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Internet censorship in Australia

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Internet censorship in Australia has up until now been symbolic in nature, with legislation allowing the removal of material unsuitable for minors from Australian internet servers, ineffective attempts to censor protest groups, and an unsuccessful plan to provide internet filtering tools to concerned parents.

In 2008, the Australian Labor Party introduced a policy of mandatory filtering of the internet for all Australians. While the policy has not yet come into force, it has generated a groundswell of opposition from almost all segments of society, with only a few groups in support.[citation needed]

Legislation

Proposed Australian laws on Internet censorship are sometimes referred to as the Great Australian Firewall, Firewall Australia or Great Firewall Reef (a reference to Great Barrier Reef and the Great Firewall of China)[1]

A collection of both federal and state laws apply, but the most important are the provisions of Schedule 5 of the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 inserted in 1999 and since amended.[2] Under this regime, if a complaint is issued about material "on the Internet" the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) is empowered to examine the material under the guidelines for film and video. If the material would be classified R18+ or X18+ and the site does not have an adult verification system, or would be refused classification, and is hosted in Australia, the ABA is empowered to issue a "takedown notice" under which the material must be removed from the site. If the site is hosted outside Australia, the site is added to a list of banned sites. This list of banned sites is then added to filtering software, which must be offered to all consumers by their Internet Service Providers.

In October 2000, Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA) attempted under the Freedom of Information Act (FOI) to obtain documents relating to the implementation of the internet filter. While a few were released, many were not, and in 2003 new legislation, "Communications Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2002", was passed by the Liberal government and four independents, and opposed by The Greens and the Australian Labor Party. While the stated reason for the bill was to prevent people accessing child pornography by examining the blocked sites, this bill exempted whole documents from FOI, many of which did not reference prohibited content at all. EFA state that the bill was designed to prevent further public scrutiny of internet filtering proposals.[3][4]

A new copyright law, the Copyright Legislation Amendment Bill 2004, was passed on 9 December 2004 by the Australian Senate, going even further than the Australian-US free trade agreement (FTA). The impact will be felt most heavily on Internet service providers. The Internet Industry Association and EFA are actively opposing these efforts.[5] [citation needed]

In July 2007, Schedule 7 of the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 came into effect.[6] Schedule 7 is similar to Schedule 5, however it covers all forms of 'content services' (such as mobile phones). Under Schedule 7, if a content provider provides material that is rated R18+ or MA15+, then the provider must verify the age of the person accessing the material. It remains illegal in Australia to host material that is rated X18+ or that has been refused classification. By contrast, X18+ material is legal to buy and own in Australia if it is in print or other traditional form. Organisations such as the NSW Council for Civil Liberties are highly critical of these Schedules and have called for their repeal.[7]

Some state governments have laws that ban the transmission of material unsuitable for minors.[citation needed] In NSW, internet censorship legislation was introduced in 2001 which criminalizes online material which is unsuitable for minors. In 2002, the NSW Standing Committee on Social Issues issued a report recommending that the legislation be repealed, and in response the NSW government stated that the legislation "will be neither commenced nor repealed" until after the review of the Commonwealth Internet censorship legislation had been completed.[8]

Enforcement

A number (but reputedly very few)[citation needed] takedown notices have been issued to some Australian-hosted websites. According to Electronic Frontiers Australia in at least one documented case, the hosting was merely shifted to a server in the United States, and the DNS records updated so that consumers may never have noticed the change. As far as foreign-hosted content goes, small numbers of complaints have reportedly been issued. Consumer takeup of filtering software has been minimal, and pornography of all kinds remains freely available on the World Wide Web from foreign sites. The Internet outside the World Wide Web also continues mostly unaffected, with Usenet binaries continuing to be hosted locally, and Bittorrent use continuing unabated. However, some Usenet newsgroups are required to be blocked and ISPs in general adhere to this legal requirement. By law ISPs are restricted from naming the Usenet newsgroups they are required to block.[citation needed]

In 2002, NSW Police Minister Michael Costa attempted, without success, to shut down three protest websites by appealing to the then-communications minister Richard Alston.[9]

Net Alert Scheme

In December 1999, the federal government established Net Alert, an organization with the role of providing a safe internet experience for young people, and to research filtering and other related technologies.[10].

