The Australian government wants to ban illegal or X-rated material on web sites hosted in Australia, and to limit access to pornography to people over 18. In a soundbite straight out of the early nineties, communications minister Richard Alston said: It’s not impossible to find bomb recipes or pedophile lists; indeed, if it’s totally unrestricted, there’s nothing to stop snuff movies and anything else that you might otherwise regard as totally unacceptable coming through on the internet.
Internet service providers point out that far more such material is hosted overseas than in Australia. Besides, they say, they have about as much control over web content as telecommunications companies have over the content of phone calls, which is very little indeed. Alston apparently considers this a feeble excuse. Under the proposed law, ISPs would be required to remove sites hosted on their networks if the Australian Broadcasting Authority received complaints. á
