The topic of Australia’s proposed Internet Filter has been mentioned here on Libraries Interact before. Recently there were three interesting views of the issue that I came across.
First was the Web of secrecy article on the Unleashed by Mark Pesce:
It began with a blacklist. The Australian Communications and Media Authority has one – URLs pointing to web sites and web pages deemed too offensive for Australian eyes.
Fair enough: as the Government regulator they have the statutory authority to block content which wouldn’t receive a classification in Australia. But here’s the thing – no one except ACMA knows what URLs are on the blacklist. In other words, not only are the URLs censored, but the list of censored URLs is itself censored.
Welcome to the rabbit hole.
Next was the recent Blocking the Net episode of SBS Insight.
The Federal Government wants to block the internet, filtering out extreme material hosted offshore like child pornography and extreme violence. Under the proposal a Government-approved black list would be given to internet service providers, who’d then be forced to block the offending sites. The idea is to make the internet more family-friendly and protect kids. Sounds pretty straightforward – well, not quite. Recently leaked black lists show some oddly irrelevant sites caught up in the existing system. And will mandatory blocking of the net work?
Lastly was the more recent Western internet censorship: The beginning of the end or the end of the beginning? editorial on the Wikileaks website. The same Wikileaks website that posted the laked list of banned websites.
Over the last two years, Wikileaks has exposed detailed secret government censorship lists or plans for over eight countries, including Thailand, the United Arab Emirates, Australia, and Germany.
Although Wikileaks’ main site has been censored by the Chinese Public Security Bureau since early 2007, last week saw the site placed onto a secret list of sites “forbidden” by the Australian Media and Communications Authority, or ACMA.
The pro-censorship governments exposed by Wikileaks can be divided into three broad categories:
- Countries with a mandatory censorship system in place: Thailand, the UAE, and Lebanon (films).
- Countries proposing a mandatory censorship system: Australia and Germany.
- Countries in which the internet censorship system is an unregulated agreement between several large ISPs and the police: Norway, Denmark and Finland.
Australia and Germany are the only liberal democracies proposing a mandatory internet censorship regime.
Each view presents the issues in a slightly different light and shows just how complex the issue really is.
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