By Rachel Chalmers
Australia looks set to adopt more stringent controls on internet content than even Singapore or Malaysia. The Australian Senate has passed the Broadcasting Services Amendment (Online Services) Bill 1999 by a margin of 34 to 32. The vote split exactly down party lines, with two independents siding with the government. The Bill now passes to the House of Representatives where, as the government has the majority, it is expected to pass. If it does, internet service providers will be required to block or remove adult web content or face crippling fines. In effect, the legislation mandates a proxy server for the entire nation, and forces a home-grown and thriving adult content industry offshore.
Civil libertarians in Australia and elsewhere are appalled. The government has turned Australia into the global village idiot, said Danny Yee, a spokesman for Electronic Frontiers Australia. EFA documents point out that as of March 1999 there is to be no censorship of the internet in Malaysia, while Singaporean ISPs are required to block access only to 100 high impact pornographic sites… as a statement of societal values. Wired notes that only China, Iran and Burma have more restrictive net content laws than the one Australia proposes.
Yet Australia’s Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Senator Richard Alston, welcomed the Senate vote. The Bill meets the Government’s objective of helping protect Australian citizens, especially children, from illegal and highly offensive material, he said, but it does so without placing an undue burden on the internet industry. This seems unlikely. Alston claims amendments to the Bill have addressed many of the complaints made about it. Private emails no longer fall within its purview, while the reasonable steps ISPs are required to take have been clarified, he points out.
That may be true, but some of the most serious criticisms leveled at the law remain unanswered. One particularly cogent point was made by Brendan Scott, a lawyer with the high-tech Sydney firm Gilbert & Tobin. Forcing the content out of Australia also means that inbound traffic is increased, he wrote in an April. Australian carriers, he explains, are currently forced to buy content from US carriers, but must give Australian content to the US carriers for free. The US carriers justify this by pointing out that the traffic ratio is roughly 70:30 in their favor.
Recently this ratio has been gradually improving, Scott notes, putting pressure on US carriers to move to a fairer interconnection regime… Increasing traffic inbound into Australia knocks the leg out of Australian carriers’ arguments for US carriers to play fair. Interconnection payments play a fundamental role in shaping the information economy. That the Government can contend that this regulation won’t inhibit the development of the online economy defies belief.
Not one of the amendments applied to the Bill addresses this deep flaw with the measures it proposes. Nor do they answer the critics’ other serious objection: that in seeking to protect its country’s children, the Australian government may succeed only in infantilizing its adults. It’s not of course about child pornography, that’s already illegal, EFA executive director Darce Cassidy told ComputerWire. It’s about repressing what adults can see and read. It places Australia in the order of China and Saudi Arabia.
