Is The Internet Censored?

When most people think about Internet censorship, the usual
suspects immediately come to mind : Communist China and
repressive Islamic countries. Unfortunately, Westerners have an
embarrassment all their own : Australia's net censorship law,
established in 2000.

Freedom House, a non-profit U.S. organization dedicated to
spreading human rights and freedom, undertakes regular surveys
on press freedom and censorship. Last year's survey found that
out of 186 countries, 69 had a free press, 51 had a partly-free
press, and 66 countries had no press freedom. Freedom House
suggested that only 21% of the world's population enjoy access
to a truly free press.

Some nations control Internet access through government servers
that censor incoming news and information, and in China "cyber
dissidents" have been imprisoned. Censorship is justified by
claims that Western democratic practices are disruptive to the
social values propagated by the local regime, or that society
must be protected from corruption by outside influences. One
Saudi spokesman for business interests commented that Saudi
Arabia's limited opening to the Internet was delayed until
technology was available to prevent access to information
contrary to Islamic values and "dangerous to our society".
Almost all Internet users in China and the Middle East are
blocked from accessing political Web sites that criticize the
government of their country.

However, Arab and Communist societies have a long history of
suppressing freedom of speech, so internet censorship in these
nations comes as no surprise. However, at the time Australia
first proposed its own form of internet censorship, it was still
considered a country with a completely free press. Freedom House
described the new Internet legislation as a measure that is
"onerous, privacy-intrusive, and will chill freedom of speech".

The Broadcasting Services Amendment (Online Services) Act 1999,
the Australian Internet censorship legislation, came into effect
on January 1, 2000. Under this legislation, broad categories of
Internet content were prohibited. Australians are forbidden from
seeing online any material which could be inappropriate for
children, which includes any material classified RC or X by the
Classification Board. Such content includes material containing
detailed instruction in crime, violence or drug use; child
pornography; bestiality; excessively violent or sexually violent
material; real or implied depictions of sexual activity; and
material which deals with issues or contains depictions which
require an adult perspective. Enforcement of the regulation of
the Internet is complaint-driven. Individuals, organizations, or
the Commonwealth, a State or Territory can make a complaint to
the ABA. If the ABA determines that the "prohibited content" is
hosted in Australia, it will direct the local ISP to remove it.

If the "prohibited content" is hosted outside Australia, the ABA
will notify the suppliers of approved filters of the content in
accordance with the Internet Industry Association's code of
practice. The Australian Internet Industry has a list of 16
approved filters. The criteria for selecting these filters
include ease of installation, ease of use, configurability,
ability for updates in respect of content to be filtered, and
availability of support. Effectiveness is not included in the
selection criteria. The filtering software is offered to
consumers, but is not compulsory.

Testing by Computer Choice (September/October 2000) found that
inocuous content, such as medical sites, were often blocked
while some adult content passed through the filter. For example,
iFilter blocked several Biblical sites, a family and child
mediation service approved by the Australian Federal
Attorney-General, the Institute of Australasian Psychiatrists,
and information about Catholics helping street kids. Apparently
technology is no substitution for parental supervision.

Aside from costing Australians 2.7 million Australian dollars
per year and making their country the laughingstock of the free
world, the legislation has had minimal effect. Despite the
multitude of pornography sites on the internet, there was no
pent-up demand to shut them down; within six months of
introducing of the legislation, the ABA received only 201
complaints about Internet content. By the end of June 2000, 197
investigations had been concluded. Of these, 37 were terminated
due to lack of information (for example, the details provided
with the complaint were insufficient to locate the content). Of
the remaining 160 completed investigations, 93 resulted in the
location of prohibited or potentially prohibited content, while
67 were found not to contain prohibited content. Around one
third of complaints related to content hosted in Australia.

The prohibited content included content hosted in Usenet
newsgroups, which is treated as content hosted in Australia if
the complainant has accessed the content from his or her ISP's
newsgroup server. The ABA issued final take-down notices for 62
postings of Internet content and referred 94 items to the makers
of approved filters. Of the 62 items of Internet content that
were the subject of take-down notices, at least 17 were later
moved to ISPs outside Australia. (ABA Annual Report 2000-2001).
So approximately one-third of the offensive websites were simply
relocated to servers outside of Australia.

In summary, filtering software products are ineffective, and
Australia cannot control websites hosted outside its borders.
The government won the approval of a few moralists who were
happy that "something has been done" about online smut, whether
or not the measures had any real effect.

However, a dangerous precedent has been set, and it is entirely
possible that the categories of prohibited Internet content will
be expanded in the future to ban political websites which
threaten "Australian values".

Incidents of this nature occured almost immediately after the
introduction of the censorship legislation. In a 2001 case,
Victoria anarchist Matthew Tayor was prosecuted by the
Australian Federal police at the behest of the FBI after posting
threatening statements inspired by Jim Bell's "Assassination
Politics" on websites in Ohio and California.

In 2002, NSW Police Minister Michael Costa wrote to the
Australian Communications Minister, Richard Alston, and Justice
Minister, Chris Ellison, requesting that 3 anti-WTO websites
(including Melbourne Indymedia) be shut down or that access to
them be restricted. Costa claimed the sites were providing
information "designed to aid the violent disruption of the
forthcoming WTO meeting in Sydney in November". Alston labelled
the sites "insidious, anti-democratic and interested in causing
violence, mayhem and anarchy".

Alston referred the matter to the Australian Broadcasting
Authority, which cleared Melbourne IndyMedia and Sydney anti-WTO
s11.org website of any wrongdoing. The ABA concluded that
grassroots news and activist websites were operating within the
law and that their rhetoric did not reach a "threshold" of
inciting violence. Costa then declared "we will be doing
everything we can to pursue it internationally". However,
Indymedia is a large network of independently-hosted
international sites, so further action proved impossible.

Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA), an online civil liberties
organization, has described the Federal Government's online
censorship legislation as a failure, and recommended that
Internet censorship legislation "...be repealed and the costly
and failed Internet regulatory apparatus be dismantled."