censorship
13 Jul 2009
Times Have Changed, But How Much?
Stephen Conroy has been named the UK's Internet Villain of the Year for his proposal to censor Australian internet users. As Fiona Patten writes, freedom of expression in Australia has been going downhill since the early 1980s
Stephen Conroy’s ambitious plan to censor all Australian internet users has earned him the title of Internet Villain of the Year at the 11th annual Internet Industry Awards in the UK. But the Communications Minister is just the latest in a long line of pro-censorship politicians on both sides of Australian politics.
Before Don Chipp waved his magic anti-censorship wand at all the old fogeys in Parliament House in the early 1970s, we lived in a very prudish nanny state. Most young people these days would be shocked and astounded if they had to live a month under the sort of sexual and moral censorship that their grandparents had to under Bob Menzies. Prior to Chipp becoming the Minister for Customs, one in two US Playboy magazines were banned in Australia and all decisions by Customs officials were kept secret. Don Chipp changed all this by simply making the "banned list" public. This public listings of banned books was the beginning of our national uniform classification scheme.
Free speech in Australia peaked under Bob Hawke’s administration. Gareth Evans’ first Classification Act in 1983 was a landmark civil libertarian response to a rapidly changing entertainment media: the introduction of video had given consumers more power to decide what they would watch. For the adult industry this was a boom period, but, in terms of censorship, it’s been downhill ever since — and things don’t look like changing under Kevin Rudd’s leadership.
In the 1990s, Paul Keating personally intervened on film and computer game classifications by introducing an upper level to the M rating — MA15+ — and then restricting the new computer games industry to that same MA15+ level. This issue is still being hotly debated in State and Commonwealth Attorneys-General Meetings.
The war against censorship lost significant ground during the Howard years as an outright assault was launched on telephone sex, early internet content, TV and film guidelines.
Firstly, we saw the premium rate adult phone services restricted to 1901 numbers with an opt-out filter. If you wanted to access these services you had to apply in writing to your telco. Of course very few people did this and the multimillion dollar industry moved offshore. We then saw the further restriction of the X classification: all fetishes were deemed offensive and removed from the classification. They even banned foot fetishism and mild spanking on adult videos! This was of course better than Howard’s promised ban but it was not in step with community attitudes at the time. Eight national polls conducted by Roy Morgan Research and the McNair group between 1992 and 2006 showed that on average 72 per cent of Australians wanted X rated films legalised around the country.
The Howard government also banned the hosting of X rated material by Australian ISPs. The then communications minister, senator Richard Alston, proudly announced that Australia would have a porn-free internet. For this he was dubbed the "global village idiot" by a number of international internet companies.
And now Kevin Rudd is following Howard as he seeks to coddle us in a retrogressive online censorship regime.
It’s time political parties made the sort of censorship laws that their stated philosophies would logically promulgate rather than the opposite. This year the ALP posted a Consultation Draft of the new National Platform on its website and invited discussion from the public and members alike. Unchanged at Point 54 is the single sentence policy on censorship:
"Labor believes that adults should be entitled to read, hear and see what they wish in private and in public, subject to adequate protection against persons being exposed to unsolicited material offensive to them and preventing conduct exploiting, or detrimental to the rights of others, particularly women and children."
The policy is listed under the heading "Defending free speech". Their 2007 election promise reads as follows:
"Labor will: Provide a mandatory ‘clean feed’ internet service for all homes, schools and public computers that are used by Australian children. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) will filter out content that is identified as prohibited by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA). The ACMA ‘blacklist’ will be made more comprehensive to ensure that children are protected from harmful and inappropriate online material."
As many have commented on newmatilda.com and elsewhere, the clean feed proposals on the table are even more draconian than this.
Point 54 should be the basis for all federal ALP censorship laws and the equivalent state laws where the ALP is in office. Otherwise it’s a hollow promise intended to keep people feeling good about Labor being in charge of their civil liberties.
