Earlier in the year I was asked to take part in the Intelligence Squared debate on internet filtering organised by the St James Ethics Centre. I agreed. I have since changed my mind. In this letter to the producer, I explain why.
Ms Deb Richards
St James Ethics Centre, Sydney
Dear Ms Richards,
After significant consideration, I am writing to advise that I must pull out of the St James Ethics Centre Intelligence Squared Debate scheduled for May 11.
As mentioned in previous correspondence, it is hard enough going into this debate in the first place, given the level of misinformation and misrepresentation of the Government’s proposed mandatory filtering scheme.
But then, for you to include – without any consultation – a Chinese speaker who defends the Chinese firewall, means that our side is doomed to fail before we’ve even started the debate. His inclusion makes it a lost cause for us: the audience will have to vote against us because they won’t support political censorship –I don’t either. I don’t support the Chinese firewall, I don’t support any filtering of political content, I don’t support filtering of the views of dissenters and minority groups. I have been publicly critical of China’s human rights violations, including the lack of freedom of expression.
If the format were something other than a “debate” – for example, the opportunity to express a range of views as individuals – I could view it differently. However, as it is a debate, in which the audience votes to determine the winning team, how can we possibly have a chance of winning (unless the audience is stacked with PRC supporters, even then, this would not be the support I’d be seeking).
I am not wishing to reflect on Kaiser Kuo personally. He may have some good arguments. He may be a nice man. He may have been educated in the West. We may agree on “one or two points”. But that is hardly recommendation enough to have him on a team which doesn’t agree with his overall position and is therefore divided. Going into a debate like this requires unity of position and our side will not have that. The other side will. They will have opportunity to discuss their approach beforehand, to meet face to face if they wish, to hone their arguments amongst themselves. We, however will have none of these opportunities and would enter the debate at a disadvantage. We would also be essentially one person down.
In your email of March 27, you write, “If it is any consolation, the ABC’s Q&A program have leapt at the chance of having him on their panel”. This is irrelevant. Why wouldn’t they want to have him? He is interesting enough. But it is a completely different format. A panel discussion is not a debate in which the audience votes.
It has been important all through the porn filtering debate to distance the policy, and differentiate the argument, from the Chinese fire-wall. In other words, to make it very clear that the arguments for filtering illegal pornography (among other things) are completely distinct from those for political censorship, and that we are as opposed to political censorship as those who are against porn filtering. The national classification scheme that the Government’s policy is based on does not consider political content at all.
The decision to invite a defender of the Chinese Government’s political censorship – on the spurious grounds of “cultural relativism” – is very damaging for our side of the debate. We will be inescapably bracketed with arguments in favour of wider censorship which can only play strongly into the hands of the internet libertarians.
I cannot join a debating team that will include a member arguing that it is legitimate to censor from the internet material that a government finds objectionable on political grounds.
When the audience comes to vote on the proposition, those inclined to favour porn censorship would have to vote “no” because a “yes” vote means a vote for political censorship as well.
I apologise for any inconvenience my decision might cause.
Yours sincerely,
Melinda Tankard Reist
April 8, 2010
57 Responses
The policy WILL block “political content”.
Euthanasia, abortion and other politically sensitive material can and will be caught up in the extremely broad RC category.
This policy is NOT a “porn filter”.
Regardless of what the proposal is NOW, our main concern is what it will end up later down the track, after many amendments to the legislation and moral panics. Even if their target was only child porn, we would still oppose it, because it is a scope creep machine just waiting to be abused.
As much as you are sure that the government doesn’t have political censorship in mind, nobody can be that certain with future governments.
Good call Melinda. Shame it happened this way. What were they thinking?
Do you know something the rest of us don’t? Since when was Senator Conroy’s proposal a ‘porn filter’? A doomed-to-failure ‘child pornography (+ all of RC content) filter’, yes, but hardly a ‘porn filter’. (This is why many worry that parents will be given a false sense of security.)
You write that you are won’t support any political censorship, but that’s exactly what Senator Conroy is planning to introduce by trying to block RC content. He probably doesn’t particularly want to block political content (it’s a very bad look for the government), but it remains the inevitable outcome if the proposal goes forward as currently planned.
I appreciate your opinions regarding pornography (even if I vehemently disagree), but they are largely unrelated to Senator Conroy’s filter proposal. I don’t think you should be counted as being on his side.
That is just unbelievable isn’t it. Blatant bias. What a joke of a “debate” that will be.
It’s telling that the email you received contained the phrase “if it is any consolation”. This is an issue that needs intelligent and reasoned debate, and that can’t happen if an unreasonable bias is imposed upon one side before the debate has even begun.
Political censorship will always be an issue with this proposal.
Consider AbortionTV, a website set up to protest against abortion. In January 2009, The ACMA (who control the current blacklist, and will likely control the proposed one as well) decided that a page on AbortionTV, featuring graphic photographs of supposedly aborted foetuses, “would be” Refused Classification if it were to be submitted to the CB (ACMA reference “ACMA-691604278”).
