Democratic Socialist Paradise of Australia. Stephen Conroy [redacted] has [redacted] list. The list contained [redacted] and is illegal under the [redacted] Act. Suggestions that the Government was acting like China and Iran were [redacted]. [redacted] [redacted URL]. This message is approved by the Australian Communications and Media Authority and complies with all local laws.
Will ACMA ban Google? There’s only one way to find out. On Thursday evening, I lodged a complaint with ACMA over links in Google to prohibited content on Wikileaks. Links to this content, as detailed in Schedule 7 Section 62 in the Communications Legislation Amendment (Content Services) Act 2007 and pointed out by ACMA on Thursday, constitute an offence and sites may be liable for a fine of up to $11,000 per day per link, or be banned. The links aren’t hosted in Australia, so a fine is probably out of the question. The only alternative is for ACMA to add pages in Google search to the prohibited sites list, as it did with Wikileaks originally, for the crime of linking to prohibited content.
Here’s the catch: if the Google search results are declared prohibited content (which they should be if ACMA is to apply the law evenly to all sites), linking to those search results would also be illegal. Any site linking to the search results becomes illegal, and any sites linking to the sites linking to the search results become illegal … and sometime next year, every site on the internet is illegal in Australia because of the Government’s crusade to save us all from the things they don’t like.
Microsoft can haz standards. Microsoft has launched Internet Explorer 8 (IE8), the latest version of its built-for-Windows web browser. The new version includes a range of features already offered by competitors, including phishing alerts, a private browser option and support for web standards.
The last point is the most important: Microsoft browsers to date have essentially ignored standards and instead implemented their own quirks. The result for a web designer has been the need to often design two versions of a site: one for IE, and one for other browsers.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said in February that IE8 was about regaining market share; while still the market leader by default — because it comes pre-installed in Windows — IE’s share is now below 70%, down from 90% only a few years ago. Australians in the tech community may recall former Microsoft Australia Managing Director Steve Vamos boasting in 2004 that Firefox presented no threat to Internet Explorer, and that extra features didn’t make a browser. The long list of new features in IE8 can be viewed here.
FT takes search seriously. The Financial Times has entered the search space with Newssift, a business search engine that aims to bring the context and meaning that is allegedly missing from traditional keyword-based business news search engines.
The concept is different. Instead of typing a search term and hitting ‘enter’, users are presented with multiple search options — such as Topic, Organisation, Place, Person, and Theme/Keyword — for the term they type in. After selecting the preferred option, the results include analysis, such as whether an article is positive or negative, both charted and with links. For example, if you only wanted positive stories on bonuses at AIG, you can easily reach that point. Each search also extracts related terms, so you can further drill down what you are looking for.
Its only shortcoming so far is the depth of its index. It’s said to have “millions” of pages indexed, but compared to the billions indexed by Google, it feels a little like the internet in 1996. For a site created by a newspaper and printing group, not a bad effort.
Thumbs down for Facebook. Facebook rolled out its new Twitter-like profile pages last week, and like all changes in Facebook, users aren’t happy. 94% of users participating in a Facebook poll (716,000 people) have said they are not fans. [via Valleywag]
No flip of the finger. Cisco has announced its intent to acquire Pure Digital Technologies, the makers of the Flip video recorder for US$590 million. The small, handheld recorders are sold as a cheap and convenient way to capture and upload video to the web, and have found a willing market, taking a 20% market share in the United States. Pure Digital raised US$68 million in venture capital over five years from some of Silicon Valley’s most successful VC firms, including Sequoia, Benchmark, and the Disney backed Steamboat Ventures. Press release here.
Duncan Riley is the publisher of The Inquisitr. Follow him on Twitter here.
“Will ACMA ban Google” — My most visited web page over the last couple of months has been the copy of Schedule 7 to the Broadcasting Services Act on http://www.austlii.edu.au 🙂
ACMA cannot ban Google because it is only empowered to blacklist links and/or content hosted on “content services”. That term is defined in Section 2 of the Scheule, which reads, in part:
“content service” means:
…
but does not include:
… (m) an exempt Internet search engine service …
The term “exempt Internet search engine service” is also defined in section 2:
“exempt Internet search engine service” means an Internet search engine service that:
(a) does not specialise in providing links to, or information about, Internet sites that specialise in prohibited content or potential prohibited content; and
(b) is not a service specified in the regulations; and
(c) complies with such other requirements (if any) as are specified in the regulations.
So as long as Google “complies with such other requirements (if any) as are specified in the regulations” , they’re not an Internet content service, which means the ACMA can’t blacklist them.
Google does have internal procedures for dealing with referrals from government agencies and the public about search results. One occasionally finds notes in search results to say that some links have been suppressed, referring readers to chillingeffects.org. That’s probably a reasonable response for Google to take, in that its search results are unlikely to contain illegal material, and it’s being reasonably open about why.
Of course, the whole question of “illegal material” is an open one. The ACMA certainly doesn’t have the authority to declare _anything_ on the Internet to be “illegal,” that power is held by the courts. Could someone perhaps clue-in the Minister about that? Ta!
– mark
Being a non-conformist and (aged 67) an unreconstructed rebel since my beatnik black stockings circa 1957, I was curious to see what would turn up if I clicked the link from a Sydney Morning Herald article and obtained a list of the banned sites, then paid some visits. I loathe and despise pornography, but suspected there was more out there–political stuff, perhaps, or hushed-up alien landings or true accounts of near-crashes at Mascot or the secrets of the way NSW politicians mismanage . . . Well–all I could find was a heap of stuff on herpetology! What a waste of time! What silly secrets! [yawn]