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Censorship -- decide
for yourself
INTERNET users will have enough to think about already on January 1, 2000. They
will be hoping the Y2K bug has minimal effect on their activities. If the prospect of
broken servers, black-outs and empty ATMs was not enough, they now have to contend with a
very different Y2K bug.
It is called Internet censorship. Senator
Richard Alston's plans to block access to X-rated content and check the age of anyone
wanting to see R-rated material are likely to come into force on Y2K day. That is when the
Australian Broadcasting Authority is to be given the
power to investigate complaints about content, not just on the Web, but in newsgroups and
chat rooms as well. The ABA will then pass on legitimate complaints to the National
Classification Board who will rate the content . . . just as it does with non-Net media
such as film and TV.
My opinion is that Senator Alston's regime is wrong and will not work. I think:
* The Net is being treated as something it is not, that is TV. Its two million Australian
users already know that the Net is not some passive babysitter like TV.
* The perception driving censorship is that the Net is full of bomb-making recipes, hate
sites and smut. You nearly always have to want to get this sort of material to see it.
Rarely will someone come across offensive content by accident. In the case of sex sites,
the US c|net organisation recently found the proportion of sex sites to other content had
dropped. And nearly all sex sites exist to make money so it is not possible to explore
them without credit card payment.
* Senator Alston has no specific technology in mind when talking about filtering out X
sites. This will be left to ISPs. The majority say existing filtering technology will be
easily by-passed by determined creators of offensive content. They also point out the
amount of material to filter is forbidding.
* Net censorship will probably make access for Australians more expensive and slower as
ISPs are forced to apply filters.
* Senator Brian Harradine's fear, expressed in Senate committee meetings
two years ago, is that Australian children will be able to see full-length movies or TV
shows on the Net which have not been rated. The technology that would allow such massive
bandwidth is some way off, possibly five years at least, and is very expensive. Digital TV
will provide the fastest Net access, but it is a horse of an entirely different colour
(back to the TV v computer argument).
* Parents might assume that with Net censorship they no longer have to understand or
supervise what their children see and do in the belief that ISPs are screening out the
nasties. But as ISPs have pointed out, any present filtering will probably be ineffective
and nasties will still be there.
As I said, all this is my opinion. The great thing about the Net is that it is adult and
democratic enough to provide plenty of resources for people to make up their own minds.
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