The ACMA even testified before Senate Estimates (23rd February 2009) that this was the correct decision, that they were right to Refuse Classification to the webpage in question.
But on the 20th March 2009, the CB ruled that the AbortionTV page was rated R18+.
Under the proposed mandatory Internet Service Provider-level censorship scheme, this would have meant the difference between being blocked, and not being blocked.
This is political content.
This is about political censorship.
It makes me sick that an intelligent woman such as yourself fails to see the bigger picture – and you dumb down the argument by using invalid (but safe) terms such as ‘porn filter’.
You really should stop going with the flow – with the flow of the Faith – just because some other ‘faith inspired’ people say ‘this is what God would want’.
I suggest that you seriously reconsider your opinion.
Go back to the facts and approach them without bias – you’ll soon find out that the filter is not just a ‘porn filter’. It filters a LOT more than that.
If this filter cannot go ahead – it goes against our civil liberties.
This is the way the Catholic Church wants to ‘book burn’ in the 21st century.
A ‘porn filter’ (or a filter of any kind) will not stem the flow of ‘evil’ that you perceive to be ruining society. It will push it underground, closer to hell, things will become far more sinister and far more money will become dirtied by the under-hand actions of greedy souls.
We need only to look back at history to understand this.
Nobody as far as I know has died from looking at porn, or having a porn addiction.
People WILL die if this filter goes ahead.
That is all.
Hi Melinda.
Interesting choice of words “porn filtering debate”. And here I was thinking it was about Refused Classification (RC) material as spouted by our illustrious communications minister.
So based on your phrasing, you are trying to impose your moral standards on the whole of the Australian population.
If Illegal material is found on the internet, get it taken down and get the police involved.
Illegal material is only a small subset of RC, and RC material is only a small subset of “porn”.
This is about Political Censorship whatever you say.
Also worth noting is the existing regime of “Link Deletion Notices.”
The email detailing the ACMA’s decision to blacklist the AbortionTV page (due to their assertion that it “would be” RC) was posted to a forum that you may well have heard of, called Whirlpool, in a discussion on the subject of Internet Censorship (a discussion which was, quite obviously, of a political nature).
Because Whirlpool is hosted within Australia, a link to a blacklisted page is itself subject to a Link Deletion Notice, which was subsequently issued. Failure to comply with said notice would have incurred fines of $11,000 PER DAY upon Whirlpool’s hosting provider, Bulletproof Networks (note that the fine and notice are not issued to Whirlpool itself, nor to the user of the forum who posted the information in the first place).
Whether or not the intent of this action by the ACMA was to censor political discussion, that is exactly what happened.
Note also, Melinda, that if this very blog were hosted in Australia (instead of Texas), the same could just as easily happen right here and now – your hosting provider could be threatened with fines of $11,000 per day if one of your own supported were to post a link to an anti-abortion campaign website.
How anyone can compare what our governement is propoosing with that of comunist China is, to me confussing. My understand is that the filter will basically bring what is unacceptable by “real world” standards into the “virtual’ world. That what a normal Australian citizen would deem inappropriate (based on the legislative accounts of what that is) is being fowarded on to what one can or can not access online. From what I understand, images of beastiality, child-like images in sexually and other selected porn images as well as books on euthinasia, graphic images of aborted fetal parts and extreemest views are not available in the ‘real world”.so why would it be available freely online?
This is nothing like the Chineese cencorship this in place because of a bruital rein impossed by communisim. Our version of political sensitivity (which we have ALWAYS had and is evedant with the release of archive records on the 1st of January every year) is nothing of what is not allowed in China. We have the freedom to critisise our government in a variety of form in both the real and virtual worlds, a freedom that men and women have died for, and one that noone will let go anytime soon, I dont see the relevance of the connection??
i think we get more of a filtered political view when you turn on the commercial networks who are filtered by a few rich white men in media rather then a few in politics. And in my opinion if porn was so free on the internet (which the argument is that the availability should be kept the same as it is) you would not have to pay to view it! But it is filtered and controlled by BUISNESS, an indirect filtering system that controls what you can and can not view based on your economic status (& yes as an adult I have viewd my fair share of it).
rather than another determinate.
Melinda’s adgenda is porn, she has made no seceret of this and I think her argument is valid. If you put up an argument that has any connection to China you are at a negitive before the first word has been spoken. How could she have possibaly put her arguments to the audience when she is at a disadvantage?
People will “Die” if the filter is implemented. That’s a new one!
Melinda, I’ve heard that if the filter goes ahead, my skin will break out into a rash, we will experience more drought and our computers will become self aware and turn against us, is that true?
short version:
Melinda is uncomfortable with the bedfellows her beliefs give her.
Censorship is censorship. Refused Classification already includes political issues like euthanasia there’s no reason to believe that this couldn’t or wouldn’t be expanded to include other political issues. And then there is the problem that the filter itself won’t work and won’t even achieve it’s stated aims.
Oh why did you pull out of the debate?
What the Australian Government is doing is ever so important. Porn is a cancer in our society and the internet is now the source of such filth and pulling out now will only hurt our chances of stopping the porn from entering Australia.
