[LINK] Quaint stash of censored books found - but no mention of ALP's Net censorship policy

[Nick Ross]

I discovered the Classification Board's secret guidelines a while back...

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-06-29/secrets-of-obscenity-the-classification-riddle/2776656

Something like 90% of all adult content is banned but it only sporadically
gets policed.

I also recently learned that quite a few board members have PTSD and all
have regular counselling.

Terrible system.

N
On Mar 24, 2012 12:48 AM, "Robin Whittle" <rw at firstpr.com.au> wrote:

> There's a story emphasising the now-quaint notions of protecting the
> public which were the law in previous decades - the 1920s to 1980s:
>
>
>
> http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-03-23/historian-uncovers-australias-censored-books/3908234
>
> as if this was all in the past.  Yet there's no mention of their
> modern-day equivalent, such as ALP's policy to censor Internet
> communications by mandating filtering at the ISP.
>
> I don't recall any mention of this policy in The Age or anywhere else in
> the last year or two.  Yet it was their policy at the last election, and
> it has never been dropped.  They are building a legislated monopoly NBN
> which most people will rely upon for Internet access.  So even without
> the censorship law, it would be a simple matter to stipulate that the
> government-owned NBN only be used by ISPs which filter communications
> according to government standards.
>
> In the above article, Don Chipp of the Liberal Party is credited with
> ending this type of censorship of books, yet I am sure there are still
> some books and magazines which are banned, by way of being "refused
> classification".   Also I recall that Helen Coonan - Liberal-National
> Coalition Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the
> Arts, 2004 to 2007 - was opposed to Internet censorship, at least
> regarding mandatory ISP filtering.
>
>  - Robin
>
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