Not going to enter the debate as to morality nor the legality in this case but wanted to say thanks.

A~

As long as adults cannot opt-out, this isn’t a debate about online safety for children.

But a wider question I’d ask is this: Is it the Government’s place to make decisions about what’s appropriate for a 6 year old?

It’s a serious question. Other countries don’t have Government authorities making these kinds of judgements. Are our parents uniquely unqualified to make those kinds of decisions for themselves? Our our 6 year olds uniquely vulnerable? What is it about Australian families that’s so different from (say) British families which necessitates the Government stepping in to separate Internet content into age-buckets?

There’s plenty of existence-proof of other jurisdictions full of eminently successful families devoid of such Government “assistance.” So what’s the justification for mandating it here?

(would, for example, CyberPatrol suffer if the Australian Government wasn’t sending them URLs?)

– mark

I think the logic behind this decision is not necessarily unsound.

I don’t have a problem with the Classification Board’s decision in itself or ACMA’s decision in itself either. This is graphic content, and there’s nothing wrong with labelling it accordingly. I only have a problem with the consequences of those decisions, which lead to varying restrictions for everyone (not just six year olds).

@Ben:

… nobody would actually want to watch something like that …

It would be difficult to find someone who watched content like this for pleasure. But of course this content wasn’t distributed to provide entertainment. It was distributed so that the world could see, in graphic detail, what it means when a newsreader says, ‘A protester was killed in Iran today…’

There are a multitude of angles to see the decision as. One is that (almost) nobody would actually want to watch something like that, so what difference does it make if it is banned. But one overriding angle is that if we allow the government to ban everything ‘bad’ that everyone agrees on, where do we draw the line? We can’t, as many people have different interpretations of ‘bad’ content. One person may be shocked and horrified at a T&A movie, while another will be bored and want something more exciting. One may think that all religions are cults and thus evil, while others (quite rightly) are entitled to believe in whatever they want (as long as they don’t tell us we are going to hell if we don’t subscribe to their beliefs).

Your comment is very true in that governments typically see the only solution is to ban things to make problems go away.

Also, the censorware will become screwed up when angry Australians want to tear it down, meaning that ISPs will have to purchase additional censorware and invest in additional maintenance costs, all of which taxpayers and ISP customers will have to fork out. If the government is serious about censoring whatever they don’t like (and evidently they do otherwise it would never have come this far), i easily see this policy going into the $200m figure and even higher depending on whether they concede defeat or not. Whirlpool states that there are currently 225 ISPs in Australia, and with all of those ISPs being required to censor the internet, that is a lot of money on something that is useless, unwanted, and downright dangerous to a democratic society.

Australia’s censorship system is so messed up on so many levels that it can’t help but to hoover-up political material, regardless of whether or not that’s what politicians intend.

It doesn’t matter whether the Government intends to censor political content (or content to which reasonable Australians don’t object), as Senator Conroy insists it doesn’t. If it passes laws that have that practical effect, the rest doesn’t really matter.

This is the answer to any Government-weenies who claim that the Government isn’t interested in political censorship. Absolute bollocks. Australia’s censorship system is so messed up on so many levels that it can’t help but to hoover-up political material, regardless of whether or not that’s what politicians intend.

The “Biggles9″ (Illingsworth) case in Qld has shown that someone can be criminally prosecuted for making child abuse material available even if the Classification Board says it’s rated MA. The “Peaceful Pill” euthanasia classification decision shows that even RC material is legal to own and view, and is no way associated with child abuse.

Put all these examples together and you end up with a big mess, but one thing is very clear: Any argument that says Australians broadly support the existing classification system can only be made with caveats, and the Government has no intrinsic moral authority to decide what should and shouldn’t be banned.

– mark