In an extraordinary move, the Australian Government is set to censor all publishers of electronic content, including Bloggers, under legislation due to be presented to Parliament in the Autumn sittings.
The Communications Legislation Amendment (Content Services) Bill, a reaction to the famous (in Australia anyway) Big Brother Turkey Slap incident last year will see all publishers of electronic content having to submit all content to the Government for classification prior to publication, where upon the content would receive classification in the same way currently that films receive a rating, with content deemed MA (Mature Audiences) or R (restricted 18+) only being able to be published with approved age restricted access systems.
Todays Crikey subscriber email (not available online) suggests that the wording of the bill would would indicate that it is primarily aimed at providers of mobile telephone and internet content such as online video, however that “nobody has thought through the implications for book and magazine publishers who also deliver content online”.
The legislation, if it passes in its current form (and like Crikey I’m confident it won’t) would stifle, if not destroy the Australian blogosphere and many others working within Web 2.0 and new media within this country.
If it does pass there is also some question remaining in terms of where a blog is published, for example many Australians, including myself, host our sites in the United States, and yet the High Court decision in Gutnick v Dow Jones would suggest that legally such sites could be deemed published in Australia even if hosted overseas, and could in theory be subject to the new censorship regime.
I’d suggest that there will be a lot more to be said about this legislation in the coming months. Certainly it will be a sad day when bloggers in China, Vietnam, Burma, Zimbabwe and other such countries have greater rights and freedoms than Australian bloggers do.
Tags: Australian, australian blogs
Originally posted on February 28, 2007 @ 10:14 pm
Hey I was horrified by this story, thanks for the information…it’s sure to get through with this arrogant government having the majority. It sure will be a sad day for Australian democracy
I can’t believe a Western liberal democracy would subject its citizens to draconian censorship of that type. Since the line between the Press and New Media is non-existent now, it amounts to censorship of the Press. That’s up there with Saddam Hussein and the Soviet Union.
If it does pass, Duncan, (which I doubt) what would your personal reaction be? How could you remain as a blogger?
John
would depend on how the act took on the concept of published, I already publish on servers outside of Australia because I’m deeply opposed to some of the restrictions already in place (adult content, even language is technically restricted material even now and in the case of actual sexual acts cant be published here…not that I publish anything like that, but where does it all end…oh, and gambling online is illegal as well, indeed I can go to jail for it now). If they found that all Australians even hosting overseas are bound by the act then I guess I won’t be blogging anymore, at least to any site I own. They cant stop me doing something like a writing gig here at 901am, but if I was to say own 51% of the site and I would then have to wait 4 weeks for Office of Film and Literature Classification to certify every single post…well it wouldn’t be tenable. I’m confident the legislation will get knocked on the head…god help us all here if it doesn’t, and the Government has the numbers in the Senate to pass it. Is there a choice? well the Opposition Labor Party has as it’s platform that they’ll apply country wide ISP level filtering of content, including anything the Government finds undesirable. China looks free and open in comparison.
Sounds like John Howard is morphing into Robert Mugabe. I can’t believe it really.
Most newspapers now publish continuously online (SMH, The Age etc.) so that you get the news in pixels before print. It would be difficult for any law to exempt print publishers who break news online first from restrictions of this kind. I think it will fail for that reason. I hope so, anyway.
The bill seems to refer specifically to “new audio-visual services” which would be streaming to mobile phones and PDAs and internet broadcasting. Looks like they are taking laws for traditional broadcasting (TV and radio) and playing catchup with new technology. It’s a bit of a stretch to claim it will apply to blogging.
It’d be terrible. However, Chinese bloggers must register with the goverment or face arrest. That’s not much better than what’s being proposed in Australia.
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