Internet censorship in Australia

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Internet censorship in Australia primarily refers to the proposed banning of certain Internet materials by the Australian Federal Government, through restriction of site access on all Australian Internet Service Providers.

In 2008, the Australian Labor Party introduced a policy of mandatory Internet filtering for all Australians. While the policy has not yet come into force, it has generated substantial opposition, with only a few groups in support. The Labor Party does not have enough votes in the Senate to enact any legislation to support the filter, so that the filter has "effectively been scuttled" unless the government is able to implement the filter by other means.^[1][2]

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) maintains a blacklist, since leaked,^[3] of websites which would form the basis for the mandatory filter. It has issued a take-down notice and threatened fines of $11,000 per day to at least one website hosted in Australia which contained a link to material on this blacklist.^[4]

On Tuesday 15 December, 2009, it was announced that new legislation, entitled "Measures to improve safety of the internet for families", would be introduced to support mandatory Internet filtering.^[5]

Contents 1 Legislation 2 Enforcement 3 Topics targeted for censorship 3.1 Euthanasia 3.2 Video Games 4 Net Alert scheme 5 Policy of compulsory internet filtering 5.1 History 5.2 Policy of current Federal Government 5.3 Two Blacklists 5.4 Leaking of the ACMA blacklist 5.5 Minority senators 5.6 Live filtering trials 5.7 Filtering Technology 5.8 UK IWF blockage of Wikipedia 5.9 Opinion Polling 5.10 Anti-censorship campaigns 5.11 Response 5.12 Attacks on Government Websites 6 See also 7 References 8 External links

[edit] Legislation

Proposed Australian laws on Internet censorship are sometimes referred to as the Great Australian Firewall, Rabbit Proof Firewall^[6] (a reference to the Australian Rabbit Proof Fence), Firewall Australia or Great Firewall Reef (a reference to Great Barrier Reef and the Great Firewall of China)^[7]

A collection of both federal and state laws apply, but the most important are the provisions of Schedule 5 of the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 inserted in 1999 and since amended.^[8] Under this regime, if a complaint is issued about material "on the Internet" the ACMA is allowed to examine the material under the guidelines for film and video. If the material would be classified R18+ or X18+ and the site does not have an adult verification system, or would be refused classification, and is hosted in Australia, the ABA is empowered to issue a "takedown notice" under which the material must be removed from the site. If the site is hosted outside Australia, the site is added to a list of banned sites. This list of banned sites is then added to filtering software, which must be offered to all consumers by their Internet Service Providers.

In October 2000, Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA) attempted under the Freedom of Information Act (FOI) to obtain documents relating to the implementation of the internet filter. While a few were released, many were not, and in 2003 new legislation, "Communications Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2002", was passed by the Liberal government and four independents, and opposed by The Greens and the Australian Labor Party. While the stated reason for the bill was to prevent people accessing child pornography by examining the blocked sites, this bill exempted whole documents from FOI, many of which did not reference prohibited content at all. EFA state that the bill was designed to prevent further public scrutiny of internet filtering proposals.^[9][10]

The Copyright Legislation Amendment Bill 2004 was passed on 9 December 2004 by the Australian Senate, and extended copyright reform beyond the Australian-US free trade agreement (FTA). The impact will be felt most heavily on Internet service providers. The Internet Industry Association and EFA are actively opposing these efforts.^[11][12]

In 2006 the Federal Parliament passed the Suicide Related Materials Offences Act, which makes it illegal to use the internet to promote suicide.^[13][14]

In July 2007, Schedule 7 of the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 came into effect.^[15] Schedule 7 is similar to Schedule 5, however it covers all forms of 'content services' (such as mobile phones). Under Schedule 7, if a content provider provides material that is rated R18+ or MA15+, then the provider must verify the age of the person accessing the material. It remains illegal in Australia to host material that is rated X18+ or that has been refused classification. By contrast, X18+ material is legal to buy and own in Australia if it is in print or other traditional form. Organisations such as the New South Wales Council for Civil Liberties are highly critical of these Schedules and have called for their repeal.^[16]

Some state governments have laws that ban the transmission of material unsuitable for minors.^[17][18] In New South Wales, internet censorship legislation was introduced in 2001 which criminalises online material which is unsuitable for minors. In 2002, the New South Wales Standing Committee on Social Issues issued a report recommending that the legislation be repealed, and in response the New South Wales government stated that the legislation "will be neither commenced nor repealed" until after the review of the Commonwealth Internet censorship legislation had been completed.^[19]

