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A lot has been said regarding the controversy surrounding the Federal Government’s plan to impose mandatory Internet censorship. This is in line with the Australian government’s crime prevention efforts in combating child pornography, sexual violence, adult ads and content. The said censorship plan, which has a $ 44.2 million budget, is compulsory, which basically means users will not be allowed to opt out from this filtering policy.
According to Stephen Conroy, Minister for Broadband, Communications and Digital Economy, the censorship program includes two tiers. The first level entails the mandatory filtering for all Australian citizens and the second level involves the “optional” censoring of adult material.
While the fundamental goal of this program can easily be accepted as exemplary, the stringent measures has definitely drawn pervasive criticisms from ordinary citizens, human rights advocates, and Internet users. This measure, being compulsory, will curb the freedom of speech and may be used by the government to ban websites that are deemed undesirable. Strong public objections were further fuelled when some innocent and perfectly legal websites such as the dentist services website in Queensland has been found to have been included in the blacklisted sites. With the wide scope of the restriction, one can easily mix up perfectly with legal websites like Adult Dating, and have a tendency to over block.
Google has also made public their concerns regarding this issue, stating that while it is understandable to ban child pornography websites, the mandatory filtering measures that have a scope that goes well beyond child abuse issues easily raise serious concerns on the imposed restrictions affecting the citizen’s rights on access to information. Another organization, the Pirate Party issued a not-so-subtle statement declaring their indignation on the said restriction bringing up concerns on the impact of the ISP-level censorship on the community as well as raising questions on inadequate monitoring of possible gratuitous manipulations from the government.
We take the same stance on this one. While the government presents a perfectly legitimate public concern – which is the need to protect the children from pornography, the scope has been too broad for comfort. Yes, we agree that parents need assistance in making the Internet a safer place for their children, but it has to be voluntary. Given the fact that in most households, all members use the same computer, an adult search is not necessarily related to child pornography. It would seem that the most effective measure here is for parents to adapt a combination of education and supervision when children are using the Internet.
And as for banning all inappropriate websites, one can’t help but question, is the Australian government in the ideal position to screen and decide what should be banned? Does any of the inappropriate material include topics on sexual health, etc.? It would seem that with the compulsory filtering policy, the Government has taken a one size fits all approach and clearly presents a very poor substitute for attention and discretion of parents.
Sure, we can impose censorship to curb pornography. Denmark, Finland, Germany and Italy have all successfully done so but with one big difference: it’s voluntary. Why can’t we have the same thing? |