In August 2007, the Prime Minister John Howard and then opposition leader Kevin Rudd announced that $189 million dollars would be allocated to Net Alert, with $84.8 million allocated to allow libraries and individuals to download free filtering software. The plan was to eventually include ISP-level blocking, but the communications minister Helen Coonan stated at the time that there were technical problems.[11]

Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy Stephen Conroy has stated that the Net Alert scheme will be shut down by the end of 2008 as it has not been successful, with few people downloading the free filtering software.[12]

Policy of compulsory internet filtering

History

In 1999, the Federal Government half-heartedly attempted to get an internet censorship regime together to gain support from minority senators to assist with the sale of Telstra, but this censorship plan did not work.[13]

In 2001, CSIRO was commissioned to examine available ISP-based internet filters, and decided that they did not work.[13]

In March 2003, the Fairfax papers The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald reported the results of a survey taken by The Australia Institute of 200 children, which found that many of them had found pornography on the internet. Over the next few days was a storm of media and political attention, and there were calls for finer internet filters and tougher censorship laws. Analysis of the report showed little new material, and only 2% of girls had admitted being exposed to pornography, while the figure for boys was 38%; such a difference between boys and girls would seem to indicate that inadvertent exposure was rare, contrary to the conclusions of the report. After all of the noise, no new action resulted from the new report, media attention, or political speeches.[13]

Shortly before the 2004 federal election, two political parties issued new policies on Internet censorship. The Australian Labor Party's policy involved voluntary adherence by users. The Family First Party released a far stricter policy of mandatory filtering at the internet service provider level.[14]

The Australian Family Association petitioned the Australian Federal Government in 2004 to further restrict access by children to pornographic material via the Internet. The petition was submitted in December 2004. Opponents of this petition claim that given the outcomes of Internet censorship it is possible that further restrictions on Internet usage will not have the outcome desired by this conservative organisation, but will, rather, further restrict freedom of other usages of the Internet.[citation needed]

Current Policy

On 31 December 2007, Stephen Conroy announced the Federal Government's intention to censor "inappropriate material" from the Internet.[15] Under the proposed system any Australian who subscribes to an ISP would receive a "clean" version of the Internet. The Federal Government's stated aim is to protect children from accessing violent and pornographic websites. However, such a system was proposed in 2006 and was rejected on the basis that it would slow down the Internet and would not adequately protect children.[16]

On 28 July 2008, an ACMA report entitled “Closed Environment Testing of ISP-Level Internet Content Filtering”[17] showed performance and accuracy problems with the ISP-based filters trialled. Despite these problems, Senator Conroy announced the government will press ahead with a real-world pilot program in furtherance of Labor’s pre-election commitment to force all Australian ISP’s to filter their customers’ Internet access.[18][19]

As of October 2008, the plan includes two blacklists, the first used to filter "illegal" content, and the second used to filter additional content unsuitable for children. The first filter will be mandatory for all users of the internet, while the second filter allows opting out. The government will not release details of the content on either list, [20] but has stated that the mandatory filter would include at least 10,000 sites, and include both the ACMA blacklist and UK's Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) blacklist. In December 2008 the IWF list caused problems when a single Wikipedia article was added to the list, as it prevented most people in the UK from being able to edit Wikipedia.[21]

The ACMA definitions of "prohibited content" give some idea of what could potentially be blacklisted. Online content prohibited by ACMA includes:

  • Any online content that is classified RC or X 18+ by the Classification Board. This includes real depictions of actual sexual activity, child pornography, depictions of bestiality, material containing excessive violence or sexual violence, detailed instruction in crime, violence or drug use, and/or material that advocates the doing of a terrorist act.
  • Content which is classified R 18+* and not subject to a restricted access system that prevents access by children. This includes depictions of simulated sexual activity, material containing strong, realistic violence and other material dealing with intense adult themes.[22]

Thus, blocked content might include not only actual sexual activity, such as that found in X 18 + classified content, but any R 18 + content that does not have a restricted access system to prevent access by children.

Minority senators

While the Family First party and Nick Xenophon have only a single senate seat each after the 2008 Federal Election, both have an extremely strong negotiating position, as the composition of the senate is such that they will often cast a deciding vote.[23]

In October 2008, Family First senator Senator Steven Fielding stated that he "wants hardcore pornography and fetish material blocked under the Government's plans to filter the internet". A spokesman for independent senator Nick Xenophon said "should the filtering plan go ahead, he would look to use it to block Australians from accessing overseas online casino sites, which are illegal to run in Australia". Senator Xenophon has, however, stated that he has serious concerns about the plan, and opposes it in its currently proposed form.[24]

As of October 2008, neither the Liberal Party nor The Greens support the mandatory filtering of the Internet.[25]

A new political party associated with The Eros Foundation, the Australian Sex Party, was launched in November 2008 and plans to campaign on issues including censorship and the federal Government's promised Internet filter.[26]

Live Filtering Trials

The government has committed to trials of the mandatory internet filter before implementation.

