Wall St was down 94 overnight, its biggest fall in a month, while the local market is down 66.
Internet censorship. Nice idea, just not practical.
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When I was 14, if we wanted to see a picture of a n-ked woman, we had to seek out a friend who had nicked a Playboy from his dad’s stash. This would count as a rare and exciting event, so even an “extreme internet libertarian” such as myself can feel a bit uncomfortable with the idea that today’s 14-year-olds are undergoing their adolescence while drinking from the s-xual fire-hose of the internet. Perhaps the only thing Clive Hamilton and I could agree on is that p-rn is by no means the best place to learn about adult relationships. Somewhere along the line this feeling of discomfort has morphed into a full-blown p-rn epidemic, in which “children, some as young as five… act out practices they have seen in p-rn videos or on the net.” The only remedy to this emergency is immediate action by the Government in the form of mandatory internet filtering, and those who oppose it are moral relativists or lack “moral clarity” who would see “every perverse and sick practice that could find a market… including child p-rnography” made available. In fact, the arguments against internet censorship are more nuanced than a simple hostility towards innocent children or a misguided fervour to protect some non-existent right to view child p-rn. Electronic Frontiers Australia strongly opposes the Government’s push to filter the internet, and our real objections, in chorus with many in the ISP industry, media and general public, have been made plain. All along, sadly, those pushing for the plan have shown a stubborn unwillingness to address informed concerns and see all opponents as champions of s-xual deviance. Hamilton’s arguments are a very typical, but unhelpful, example of this. (For the record, contrary to Hamilton’s assertions, EFA strongly opposed the Howard Government’s previous internet censorship initiatives and still does.) It must be easy for those who do not understand how the internet works to imagine that if we try hard enough, we could clamp down on X-rated web sites like we do X-rated films. “What’s so special about the internet?” asked Hamilton yesterday, clearly anticipating an answer of “nothing.” Of course, the internet is special. Traditional media (films, games and magazines) involve tangible purchases from recognised distributors. Books must be printed or imported. Films go through licensed distributors and are shown by a limited number of cinemas who are required to operate under the classification regime, whereas TV and radio are broadcast by a licensed entity. On the internet, however, everybody can be an author, publisher, and worldwide distributor instantly, for free, without training. Censorship of the internet would extend the current regime from one that targets movie studios and book publishers who sell their wares in Australia to all internet users, everywhere in the world. Last year the Classification Board made about 7,000 classification decisions, mostly films. On the other hand, the number of web pages is now in the billions, and it changes on a daily basis. Scaling the Classification Board into a massive Department of Internet P-rnography who classify every page on the web is clearly not feasible. The current ACMA blacklist is only about 1,300 websites and can not be seriously represented as a either a cyber-safety tool or a weapon in the fight against child p-rnography. This leaves us with the prospect of dynamic filtering, where every web page we access is vetted in real-time by unreliable software to see if it passes muster. Although appropriate in an individual household where they can be tailored for the children who live there, at an ISP-level they introduce crippling speed and reliability problems and come at enormous financial cost. These distinctions appear lost on Hamilton who is content to muddy the waters with constant references to violent p-rn and b-stiality. The internet is more than a new-fangled cross between a TV and a newspaper. Regardless of your position on the desirability of applying a censorship system, the practicalities make it impossible. On this, technical experts are unanimous: circumvention of the filter will be trivial and instant, especially amongst the teens for whom Hamilton expresses such alarm. An ISP is not analogous to a TV station that broadcasts content to its users and who can simply be tasked with toning down their programming. When it comes to curious kids, the challenge is simply not amenable to a technological fix, but sits squarely in the domain of responsible parenthood. No other democracy has comparable mandatory internet censorship of this kind - it is more than hyperbole when we point out that it is only countries like China that implement aggressive and secretive technological censorship regimes. An issue to which Hamilton is apparently oblivious is that censorship in other media is an open process and subject to review by the Classification Review Board. This is a safeguard that helps prevent the “slippery slope” into political censorship that Hamilton dismisses. Online censorship decisions, however, are secret. The current ACMA blacklist is guarded, and attempts by EFA to obtain it under Freedom of Information were unsuccessful (the FOIA was subsequently amended to specifically exclude such a list from future requests). It must remain secret, lest the Government be in the business of publishing a directory of hard-core p-rnography for the world to enjoy. Secret and unaccountable censorship of perhaps our most important communications medium is naturally a legitimate civil liberties concern. Perhaps we trust the current Government to resist the political pressure of influential senators, lobby groups or the tabloid media, but this secret censorship power is one that we would be granting to to all future governments as well. Unpleasant material of the kind Hamilton is obsessed with is out there on the internet, but the real world of national policy requires more than righteous disgust and good intentions. Closing your eyes and hoping for the best isn’t a sensible way to achieve a good policy outcome, nor will lambasting those who disagree with you as extremists further the debate. Internet censorship is unpopular because it is technically unworkable, will not achieve its policy aims, and restricts our freedom in real and secretive ways for which no compelling case has been made. When the filter’s proponents are willing to address these real issues, perhaps they will be taken a bit more seriously. |
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13 Comments
I am most grateful for the well informed, calm and well reasoned arguments of Electronic Frontiers Australia against censoring the net. I have made a donation to Electronic Frontiers Australia to support its activism.
