You too can dob-in a webpage!
What is ACMA? Until recently, I thought it was a skin disease. Then I got an education.
The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) is the Australian Federal bureaucracy that will be in the cockpit of Internet censorship enforcement if the Rudd/Conroy plans for a mandatory ‘filter’ ever get off the ground. According to its website, ACMA is:
a government agency responsible for the regulation of broadcasting, the internet, radiocommunications and telecommunications, with responsibilities including:
- promoting self-regulation and competition in the communications industry, while protecting consumers and other users
- fostering an environment in which electronic media respect community standards and respond to audience and user needs
- managing access to the radiofrequency spectrum
- representing Australia ’s communications interests internationally
ACMA’s Vision is that, by 2010, ACMA wants to be, and be recognised as: the world’s leading converged communications regulator; and a forward-looking and efficient organisation that supports and encourages a dynamic communications sector.
Take good note of that Vision before you read the rest of this story…
ACMA already plays a role in censoring the Internet. But without the proposed ‘mandatory filter’ in place, it’s rather hamstrung. It can’t just pull the plug on websites or pages it decides to ban. It has to ask…
Yesterday, ACMA approached the Australian ISP of the popular Whirlpool forum and demanded one page to be taken down. Actually, it was really after a single hyperlink on the page. It wanted the link deleted.
Abortion TV pictures of human embryos: gruesome... but should this really be ILLEGAL?
The offending link pointed to a page on an American anti-Abortion website, which shows gruesome pictures of aborted foetuses. Not the kind of material you’d put on wallpaper, for sure. Even so, is this really something that no Australian should ever see?
So, why on earth was ACMA so concerned to knock out this particular link?
The answer is found in a fascinating article by Fran Foo in Australian IT. I’ll try to summarize. ACMA wanted the link snipped because someone had complained to ACMA about that gruesome webpage back in January. That someone is a participant on the Whirpool forum. When ACMA responded positively to his ‘complaint’, he publicized the outcome (post since deleted) – on Whirlpool. His motive: to demonstrate that ACMA is not simply concerned to ban ‘child porn’. In this case, ACMA’s ban really did amount to political censorship.
By exposing the outcome of his ‘complaint’ on Whirlpool, the maverick activist presumably embarrassed ACMA. Even so, few people noticed the story at the time. I’m interested in Internet censorship, but didn’t look up the banned anti-abortion website page when this was first mentioned in late January.
But that was before ACMA went completely berzerk. This week, it took aim with a blunt axe. It didn’t content itself with complaining directly to Whirlpool, the website and forum. It complained to Whirpool’s Australian ISP. Whirlpool since complied and the post containing the link has been snipped from the forum.
Within a few days, thousands upon thousands of Australians will have heard about this story and checked out the notorious photographs. If you want to take a look, there’s a link on Mike Meloni’s article and doubtless more will be posted in the coming days. Apparently, as the law stands, publishing a fresh link on a different webpage is not an offense; each page must be the subject of a separate complaint before ACMA can require new take-downs.
If the intention was to stop more Australians from viewing these disturbing images, it has backfired big-time. Of course, that was entirely predictable at the outset. Are there anti-abortion activists inside ACMA, perhaps? Or are these folk really as silly as they appear to be?
"Please Mr Rudd, give us a decent Communications Minister"
The Rudd Government’s fumbling moves towards censorship of the Internet have become the laughing stock of the nation – and those who keep insisting the scheme is only about pornography are exposed as fools or knaves.
Prime Minister Rudd should fire Senator Conroy as Communications Minister, close the page on his failed polices and start afresh. Australia’s communications are too important to leave to the whims of an over-grown schoolboy and bureaucrats with a vested interest in the endless expansion of their petty empire.
If we must keep these people in employment, how about a return to the original New Deal plan: digging holes and filling them in again?
It’s futile as well, but relatively harmless and can have health benefits.