On 28 July 2008, an ACMA report entitled “Closed Environment Testing of ISP-Level Internet Content Filtering”[27] showed that of the six unnamed ISP-based filters evaluated:

  • One filter caused a 22% drop in speed even when it was not performing filtering;
  • Only one of the six filters had an acceptable level of performance (a drop of 2% in a laboratory trial), the others causing drops in speed of between 21% and 86%;
  • The most accurate filters were often the slowest;
  • All filters tested had problems with under-blocking, allowing access to between 2% and 13% of material that they should have blocked; and
  • All filters tested had serious problems with over-blocking, wrongly blocking access to between 1.3% and 7.8% of the websites tested.[19]

In November 2008 the Government hired Melbourne company ENEX TestLab, an RMIT spin-off, to design a live pilot test on a real network.[28] In this trial, in which several ISPs have expressed an interest, 10,000 blacklisted "unwanted" websites would be blocked in addition to 1,300 websites identified by ACMA.[29] As an incentive for participation, the department states that participating ISPs "will be recognised for their participation in the Pilot. This recognition will strengthen their brand image with the community." These ISPs will also be allowed to keep any software and hardware purchased by the government for the trial. The trial may include some ability to block or alert on the presence of proxies. Both filtered and unfiltered users will be surveyed as part of the trial.[30]

ISPs participating in the Live Trial will be required to enter into a non disclosure agreement with ACMA[31].

There is some confusion about the scope of the trial. Communications from Senator Conroy's office have indicated that the live trial will occur without the participation of any customers due to concerns about the impact on network performance of filtering 10,000 URLs. Telstra and Internode have stated that they will not take part in the trial. iiNet has stated that it will take part in the trial only to show that the filtering will not work. Optus has stated that it will only test a heavily cut-down filtering model containing only 1300 URLs in a limited geographic area, and customers will be allowed to opt out. Senator Conroy has consistently dodged questions directed to him about the trial in Parliament.[32][21]

Stephen Conroy anticipates that the live trial will also test the filtering of Bittorrent traffic.[33]

The trial was originally scheduled to be commenced in December 2008, but, after the existence of a report critical of the trial became known, the trial was pushed back to mid-January 2009.[34]

Participating vendors

A Swedish vendor NetClean reported that it is offering own product, WhiteBox, to Australia[35]. WhiteBox is a hybrid filtering technology: it routes web traffic through a transparent proxy, but only for IP addresses known to host "objectionable" material[36]. This technology was deemed to be non-invasive, allowing to block individual URLs without slowing down majority of Internet traffic. However, hybrid filtering technology implemented by UK providers[37] caused disruption of Wikipedia operations in the UK in December 2008[38]. In particular, Wikipedia was unable to selectively block vandals by IP address (because all users appeared to come from IP addresses belonging to the proxies). Some proxies simply collapsed under load generated by Wikipedia traffic[39]. Researchers documented some other risks and limitations of hybrid filtering, too.[40]

Response

Mark Pesce believes that the nature of the internet itself has allowed the organization of unprecedented levels of ad-hoc political action ("hyperpolitics") to oppose internet filtering, and that the Federal Government will be forced to back down from the filtering proposal.[41]

The leaders of three of Australia's largest ISPs (Telstra, iiNet and Internode) have stated in an interview that the internet filtering proposal simply cannot work for various technical, legal and ethical reasons.[42] The managing director of iiNet, Michael Malone, has said of Stephen Conroy "This is the worst Communications Minister we've had in the 15 years since the [internet] industry has existed," and plans to sign up his ISP for participation in live filtering trials by December 24 to provide the Government with "hard numbers" demonstrating "how stupid it [the filtering proposal] is."[43]

Dale Clapperton, the current chairperson of EFA, argues that the Labor party cannot implement the clean feed proposal without either new legislation and the support of the Australian Senate, or the assistance of the Internet Industry Association. As the Liberals and Greens have both stated that they will not support legislation, it can only be implemented with the support of the IIA.[44]

International lobby group Netchoice, which is backed by companies including eBay, AOL Time Warner, Oracle and some trade associations, is likely to oppose the mandatory filter.[28]

