Does Internet Censorship Exist?

 Does Internet Censorship Exist?

Common perception holds that authoritarian Islamic nations and Communist China are the most notorious culprits when it comes to Internet restriction. In 2000, Australia passed a law imposing online censorship, which is embarrassing for Westerners.

Consistent with its mission to promote human rights and freedom, the non-profit American organization Freedom House conducts surveys on press freedom and censorship on a regular basis. Of the 186 nations surveyed last year, 66 did not allow any kind of press freedom whatsoever, 51 allowed some degree of press freedom, and 69 did not allow any press freedom at all. A only 21% of the global population supposedly has access to a fully free press, according to Freedom House.

Certain countries manage Internet access by use of government servers that filter incoming material and news; for example, "cyber dissidents" in China have been imprisoned. The local regime's social norms are said to be threatened by Western democratic practices, which is used as an excuse for censorship. Another argument is that society needs protection from corruption from outside forces. Saudi Arabia's limited entry to the Internet was postponed until technology could be developed to block anything that is opposed to Islamic norms and "dangerous to our society," according to one Saudi spokesman for commercial interests. Websites critical of the government in China and the Middle East are inaccessible to nearly all Internet users in those regions.

Censorship of online expression is not surprising in Arab and Communist countries, though, because of their lengthy tradition of repressing free speech. Nonetheless, Australia was still thought of as a nation with an entirely free press when it initially suggested its own method of internet control. The newly proposed laws governing the Internet were deemed "onerous, privacy-intrusive, and will chill freedom of speech" by Freedom House.

Australian law that restricts access to some websites went into force on January 1, 2000, with the Broadcasting Services Amendment (Online Services) Act 1999. This law outlawed a lot of different types of online material. There is a blanket ban on all content rated RC or X by the Classification Board in Australia, meaning that no one under the age of 18 may view it online. This content includes things like explicit or implied sexual content, child pornography, bestiality, violent or sexually violent content, depictions of sexual activity (real or implied), and issues or content that require an adult perspective.

A complaint is the primary tool for enforcing Internet regulations. The Australian Bar Association (ABA) hears complaints from individuals, groups, or even the federal government, a state, or a territory. To have the "prohibited content" removed, the local ISP must be instructed to do so by the ABA if it is found to be hosted in Australia.

In line with the code of practice of the Internet Industry Association, the ABA will inform the providers of approved filters of the content if the "prohibited content" is housed outside of Australia. There are sixteen filters that have been certified by the Australian Internet Industry. Installation convenience, usability, configurability, support availability, and the capacity to update filtered content were the deciding factors in choosing these filters. The selection criteria do not take effectiveness into account. The filtering software is provided to customers, but they are not obligated to use it.

According to testing conducted by Computer Choice in September/October 2000, the filter was found to frequently block sensitive content like medical sites while allowing some pornographic information to flow through. For instance, iFilter restricted access to many biblical websites, an Australian Federal Attorney-General-approved service for family and child mediation, the Institute of Australasian Psychiatrists, and details regarding Catholics' efforts to aid children living on the streets. It would appear that technology cannot replace the need for parental oversight.

There has been little change despite the fact that the law is costing Australians $2.7 million year and has made their nation an international laughingstock. Even though there were a lot of pornographic websites out there, nobody wanted them taken down. The ABA only got 201 complaints regarding pornographic content on the internet in the six months after the bill was introduced. A total of 197 investigations were completed by the month's conclusion in 2000. For example, 37 of them were let go because there wasn't enough information in the complaint to find the content. There were 160 investigations that were finished; 67 of them did not find any illegal or potentially forbidden information, while 93 of them did. Content hosted in Australia was the subject of about a third of the complaints.

The content that was deemed forbidden includes Usenet newsgroups, which are considered to be hosted in Australia if the complainant has accessed them through their internet service provider's newsgroup server. The ABA forwarded 94 items to the developers of authorized filters and finalized takedown notices for 62 online posts. At least 17 of the 62 pieces of content that were eventually removed from the Internet were transferred to ISPs in countries other than Australia. in the ABA Annual Report for the years 2000–2001. Consequently, over a third of the objectionable websites were just moved to servers situated outside of Australia.

To sum up, Australia has no control over websites housed outside its borders, and filtering software products do not work. Some moralists were pleased that "something has been done" about online smut, which helped the government gain their support, regardless of how effective the measures actually were.

But now we have a horrifying precedent, and it's not out of the question that political websites that undermine "Australian values" may be added to the list of banned online content in the future.

Nearly immediately following the passage of the censorship laws, incidents similar to this occurred.
After posting threatening messages on websites in Ohio and California, anarchist Matthew Tayor of Victoria was charged by the Australian Federal police at the request of the FBI in 2001. Tayor had been influenced by Jim Bell's "Assassination Politics" in his writing.

Three anti-WTO websites, including Melbourne Indymedia, were either taken down or had their access restricted in 2002 after a letter from NSW Police Minister Michael Costa to the Australian Ministers of Communications, Richard Alston, and Justice, Chris Ellison. “Designed to aid the violent disruption of the forthcoming WTO meeting in Sydney in November” was the information that Costa asserted the websites were disseminating. Sites liked these were "insidious, anti-democratic and interested in causing violence, mayhem and anarchy," to quote Alston.

After Alston took the case to the ABA, they found no fault with the anti-WTO s11.org sites in Sydney and Melbourne IndyMedia. Based on the fact that their speech did not approach a "threshold" of encouraging violence, the ABA found that activist and grassroots news websites were acting lawfully. We will be doing all in our power to pursue it abroad," Costa continued. Unfortunately, such measures were not feasible due to the fact that Indymedia is a vast network of independently-hosted worldwide sites.

An online civil liberties organization called Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA) has criticized the Federal Government's online censorship laws, calling them a failure. EFA has recommended that these laws "...be repealed and the costly and failed Internet regulatory apparatus be dismantled."

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