Please reconsider as I’ve done a bit of reading on China. Essentially the negatives of China’s filtering is based upon their political system, whereas the positives are based on their stated goals. That being to protect their youth and to bring their youth up in the traditions of their fathers.
And so what if the filter stops some filthy political talk. If the websites want to talk politics using filthy material then they should be stopped. Our Government knows what is right and when they decide that particular class of material should be stopped they add it to the RC list and the public servants looking after the list will add any and all such filth.
We used to be such a clean country without all the political unrest and classification system did a very good job stopping anti-government propaganda in Books and Films, but now we need to stop it on the internet.
The speaker from China could very well be one of our great allies in that he could easily separate the negatives of political suppression that is China’s way, and highlight the positive benefits that the chinese filter has on their youth.
So please reconsider pulling out and work with the chinese speaker to nail the anti-filter porn-loving propaganders .
Mary
From Clive Hamilton’s article:
“The spectre of the Great Firewall of China is repeatedly raised, but it is no more than a phantom. Unlike China, Australia is a democratic society. Australian censorship of sexual content in films, books and magazines has not set us on a ‘slippery slope’ to political censorship.
On the other hand, if a strong case can be made to restrict other forms of content—such as how to make bombs—because it is a genuine social threat let’s have that debate without resorting to meaningless slogans about the right to free speech being always inviolable.”
http://www.clivehamilton.net.au/cms/media/documents/articles/crikey_19_nov_internet_filtering.pdf
In the Hungry Beast interview first aired on ABC 1 on February 10 this year, our beloved Minister for Communications said; “so we’re currently in discussions with Google about … how we can work this through [removing RC videos from Youtube]. Google at the moment filters an enormous amount of material on behalf of the Chinese government; they filter an enormous amount of material on behalf of the Thai government”.
So fair enough, if Senator Conroy wants to compare his filter to what Thailand and China do (or more accurately what both governments force Google to do, though Google has given China the middle finger recently), then fine, add Kaiser Kuo to the debate.
Love how Melinda says that there has been “misinformation and misrepresentation of the Government’s proposed mandatory filtering scheme”, then a couple of paragraphs down says “the porn filtering debate”. What a joke. The proposed filter will not block material unsuitable for children such as X18+ pornography and R18+ material. It even says so on the DBCDE website;
“The Government has recently announced that in 2010 it will introduce legislative amendments to require all ISPs in Australia to use ISP‑level filtering to block overseas hosted Refused Classification (RC) material on the Australian Communications and Media Authority’s (ACMA) RC Content list”
So everything from G to X18+ will be unfiltered. Well most RC will come through unfiltered anyway. The censoerboxes can only do 10,000 urls maximum.
It’s also pretty laughable when Melinda says “I don’t support any filtering of political content, I don’t support filtering of the views of dissenters and minority groups”, because by supporting this plan, that’s exactly what she is doing. The current legislation doesn’t discriminate between political or non political. As mentioned above the ACMA blacklist currently contains urls for the Abortion.tv website as well as Exit International videos on Youtube. The video of Neda Agha-Soltan who was shot and killed during the Iranian election protests in June 2009 is also on the blacklist, as is the list itself, on Wikileaks. How can this material not be political? It is.
I live how Melinda has tweeted the absurd comment made by “Rex” here, but refuses to acknowledge the real problems that this filter has and the real issues of free political speech that it will censor.
The legal status of Euthanasia is a political issue, but instructions on how to kill yourself is illegal. This is why instructions on how to kill yourself are Refused Classification. For the argument stated about Euthanasia above to be valid, you would have to show that debates and discussions about the legality of Euthanasia would be considered RC and therefore blocked.
I doubt the porn industry would be jumping up and down so much if the filter really wasn’t going to work. As Conroy has stated over and over, the filter is part of a bigger cyber safety plan. They have never claimed it to be the “only” solution.
Melinda L,
I disagree a little with that, because in the 70’s when I was in High School there was communists trying to spread their political message through the school and the government very much censorsed them and arrested them. The charges were based on the sex-education material they included in their propaganda.
While today that material is standard in primary schools it was not in any school in the 70’s.
The state government used the classification system to arrest political propaganda, and I was very thankful that they did, as today the communist party is virtually non-existent because the government was able to use classifications to silence BAD political speech.
If political speech has filth in it then it should be censored, I like a clean Australia and any method to prevent that being destroyed by political propaganda is good in my books and the classification works well for that.
You see the classification system does not differentiate between political and non-political, just how suitable it is to view. So if we can ban RC then later on we can ban X18+, then eventually R18+ and hopefully even MA15+
My previous post was in response to Clive’s statements
Wasn’t Kaiser Kuo added after Senator Conroy pulled out? (or maybe it’s another event I’m thinking of). I’m wondering if there just isn’t a great depth of articulate speakers who can defend the policy.
I also don’t find Melinda’s letter particularly genuine in calling the filter a porn filter. It’s gone through a few incarnations since Labor was elected, but it was always far more broad than porn.