Internode engineer Mark Newton was the subject of a letter of complaint from Stephen Conroy's office for his participation in a Whirlpool forum showing the negative impact of the filter on internet speeds.[45] He has also pointed out a large number of inconsistencies and errors of fact promulgated by defenders of the plan, including the assertion that other Western countries already have a similar internet filter, and confusion about whether ACMA's black-list consists of "material unsuitable for children", or "illegal material".[46] Of politician's ignorance of the internet, he has said:

"Politicians assume that parents are ignorant about the Internet because politicians are ignorant. Yet parents came to grips with it years ago; the last remaining social group in our country who expresses difficulty with the Internet appears to be baby-boomer Federal politicians, whose child-rearing days are mostly well behind them."[47]

Protests were held on the 1st of November, 2008, with hundreds of people in all capital cities marching on state Parliaments. The next scheduled protest is to be held nationally in all capital cities on the 13th of December.[48] The Digital Liberty Coalition organized most of these protests, with the Melbourne protest being organised by the Australians Against Internet Censorship. The Digital Liberty Coalition has declared an intent to rally monthly until censorship as a whole is taken off the table. The group has gained the media spot light, and is regarded the unifying group to bring together many dissenting organisations.[49][50]

The internet-based political activism organization, GetUp! plans to run mainstream ads and back the offline action of the DLC to oppose the internet censorship plan, as it has previously with the action against Work Choices and to free David Hicks .[51] The group raised an unprecedented $30,000 before the end of the appeal's first day.[48]

Some child welfare groups have attacked the filtering plan as ineffective, stating that resources would be better spent elsewhere, and agreeing with the opposing position presented by Australia's ISPs. Other child welfare groups continue to support the filters;[52] ChildWise has defended the plan as "a victory for common sense."[53]

NSW Young Labor has abandoned the internet filtering plan, passing a motion rejecting Conroy's plans, and calling on him to adopt a voluntary, opt-in, system.[48]

Colin Jacobs, vice-chairman of Electronic Frontiers Australia, said that the pitfalls of mandatory ISP filtering were illustrated by the problems in the UK caused by the blocking of a single Wikipedia page. He also said of the IWF blacklist: "In Australia, not only would the Government have the ability to secretly add any site to our blacklist, but an unaccountable foreign-based organisation would as well".[21]

South Australian Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi, who is extremely conservative in many respects and has attempted in the past to censor Gordon Ramsay's television swearing, does not support the mandatory internet filter. He considers Stephen Conroy's plan to be "so devoid of detail" that it is impossible to form an opinion on it, and says "Parental responsibility cannot and should not be abrogated to government - if it is, our society will only become weaker ... Yes, illegal content should be banned from the web ... but it is wrong to give the government a blank cheque to determine what is appropriate for us to view on the internet."[12]

Clive Hamilton, a senior ethics professor at the Australian National University whose think-tank the Australia Institute was responsible for the initial media attention for a mandatory internet filter in 2003, argues "The laws that mandate upper speed limits do not stop people from speeding, does that mean that we should not have those laws? ... We live in a society, and societies have always imposed limits on activities that it deems are damaging. There is nothing sacrosanct about the Internet."[53][54]

The Howard Government commissioned a number of independent technical experts to examine internet filtering. The resulting report was delivered to the Australian Government in February 2008, and released publicly in December 2008. Professor Bjorn Landfeldt, one of the report's authors, stated that filtering technology simply does not work, as it can easily be bypassed and slows the internet by up to 87%. In response, Stephen Conroy has stated that the report involved no empirical testing, and was simply a literature review of material available from other sources; any problems raised by the report would be tested during the filter trials scheduled for mid-January 2009.[55][56]

