One thing I had not emphasized is that that there will be no oversight of this scheme. Whatever the government decides should be censored from Australians will be banned. No recourse, no protest, no take backs, do not pass Go. Do Not collect $200. Given the exemption from FoI laws, Australians will not even know “what” sites have been banned.
- The scheme will use a blacklist of web sites that every internet company will be forced to use.
- This blacklist will be decided by the government.
- This blacklist has been 'protected' by Freedom of Information laws (FoI) so that ordinary Australians will not know which websites have been banned, and therefore will have no recourse to protest the banning of certain websites
As with pretty much every government scheme with no oversight and a faulty mandate, mission creep is inevitable. So from The Age (June 25), we now have an example of how this scheme will evolve:
“The Federal Government has now set its sights on gamers, promising to use its internet censorship regime to block websites hosting and selling video games that are not suitable for 15 year olds.”From the article, because Australia’s current censorship scheme does not have an R18+ rating for computer games, any games with ‘unacceptable’ content are simply banned and you can’t buy them. Blanket banning game downloads or online games seems to be overstepping the bounds of stopping child pornography, and kind of smacks of ‘ideological convenience’ or a quick fix to something that really wasn’t a problem to begin with.
Box graphics from a computer game Hilary Clinton had an issue withI’m not arguing that there are not games that do not have content that is offensive or disgusting (as a recent title from Japan demonstrates) however I don’t believe this falls under the mandate of this scheme. From the Australian Government’s own website:
“The Government's election commitment was that filtering would block content using a blacklist of prohibited sites maintained by the This link sends you off DBCDE's websiteAustralian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) in accordance with legislation. The ACMA blacklist is a list of internet web sites, predominantly comprising images of the sexual abuse of children, which are defined as 'prohibited' under Australian legislation which has been in place since 2000.”I’m not sure why computer games that do not have violent, degrading or illegual sexual imagery are banned, such as "Marc Eckō's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure", which if Wikipedia is to be believed was “Banned [in Australia] because of high impact violence and the glorification of graffiti”
I totally understand how the “glorification of graffiti” can, in its’ own way destroy society, however there is a fairly strong argument that this could be overstepping the bounds of what is deemed unacceptable and censorship-worthy. Also, from this 2006 article, it is clear that ACMA, has wanted expanded powers to ban and censor online content for all Australians for a little while:
If prohibited material is hosted in Australia, ACMA can issue take-down notices or inform relevant law enforcement agencies to take action but its powers dramatically wane when faced with overseas hosting, as is the case with Postal.In 2006, ACMA did not have those powers. If the Australian government successfully implements their internet content filtering scheme, they will have them.
"With overseas hosting, ACMA can refer the content from the downloadable source to manufacturers of content filters so ISPs can block the offending URLs," Barnard said."
Today, it’s the “glorification of graffiti”, tomorrow “climate change denial”?
Links:
GTA "Hot Coffee" link (warning: badly rendered polygons made to look like two people having sex): http://www.spike.com/video/hot-coffee/2673401
More videogame sex scenes: http://www.ugo.com/lifestyle/best-video-game-sex-scenes/
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