There seems to be a community misconception that RC is sexual content at a level above X18. In some cases it can be. RC also covers a broad range of controversial material well beyond violent porn and child abuse. A subset of RC is actually illegal and will land you in jail for possession of it. It’s a pretty small slice of RC though.
RC includes content like graffiti videos and politically sensitive material around abortion and euthanasia. While some of this material might make many uncomfortable, it’s a far cry from the child abuse material that is poorly targeted (actually barely targeted at all) by this policy. Labor’s filter doesn’t touch x18 or r18 material at all, so it’s hardly protecting children. There are much better uses of resources if protecting children is a core aim.
The issues with this policy are so deep that people speaking out against it include Justice Michael Kirby, The Australian Library and Information Association (peak body for the nations librarians), Google, Yahoo, the US government, National Youth Law Centre, Reporters without Borders, Save the Children, Canon Dr Ray Cleary, NSW Uni Media Research unit.
Beyond that you have a massive weight of technical opinion against it. It’s not just a small group of angry porn lovers trying to protect the “smut trade” who have noticed deep problems with this policy.
Melinda L, the Exit International videos are STILL avalible on Youtube, because they’re not illegal in the US. So why the hell should they be illegal here? It’s nonsense. Seeing as the censorboxes fall over if there is a url on high traffic site (like Youtube) and Google won’t budge on removing the videos or blocking Australians from viewing the videos, the policy is dead in the water from day one.
The filter is no solution. It’s not even blank bullet let alone a silver bullet. What is it meant to do anyway? It doesn’t save kids from paedophiles or from them being exploited in child porn. It doesn’t stop kids from looking at porn. It does nothing. It’s a complete waste of time and money which would be better spent on policing.
And Melinda L, it’s really hard to keep continually claiming the porn industry are the only ones angry when you have people and groups like Save the Children, former High Court judge Michael Kirby, Joe Hockey, Yahoo, Google, Reporters Without Borders as well as United States Ambassador to Australia Jeff Bleich who are dead against the plan.
Heck, even Michael Flood who wrote the “Youth and Pornography in Australia: Evidence on the extent of exposure and likely effects” discussion paper with Clive Hamilton a few years back, the paper which seems to be part of the evidence to show a need for this filter, even Michael Flood has said it’s a bad idea.
How the hell can you keep saying it will block out porn and it’s a great idea even after all of that? It’s an expensive white elephant that anybody can circumvent by hitting the cache link on website search on any search engine or doing an English to English translation of the banned URL on Bablefish.
As far as I can see, every post here with a male name opposes internet filtering, and every post from a woman (with one exception) supports internet filtering. Interesting. What’s up guys?
@ Paul G. Would you care to expand on your post. I’m not sure I get where you are coming from. Are you trying to imply that opposition comes from the fear of losing access to porn even though:
* Studies show that women consume porn too
* It’s clearly not a porn filter (it covers a lot of non-sexual content and doesn’t touch R18 or X18
* There’s lots of serious organisations and individuals (listed in my comment) speaking out against the policy without mentioning porn at all. Some people who oppose porn also oppose this measure.
* Even if it were all about porn, the tech solutions the government trialled and declared a success were all trivially bypassed as reported in the government’s own commissioned report.
* I can post under a fictitious name of “Jane” if it would help you take my comment more seriously 😉
Paul G
Rather than pontificate upon the genders of the people contributing to the discussion, why do you not examine the depth their arguments?
Glad you pulled out of debate Melinda. It is most unfortunate that the Chinese person was added to pro-filter side. With his addition the pro-filter side is bound to lose debate which is very unfortunate as all the libertarians like the writers using a MALE name on this blog (good on you Paul G!) will celebrate. I take the point that some sites might be filtered out that shouldn’t be, but I really want to reduce the possibility of children easily accessing pornography – and yes yes i know the arguments that it’s so easy to get around filter…actually given that is so easy to keep accessing pornography, why is the porn Industry so concerned?? [watch out for pro-porn support posts from ‘Jane’ – grin!!]
Renate
It has already been pointed out that this “filter” will have no effect on children’s access to pornography.
It’s not targetting R18+ or X18+ material at all, only RC.
Nik,
No, it has been *claimed* that this filter will have no effect on children’s access to pornography.
That doesn’t make it true.
While some kids might go to some effort to get around the filter, there will be plenty who won’t bother. But at least they will be more protected from some of the most vile stuff on the net, which many posters here are keen to protect.
No, Melinda L, it has been *stated* by Minister Conroy himself, that the mandatory “filter” will only target material that has been Refused Classification.
http://www.minister.dbcde.gov.au/media/media_releases/2009/115
Anything that targets X18+ or R18+ (pornography) will *not* form part of mandatory “filter.”
It is the mandatory “filter” that we oppose, *not* a parent’s right to shield their child/ren from adult material.
Beneath the technical expertise, the sophistry, the disembodied expertise, the defense of democracy itself, is the outrage of the porn consumer who has confused mass marketed masturbation with freedom of expression… there is nothing radical about the programmed release of the Big Porn money shot
I would like to quietly thank Melinda L for showing me the strength of her argument through the employment of sarcasm. Melinda L you truly uncovered the truth – and you have made a firm believer out of me.