See also

References

  1. ^ Tear down Australia's Great Firewall Reef (spiked)
  2. ^ "Broadcasting Services Act 1992 - Schedule 5 Online services". Australasian Legal Information Institute. Retrieved 2007-05-27.
  3. ^ EFA: FOI Request on ABA
  4. ^ EFA: Amendments to FOI Act: Communications Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2002
  5. ^ Internet freedom threatened: the Copyright Legislation Amendment Bill 2004 (Greens Senator Kerry Nettle press release)
  6. ^ "Broadcasting Services Act 1992 - Schedule 7 Content services". Australasian Legal Information Institute. Retrieved 2008-04-13.
  7. ^ "Internet Censorship in Australia". NSW Council for Civil Liberties. Retrieved 2008-04-13.
  8. ^ New South Wales Internet Censorship Bill 2001
  9. ^ NSW seeks to shut down protest sites
  10. ^ Appointments to Net Alert board
  11. ^ AU$189m govt porn blocking plan unveiled
  12. ^ a b http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/new-hurdle-for-net-censorship/2008/12/12/1228585100603.html?page=fullpage New hurdle for net censorship
  13. ^ a b c [http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/communications/soa/Porn-wars-episode-II/0,130061791,120273369,00.htm Porn Wars, Episode 2 (zdnet Australia)
  14. ^ "Internet Pornography And Children" (PDF). Family First Party. Retrieved 2008-03-03.
  15. ^ "Conroy announces mandatory internet filters to protect children". ABC News. 2007-12-31. Retrieved 2008-03-03.
  16. ^ "Labor's Mandatory ISP Internet Blocking Plan". Electronic Frontiers Australia. 2008-02-07. Retrieved 2008-03-03.
  17. ^ http://www.acma.gov.au/webwr/_assets/main/lib310554/isp-level_internet_content_filtering_trial-report.pdf Closed Environment Testing of ISP-Level Internet Content Filtering
  18. ^ http://www.minister.dbcde.gov.au/media/media_releases/2008/minister_welcomes_advances_in_internet_filtering_technology Minister welcomes advances in internet filtering technology
  19. ^ a b http://www.efa.org.au/2008/07/31/efa-says-filtering-trial-a-failure/ EFA says Filtering Trial a Failure
  20. ^ No opt-out of filtered Internet Darren Pauli, Computerworld Australia, October 2008. Reprinted by The Industry Standard
  21. ^ a b c Labor plan to filter the Internet is in shreds (SMH)
  22. ^ http://www.acma.gov.au/WEB/STANDARD/pc=PC_90156#prohib
  23. ^ BBC - Australia Trials National Net Filters
  24. ^ http://media.mytalk.com.au/3AW/AUDIO/291008_Internet_Filter.wma
  25. ^ "Internet Filters could block porn and fetish sites"
  26. ^ Sex industry is launching a new political party
  27. ^ http://www.acma.gov.au/webwr/_assets/main/lib310554/isp-level_internet_content_filtering_trial-report.pdf Closed Environment Testing of ISP-Level Internet Content Filtering
  28. ^ a b Opposition rises to internet filter
  29. ^ Internet Filter to block 10,000 "unwanted" websites (Courier-Mail)
  30. ^ iTWire - Australian Government calls for live Internet filter trial
  31. ^ http://www.dbcde.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/89159/request-for-expression-of-interest.pdf
  32. ^ Aussie government to rig filter testing
  33. ^ Oz net censorship apparatus to target BitTorrent (The Register)
  34. ^ List of banned websites in Thailand and Denmark leaked online
  35. ^ NetClean CEO blog: Australia to block child abuse webpages
  36. ^ NetClean sales presentation
  37. ^ http://www.boingboing.net/2008/12/07/how-the-great-firewa.html Cory Doctorow. How the Great Firewall of Britain works
  38. ^ http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/UK_ISPs_erect_%27Great_Firewall_of_Britain%27_to_censor_Wikimedia_sites wikinews, December 7, 2008. British ISPs restrict access to Wikipedia amid child pornography allegations
  39. ^ WP:IWF#Technical Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/2008 IWF action, technical issues
  40. ^ http://www.laquadrature.net/files/note-quadrature-filtrage-hybride-en.pdf Christophe Espern. Principle, interests, limitations and risks of hybrid filtering in order to block resources on child pornography
  41. ^ Unleashed - Clean Feeds
  42. ^ ISP-level content filtering won't work
  43. ^ Net Censorship Plan Backlash (SMH)
  44. ^ Can Labor implement 'clean feed' without legislation?
  45. ^ Filtering out the fury: how government tried to gag web censor critics - Sydney Morning Herald, 2008 - 10-24
  46. ^ Filter advocates need to check their facts (ABC)
  47. ^ Conroy tangled in his own rabbit-proof firewall
  48. ^ a b c Cash floods in for anti-censorship protests
  49. ^ "GetUp! organises advertising blitz to protest internet filter". news.com.au. December 4, 2008. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  50. ^ "Rally Locations for December 13th // NOCENSORSHIP.INFO // NO INTERNET FILTER". The Digital Liberty Coalition. December 3, 2008. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  51. ^ Activists target Rudd's net censorship plans
  52. ^ Children's welfare groups slam net filters
  53. ^ a b Proposed Filter Criticized in Australia (New York Times)
  54. ^ Liberal tyranny on the World Wide Web (spiked)
  55. ^ Fatal Flaws in Web Censorship Plan, says report
  56. ^ Government rejects negative internet filter report
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