 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group One Year of Internet Censorship in Australia Monika Merkes monika@melbpc.org.au |
Freedom House, a non-profit U.S. organisation committed to the cause of
human rights and freedom, undertakes regular surveys on press freedom and censorship. Last year's survey
found that out of 186 countries 69 had a free press, 51 had a partly-free press, and 66 countries had no
press freedom. Freedom House suggested that only 21% of the world's population enjoy access to a free
press.
Some countries control Internet access through government servers that censor incoming news and information
(e.g., China), and "cyber dissidents" have been imprisoned. These measures were justified, for example, by
claims that Western democratic practices are incompatible with Asian values, and that these values have to be
protected from corruption by outside influences. Several Arab countries used similar arguments. A Saudi
spokesman for business interests commented that Saudi Arabia's limited opening to the Internet was delayed
until technology was available to bar access to information contrary to Islamic values and "dangerous to our
society". (The report Censor Dot Gov - The Internet and Press Freedom 2000 is available at http://www.freedomhouse.org/pfs2000/ )
The authors of the report Censor Dot Gov pointed out that "constructive regulation" may sometimes be
necessary to keep the economy developing and to ensure maximum volume and diversity of content. However, some
democratic governments may use supposedly constructive regulation to mask censorship. Examples included
devising Internet-explicit licensing and regulation, applying existing restrictive print and broadcast laws
to the web, filtering Internet content through control of servers, or censoring electronic content deemed
unacceptable.
While Australia was considered a country with a free press, Freedom House noted that our new Internet
legislation is "onerous, privacy-intrusive, and will chill freedom of speech".
The Broadcasting Services Amendment (Online Services) Act 1999 - aka the Australian Internet censorship
legislation - has been in effect since 1 January 2000. Under this legislation, the following categories of
Internet content are prohibited:
- Content which is (or would be) classified RC or X by the Classification
Board. Such content includes:
- material containing detailed instruction in crime, violence or drug use;
- child pornography;
- bestiality;
- excessively violent or sexually violent material;
- real depictions of actual sexual activity; and
- Content hosted in Australia which is classified R and not subject to a
restricted access system which complies with criteria determined by the Australian Broadcasting Authority
(ABA). Content classified R is not considered suitable for minors and includes:
- material containing excessive and/or strong violence or sexual violence;
- material containing implied or simulated sexual activity;
- material which deals with issues or contains depictions which require an adult perspective.
If the content is not hosted in Australia and is prohibited, the ABA will notify the content to the suppliers of approved filters in accordance with the Internet Industry Association's code of practice http://www.aba.gov.au/what/online/complaints.htm.
During the first six months since introduction of the legislation, the ABA received 201 complaints about Internet content. By the end of June 2000, 197 investigations had been concluded. Of these, 37 had been terminated due to lack of information (for example, the details provided with the complaint were insufficient to locate the content). Of the remaining 160 completed investigations, 93 resulted in the location of prohibited or potentially prohibited content, while 67 were found not to contain prohibited content. Around one third of complaints related to content hosted in Australia. This included content hosted in Usenet newsgroups, which is treated as content hosted in Australia if the complainant has accessed the content from his or her ISP's newsgroup server. The ABA issued final take-down notices for 62 items of Internet content and referred 94 items to the makers of approved filters. Of the 62 items of Internet content that were the subject of take-down notices, at least 17 were later moved to ISPs outside Australia. (ABA Annual Report 2000-2001,
http://www.aba.gov.au/about/information/an99-00/chapter_3.htm).
The Broadcasting Services Amendment (Online Services) Act 1999 is of course more complex. The censorship arrangement also includes a community advisory body called NetAlert. Further, it involves the Office of Film and Literature Classification/Censorship and forthcoming State and Territory censorship enforcement legislation (for more detail see Electronic Frontiers Australia at http://www.efa.org.au).
The Internet Industry Association's code of practice for self regulation of Internet content http://www.iia.net.au/index2.html lists 16 approved filters. The criteria for selecting these filters include ease of installation, ease of use, configurability, ability for updates in respect of content to be filtered, and availability of support. Effectiveness is not included in this list.
Governments and the producers and retailers of filtering software tell us that filters protect children from the smut on the Internet. However, people who have tested the various filtering products found them at best a useful tool that will fail occasionally. Computer Choice (September/October 2000) found that none of the seven products they tested performed as well as expected: none of the programs blocked all offensive content, and only one blocked offensive graphics. On the other hand, filters blocked innocuous sites. For example, iFilter was found to block several Biblical sites, a family and child mediation service approved by the Australian Federal Attorney-General, the Institute of Australasian Psychiatrists, and information about Catholics helping street kids http://www.efa.org.au/Publish/PR990730.html. PORNsweeper, which claims to detain e-mail messages with pornographic image file attachments, blocked a photo of George W. Bush and his wife, Rembrandt's Portrait of a Lady with an Ostrich-Feather Fan, and Da Vinci's Mona Lisa. However, several pictures of latex fetishists in action went through (Australian IT 1 November 2000). Overall, the verdict was that filtering the Internet is a hit and miss affair, and that nothing substitutes parental supervision.
If filtering software products are not fit for purpose, and we can't control information that is hosted outside Australia - what is the benefit of this legislation to Australians? The government is seen to be doing something, as are schools who install filtering software. Will the categories of prohibited Internet content be expanded in the future to protect "Australian values"? While the new censorship legislation has made no immediate difference to my access to Internet content (I happen to have no interest in the material considered to be prohibited content), I believe it is an inappropriate use of taxes. I am also concerned that this is just the beginning. There is no convincing argument in favour of Internet censorship.
"First they came for the hackers. But I never did anything illegal with my computer, so I didn't speak up. Then they came for the pornographers. But I thought there was too much smut on the Internet anyway, so I didn't speak up. Then they came for the anonymous remailers. But a lot of nasty stuff gets sent from anon.penet.fi, so I didn't speak up. Then they came for the encryption users. But I could never figure out how to work PGP anyway, so I didn't speak up. Then they came for me. And by that time there was no one left to speak up". (Alara Rogers, based on Pastor Martin Niemoeller's much quoted statement on speaking up, at http://www.wh9.tu-dresden.de/~heinrich/).
| Other Internet
resources: Electronic Frontiers Australia (comprehensive information and links to other relevant websites) http://www.efa.org.au/ VICNET (includes many links to other relevant websites) http://www.vicnet.net.au/issues/censorship.htm. Australian Broadcasting Authority http://www.aba.gov.au/ Peacefire (promotes the rights of young people to freedom of speech, and provides advice on how to disable filtering software) http://www.peacefire.org/ Danny Yee, Free Speech: Fighting Internet Censorship in Australia http://danny.oz.au/freedom/ newsgroup aus.censorship. |
Reprinted from the February 2001 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
