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Why You Should Be Afraid Of Internet Censorship in Australia, Even If You Don’t Live There
Editors Note: This is a guest post by Duncan Riley, Australian entrepreneur,respected blogger and editor of The Inquistr . We are delighted to have someone of his calibre and experience share his thoughts on the potential consequences on Australia’s Internet censorship plans.
The spectre of broadscale Internet censorship in Australia has been covered previously here on The Next Web before, but many outside Australia may wonder: why should you care if you don’t live in Australia.
If you’re not aware of what’s proposed, the short version is that Australia is proposing to introduce a compulsory firewall that filters content based on a blacklist of banned sites.
What’s going to be on that list is even now still somewhat confused. The Censorship Minister Stephen Conroy has stated that all Refused Classification content will be banned, which in Australia would extend to computer games unsuitable for children (Australia has no adult (R18+) rating for computer games,) small breasts, information about euthanasia, discussion forums on anorexia, as well as the usual nasties of child porn. To complicate matters, a site may be refused classification in Australia if it links to a site that is refused classification, which could literally result in half the internet being blocked.
Notably though the system will work primarily on a reporting basis; that is, sites to be banned are reported to authorities, so it’s not clear whether sites en masse will be banned up front, or the ban will be creeping. Within that, the process is secretive, with little to no ability to appeal a ban; a previous leak to Wikileaks showed that a current list (Australia has a banned sites list currently but it’s not used in censorship) included the website of a dentist.
But why should you care if you’re not in Australia? After all, it’s just those crazy Aussies doing their own thing, at least that’s how some sites have reported it.
You should care because of the precedent it creates, and the global flow on effect such a precedent would create. This is particularly relevant to those in the UK, where many The Next Web readers are based.
Australia and the UK have a common history going back years. It was only in 1983 under the Australia Act (a joint act in both the UK and Australian Parliaments) where appeals to the UK Privy Council were cut off for Australian Court appeals. Both countries share a similar legal system and rule of law; although Australia cherry picked some parts of the American system when declaring independence in 1901 (particularly the establishment of a Senate vs a House of Lords,) Australia is still very much British in many ways, not unlike New Zealand (which is more British) and to a lesser extent Canada.
With a shared history, both countries commonly look to each other on matters of law and legal matters. Of note is the reference by the Australian Minister to the United Kingdom’s current internet censorship. Yes, if you didn’t realise it, the UK already has some basic internet censorship.
The UK model isn’t nearly as bad as what is proposed in Australia; that is, child porn is already filtered in Britain on a voluntary basis by ISP’s. As a whole I have no objection to this, but of note is that it is small scale filtering, filtering that doesn’t affect internet speeds for example.
The flow of the UK-Australia relationship isn’t one way though. The House of Lords started looking at similar internet censorship to Australia in December 2009. Even in non-censorship matters, an apology for the deportation and abuse of orphan British children to Australia has bought pressure for the UK to do something similar.
But lets look at an actual UK legal case. In the case of Harrods vs Dow Jones:
“The judge held that accord to English law, publication had taken place within the Court’s jurisdiction. This applied to both the print copies of the US edition received by subscribers in England, and, referring to (the Australian case of) Dow Jones v. Gutnick, the hits on the relevant page of the Wall Street Journal webiste, no matter how small the number of copies distributed or number of hits.”
That’s not the only one, but I highlight it because the case referred to in Australia was a highly controversial and internet based one; that is, something published in the United States was applicable under local law as it could be read on the internet. In itself, the case is highly risky, in that you could be sued for something you published in your own country about someone else in another country under their local law.
It’s not completely relevant to censorship law, but relevant in that both the UK Parliament and UK courts are willing to consider relevant Australian law and cases in justification of their decisions. Both our countries retain strong links: what happens in the UK can influence Australia, and vice versa.
Given the UK Government has already considered three strikes on downloads, and the House of Lords has already considered Australian like internet censorship, it’s not a big jump to make that the implementation of internet censorship in Australia may be used to justify similar measures in the United Kingdom.
Indeed, implementation of internet censorship in Australia will not only be used in the United Kingdom, but across not only the anglosphere, but the full range of so-called free democratic societies as well.
I’ve focused on the UK-Australia experience, but many other countries use others in justification of their proposed policies. Even if we look to the United States today, the so-called bastion of free speech, the proposed net neutrality laws exempt bittorrent traffic. While the free speech clause in the American constitution might limit a local version what is proposed in Australia, where as it could become law in the UK and across Europe, the line comes down to technicalities and the old pandoras box.
The danger here for the United Kingdom, much of Europe, and perhaps even the United States is one of precedent. Despite what you may think of Australia, this country is one of the most freest, safest, western democracies in the world. Although we may not be perfect, we don’t suffer the police state that monitors citizens via CTV in the UK, nor do we suffer from onerous laws and the risk of false imprisonment like the United States. Nor are we anything like what is shown in “The Presuasionists”. What we may be though is a pandoras box for Western democracies. Once you open that box here, the rest may well follow.
You should be concerned about what is happening here for one simple reason: you don’t want it to happen where you live. Think Communist domino theory, but with western democracies, and you’ll be close to the risk Australian censorship presents to the country you live in.
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“Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficient. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.” – Louis D. Brandeis
“The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.” – John Gilmore
Because of the rise of these and other threats to the Internet world wide, more and more people are turning to solutions such as our VPN proxy https://connectionvpn.com/
“Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficient. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.” – Louis D. Brandeis
“The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.” – John Gilmore
Because of the rise of these and other threats to the Internet world wide, more and more people are turning to solutions such as our VPN proxy https://connectionvpn.com/
I can imagine the UK government doing this next. They have so much to lose.