I for one welcome my new Internet-Censoring Overlord.
Melissa you summed up the fatal flaw with this policy yourself: “The national classification scheme that the Government’s policy is based on does not consider political content at all.”
ACMA do not consider whether or not the content submitted is of a political nature – the legislation does not allow them that discretion. If it’s refused classification, it will be filtered, political or not.
Rex, thanks for your feedback.
Love the Simpsons reference in your post. Though it appears you have made yourself to be as hysterical about internet filtering as Kent Brockman is about a master race of giant space ants.
Allow me to elaborate:
“One thing is for certain, there is no stopping them; the ants will soon be here. And I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords. I’d like to remind them that as a trusted TV personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to…toil in their underground sugar caves.” – Kent Brockman. The Simpsons. Top show.
Tony,
Refused Classification does not include political content:
“Refused Classification-rated material includes child sexual abuse imagery, bestiality, sexual violence, detailed instruction in crime, violence or drug use and/or material that advocates the doing of a terrorist act.”
http://www.dbcde.gov.au/online_safety_and_security/cybersafety_plan/internet_service_provider_isp_filtering/isp_filtering_live_pilot/isp_filtering_-_frequently_asked_questions
Melinda L
When I quote the Minister’s press release, it is to illustrate the policy as expressed by the Minister.
But I would suggest not relying on the Minister’s (or his Department’s) website to cite the correct definition of actual legislation.
Irene Graham’s website does, however, cite actual legislation when explaining the full meaning and scope of Refused Classification. It is a lot broader than the subset that the Minister so emotively trumpets.
http://libertus.net/censor/isp-blocking/au-govplan-refusedclassif.html
I can’t tell if Mary is a troll or not. This worries me.
@Melinda L: libertus.net has some good information on exactly what RC entails: http://libertus.net/censor/isp-blocking/au-govplan-refusedclassif.html – this should give a good indication of why many of us are worried about the proposed filter’s scope.
It seems to me that the people here who are supportive of internet filtering have been misled: as stated several times above, this is not a ‘porn filter’. Children will be able to look up as much X18+ material as they want, just like now (unless, of course, parents decide to install client-side filters – or supervise their kids). They won’t have to bypass anything, since the filter will not block that sort of material.
To reiterate: children will be able to look up as much X18+ as they want.
I don’t think this is the outcome you are so desperately hoping for. In fact, I don’t think anyone is actually satisfied with what Senator Conroy is proposing: his supporters all seem to want the scope massively increased to include non-RC pornography/X18+ material (see: Australian Christian Lobby, Clive Hamilton, this website), while everyone else wants to see the whole plan dismissed as the folly that it is.
Kaiser Kuo is an American living in China, he is only ethnically Chinese, not nationally. He’s a bit of a rocker actually. I think you are prejudging what he will say, Melinda. I very much doubt he will be the apparatchik you fear.
Funnily enough, he is rather your match: the overseas Chinese defending the great firewall meets the “pro-life” “feminist”! You probably both owe your invitations to your maverick and against-the-flow positions.
At the same time, you have to face up to it that the net filter proposed includes a ban on topics such as euthanasia or assisted suicide which people ought to be able to discuss freely. There are plenty of people, especially elderly people who wish to have some control over their own aging and decline and the chance to decide for themselves when to go who want to read that sort of stuff and are interested in being able to receive that information. It really is a question of freedom of speech, even if distinctions can be drawn, and you are just running away from the issue by pulling out of the “debate.”
In all honesty, I would love it if porn was blocked, and by porn, i mean soft-porn too. I don’t imagine this will ever happen, i just wanted to expose my bias straight up.
I’m not against freedom of speech: Like Melinda TR, I oppose political censorship.
I understand why a filter like this makes sense. I don’t think it’s a good idea, but it makes sense. Most people don’t realise, but if you attempt to host RC-classified material on a server in Australia, whoever owns the server will be issued with a take-down notice that has legal clout. It’s illegal to host a video inside Australia which includes instruction in crime (as an example).
Wanting to extend this ruling to websites outside Australia makes a little sense – if it’s illegal to host it here, it makes little sense that we can host it on a foreign server or download it from there instead. Just like buying guns here [with no licence] is illegal, and it doesn’t make sense to let people buy them overseas and bring them home – border control.
At the same time, several things worry me about this plan: #1, the possibility of bad implementation slowing down our already slower-than-T1/cable internet access.
#2, the possibility that people will think it’s a porn filter and not supervise their kids as they should – As others have pointed out, most of the porn pop-ups or dodgy search results are only M15+ or R18+ which isn’t even being proposed for blocking.
#3, The funding that’s going in to enforcing this would be far, far better pumped into education campaigns for parents about being aware and safe online – Introducing and warning about concepts like grooming, phishing & privacy, webcam roulette and cyberbullying.
Just 2c from a tech girl
@Alison:
“Most people don’t realise, but if you attempt to host RC-classified material on a server in Australia, whoever owns the server will be issued with a take-down notice that has legal clout.”
