censorship
23 Oct 2008
First They Came For The Perverts
The Rudd Government's "clean feed" proposal will censor the internet use of every single person in the country. We're slipping in the freedom index, writes Philip Annetta
Some time ago, I wrote on newmatilda.com that while Western countries still had a greater degree of individual freedom than their putative rival, China, their trajectories were narrowing as China slowly opened and the West succumbed to the siege mentality of the "War on Terror".
It’s worth revisiting this as the Labor Government prepares to implement its election promise of providing "clean, family-friendly" internet feeds. Up to this point, talk from Stephen Conroy’s office has been high on rhetoric and low on detail about the proposal, seeking to equate those who would prefer an unfiltered internet with seekers of child pornography. This is not only patently ridiculous, it is a slur — and it is a political Trojan horse.
Child pornography is of course a problem, and nobody is defending it. Any child pornography on the internet or resident on file-sharing programs should be traced to its providers and consumers, and they should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Who could say otherwise? However, laws exist for precisely this purpose. If the legislation or the enforcement is found to be inadequate, it should be strengthened.
But child pornography is of course not the real issue.
Australians might have been misled by the Government’s initial announcement that it was possible to "opt out" of the filtering. According to industry insiders, users can choose to opt-out of the filter which blocks content deemed unsuitable for children, but there is in fact no opt-out for content that is deemed "illegal".
Regarding the first blacklist category, of course there are those who not only do not want to access pornography, they would prefer that their internet connection could not, perhaps for their children’s sakes, and certainly at schools. This is a reasonable stance, but begs questions. What about sites with sex education? Why can people not simply use PC-based content filtering programs, which many claim are more effective? Why should a government decide what its citizens cannot access in their own homes? And most seriously from a civil libertarian perspective, will those who chose to opt out be placed on what is essentially a Government list of perverts?
As for the second category, its broadness raises an immediate red flag. Will the Government release the list of sites that will be illegal under this legislation? What if sites include, say, useful information about drugs? What about politics? Anybody who frequents sites with political dissent can vouch for them having a wide range of views, and a wide range of users. Many have user-generated content, with everything from incisive analysis to buffoonery calling for certain people’s heads. Will this last type of content make an entire site illegal? Will the threat of legal action force sites without the resources to moderate every conversation to close? And again, why should any government decide what information its citizens can or cannot have access to?
I work in publishing, and have studied its history at tertiary level. It’s disputed as to whether Gutenberg invented the printing press — there is strong evidence to believe that the conglomeration of inventions that led to its development originated in China — but what is never in dispute is the impact that printing had on the distribution and proliferation of knowledge in Europe. The quantity and types of information available climbed exponentially. Scholars who would have travelled for years trying to find a particular book could now not only read it and know that its contents would exist for far longer, they and others could publish pamphlets debating it. Of course, much like the internet, quality of content varied wildly, particularly in the initial stages, but it is not underestimating its impact to say that this upsurge in both knowledge and its sharing were critical to the Enlightenment.
What would the Renaissance have looked like if publishing had continued to be largely a church endeavour?
Aside from the moral issues, there are technical aspects that bode ill for the free flow of information. The Government’s own pilot figures show that up to 6 per cent of sites were blocked incorrectly in the latest trial.
Back to the shrinking gap between China and the West: the great irony is that if this pilot is put into practice — as it will be if people don’t speak out — the internet access I have in this outpost of China will be freer than that back home. Welcome to the Information Age.
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Lot’s of interesting ideas here Philip, but you lack real understanding or concern for families.
Most parents would struggle to install a filter that their children wouldn’t get around in 5 minutes flat.
I, for one, am prepared to forgo 6% of internet sites if we might better protect the innocence of our little ones.
We know that Prime Minister Rudd finds Bill Henson’s works “revolting” and “disgusting”. Will he be putting Henson’s works on the blacklist when the time comes to defining what a “clean feed” is?
An inner twinge of worry flares up whenever it seems that reactionary politicians and over-reactionary governments take choice and responsibility away from the people.
Excellent article Philip: Purely from a moral point of view-ie I wouldn’t know a technical
point if I fell over it-Mr Rudd should pause long and hard before embarking on his
crusade to prevent children accessing pornography.
I am renewing an acquaintance in a book of mine, about the legendary Eleanor of Aquitaine; in which is depicted the savagery and barbarism of the 12th century. If Mr Rudd, in his religious fervor, wants his world to be pre-Renaissance and pre -publishing in the Western World- I hope he has the moral courage to find out about the appalling treatment metered out to the children-and anyone/thing else-of that era.
Mr Rudd, like thousands before him, will find he cannot have it both ways. Either each child has a computer, and runs the concomitant risks associated with them. Or we go back to an age before publishing and prior to the Renaissance and run the concomitant risks of a barbarianism which, hopefully, is beyond Mr Rudd’s imagination.
Cheers
V.
PS: When I voted for Mr Rudd, I was not inviting him, nor anyone else in his government, into my bedroom.