This policy hypocrisy has not been without consequences. Research by the Eros Association has shown that over the last 20 years, state Labor governments have created a $40 million black market in adult films by maintaining a prohibition on them even after they have been given the okay by the Federal Classification Board. Effectively this policy saw State Attorneys-General like Rob Hulls in Victoria and Bob Debus in NSW threatening to send people to jail for selling films that John Howard’s censors had approved.
Under ALP policy, the federal platform should override any inconsistencies with state platforms. Sending vendors of adult films to jail is light years away from Point 54 of Labor’s federal platform.
It is true that when it comes to minors having access to adult material on the web, there are problems. Unlike in an adult shop — where the owner simply throws out pimply faced boys — the internet is not equipped with a bouncer to check ID. But there are numerous tools available to parents and educational institutions to restrict access. Education, as usual, is the key here and if parents or schools want to opt into an ISP-based filter, then there are already companies offering this service. It does not require a compulsory filter that will block all adults from accessing otherwise legal adult material. These arguments have been articulated in many outlets, including on newmatilda.com.
Although the Coalition is currently opposing Conroy’s clean feed proposal, when it comes to freedom of speech and censorship issues, there is now little difference between the major parties. Conroy’s attempt to filter the internet is in large part a copy of John Howard’s 2007 attempt to introduce legislation that would stop the Big Brother "Turkey Slap" from being re-broadcast on Australian television, mobile phones and computers.
Howard’s Online Content Services Bill was drafted in January 2007, just in time for the November election. Access to the first draft of this legislation was restricted to a handful of people but it was nevertheless leaked to the Eros Association and Electronic Frontiers Australia. This draft contained lengthy jail sentences and six figure fines for companies and individuals who created, uploaded or hosted adult content on the internet. Where the content was hosted had no impact on liability to prosecution. If the content was created or uploaded in Australia and the provider or creator was based in Australia, there would be a case for prosecution. The words "with an Australian connection" were repeatedly used in the draft legislation.
In the online context, "adult content" is defined as Refused Classification, X or R-rated filmed material and Category 1 and 2 Restricted publications. In the draft, R-rated content was to be exempt if there was a satisfactory age-verification device in place but this did not apply to the other categories. Category 1 magazines that were freely available in newsagents around the country could have had their electronic versions banned and the publishers sent to jail for two years. Category 1 publications include Madonna’s coffee table book Sex; all books by David Hamilton, who moonlights as a photographer of European royalty, and all of ACP’s restricted magazines.
The Eros Association, which represents the adult retail and entertainment industry, worked with two large mainstream groups who would be adversely affected by the proposed Online Content Bill. The Australian Publishers Association (APA) represented the distributors of many erotic and "bodice-ripper" publications that would have been caught up in this legislation. ACP magazines also produced some adult publications which were about to be put online and would have run foul of the new regulations.
Eros approached the Liberal Party organisation rather than the parliamentary wing to let them know how unpopular this legislation would be with the business community — as well as with the four million consumers of adult erotica out there in Voterland. Our bottom line was that if these draconian laws came into effect, we would email and mail these four million adults asking them not to vote for the Coalition and pointing out how severe Howard’s government was on censorship issues. Sending company directors to jail for uploading content that was being sold at the local newsagent proved how totally out of touch they were with reality.
In the end, this strategy proved effective. The second draft of the Bill which surfaced about two months after the first, had had all the criminal provisions removed as long as content was hosted off shore — basically what it was under the 1999 Online Services Act.
This was not the first time that these reforms had been tried. In 2004 NSW became the first state to attempt to legislate the enforcement provisions of the Commonwealth’s 1999 Online Services Act. This would have meant jail terms and large fines for anyone in NSW who created or hosted adult content for upload anywhere in the world. This included amateur couples who may have posted their explicit nude photos to a swingers site in New York. This legislation gave police the right to break down the doors of anyone suspected of running adult content on websites. All they had to do was show a connection between the image and the person living in NSW.
Eros tackled this legislation as it passed through the Upper House in the NSW Parliament in the early hours of the morning. The next day, before the legislation could be sent to the NSW governor for "Royal Assent", we convinced the then Attorney-General Bob Debus to intervene and refer it to an Upper House Committee which included ALP members Meredith Burgmann and Amanda Fazio. While the committee did not formally refute the legislation, it was "decided" that it would be shelved. Although still a law on the NSW Statute Books, it has never been enacted.