Oh boy, what's next? hmm, lets just see..
This is quite close to what's already decided but postponed (due do public protest) in Germany.
The law states that it should only be used against child pornography, but once a framework exists, it's bound to get used for much more.
It says the first step will be compulsive DNS level filtering done by all providers (and some are quite eager to comply), but it also states that the filtering has to be effective, and DNS level isn't…
They should make child porn possession/download legal. All these is nothing but censorship.
In any case I will take my hats off if it stops anything, as you pointed out the UK already has child porn filtering at ISP level and it does not look as if they have managed to bring down child porn.
They should make child porn possession/download legal. All these is nothing but censorship.
In any case I will take my hats off if it stops anything, as you pointed out the UK already has child porn filtering at ISP level and it does not look as if they have managed to bring down child porn.
To support the precedent case, a recently concluded legal case in Australia involved most of the major global movie studios and a local national television stations suing a mid-large ISP (iinet). The studios claimed that the ISP did not do enough to stop people pirating movies via the internet and wished iinet to be responsible for policing the behaviour of its users.
The studios chose iinet as they were large enough to be significant, but small enough to be financially challenged by a court case standing up to some of the largest companies in the world. If the verdict went in their favour they would quickly use it as a precedent across the Australian ISP market.
They would also use it as a precedent in courts around the world to attempt to get other jurisdictions to change the treatment of ISPs as carriers to being responsible for what they carried – not unlike a phone company being responsible for monitoring every phone call.
Equally Australian politicians regularly point to overseas filtering regimes, then suggest we go quite a bit further. I can see overseas politicians taking the same approach if Australia's government puts in place a mandatory filtering law.
I can't understand this global trend. I come from Poland and our government try to push anti-gambling bill. Yes, that's right! Anti-gambling! “By accident” the prime minister want to introduce internet censorship. The pretext is children's porn, phishing and gambling(!). The gambling is to be prohibited in the internet! It's ridiculous that 20 years after another Poland's independence (collapse of communism) they want to introduce censorship! And they who want to do that are so-called “liberal” politicians.
I truly understand your concern. This is not Australian people's matter but global trend. I hear about Germany, France, USA, now Poland, Australia and more! I'm furious about it! #ożeszkurwajapierdolę! 
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Could be time for a bit of civil disobedience from us Australians to retain our freedom by showing the government just how unhappy we are about their secret Internet Filter. It worked for Gandhi in India didn't it?
A Belgian senator just introduced a private member's bill to establish web monitoring/filtering plus “graded retort” plus web tax (according to the French 'Hadopi' model). Contagion… Gresham said “Bad money drives out good”, today we could say “Bad ideas drive out good ones”.
It's reported that the main reason for the filter is child porn, which I don't think anyone thinks should be available. If they were serious about doing something about it, instead of passively and reactively banning child porn sites, they should be using the internet to actively and agressively finding the people responsable and charging them, (internationally too). That would be far more effective, but they have reasons apart from their report reasons.
While I understand the need to fight child pornography in all it's forms, I can not and will not ever trust any government (Christian based or otherwise, but they all have a religious/moral agenda) to filter the internet. I don't need to be told what to read, watch, do or think. I have never been one to protest, but this living in a nanny country is getting old. I want to drive fast. I want to watch video with swearing and nudity and sex. I think I'm old enough to make decisions for my self.
When did the Government go from being representatives of the people to being the semi-religious minority morality enforcement agency?
I know a lot of people say that if we don't like it we should vote them out. The problem is that we have a two party system….. and they control both parties. So maybe we should stage a coup, but they took our guns away. Hell, we can't even carry a swiss army knife unless we can prove we use it for work.
So what's next for the people of Australia?
Speed limited, front wheel drive cars, a limit of two beers per day, $5 gambling limits? I could go on, but the point is that our government never seems to outright ban things, they just put so many restrictions on them that the suck all of the fun out of them.
Now we are set to loose the internet….. The only free medium we have left.
I really don't understand if why governments are so worried about imposing limitations on internet. There are lots more things which need attention like global warming, terrorism, hunger, etc etc
Even if you put limitations, there are ways we can still access using VPN.
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Monday, February 8, 2010
With influential proponents recently calling for a newly regulated world wide web, we got a preview of how that might look this past weekend after both Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com were completely blocked to many Internet users in New Zealand.
The block was only removed early this morning following a raft of complaints after both websites were unavailable on many ISP’s since Friday.
As the New Zealand based InfoNews website reported yesterday, both of Alex Jones’ flagship websites were blocked by ISPs using Asia Netcom for their international internet traffic.
It is important to stress that we receive emails on a weekly basis informing us that our websites have been blocked as “hate speech” or “offensive material” at Internet cafes, libraries, transport hubs, workplaces, and numerous other buildings not only in the United States but across the world. The censorship is being done at the ISP level, so whereas some people in a particular country will still have access, others will be blocked.
There seems to be a tendency to ban everything…
Heaps of things are censored because of fear of offending advirtisers ( I like Ralph Nadar ) and being branded as racist ( I like Pauline Hanson too ) …….. Uncensored , which is printed in New Zealand is a great magazine and the only way you can have a good laugh these days is to use , the can’t be censored internet …….. offensive jokes and laughter stop me looking at pornography .
This is shit!
I agree…what next? blue cheese?