Australia Pushes Net Censorship in Washington

Saturday, October 8, 2011

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy. Photo: Jessica Shapiro

This article, published in the Sydney Morning Herald on 23^rd April, 2010, provides an interesting twist on the controversial issue of internet censorship. The spokesperson for the Australian government, Communication Minister Stephen Conroy (pictured), is being drawn into a discussion of their plan to ban certain websites in Australia, but only because the US government is expressing concern over the plan. The article provides a lively debate about the issue, from many points of view. The debate began with the US ambassador voicing his concern about the censorship on Australian TV and saying cyber safety could be achieved without censorship. (One wonders what might be the US interest in a “free” internet in Australia – this point is not covered in the article.) Following this statement the press pursued the issue. Conroy’s office did not give much detail about its plan to introduce legislation to enable internet filtering policy in the second half of 2010. The legislation will require ISPs to block a blacklist of banned websites – classified “refused classification” (RC) for all Australians. The defence of the government is that it is applying the same offline classification rules to the online world, and it is only blocking access to child pornography.

In the article others criticise this argument from two points of view:

1) That it won’t achieve its objective because filtering will not stop other ways of internet access to the same material (e.g., email and peer to peer networks) and filtering can be overcome. Antony Loewentsein (2010), in an editorial in The Age, agrees that filtering is ineffective, saying other Western nations (including Norway, Finland, the UK, Denmark, the Netherlands and New Zealand) which have all blocked sites said to contain child pornography find that impact on limiting access to the obscene content has been minimal.

2) That it will be block a much broader range of other material as well – e.g., potentially innocuous material such as euthanasia and abortion sites or graffiti videos on Youtube.

The circuit of culture model (Dezuani, 2010) helps illustrate here that regulation effects consumption (information being denied to Australians through filtering), production (use of that information in other activities being denied internet users), identity and representation (both effected by absence of material on issues like abortion or euthanasia which might be of vital significance to those Australians directly affected by these matters).

An up to date “post script” to this issue is provided by Libertus.net (2011), a website arguing against internet censorship, which says the government’s mandatory ISP level blocking plan is on hold until the completion of a review report to be completed by January 2012.

REFERENCES

Dezuani, M. (2010). CLN647 The ‘Circuit of Culture’ in New Media Contexts: Lecture 6 [Lecture Notes]. Retrieved on 10/10/11from http://blackboard.qut.edu.au/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_75617_1%26url%3D

Libertus.net (2011) AU Gov't Mandatory ISP Filtering / Censorship Plan. Retrieved on 21/10/11 from http://libertus.net/censor/isp-blocking/au-govplan.html

Loewentsein, A (2010) Governments should not censor the internet. Retrieved on 13/10/11 from http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/governments-should-not-censor-the-internet-20100512-uxfr.html

Moses, A (2010) Australia pushes net censorship in Washington Retrieved on 4/10/11 from http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/australia-pushes-net-censorship-in-washington-20100423-tgkh.html

Posted by Paula

Labels: Regulation - Paula