It was in response to these censorship debates that the Australian Sex Party (of which I am Convenor) was formed in 2008. The NSW and WA Liberal parties have turned into breeding grounds for extreme right wing religious ideologies and the National Civic Council and the old DLP are regrouping as spurious "inter-faith" organisations. With the demise of the Democrats and the Greens’ retraction of their former progressive platform on moral issues, Labor’s abandonment of their policy platform on censorship has proceeded unchecked. As reactionary religious groups and moral crusaders are grabbing hold of more and more politicians, there has never been a greater need for a strong voice against censorship and for free speech.
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great article, Fiona
Adult choice, or lack thereof, aside, I understand that Conroy/ACMA intend to ban any site that links to a banned site.
One trouble here is that any blogger can put a link onto a blogging site, such as this or any of the mainstream media and some government sites. Similarly anyone with malign intent can put links onto a business competitors website. Such links could be enough to shut the sites down with no notice and no explanation.
The opacity of the ALP process means that no-one really understands how the government determines which sites will be banned, how it checks to assure that they should remain banned, how the ban is lifted and what compensation will be available for the inevitable errors.
The ACMA approach genuinely risks crashing major portions of the internet as well as impeding lawful business and shutting down blog/comment sites such as the mainstream media.
I don’t believe anyone would object to children’s content being filtered by parents and so on. However the proposal from ACMA is much worse and threatens many dire downstream consequences.
Given the track record of government in this country, surely it’s worth asking where they get the competence to do this without stuffing people and businesses up. Look what they did, and are still doing, to the Murray Darling…or the Sydney and Melbourne public transport systems…or the health system…or our ports infrastructures…and on and on…
No government agency should be allowed to decide what adult Australians watch, and particularly not when those agencies want to act in secret.
Who polices the thought police?
As an ill thought out piece of attempted Legislation, this must take a bit of beating. But from a Government which so far has not once…NOT ONCE… been able to efficiently and effectively bring into operation ANY of it’s insane ideas and mostly draconian ideas (just look at the list of total failures) one can not expect any better.
Every one of the Rudd Ministers, up to and including Rudd, has so far failed to do ANYTHING properly. A bigger mob of totally irresponsible and ineffective people I have yet to find, and that includes Howard’s mob.
Howard’s mob did things like this for extremely NASTY reasons, wanting to do harm to various people and groups, Rudd’s mob are doing it because either they are ‘Bible Bashing Bast..ds’, as Whitlam was wont to call Joh Belching-Peanut, or they are beholden to some very nasty operators in a very nasty little bit of country in the Middle East, where Julia Baby recently did her little bow of obsequious obeisance to another crazy Fundamentalist religion and it’s followers.
We here in Australia used to laugh at the USA, and it’s crazy censorship of sexuality on behalf of Fundamentalist Christians and others of like ilk, who have such an incredible hold on all communications in America, even down to minor swear words and what they call blasphemies, but under Rudd and Conroy and so many of the Rudd Ministry who wear their religious connections like badges of office, and push it into their Politics on a daily basis, forgetting or ignoring the supposed divisions in the Westminster System of Government, we here are also being pushed back into the Middle Ages, where Nutty Religionists have the power of life and liberty over us.
And this is now, for the moment forgetting Pauline Hansen, where we have to listen daily to the totally insane ravings of one of these nutters, one Senator from Victoria, accidently elected on Labor preferences in order to deny them to the Greens, and I hear the ABC interviewer seemingly giving him a half-way decent hearing. He should be laughed out of parliament, and fast, before he does any more damage to our Society and our Planet. And yes, he is being given Freedom of Speech, where the internet is being throttled by his religionist mates, and him probably also when it eventually comes up in the Senate.
So Conroy got “Internet Villain of the Year”. Well deserved. But I hope he feels free to share it around with his fundamentalist mates in the new Right Wing, Conservative, Religious Labor Party.
