The recent announcement by the government that the mandatory blacklist will explicitly target computer and video games has caused much alarm in Australia. In order to clarify, we have put up a page to quickly cover the issue and which we will update as things progress:

EFA: The mandatory blacklist and computer games

Please feel free to spread the word. I’d like to reinforce a couple of extra points here, though.

For one, this latest expansion of the scheme has to be seen in the wider context of the plan as a whole. Sold to the electorate as a plan to protect children, it actually only targets websites that an adult is likely to encounter, and applies indiscriminately to all Australian homes and businesses. Due to technical limintations, it can’t and won’t stop the traffic of child abuse material. The blacklist is secret, there is no appeal, and what goes on there is controlled by Government. The potential game ban is only one alarming aspect of the plan as a whole.

EFA has repeatedly warned that, regardless of its intial scope and intentions, any government-controlled blacklisting scheme will expand in time. It’s simply impossible to imagine this and future governments resisting the temptation to add content to the list when politically expedient or in response to powerful lobbies. Even if the blacklist was just targeted at child abuse material, it would soon expand to include hate speech, violent games, copyright violation, incitements to crime, adult pornography, and any other political panic of the day.

So far, however, the blacklisting scheme only applies to web sites. This means that online games such as World of Warcraft or Second Life would continue to work - only web sites making them available would be banned. Due to the limitations of filtering technology, you will be able to circumvent the filters and get to those, too. EFA will show you how - as long as the Government does not criminalize such circumvention.

Bearing in mind the ineffectiveness of blacklisting in actually protecting children or stopping illegal material, it’s hard to argue that the censorship scheme will help children, Australian adults, or the speed and cost of internet access. Banning popular games would just add insult to injury. Let your elected representatives know what you think.

ContestedFooty.com, an AFL commentary blog run by some university students in Melbourne, has received a Cease & Desist letter from the AFL. The AFL allege that the blog infringes their intellectual property rights - both the trademarks and the copyright in the AFL and team logos and names.

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Dr Greg Adamson, Chair, SSIT Australia advises that the IEEE Society on Social Implications of Technology (SSIT) is running a forum next week about online gaming and censorship that promises to be very interesting.

WOW, they’re uncontrollable: Online games, censorship and the crisis of control

6:00-7:30pm, Wednesday 13 May 2009

Dr. Jeffrey E. Brand, Associate Dean and Head of School, Communication and Media, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Bond University

Melbourne University, cnr Grattan & Barry Sts, Carlton. No charge, all welcome.
Brochure at: http://ssit.ieeevic.org/upcoming.php

Today EFA’s hosting provider received a Final Link Deletion Notice from ACMA, requiring us to remove a link to a page that contains images of aborted foetuses from our website. We have complied with this notice because it exposes our host to fines of up to $11,000 per day that we do not remove the link.

This post examines some of the free speech arguments and technicalities of potential appeals processes. Expect long-winded legal analysis beyond the jump.

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EFA’s web hosting provider was today the recipient of a Link Deletion notice from ACMA for an article on our web site ironically entitled “Net censorship already having a chilling effect“. The original article included a link to a page at abortiontv.com that includes graphic images and was previously added to ACMA’s blacklist for being “R-18+”-level material. (For more information on the ACMA net censorship system, see here and here.)

There are many reasons why this should alarm Australian net users. Most significantly, the link was part of a political discussion about the merits of the existing and future Internet censorship policies. The link was offered as a demonstration of the sorts of controversial content that could and would be included in any such proposal. No “offensive” material was included on our site itself. Nevertheless, we were forced to remove the link on pain of severe penalties.

To be clear, EFA published only a link to a page that is hosted overseas and is on ACMA’s prohibited list. Viewing the potentially R-rated page itself is not in any way illegal, and no system is yet in place to enforce the blocking of such web pages. One may well wonder why a link to a legally viewable page should draw the threat of legal sanction while the content itself remains visible. Because the link was on a web page hosted in Australia, the hosting provider - not EFA ourselves, who have more control over the content - falls under Australian legal jurisdiction and could be so served. What this accomplishes is uncertain.

This system, which costs Australian taxpayers millions each year, is clearly unworkable. Because the content is hosted overseas, it remains untouched by ACMA’s directives. Any links or commentary on prohibited content can be protected by the simple expedient of posting it on a web site hosted overseas. No letters from the Australian media regulator, issued months after complaints are filed, will reduce the availability of such material. If a link to a prohibited page is not allowed, what about a link to a link? At what number of hops does a hyperlink become acceptable?

This is a textbook case that demonstrates that there is no sharp dividing line between “political” speech and other content. At the edges of public policy are issues which will inflame passions and lead to images, video and words that are offensive to many people. Trying to stamp these out, especially on the Internet, not only diminishes our democracy but is pointless and paternalistic to boot.

On the Internet, a discussion about some information is often barely distinguishable from the information itself. The current ACMA censorship regime accomplishes little apart from achieving a Howard-era political objective, and makes it clear how far behind the curve political thinking is when it comes to the technical realities of the Internet. We now seem set to move to a new stage where the perceived shortcomings of the current system are to be remedied by legislation making the blocking of overseas content mandatory. It goes without saying that such a block will be easily circumvented by those with the motivation, and material of genuine political interest will find a way to proliferate despite the ban. It is average Australians who will be left wondering what they should and should not be viewing, and not know what controversial material has been deemed unacceptable by the censors.

