On the same day that Google stopped censoring search results in China, the Department of Broadband, Communications and Digital Economy published the 174 public submissions it received on the oddly Kafkaesque issue of improving the transparency of creating a secret censorship blacklist. You can see why Minister Conroy couldn’t introduce legislation into the autumn session of parliament as planned. The criticism is comprehensive.
The “Submissions on measures to increase accountability and transparency for Refused Classification material” were meant to focus on how the list of RC material to be blocked by the mandatory internet filter is compiled and managed. A discussion paper put forward six options for consideration.
But many submissions from major players spoke out against the very concept of the mandatory filter, and against the scope of material to be blocked. RC is much broader than child abuse material, and even Senator Conroy’s recently-improved descriptions still give a distorted impression.
Google’s submission, to pick just one example, while agreeing that removing child abuse material is “obvious” said that “a scope that goes well beyond such material is heavy handed and can raise genuine questions about restrictions on access to information”. Google was also concerned filtering may give parents a false sense of security, that it could damage Australia’s international reputation and can be easily circumvented.
“When we receive a valid legal request like a court order to remove content alleged to violate local laws, we first check that the request complies with the law, and we will seek to narrow it if the request is overly broad. Beyond these clearly defined parameters, we will not remove material from YouTube.”
One of Conroy’s key problems is that he’s trying to build an internet censorship system based on the existing cobbled-together classification system. It’s not his fault, but under current law the internet is a movie.
“Australia’s current system for regulating media content has evolved erratically, reactively and inconsistently. The Federal Government has inherited not only the challenges of the new media era but equally the deficiencies of the regulatory regime developed for past media eras,” write Professors Catherine Lumby, Lelia Green and John Hartley in their 20,000-word submission Untangling the Net: The Scope of Content Caught By Mandatory Internet Filtering. The academics, all members of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation, argue we shouldn’t apply this old, inconsistent classification system to the online world without considering its “complex peculiarities”.
“The internet is not a medium: it is a whole new media environment which requires us to rethink how we regulate content, protect vulnerable groups and define the relationship between media consumers and media producers,” they write.
Untangling the Net is explicitly cited in Google’s submission, as well as those from the Internet Industry Association, Yahoo and the Australian Computer Society. Its echoes can be heard in other submissions such as that from the Australian Library and Information Association and other members of the recently-formed Safer Internet Group.
The emerging consensus — apart from the submissions from Christian organisations — is that Refused Classification, and indeed the classification system generally, needs a complete re-think.
“The Government will take the time to ensure that it gets the legislative framework right,” a spokesperson for Senator Conroy told iTWire last week. But could that possibly include a whole new classification system? In an election year? Senator Conroy is due to appear on tonight’s edition of Channel Ten’s The 7pm Project.
P.S. DBCDE originally screwed up the links to many of the submissions by putting a backslash “\” in URLs. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer web browser, which is what the Department uses, automatically changes them to proper slashes “/”. But web browsers such as Firefox and Safari don’t, because it’s a potential security risk. The broken URLs have now been fixed, but getting I wrong wasn’t a good look for the Department responsible for the internet.
I can’t imagine there’s much appetite for the censorship regime in Federal Labor currently.
There are limited votes to gain and plenty to lose, as was demonstrated in the South Australian election. Now the question remains: Are they sensible enough to ditch the plan completely and alienate the small ‘wowser’ vote, or will they take the coward’s option and just let the plan languish?
There’s certainly no way they can go forward claiming that their scheme is technically feasible given the comprehensive weight of submissions against it.
Interesting that the article missed a major development on this issue which occurred on the weekend – SA Attorney General Mick Atkinson stepped down to voluntarily return to the back-bench. Now whether his replacement has similar views to Atkinson or not remains to be seen, but certainly Atkinson was one of the major drivers of this stuff at COAG level.
In a previous professional role, some of my responsibilities included oversight of multimedia properties published by telcos on mobile phones. One of the administrative hoops I had to jump through was attendance at a number of “training courses” held by the Office of Film and Literature Classification.
Picture this exchange. Paraphrased, of course, but this is the basic jist.
OFLC rep: The classification system reflects the values of the community.
Me: Which community?
OFLC rep: Reasonable Australian adults.
Me: Please define “reasonable”.
OFLC rep: Beliefs are reasonable when they’re held by the community.
Me: Which community?
OFLC rep: Reasonable Australian adults.
Me: You haven’t really thought this through, have you?
Great article Stilgherrian. The question is, how do we redefine our classification system?
Firstly, it should be about *classification* not censorship. There should be no right to ban anything. The ACB rhetoric is that “adults should be allowed to read, see and hear what they like” but the reality is far less free particularly when it comes to consensual sexual speech (X-rated films). The recent clampdown on depictions of female ejaculation prove that deciding what is “obscene” is very much in the eye of the beholder. And if the beholders on the Classification Board are a bunch of sexual conservatives, that relegates a vast amount of sexual behaviour and expression to the dustbin.
By all means, give people an idea of content but let the grown ups be grown ups, please.
Secondly, the classification system should not be based on the “morals” of some imaginary “reasonable adult.” Censorship arises from the idea that media can cause moral harm but there’s not a lot of evidence out there to back up the panic. If you are making “evidence-based policy” (as Conroy regularly states) then you need to provide *evidence* that a movie, book, magazine or a site on the internet is causing real harm before you start censoring things. And no, “harm” does not mean a media frenzy whipped up by the eager moral guadians on the Sunrise show.
Thirdly, any classification system should be voluntary, not compulsory. At present media producers are forced to have their content classified and they have to pay for the privilege of being censorsed. In the US, the ratings system is voluntary. It means that smaller producers don’t have an extra financial burden placed on them when distributing their work. Of course, the US has a lovely thing called the First Amendment while we can’t even get a bill of rights on its feet.
Fourth, get rid of rules that give precedence to “art” over “porn”. This nonsense has its roots in the cultural fear of “the prurient interest”; our classification laws deem that Australians should not be encouraged to masturbate. The rules mean that extremely subjective decisions are made over what’s considered to be “art” and therefore pure, and all that other stuff that the dirty pervs watch. Thus, the horribly violent “Baise Moi” can get an R rating because it’s “art” but Jennifer Lyon Bell’s sensual film “Matinee” is banned because it’s “just porn”.
I think we can do without the Classification Board making decisions of taste for the rest of us.
We’re more than ten years into an unfettered internet where Australians have been able to seek out any information and material they wish without government interference or censorship. In theory we should have all gone blind by now. Strangely enough, society hasn’t collapsed.
It should be pointed out that in the past 10 years, individuals have come up with their own ways of dealing with objectionable content. One of those is not seeking it out in the first place (the internet is a “pull” medium after all). The other methods include: not reading comments section, not feeding the trolls, not opening links that look dodgy, just walking away. You know. Personal responsibility. The other options are, of course, filtering software and Google’s Safe Search.
We don’t need the government to be our net nanny. We’re big now. We’ can look after ourselves, thank you very much.