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A few weeks ago Realtraders had a short discussion regarding the
(im)possibility) of internet censorship.
I thought Realtraders may be interested to know that the Australian
Government is currently passing such legislation, which obviously has
the potential to become the model for the rest of the world. At present
Australia is one of the world's highest users of the net per capita &
this legislation has the potential to turn it into a backwater.
The exact details of the legislation are still unclear but it is safe to
say that it will almost certainly be enacted & once that has occurred
what politician would ever remove it? You can hear the political spin
doctors' slogans already.
As is usual in our times the legislation is being introduced for very
understandable & acceptable reasons, however as is also usual, the
potential for undesirable side effects is immense.
It appears that virtually all internet transmissions will have to be
vetted for content, can you imagine what that will do to speed?
In the event of proscribed words being detected the e mail, web site
etc. will be blocked. Two of the activities the censorship is designed
to eliminate are pornography & drugs, as a result we in Australia may
not be able to receive a report stating that the S & P has "made a
bottom & is rallying" nor would we be able to read about say the New
York Police Service's latest initiative against drugs because of the
presence of those words, irrespective of context.
At present it appears that the Government is just realising the the
immensity of the task they are providing & are therefore placing legal
responsibility for enforcement on the ISPs
Below are a few comments & links for those who are interested.
Thanks for a great discussion service.
David
The Broadcasting Services
Amendment (Online Services) Bill 1999 was passed through
the senate on the 26 May,
intending to censor the internet for Australian's.
Informative Links:
http://www.efa.org.au/
http://censorship.avs.net.au/
http://technology.news.com.au/indextech.asp?URL=/techno/features/f90601a.htm
In summary, the bill intends to
"establish a regulatory framework relating to illegal or
offensive material published and
transmitted through online services such as the
Internet.".
The bill proposes to censor
internet content which is defined as : "information that is
stored and that is accessible to
the public. Restricted access systems such as Intranets are
excluded. Ephemeral content, such
as newsgroups, chat rooms and real time services such
as streaming video and audio, is
also excluded, except to the extent that they are stored or
archived, given that it would not
be possible to classify "live" material. However, this
content will continue to be
subject to s.85ZE of the Crimes Act that provides for an
offence for the knowing or
reckless use of a carriage service in a manner which would
cause offence to a reasonable
adult in all the circumstances. The Bill amends the Crimes
Act to put its application in this
regard beyond doubt."
YOUR SAY: Some comments from our
customers...
"The technology to filter port 80
request isn't reliable, there's a lot of legitimate sites
filtered out by certain programs."
"The internet industry will
suffer, prices will rise, jobs will fall..."
"This will limit and reshape the
way internet content will be produced and will arrive in
australia."
"in terms of the censorship, the
bill will give the law the power to censor mailing lists,
YOUR OWN EMAIL, all web content,
newsgroups and, funnily enough, online gaming.
I don't know about you, but i
consider the potential to have email filters implemented at
the ISP level to be an invasion of
privacy, comparable to having one of those tv-style
'bleeep's appear out of nowhere if
you swore whilst on the phone to a friend..."
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