Australian government to 'block' gay websites

[bluedawg12]

Get ready for the new rightwing buzz word: cyber safety. :eyes:
Censorship, once it starts, tends to expand.

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-11686.html
Australian government to 'block' gay websites

By Emma Cullingford • March 20, 2009 - 17:20

Australia could block gay websites

A blacklist of banned websites drawn up by the Australian government includes gay sites.

The government is proposing a law that requires internet service providers to filter and block inappropriate content, such as that related to terrorism and abusive images of children. It has drawn up a list of sites to be blacklisted.

However, webpages such as gay and straight porn sites, YouTube links and certain Wikipedia entries have been included in its scope.

The blacklist of about 2,395 banned sites was obtained by Wikileaks, a website which allows anonymous whistleblowers to leak official documents.

Wikileaks plans to publish the list on its website, having previously revealed the blacklists from Denmark, Norway and Thailand.

The Sydney Morning Herald also gained access to the list and stated about half of the banned websites are not associated with child pornography.

The sites include online poker portals, YouTube links, gay and straight porn sites, Wikipedia entries, euthanasia pages and the homepages of private companies and medical practitioners.

The founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, told the newspaper that secret censorship systems were “invariably corrupted.”

He pointed to the example of more than 1,200 sites criticising the Thai royal family which were on the Thailand censorship list, originally created to prevent child pornography.

Mr Assange obtained the blacklist after ACMA added Wikileaks to its blacklist following the site’s decision to publish the Danish blacklist.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) is investigating the leak of the blacklist and considering a range of actions including possible criminal prosecution.

Senator Stephen Conroy, the communications minister, told the Sydney Morning Herald the leak and publication of the blacklist would be "grossly irresponsible" and undermine efforts to improve cyber safety.

Senator Conroy said: "Under existing laws the ACMA blacklist includes URLs relating to child sexual abuse, rape, incest, bestiality, sexual violence and detailed instruction in crime. No one interested in cyber safety would condone the leaking of this list."

The blacklist is provided to makers of internet filtering software that parents are able to install on their PCs. However, if the government proceeds with its proposed internet filtering scheme, sites on the blacklist will be blocked for all Australians.

[Chulanowa]

1. The article plays it wrong

It portrays this as an abuse of the "internet safety" laws. That's bull. This sort of censorship is exactly what these laws are for. There are vastly more effective ways to fight things like kiddie porn without restricting the freedom of information of those uninvolved. Cyber-bans are nothing but censorship laws with a friendly talking point

[bluedawg12]

2. I'm not following you.

[Chulanowa]

3. Okay, let me try again

These "cyber safety" laws are simply laws that allow the government to ban citizen access to any documents on the internet that the government feels are "unsafe". When presented to voters, this is usually stuff like child pornography, phishing sites, and the like.

However, these laws always leave lots of wriggle room for the government to censor anything and everything it feels the need to censor. Some examples are given in the article.

The article approaches these laws as if their intent really is to "protect" internet users. They're not. The intent of these sorts of laws is to restrict internet user's access to information. It's easy enough to police stuff like child pornography - There are no shortage of bandwidth providers, citizen's groups, and government agencies actively devoted to finding such sites and closing them down at the source, rather than simply blocking them.

Internet censorship is exactly that - It's not a protection, it's an attack.

[bluedawg12]

4. Either way it's censorship.

Whether they go to the source and close them down, or block them, it's still censorship.

I wonder if the problem of going to the source to close down sites, is that they may originate from places where a particular government has no authority?

This raises the question of intent to censor, I wonder what people think. Should there be any government censorship at all, or should that be left to the end users to perhaps have some sort of filter in place?