And this is one of the reasons that hosting anything in Australia is a bad idea. Why take the risk of being threatened with massive fines on the off-chance that something you’re hosting strays into ‘Refused Classification’ (a very broad category – this needs to be emphasised) when you can do it much more cheaply overseas without ACMA breathing down your neck?
Australia’s RC content hosting laws were stupid before this proposal arose – it’s only now that more people are starting to care, since the government actually seems to want to enforce them.
Melinda L:
You say that Refused Classification does not include political content: and quote DBCDE “Refused Classification-rated material includes child sexual abuse imagery, bestiality, sexual violence, detailed instruction in crime, violence or drug use and/or material that advocates the doing of a terrorist act.”
The point which you miss is that this list includes political issues. Defining crime and terrorism is political. Euthenasia is a crime, abortion was a crime, homosexuality was a crime. Someones terrorist is someone elses freedom fighter. What is counter-terrorism and what is terrorism? What about describing the torture someone has suffered?
And all of this ignores the underlying issue, why does it matter if it’s illegal to talk about committing crimes if it is still illegal to commit them?
I find it very telling that Melinda says:
“As mentioned in previous correspondence, it is hard enough going into this debate in the first place, given the level of misinformation and misrepresentation of the Government’s proposed mandatory filtering scheme.”
Then in the same letter and comments from supporters of the scheme we have
– Melinda referring to it as a “porn filter”
– Someone quoting the DCBE with a list of what RC includes and asserting this as the complete definition of RC, when it in fact is only a list of some of the items included in the scope of RC content.
– The assertion that political content will not be filtered because the “The national classification scheme that the Government’s policy is based on does not consider political content at all.” – when this is precisely the reason why political content could easily be caught up in the filter, because the scheme wont even be considering whether the content it is classifying is of a political nature or not.
– Supporters posting they agree with the policy because they want to “reduce the possibility of children easily accessing pornography” – when the policy is not aimed at this, nor will it have any affect on childrens access to pornography whatsoever.
– The assertion that the debate must be distanced from the Chinese firewall when we have Conroy himself making comparisons when he talks about what Google blocks for China, saying this is the reason why Google should block what our Government wants.
I think its pretty clear that all the misunderstandings and misconceptions are stemming from Conroy’s refusal to clearly define the objectives of the scheme, and the only people who have misunderstood what information we do know for sure are those who want to see the scheme implemented.
I strikes me that there is a similarity between the arguments used to criticise an internet filter and the arguments the National Rifleman’s association in the US uses against gun laws:
– a pefectly reasonable restriction on anti-social (and in this case, already illegal) behaviour is described as an assault on basic freedom, with wildly irrational and exaggerated claims about its effect.
– the evil of the anti-social behaviour is played down or ignored
– there is not benefit from the behaviour being restricted
– since the anti-social bahaviour can’t be defended, the argument retreats to “it can’t be done, even if we wanted to”.
Now I concede that filtering of RC material is more difficult than banning automatic weapons or unregistered handguns, but I don’t accept that it is impossible or not worth trying to find a solution.
Paul G
I disagree with your assertion that the Rudd Government’s proposal to throw a blanket over reported child sex abuse websites is a “perfectly reasonable” solution to any problem.
I disagree most vehemently.
Paul G, there is a difference between gun restrictions (which I support) and the government’s proposal.
I’ll ignore freedom of speech issues and focus more on the practicalities.
Unlike gun restrictions, which are fairly difficult to bypass (eg. need to know someone who can get one, fake an ID, etc), the government’s proposal is so easy to bypass that it borders on ludicrous. A five year old could be taught to bypass the filters.
The question comes down to: Is *this particular solution* effective? The answer is no.
Gun laws will always be more effective than censorship of the internet because it is more difficult to obtain a banned gun than a banned web page on the internet.
“but I don’t accept that it is impossible”
You need to define possible. What is the goals trying to be achieved? Stopping children accessing RC material? Adults? Everyone? Deliberate access? Accidental access?
ISP censorship will always be easy to circumvent because it is how the internet was designed. Even China, with their 30 000 strong army of censors, can’t fully control the flow of information. That is with death threats to back up their system. Imagine the failure of our system.
“or not worth trying to find a solution.”
Again, what is it trying to achieve? Something tangible which can be measured. The “something is better than nothing” arguments are a joke when ‘something’ and ‘nothing’ aren’t measured.
With respect, Nik and Ben, I think you just demonstrated my characterisation of the anti filter commentarty. Nik demontrated the first 3 points and Ben the 4th.
Tristan, I located and read the 2010 statements from Conroy and the DBCDE on the objectives of the filter.
They state that the filter is foreseen to block, where possible, RC material originating from oversees webpages from being viewed in Australia.
I read up on the classification laws and they state clearly that the display or making available of RC content in Australia contravenes Australian law.
Those objectives are very simple and clear.
Significant confusion is introduced by various people wanting to make myriad claims about what they think are the objectives.
Asserting that the filter will catch political comment, just because it could, is completely devoid of any logic and would not hold up 30 seconds in a court of law, before a judge.
