."

>I haven't researched this further, but I am acutely aware that its just
>a stroke of the pen for governments to pass laws which criminalise
>anyone who runs a website (no matter where the server is) expressing
>views about, or discussing, anything at all they care to suppress.

Indeed, the same draft Bill contains new criminal offences that appear
designed to enable targeting people involved with sites such as WTO protest
sites that so upset a couple of Government Ministers in 2002, but the ABA
found did not breach the existing Internet censorship legislation. So now the
C'th Gov't proposes new laws that will enable criminal prosecution and jailing
of content providers and ordinary users under Commonwealth law.

Irene