newmatilda.com presents a national series of public forums about the internet regulation debate in Australia.

The Federal Government's proposal to block internet sites with a mandatory filter has drawn overwhelming opposition from voices across politics and civil society. So what are the real questions for policy-makers?

These forums explore the ethical, social and political questions raised by government regulation of the internet. With the growing intersection between technology, politics and media, how do existing and proposed classification regimes measure up? Is filtering inevitable? Or are there better ways to regulate the world wide web?

SPEAKERS:
Senator Scott Ludlam, the Australian Greens
Michael Flood, Sociologist
Colin Jacobs, Electronic Frontiers Australia
WHEN:
Monday April 27th, 6.30pm

WHERE:
ACMI Cinemas
Federation Square
Flinders Street, Melbourne

Tickets for this event are $5. RSVP is essential: enquiries(at)newmatilda.com [Please inc: “Melbourne Forum” in the subject line]

A few days ago, a Swedish court found the four figures behind thepiratebay.org guilty of criminal copyright infringement and sentenced them to pay approximately $5M AUD in damages and serve a one year prison sentence. The severity of the punishment is surprising, particularly as the operators of the Pirate Bay played a fairly loose role in any copyright infringements -- merely providing an index of torrents already posted and tracked elsewhere.

But whatever we may think of The Pirate Bay, this case raises another example of a very troubling period for copyright law. Pirate Bay and other public trackers are clearly responding to consumer demand, and tougher sanctions for copyright infringement are unlikely to change that. Over the past ten years, we have seen that these actions have rarely, if ever, been successful in curbing the volume of filesharing. New filesharing technologies developed after Napster, Aimster, Grokster, Kazaa, and the creators of other networks were successfully sued. This trend is likely to continue, because the underlying demand is not being addressed.

The goals of copyright are noble. We all want to ensure that professional creators have the ability to be paid for their work. But the current approach of imposing harsh punishments on users and intermediaries is not helping with that goal.

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Colin Jacobs, Vice Chair of EFA, was a guest on SBS Insight on Tuesday night, discussing internet filtering with Senator Stephen Conroy, Mark Newton, Lyle Shelton and others. If you missed the show, you can stream it or view the transcript from the SBS website.

Colin has an interesting wrap-up of Senator Conroy's long-awaited engagement with the substantive issues on the New Matilda blog, PollieGraph:

The most significant revelation was that the list will be focused “almost” entirely on RC material. The represents a significant backing away from the ACMA blacklist, which the Minister took great pains to remind everyone was a nine-year-old Liberal Party policy and not an invention of his government. Despite assertions to the contrary, previous indications have been that the ACMA blacklist would form the core of the new mandatory filtering regime, so this represents something of a policy shift.

Any narrowing of the list’s scope is to be welcomed, but unfortunately Conroy refused to be drawn out precisely what would be blacklisted - a few qualifiers were left in to allow future wiggle room. There were many references to bestiality or incest web sites, which while they can conjure up disturbing images in the listener’s mind, especially when juxtaposed with kids. However, the problems with the filter policy occur around the edges where the content is more controversial, and here there was less detail forthcoming.

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