Comment heard at a debate a few years ago:
“Shooting JFK was a political statement, how dare they try and proscecute that guy and restrict his freedom of speech!”
Yes there is a line between legal / acceptable political comment and unacceptable / illegal expression or comment. A crime is a crime, simply calling it political comment does not make it acceptable or legal by default. The same applies to RC.
“Asserting that the filter will catch political comment, just because it could, is completely devoid of any logic and would not hold up 30 seconds in a court of law, before a judge.”
Uh Ibrahim, there ALREADY IS political content on the current and former blacklists as leaked by Wikileaks. Two anti-abortion sites, two Exit International videos on Youtube. Wikileaks list of the blacklist itself is on latter blacklists. It was reported that the video of Neda Agha-Soltan who was shot and killed during the Iranian election protests in June 2009 is also on the blacklist. This is political content. It’s on there now. If legislation was brought in tomorrow, this material would be blocked.
Crimes should be dealt with by police. Anything illegal on the web can be dealt with by law enforcement and it generally is across this planet. What the filter does is not law enforcement. It either throws a blanket over it and hopes it goes away, or it’s “moral filter”, blocking out material which isn’t illegal, but the government just finds a bit icky.
Paul G
Your characterisation was based on a false premise, and even if I had demonstrated any of the “points” you made (which I did not), your characterisation would still be spurious, and therefore irrelevant.
I could just as easily characterise your few posts here as equivalent to the campaign of misinformation waged by a number of hardware filter vendors, who publicly support the Government’s policy but prefer not to reveal their vested interest – that is, they have a product to sell. But such a characterisation on my part would be equally spurious, and irrelevant to the discussion.
For the sake of argument, let’s take the Minister at his word, and assume that this is all about child pornography. That would be the “anti-social (and in this case, already illegal) behaviour” you spoke of.
You asserted that the Minister’s proposal to combat child pornography is “perfectly reasonable”, and that the anti-censorship campaigners are attempting to downplay or ignore the evil of child pornography.
The Minister’s proposal to combat child pornography is to cover up a few websites and pretend they do not exist. This is not “perfectly reasonable.”
And to pretend that anyone in this debate is attempting to downplay or ignore the evil of child pornography is outrageous, insulting and downright shameful.
The Rudd Government’s “Cyber-Safety” policy includes extra funding to the Australian Federal Police, to help them track down *real* criminals on the Internet; but this funding was reduced by several million dollars from the Howard Government’s original outline.
The anti-censorship campaigners want to see the money intended for the ISP “filter” instead added to the AFP budget, so that actual police work can have any discovered child pornography *deleted* from the Web altogether; rather than let that money be wasted on a system which will do nothing to affect the availability of child pornography, will do nothing to stop or slow the activities of child abusers, and will not bring one single child abuser one single step closer to a jail cell.
Good on you for being someone who understands the times and being focused.
Just for interest, would the censorship of fundamental islamic jehadists or other religeous fundamentalists be seen as political censorship?
Phillip
I’m not sure if you’re asking me, but I’ll answer anyway 🙂
I don’t know if it would “be seen as” political censorship, but that is exactly what it would be. It is the burying and stifling of ideas which the Government does not want the public to see or hear.
Granted, the ideas in question are repugnant, poisonous and even dangerous, but burying them does not solve the problem.
The only way to effectively deal with fundamentalist agendas is to educate the public, to provide people with the mental ammunition to fight radical and extremist ideas themselves, within their own minds. When radicalism is already recognised as radicalism, the radicals lose their power.
Ibrahim,
“Tristan, I located and read the 2010 statements from Conroy and the DBCDE on the objectives of the filter.”
“Those objectives are very simple and clear.”
You can’t honestly tell me you believe the objectives of this plan are very clear. We have heard for years now from Conroy about the filter and blocking child porn, stopping paedophiles etc, and just recently a spokesperson for Conroy says
“The government has never claimed ISP filtering is about catching paedophiles, it is about blocking inadvertent access to abhorrent content which includes child sexual abuse content” – http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/australia-pushes-net-censorship-in-washington-20100423-tgkh.html
So now the government is spending $44 million dollars to prevent Australia from accidently stumbling on something RC. As if all RC content is so horrifying that if anyone saw it even for a second they would be scarred for life. Ignoring whether thats extremely patronising to the Australia public, consider this.
The blacklist can not exceed 10,000 websites as stated by Conroy himself. Google has indexed over 1 trillion web pages. (Lets ignore the fact that the number of webpages grows at an astronomical rate each day).
Therefore the chance of stumbling on a blacklisted page would be 0.00000001 (1 in 100 million). Lets be generous and say the average Australian clicks on 100 web pages per day. The probability then reduces to 1 in 1 million of stumbling on an RC page per day. Dividing that by 365 equates to the average Australian who clicks on 100 pages every single day, stumbling on a blacklisted page once in every 2740 years.
Try to tell me that it is worth 44 million tax payer dollars to stop Australians viewing 1 webpage of RC content every 2740 years.
Good to see you had your FB admin ban me when i practically tore apart your argument on the internet filter.
I mays well post it here so the public can see it.
