Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Stop Internet Censorship in Australia

Take one

NO CLEAN FEED: Stop Internet Censorship in Australia

Electronic Frontiers Australia has done a pretty good job of clearly and objectively summarising the state of play of the great australian ISP level censorship battle, under these headings:
  • What is the Government's Plan
  • What do we know so far?
  • What we don't know is just as important
  • There are technical issues
  • There are free-speech concerns
  • The Clean Feed is bad policy
  • Informative footnotes

Take two

Greens Senator Scott Ludlam asked Senator Conroy (our Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy) to explain why he had made an incorrect statement that Sweden, the UK, Canada and New Zealand had similar filtering systems to the one being proposed by him for Australia, pointing out that the systems are not mandatory in those countries. This question was on notice so Conroy had time beforehand to prepare his answer. Conroy read a prepared answer to the House but did not answer the point made by Ludlam about mandatory filtering. Scott Ludlam then followed up with four more questions, which Conroy declined to answer at that time.

Check out this exchange for yourself to evaluate the competence of our Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy:



Thanks to Joel for this information, more here

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I vaguely remember Glenn Beck mentioning this issue in relation to Australia, and a few of the other countries mentioned. He predicted such moves were on their way here to the U.S. I doubt that, but anything's possible.

Some people got scared when Pres. Clinton proposed the V-Chip for televisions, which would filter TV content according to what is age-appropriate, but have its settings be under adult/parental control. Every now and then I still hear about the V-Chip. I wonder if some TV sets have it. I thought the issue died years ago, though I thought I heard the broadcast channels had started including signal "markers" with TV shows several years ago, that the V-Chip could use to filter content. I know at least there are visual markers. At the beginning of entertainment shows a small box shows up in a corner of the screen with a code in it that's like a movie rating (though the abbreviations are different).

What I don't have a clear picture about is, is the proposed Australian filter system going to be voluntary, like they were saying for other countries, or mandatory?

Anonymous said...

i am not familiar with this topic but in my opinion flitering place a major role in tv channels