PPS: Going by Mr Rudd’s treatment of Bill Henson and Mr Rudd’s inability to see anything but shame in naked children, I can only suggest that this exactly the premise of the child pornographer. The CP has probably been brought up in a highly moral family, where perhaps he was taught harshly about s-ex. Too harshly….we all know the hypothesis, I think.
Phillip, a Trojan horse indeed.
Forget the x-rated sites, a whole host of politically, culturally or religiously ‘sensitive’ subjects are likely to be censored for “appropriate” content, and its not just here it seems to be a trend spreading around the ‘free world’.
Perhaps the next step will be the rounding up of ‘internet terrorists’ , dissenters or agitators - oh I forgot, that’s already happened.
The people best positioned to protect the innocence of little ones are, first and foremost, their parents.
In this day and age, it would be madness for parents to not wise themselves up about the Internet and apprise themselves of the numerous effective choices available to protect the innocence of their little ones on the Internet.
Demanding that Government absolve parents of this responsibility is paternalistic, shortsighted, a slap in the face to parents, places an excessive amount of trust in the competence of Government and bureaucracy, and is bound to be seriously flawed in its implementation for any of a number of technical and cultural reasons.
Concern for families is better demonstrated by supporting public policy which better equips and informs families to handle these challenges (rather than government taking it upon itself to do the thinking and decision-making for them).
Gabatronic, I think you have missed the point. This program has nothing to do with protecting the children. Mandatory filtering will do nothing to protect children from threats such as cyber bullying or stalking. Additionally, if you care to check Labor’s so-called “fact sheet” you will see that one of the problems they are trying to prevent is children accessing child pornography (Their words). This is patently absurd as those degenerates who are into that sort of thing post material in closed user groups, it is not freely accessible to every internet user. This is all about setting the precedent for the government to regulate the internet the same way they have the mass media in Australia for its entire history. Finally, if you think your children may get into trouble online there is one sure- fire way to protect them; through parental supervision.
PPS: Going by Mr Rudd’s treatment of Bill Henson and Mr Rudd’s inability to see anything but shame in naked children, I can only suggest that this exactly the premise of the child pornographer. The CP has probably been brought up in a highly moral family, where perhaps he was taught harshly about s-ex. Too harshly….we all know the hypothesis, I think.
If there is to be any censoring, the fundamental questions are, who is going to do the censoring, and exactly what is to be censored? Is it to be X ratings and unclassified (ie totally censored) as determined by the Censorship Board? We already have censoring, so extending it to the internet - if that is all they are doing - is a logical sequel.
What about violence?
People who disagree with censorship per se had better get stuck into that issue first.
Have a peek in a Victorian high school to see how problematic, counterproductive and dysfunctional net censorship is. Or in the words of John Gilmore, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, “The net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.”
http://www.eff.org/
Free speech is like pregnancy. You can’t have a little bit of it.
The only difference between this and the Chinese approach is the degree of censorship. And we all know about the dangers of mission creep…my favourite recent example is Gordon Brown’s use of Anti-Terrorist legislation to freeze the British assets of the Icelandic banks…wtf???
If anyone wants to register their protest, an online petition can be found here:
http://petitions.takingitglobal.org/home/index.html
Thanks for the comments, everyone. I just wanted to let you know that there’s a good update on this in The Age today:
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2008/10/23/1224351430987.html?page=ful…
A couple of choice parts:
*
Internet providers and the government’s own tests have found that presently available filters are not capable of adequately distinguishing between legal and illegal content and can degrade internet speeds by up to 86 per cent.
Documents obtained by us show the office of the Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, tried to bully ISP staff into suppressing their criticisms of the plan.
Senator Conroy has since last year’s election victory remained tight-lipped on the specifics of his $44.2 million policy but, grilled by a Senate Estimates committee this week, he said the Government was looking at forcing ISPs to implement a two-tiered filtering system.
The first tier, which internet users would not be able to opt out of, would block all “illegal material”. Senator Conroy has previously said Australians would be able to opt out of any filters to obtain “uncensored access to the internet”.
The second tier, which is optional, would filter out content deemed inappropriate for children, such as pornography.
But neither filter tier will be capable of censoring content obtained over peer-to-peer file sharing networks, which account for an estimated 60 per cent of internet traffic.
…
Colin Jacobs, chair of the online users’ lobby group Electronic Frontiers Australia said: “I’m not exaggerating when I say that this model involves more technical interference in the internet infrastructure than what is attempted in Iran, one of the most repressive and regressive censorship regimes in the world.”
…
Senator Conroy has himself accused critics of his filtering policy of supporting child pornography - including Greens Senator Scott Ludlam in Senate Estimates this week.
*
The Age article was even quoted on Andrew Bolt’s blog, and they’re getting mad about it over there as well. I think that constitutes a bipartisan groundswell (even if they are blaming the socialists…).
Cheers
Phil Annetta
http://philannetta.blogspot.com
So if kids access to pornography is second tier (optional), what constitutes the ‘illegal material’ which is the first category (mandatory)?