“Clive Hamilton is not a dickhead; he just has a misguided approach to a challenging, though overstated, problem.”
Clive has an unworkable solution he is peddling. He flares up like a schoolgirl when challenged. that makes him a dickhead. the real solution to net exploitation is parents being resonsible and the police worldwide cracking down as in the wonderland and beaver dam cases.
ps have you seen what a filter will block?
Very well put. Of course, none of this will make any difference and the dickheads will implement the damned thing anyway. Blerg.
Clive Hamilton is not a dickhead; he just has a misguided approach to a challenging, though overstated, problem.
Thanks, Colin Jacobs, for presenting a well-reasoned rebuttal of Clive’s proposal.
The censorship test in the proposed legislation will be “unwanted content”. If the ACMA keeps it’s unwanted list secret, how long will it before sites with ‘unwanted ideas’ make it onto the list? By way of example. Australian Professor Frederick Tobens is the holocaust denier recently pulled off a plane in the UK in response to a German issued Interpol warrant. Denying the holocaust in the UK is not illegal. It is in Germany. Tobens’ website is in Australia. He’s never been to Germany. This is what happens when ideas are deemed unwanted. What would the ACMA do if the Anti Defamation League wanted Tobens’ site black listed? Senator Conroy is well advised not to open this censorship can of worms under the pretext of ‘good intentions’ to limit porn. The staged 911 event was the pretext for the US the Patriot Act which tore up the Constitution, restricting freedoms and civil liberties. Ask David Hicks about ‘good intentions’, which serve the advancement of tyranny. We might trust the ALP today. How about some future administration that might seize Australian democracy from the middle of the road whilst most of the people are asleep? Freedom of information is our guarantee of freedom. No to Internet Censorship.
No Bev - tank YOU.
I think Clive Hamilton is a brave boy very high standards, I guess as I am now a Senior Person, I can see what young, person has to cope with on the internet and the Media concerning Porn, its not just the young but older people to who live on their own. As I know both sides of life I am now very careful what I say to people about relationships because their is quite a difference of views in our society, but I would advice any one to think of their mental state when they talk about this subject, and stay well and happy in relationships and keep on learning or ask a good C hristian person to help you or to discuss it with you, so rest of your life you can be content and live in peace tanks clive
By the way, the title’s a bit misleading. If you were wondering why EFA thinks net censorship is a “nice idea”, we don’t. In this case censorship is definitely a cure worse than the disease, and only a small group of people (CH included) think society is diseased enough to warrant it.
During the early noughties I was teaching Year 12 English Studies at Katherine High School in the Northern Territory. A very useful website for studying Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice was The Republic of Pemberley (http://pemberley.com/). One year the site was blocked by the NT Department of Education. Apparently their black list was outsourced to a U.S. firm in silicon valley.
Presumably the website was inappropriate because it mentioned prejudice or pre-marital sex or shot-gun marriages. It was possible to correct this gross case of censorship and incompetence and have the site put on their ‘White List’ but it was too late for the students’ examination revision. This is the inevitable result of politicians and bureaucrats trying to decide what we should have access to on the Internet.
More at ‘Labor View from Bayside’
Totally agree. I recently updated my Computer Associates anti virus program and when I next logged on, discovered it came with a Parental Controls net nanny. These controls not only slow down my computer by more than 50%, they block most of everything. In my bookshop I was trying to find a book to order for a client. The book was a very popular children’s book for 15-year-olds. No go said the Parental Controls, this is a book that includes ‘dating’. I have since gleefully uninstalled the Parental Controls.
Although Hamilton responded to some of the comments made in respect of his article yesterday, neither his article nor his comments addressed the technical issues of censoring the internet. This seems very silly to me - surely the merits of any policy decision must include assessment of the practicality of the policy as much as the underlying philosophy? I’m personally ambivalent on the philosophical issues around censoring violent sex images or images of illegal activities, but I’m deeply concerned about any moves which involve blocking non-offensive material. Currently, there is no software which can censor offensive imagery while not also incorrectly identifying harmless material as requiring censorship. We would not accept traffic signals which were only 95% effective. We would be furious with level crossing signals which gave 5% false positives and let through 5% of trains without activating. Why would we be willing to accept ‘clean feed’ which also allowed thousands of web pages to be blocked unnecessarily, and possibly deliberately for purely political reasons?
Don’t despair Michael! while guys like Colin Jacobs keep writing good sense, and dickheads like Clive Hamilton keep writing garbage, surely good sense will prevail.
Hooray, a reasoned and thoughtful articulation of the (I believe) insurmountable challenges facing internet censorship!
Thanks!