Trouble is, they will all feel pleased at such recognition. They will be able to go and greet GWBush and Dick Cheney any time as fellow Religious Nutters who brought their nuttery to their politics, and left the whole world worse off for their efforts.
Oh My Gawd! Dazza.
Pot -> Kettle -> Black
EROS Magazines - EROS Magazine Vol.9 No.2 2008
Friday, 13 June 2008
EROS Joins Forces with Christians
EROS has recently partnered with the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) in criticising the possible introduction of an R18+ rating for video games. Presently games that exceed an MA+15 category cannot be sold in Australia. If an R18+ category was to be introduced it would allow games that showed extreme and graphic violence.
Fiona Patten, EROS CEO, said, “there’s too much violence out there and there are more pressing issues for the attorneys to consider such as the regulation of the X-rated film industry.”
Source: http://www.eros.org.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=202
Womp’s comments relate to a debate about state attorneys general proposing to discuss a new adult classification for computer games while still refusing to discuss the adoption of the X adult classification in their own states.As the industry group representing adult film retailers we used the opportunity of a debate on an adult category in games to highlight the fact that all state attorneys general still refuse to allow the legal sale of the federally sanctioned X film classification. The mandate of the industry group the Eros association is represent its members, adult retailers.
The Australian Sex Party supports the introduction of an R and X classification for computer games. If it is legal in one format then it should be legal in another.
Overall I think, as the article attests, we have been fighting censorship and working for law reform that allows adults to view what they choose more than just about any other organisation in Australia.
Fiona - thankyou for the article. Could you please expand on The Greens re moral issues, as I am not familiar with their policies on such matters.
thanks, nanks
Nanks, why don’t you visit the Greens web site, and see for yourself if this is just sour grapes from the writer after the ‘hit’ that the Greens took from the professional wowsers during the last Federal Election, and before, for actually proposing progressive ideas about sex and censorship, and drug policies.
Does not pay to put you head up too far, there are lots of religious and fundamentalist nutters out there ready and willing to shoot it off. Truth and public interest are not part of their thinking. Dazza.
Civil liberties involve freedom of information and that should include access to all published material, no matter what the media or medium.
All published material should be viewed by the ACMA - and then given a classification, with relevant warnings.
Access to publications, or rather restriction of access to publications, should not be a matter of fickle censorship laws, but rather an ACMA classification process that warns and informs potential consumers of the possiblity of offensive material, including excessive violence, swearing etc..
It’s then up to the individual (or guardian) to make an informed choice.
However, a ‘clean feed’ at ISP level is a violation of civil liberties and repressive societies who attempt such censorship laws could actually produce more, rather than less sexual deviants and sexual predators.
All PCs can be programmmed to filter out (or lock out) any offensive material to protect minors.
And as usual all that is popular (pornography) but illicit, would go underground and create even more criminals, with the subsequent extra costs in policing, courts and prisons, etc..
Harry Morton During ww2 Calwell ALP Minister for Information censored Brian Penton editor of the Sydney Daily Telegraph for supporting the Australian made Owen Submachine gun and its inventor Evo Owen. Army C in C General Thomas Blamey opposed the gun being introduced and Calwell supported Blamey. Pentor had a large blank space inserted on the front page with this in bold type in the centre. ’ Minister Calwell has censored out this space where we wished to support the Owen gun.’
What’s new?
I am for porn but against the Owen gun.
Thanks Fiona, it is interesting to me that the porn industry is once again at the forefront of the fight for free speech and against censorship. The desire to control others always starts with sex.
We all know wowsers when we see them but continue to empower them by electing them to parliament. After all those years of Papa John Howard, I would have hoped we would choose less patriarchal leaders but apparently we don’t want the responsibility of controlling the information we and our families use.
Thankfully government is traditionally piss-poor at controlling this sort of stuff, and we can be relatively sure they will fail again.
Dazza - I had a look on the Greens site first, but couldn’t find anything relevant. Australia has a long tradition of puritanism and I’d hate to see the Greens give in to pressure from a bunch of control freaks and wowsers.
So, the next time this comes up which one are you going to be, the CEO of EROS or Party leader of ASP?