[LINK] the Bill Henson 'mistake' - Conroy

[Jan Whitaker]

Blacklist snares Bill Henson fan site

http://www.theage.com.au/news/technology/web/blacklist-snares-bill-henson-fan-site/2009/03/26/1237657050527.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
Asher Moses
March 26, 2009 - 3:00PM

A link containing Bill Henson's artistic photographs of young boys 
has been added to the communications regulator's blacklist, again 
calling into question claims by Communications Minister Stephen 
Conroy that his internet filtering plan would block only the worst of 
the worst sites.

The images appear on a "male beauty" blog that contains several nude 
male images. However, the only link to the site found on the 
blacklist is one containing just five Bill Henson photographs. The 
boys are clothed in all of the images except for one, which shows a 
naked boy, but no genitalia are pictured.

The link was added to the Australian Communications and Media 
Authority (ACMA) blacklist despite the Classification Board last year 
clearing Henson's work for general release.

Sites featured on the list were only revealed this month after a 
leaked version was published on the Wikileaks website.

While the list of "prohibited" material does not have a significant 
impact on most internet users today, links contained on it will be 
blocked for everyone if Conroy proceeds with his mandatory internet 
filtering plan.

Henson's spokeswoman Sue Cato declined to comment, as did ACMA and Conroy.

Colin Jacobs, spokesman for online users lobby group Electronic 
Frontiers Australia, said: "With an abortion site, the Peaceful Pill 
Handbook and Bill Henson photos all now revealed to be on the 
blacklist, claims that the list only includes the 'worst of the 
worst' of the web are sounding like those over-emphatic defences of 
Guantanamo Bay."

Jacobs said EFA was "pretty unenthusiastic" about a censorship system 
"where we have no choice but to take such assertions at face value".

Greens Senator Scott Ludlam said: "It's a classic example of that 
scope creep. They say it's about the worst of the worst but before 
you know it it's expanding to cover other kinds of material."

The Classification Board said it had received 10 applications to 
classify works by Henson. It found the images of children were not 
sexualised, "mild in viewing impact and justified by context". This 
is despite some of the images depicting a naked female with "breast nudity".

Henson's images sparked a political storm last year following an 
uproar on talkback radio, which led to police seizing 32 of Henson's 
photographs from Sydney's Roslyn Oxley9 gallery.

At the time, the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, declared the pictures 
"absolutely revolting". But the case against Henson eventually 
collapsed, with the Director of Public Prosecutions advising NSW 
Police that any prosecution of Henson would be unlikely to succeed.

Conroy initially called into question the veracity of the leaked 
blacklist but yesterday said the latest leaked version, dated March 
18, "seemed to be close" to ACMA's current blacklist.

"It is completely untrue that the leaked blacklist contains political 
content. This is a list which contains sites that promote incest, 
rape, child pornography and child abuse," he said.

However, alongside child porn, bestiality, rape and extreme violence 
sites, the leaked list also includes a slew of online poker and 
gambling sites, YouTube links, regular gay and straight porn sites, 
Wikipedia entries, euthanasia sites, websites of fringe religions 
such as satanic sites, fetish sites, Christian sites, the website of 
a tour operator and even the sites of a Queensland dentist, a school 
canteen consultancy and an animal carer.

"If in the future the Prime Minister finds a controversial artwork 
'revolting' or an online game too violent, do you trust him to resist 
pushing the 'ban it' button? He could then go on talk radio and say 
something was being done," Jacobs said.

The Opposition communications spokesman, Nick Minchin, said he had 
not seen the blacklisted link with the Henson images but the 
revelations raised "further questions about how Senator Conroy will 
compile any blacklist and how this will be vulnerable to 'creeping' 
based on the political will of the day".

Yesterday, Conroy said public concern about the possibility of the 
blacklist "creeping" to include legal content was justified, but 
stopped short of guaranteeing the Government would be able to prevent it.

The Government plans to expand the blacklist to up to 10,000 sites 
and has said it plans to incorporate sites found on international blacklists.



Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
jwhit at janwhitaker.com
blog: http://janwhitaker.com/jansblog/
business: http://www.janwhitaker.com

Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or 
sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.
~Madeline L'Engle, writer

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