Networker: Criminalising the internet

The internet is a dangerous place. Fortunately, legislation before
the South Australian Legislative Council is here to protect us from "references
to and depictions associated with issues such as suicide, crime, corruption,
marital problems, emotional trauma, drug and alcohol dependency, death
and serious illness, racism, religious issues’‘, under threat of $10,000
fines.

That, of course, requires some explanation.

Two years ago, in its search of votes for the GST, the federal Coalition
government agreed to adopt one of the most restrictive laws in the world
regarding internet content. This censorship legislation came into effect
on January 1, 2000. It provides the government with powers to order the
removal of material which can be purchased in print in any local newsagent
from internet web sites. As well as passing this legislation, the federal
government requested state governments to pass complementary legislation.

Such a bill was introduced into South Australian parliament last November
by SA Attorney-General Trevor Griffin.

The legislation takes a simple approach. Among other things, treat adults
as minors and put police in charge of setting censorship values.

The way it does this is to criminalise the provision of any content
considered unsuitable for minors online, even if this content is only made
available to adults. So you can walk in to a cinema or video rental shop
and get access to R rated films. But if identical material is provided
solely to adults from a South Australian based internet site, this is illegal.
The maximum penalty for undertaking what should be a legal activity is
$10,000, twice that for actually providing R rated films to minors.

The measure of what is unsuitable is content that is, or would be, classified
R by a majority decision of the Office of Film and Literature Classification.
The sentence in the opening paragraph of this column is from an OFLC annual
report describing what sort of “adult themes” get a film an R rating.

The implications of South Australian police in guessing what rating
a web site would get was shown earlier this year. In January police raided
a bookshop and seized a book which they claimed had photos that should
be rated unsuitable for minors. When the OFLC then ruled that the book
should be generally available, the police appealed, and had a restricted
rating applied. So South Australia's police force has donned the mantle
of judge of public morals. (This is the same police force investigated
by Scotland Yard after the killing of a gay Adelaide academic following
an anti-war demonstration in the early 1970s.)

Electronic Frontiers Australia is leading a campaign against the bill.
EFA is an organisation devoted to protecting freedom of speech on the internet.
Extensive analysis of the bill (including background information used in
this column) is available at its site, <www.efa.org.au>.

BY GREG HARRIS (gregharris_greenleft@hotmail.com)

From GLW issue 443