With fines of up to $11,000 per day threatened against our hosting provider, we have little choice but to comply with ACMA’s directive. However, we are investigating an appeal of the order on the grounds that it stifles a legitimate political discussion on the merits of the Government’s internet censorship policies.

Full text of the LDN here.

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]

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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Australia’s frustration with the Government’s push for mandatory Internet filtering is coming to a head. Last night Communications Minister Stephen Conroy appeared on ABC’s Q&A and faced a mountain of questions from the Australian public on this scheme - far and away the most questions the ABC have received on any subject. By starving the public of information on the policy and dismissing criticisms with sound bytes about children, the Minister has angered many people, but last night Tony Jones put him in the hot seat and he had to answer some real questions.

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Update 9.55pm: Wikileaks has published a more up-to-date copy of the ACMA blacklist, current as of the 18 March. This list includes abortiontv, wikileaks itself and Philip Nitschke’s Poison Pill Handbook as well as a similar smattering of legal material and innocent sites.

The leaking of the ACMA blacklist as reported in the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday and commented on by EFA has provoked a lot of interest and we have received many questions from the public and journalists. Here are a few more comments on the revelation of the blacklist.

I’ll address the authenticity of the list in a moment, but the question is almost irrelevant for a couple of reasons, First, a leak of the blacklist is inevitable once it is distributed to every ISP in the country. It may happen tomorrow or a month from now, but the leak will occur and the contents will not be substantially different from the list we have seen on Wikileaks. (more…)

Edit 19/3 4.00pm: The Minister has refuted the authenticity of the list in a media release. Indications are that the leaked list contains the ACMA list plus sites chosen by the filter vendor. In any case, comments about individual sites on the list should therefore be treated with caution.

Electronic Frontiers Australia today hailed the leaking of the government’s secret internet blacklist as a “wake-up call for Australians concerned about secret censorship”. The blacklist, which appeared on the whistle-blower site Wikileaks, is compiled by the Australian Communications and Media Authority and distributed to the vendors of approved internet filters, but is otherwise secret.

“The leaking of the list has confirmed some of our worst fears,” said EFA Vice-Chair Colin Jacobs. “This was bound to happen, especially as mandatory filtering would require the list to be distributed to ISPs all around the country. The Government is now in the unenviable business of compiling and distributing a list which includes salacious and illegal material and publicising those very sites to the world.”

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Next week I will be speaking at a forum organised by New Matilda, “The Tangled Web: Beyond an Internet Filter”. The abstract reads:

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?

The forum will be chaired by Peter Black, and will include Senator Scott Ludlam, Irene Graham, and myself, Nic Suzor.

It’s a free event on at 6pm, Tuesday 24 March, at QUT. Places are limited, so please RSVP to enquiries(at)newmatilda.com.

I highly encourage anyone in or around Brisbane who is interested in the ongoing mandatory filtering discussion to attend. We will be leaving plenty of time for discussion, and it should be a really interesting evening.

Despite premature celebrations or wishful thinking that the Government are looking for an exit strategy, the Government is powering ahead with its plans to censor Australia’s Internet.

On Sunday’s edition of Background Briefing on radio national - an excellent and in-depth look at the scheme, available here for download - the Minister could be heard proclaiming the necessity of the scheme, dismissing the critics, and confusing the issue, saying that the filter would protect Australia’s children from “’such vile websites as child pornography and the ultra-violent sites” and that Labor made no apology for trying to “block these sites from families’ loungerooms and children’s bedrooms.” These are frightening words for anyone who understands the issues at stake, for they demonstrate some very confused thinking lies at the heart of this policy. If the Minister truly believes that children are seeking out, or being bombarded with child pornography, then there’s a dearth of both common sense and proper research in the Ministerial suites.

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Mr Michael Atkinson, the South Australian attorney general, still misunderstands a key issue affecting Australians and it’s an issue that those he represents are demanding that he consider.

Australian gaming website Kotaku has published a response to a letter that a member wrote to Mr Atkinson; unfortunately for law-abiding, adult Australian gamers the news is all bad. Not only is Mr Atkinson unrelenting in his position to cement Australia’s status as the only developed nation not to have an adult categorisation for computer games, he is still displaying woeful deliberate ignorance of the key issues involved.

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Before the Government’s mandatory filter is even in place, the potential chilling effect of even the current net censorship regime was felt today when Whirlpool’s hosting provider received a take-down notice from ACMA because of a page that links to a another site on the current ACMA blacklist. Given the steep penalties, up to $11,000 per day, it’s hard to fault the host and Whirlpool for taking this seriously and complying. (more…)

Despite detailed and concerted lobbying and campaigning to attempt to secure logical and cohesive answers to our questions about what an Australian censorship regime might look like, we are still no closer than we were in November 2008 to knowing what might happen if you click something that the Australian Communications and Media Authority deem you should not.  EFA has taken the initiative to explore the issue itself, in a light hearted fashion, and developed at the same time a way you can let your friends know what may be in store for all Australians.

Have a look at http://nanourl.net/f5b21 to see what EFA’s website may look like at the completion of “successful” trials, you can show anything you like to your friends.

Asher Moses reports that “The Government’s plan to introduce mandatory internet censorship has effectively been scuttled, following an independent senator’s decision to join the Greens and Opposition in blocking any legislation required to get the scheme started.”

This news has set the blogosphere and twitter alight with celebration. Unfortunately, that may all be a bit premature.

While it is true that a mandatory filtering proposal is likely to require legislation to implement (especially without the support of the Internet Industry Association and a voluntary code of conduct), it is not clear that any future legislation is dead in the water just yet.

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