The filter will not work. It is as simple as that.
They tested this filter out in a Yr 7 class. It took less then 10 mins for one of them to breach it via a proxy site.
The money used to even fund the development of this filter could of been given to the AFP to combat Child Pornography (CP) distribution via P2P networks, the same network which piracy and illegal pornography is vastly distributed and the same network which this filter does not cover.
Australian ISP’s already have websites which host CP blacklisted and home users are banned from viewing them. Senator Conroy should be giving the ISP’s the list of banned sites so they can add the CP distributors to the blacklist.
Australias network speeds are one of the slowest in the world, we do not need a filter slowing it down even more.
The government could save money by sending every family a Internet nanny (practically a filter) program. This program is constantly updated against all things evil and parents/caregivers have complete control on internet viewing. They also could take a page from Microsoft and show them how to set the computer so users can not search for certain things.
Senator Conroy let slip on the 7PM project that the filter is practically designed on China Great Firewall. so you dropping the debate because you found a speaker on your team was a advocate for the chinese filter is rather daft.
You are supporting Censorship, and a Chinese designed firewall.
It never fails to amaze me how some people think the internet is somehow special and should be above the law. It is just another medium of communication.
Refused classification (RC) material is banned material because it is harmful and includes very nasty forms of pornography and information which might induce suicidal people to take their own life. There is no reason this harmful information should be allowed on the internet if there is a way to stop it. Of course, the solution will not be perfect and all material will not be blocked – just as is the case with printed material. But it is responsible to try.
Governments may one day try to ban political material too – printed, broadcast or on the internet. They should not be allowed to do that. But to stop reasonable measures to protect people from harm, via the internet, printed material or broadcast, because of the possibility that a government may want to make an attack on political freedom of speech is just ridiculous.
Snow Fox, I’m sure “the public” are clamouring for your commentary! Quick alert the media….It’s Snow Fox!!
I am the admin for Melinda Tankard Reist’s page, and I removed you. Your removal had nothing to do with your arguments and everything to do with the offensive nature of your posts. (I assume you are Ben? Kate?) There is another person posting arguments on the fan page, so far he has been able to stick to the issue without being offensive and as such, is still there. As you can see, a lot of arguments against the filter have been posted here on Melinda’s own blog and she has not stopped people posting them, so all this talk about Melinda “having her admin ban people” for “tearing apart the filter” is garbage.
When a person is blocked on a fan page, all of their content is removed, not just the offensive ones. I saw no point in just removing individual offensive posts when the person who posted them is likely to post more of the same. Robust argument is fine and there is lots of that here and on the fan page. But if people are going to be offensive, they will be removed. Simple as that.
Jezza
Refused Classification does not mean “banned.” It is perfectly legal for me to go to Amazon.com and purchase a copy of The Peaceful Pill Handbook, have it delivered to my home, to read it, and keep it on my bookshelf. There will be no policemen smashing down my door to take me to jail, because I will have broken no laws. RC does not mean “illegal.”
Material such as child pornography is illegal because it breaches the Commonwealth Crimes Act. It is criminal material. Classification law doesn’t even enter the picture.
State and Territory laws all include regulations pertaining to the sale of material based on its classification, but they do not always agree; the fact that every state prohibits the sale of RC material is little more than coincidence, and hardly an excuse for the Federal Government to start trying to enforce the States’ laws for them.
The States also prohibit the sale of X18+ material, but again, not possession. It is perfectly legal for someone in New South Wales to drive to Canberra, buy some X18+ DVDs, take them back to NSW, and watch those DVDs in the privacy of their own home.
We don’t have policemen waiting at the border, searching every car going in and out of the ACT looking for porn, and nor should we (although remembering whose blog I’m posting to, it’ll only be a matter of time before someone pipes up claiming we should!). Nor do we have Australia Post workers examining every parcel entering and leaving the ACT. Because the material in question is NOT ILLEGAL. By the same token, we don’t need the Rudd Government to watch what websites we visit.
Let the Police deal with illegal activity. By all means, give them a bit more money to do so.
@jezza: One of the issues is that illegal material is only a small subset of RC material. The rest of RC is perfectly legal to view in most of Australia. Another issue is that the users involved in your examples (‘very nasty forms of pornography and information which might induce suicidal people to take their own life’) are simply not going to be stopped by the proposed filter. Senator Conroy has generally – sometimes he changes his position – stated that the filter is designed to stop inadvertent access: anybody determined to see ‘very nasty forms of pornography’, for example, will be able to do so with minimal effort.
Yes, it is reasonable to try and remove illegal material like child pornography from the internet, and this is something that the international community has a remarkable consensus on. The method proposed by Senator Conroy, however, is not reasonable: it is a head-in-the-sand approach that serves no-one.
The internet is certainly not above the law: we regrettably see people caught sharing child pornography on a semi-regular basis. These people are given severe sentences, as is appropriate.
Further to Ormus’ last comment, the people caught sharing child pornography are not caught because they visited a website. They are caught because the police infiltrated a private peer-to-peer network.
A “filter” would not have prevented or impeded their access to this material.
Great letter Melinda