Thanks Philip. A very incisive and well considered article.
Howard used the ‘little children’ to dump on the Northern Territory and it’s Indigenous citizens. Elmer Fudd and Co. is using ‘little children ’ to shut off all criticism. Beware Trojan Horses led by Far Right Wing Religious Nutters. And yes, that includes most of the Rudd Cabinet.
We are all going to rue the day that a majority of us voted for Rudd (not including me!). His Ultra Conservative Religiosity is going to sit on us all like a very dark and suffocating blanket. Between Internet Control and the Control his draconian Anti-Terror Laws give him, there is not a lot left of Australian Democracy. And that little bit is more threatened every day. Dazza.
“PS: When I voted for Mr Rudd, I was not inviting him, nor anyone else in his government, into my bedroom.”
Me either Venise, but I still hold out hopes for Therese.
Ben, you’ve just made my day! Very, very funny.
Cheers V.
Dazza: And you think the Howard Government was less suffocating? In every sphere of life.
It’s a scary thought, censorship, but sometimes, it’s a neccessary evil. It should, however, be a personal thing, not something to be decreed by a national government.
Keep an eye on your kids, parents, learn a little about the Internet and give them a bit of a coaching. Look at it like teaching your offspring a virtual version of the Green Cross Code (or whatever the Australian equivalent is).
Finally, a little grammatical quibble with Phil’s otherwise well-written article. He used the term “begs questions” when he should have used “raises questions”.
To beg the question is one of the most difficult phrases to master in the English language, and its meaning has become twisted and distorted by many in the media these days. I haven’t quite mastered the correct definition of the term, but methinks it runs along the lines of claiming that something is true but not backing it up with evidence; claiming that this something is true merely because you say it is.
For someone who works in the publishing industry and writes articles for NM, this is a little on the shoddy side.
Make both tiers opt-in, rather than opt-out, that way there won’t be a “list of perverts”.
I’m 100% confident I can get around any of the ISP level filtering with tunneling, but it’s a nuisance to have to do this. And Conroy’s presumption that anyone arguing against it must be into child porn is insulting.
HI all
Please show your support and check out the anti-Net-censorship site at
http://www.nocleanfeedforum.com/
Also please join the facebook, as listed on the above site, and volunteer your time for organising/staging a protest, pref on November 29th to stay in line with the days of the Melbourne rally.
As a young citizen of the supposedly cynical and apathetic generation Y this censorship disgusts me and reminds me why most people my age think politics is a crock.
Let’s reinvigorate everyone again - much like Obama has!
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“…people fascinate me…”
— andy warhol
The Australian Library and Information Association is very concerned about this issue. Here is their list of questions to the Senator:
9 January 2008
ALIA’S ten questions on censorship for Senator Stephen Conroy
[ pdf 96 KB ]
On 31 December 2007, Senator Conroy made a statement about the mandatory ISP clean feed which is to be provided to all Australian domestic, school and library internet users. In response to this statement, ALIA has developed a set of questions and looks forward to the Government’s response.
1. What does “clean feed” mean?
Is there a definition of the term? Does it have the common meaning people understand? Does it mean what the UK and Canadian proponents mean?
2. What exactly will be filtered out?
Is there a definition or is this yet to be developed? The current language is vague and alarming - “inappropriate content”, for example. We know child pornography and “violence” will be filtered out; what other “undesirable” content? Will the filter cover websites, chat rooms, blogs, game sites - or just some of these?
3. What rules will be used?
How will the filtered-out content relate to the Guidelines for the Classification of Publications (2005) and the National Classification Code? Will it be the same as “refused classification” material? Or will it also include X, 18 and 15 rated material or some combination?
4. Will the list of blacklisted sites be made publicly available?
The current list of sites which are banned is not made public. This makes it very difficult to argue that a mistake has been made.
5. Who will decide which specific sites are to be filtered out in the “clean feed”?
Will this be an administrative decision? Will it include any transparency requirements? Will there be any kind of appeal from decisions?
6. Who will know who has opted out of the clean feed?
Will there be any privacy provisions? What will they be?
7. How can we be sure this is not the thin end of a wedge?
What kinds of guarantee will Australians have that a policy which may initially have a narrow scope (e.g. child pornography) will not later be widened (e.g. to support and advocacy of terrorism). Will there be scope to extend the policy by administrative decision, or only by legislation?
8. Do Australians want internet filters?
In 2007 the then Government sent a brochure offering free filters to 8 million Australian households. We understand that only a very small percentage chose to take up this offer. Can we conclude that 98% of Australian households see no need for filters? What evidence is there to the contrary?
9. What happens next?
What process will be followed in Government plans to “work with the industry to ensure the filters do not affect the speed of the internet?” Is this a commitment to no loss of internet speed or response time? Is there a timeline?
10. What will it cost us?
What will the policy cost to implement - not just cost to government (though we want to know that), but cost to Australian internet users, industry and education.
ENDS
What concerns me most is “The current list of sites which are banned is not made public.” This is not a transparent Government.