[LINK] Web censorship plan heads towards a dead end

[Stilgherrian]

On 26/02/2009, at 11:00 PM, Leah Manta wrote:
> Who defines what the standards of morality are?

Whoever has balance of power in the Senate.

Less cynically, and in an overly-simplistic overview, the Australian  
Classification Board (formerly the Office of Film and Literature  
Classification) has a set of guidelines to follow, and the ratings for  
what counts as G, PG, M, MA15+,. R18+, X and RC are in set under  
Broadcasting Services Act.

How is all that set? Through the normal process of political policy  
development: compromise, review, representation from community groups  
etc.

One could argue that the process will always drift towards greater  
restrictions on what can be seen because the people who want to  
restrict what we view because the world is an evil, moral cesspit tend  
to be more passionate and better organised that those who have a more  
relaxed attitude and would tend to leave it to individuals. Also, once  
the "we must protect the children" flag is raised it's difficult to  
return from that emotional level to a rational debate.

Irene Graham has outlined the current system for the Internet at:
http://libertus.net/censor/netcensor.html



>> And last month, ACMA added an anti-abortion website to its blacklist
>> because it showed photographs of what appears to be aborted foetuses.
>
> Why is this an issue?

I'm not asking whether you're asking why the images are "bad" and  
should be blocked, or why it's of concern that such imagers were added  
to the AMCA blacklist.

I wrote about this for Crikey.com.au, including a link to the  
offending images.
http://www.crikey.com.au/Politics/20090123-So-Conroys-internet-filter-wont-block-political-speech-eh-.html

In brief, while the images are very confronting, they are part of a  
political campaign to stop abortion. So while they may be challenging  
and something you wouldn't want children to stumble across,  
nevertheless they are potentially part of "political speech" and  
supposedly protected. It's certainly a blurry boundary. Which has  
priority, our right to free speech or the need to protect the children?

However the ACMA blacklist is secret, and this incident was only made  
known because the complainant to caused it to be blocked did so with  
the specific aim of exposing this problem.

One of the key problems with with ACMA blacklist is its secret,  
unaccountable nature. It has been pitched continuously as "mainly  
child abuse material" to make it seem something no sane person would  
challenge but in fact that's not true.

Again, Ireme Graham is the go-to source. Her description of the ACMA  
blacklist is at:http://libertus.net/censor/ispfiltering-au-govplan.html#s_19

Stil



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