In December, 2009, it was announced that new legislation, entitled "Measures to improve safety of the internet for families", would be introduced in Autumn 2010 after public consultation. The new legislation will support mandatory Internet filtering, improve transparency of processes surrounding refused-classification content, provide grants for ISPs to provide further, optional, filtering to consumers, and provide for counselling and education.^[5]

[edit] Enforcement

A number of take down notices have been issued to some Australian-hosted websites. According to Electronic Frontiers Australia in at least one documented case, the hosting was merely shifted to a server in the United States, and the DNS records updated so that consumers may never have noticed the change. As far as foreign-hosted content goes, small numbers of complaints have reportedly been issued. Consumer takeup of filtering software has been minimal, and pornography of all kinds remains freely available on the World Wide Web from foreign sites. The Internet outside the World Wide Web also continues mostly unaffected, with Usenet binaries continuing to be hosted locally, and Bittorrent use continuing unabated. However, some Usenet newsgroups are required to be blocked and ISPs in general adhere to this legal requirement.

In 2002, New South Wales Police Minister Michael Costa attempted, without success, to shut down three protest websites by appealing to the then-communications minister Richard Alston.^[20]. The Green Left Weekly stated these were Melbourne Indymedia and S11 websites, and that the Australian Broadcasting Authority cleared them of breaching government regulations on 30 October 2002.^[21]

Also in 2002, and under the terms of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975, the Federal Court ordered Dr Fredrick Töben to remove material from his Australian website which denied aspects of The Holocaust and vilified Jews.^[22][23]

In 2006, Richard Neville published a "spoof" website that had a fictional transcript of John Howard apologising to Aboriginal Australians. The website was forcibly taken offline by the government with no recourse. ^[24]

After the devastating bushfires in February 2009, details about an alleged arsonist were posted to the internet by bloggers. Victorian police deputy commissioner Kieran Walshe has asked the state Director of Public Prosecutions to examine the possibility of removing these blogs from the internet, as they might jeopardise any court case.^[25]

In March 2009, after a user posted a link to a site on ACMA's blacklist on the Whirlpool forum, Whirlpool's service provider, Bulletproof Networks, was threatened with fines of $11,000 per day if the offending link was not removed.^[4] The same link in an article on EFA's website was removed in May 2009 after ACMA issued a "link-deletion notice", and the EFA took the precautionary step of also removing indirect links to the material in question.^[26]

After the Australian government announced plans to mandate Internet filtering in Australia in December 2009, an anti-censorship website hosted on stephenconroy.com.au (The full name of the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy) was taken offline by auDA after only 24 hours of being published online. ^[27][28]

[edit] Topics targeted for censorship

[edit] Euthanasia

On 22 May 2009 it was disclosed in the press, citing wikileaks.org, that the Australian Government had added Dr Philip Nitschke's online Peaceful Pill Handbook (hosted at www.yudu.com [10]), which deals with the topic of voluntary euthanasia, to the blacklist maintained by the Australian Communications and Media Authority used to filter internet access to citizens of Australia.^[29]

[edit] Video Games

In June 2009, it was confirmed that the Government's proposed internet censorship regime would block downloadable games, flash-based web games and sites which sell physical copies of games that do not meet the MA15+ standard, such as Ebay and Amazon.^[30]

[edit] Net Alert scheme

In December 1999, the federal government established Net Alert, an organisation with the role of providing a safe internet experience for young people, and to research filtering and other related technologies.^[31].

In August 2007, the Prime Minister John Howard and then opposition leader Kevin Rudd announced that $189 million dollars would be allocated to Net Alert, with $84.8 million allocated to allow libraries and individuals to download free filtering software. The plan was to eventually include ISP-level blocking, but the communications minister Helen Coonan stated at the time that there were technical problems.^[32]

Late in 2008, Stephen Conroy stated that the Net Alert scheme had not been successful, with few people downloading the free filtering software. In December 2008 it was shut down,^[33][34] although support for existing users will continue until 2010.^[35]

[edit] Policy of compulsory internet filtering

[edit] History

Wikinews has related news: Portions of Wikileaks, Wikipedia blocked in Australia

In 1999, the Federal Government attempted to get an internet censorship regime together to gain support from minority senators to assist with the sale of Telstra, but this censorship plan did not work.^[36]

In 2001, CSIRO was commissioned to examine available ISP-based internet filters, and decided that they did not work.^[36]

In March 2003, the Fairfax papers The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald reported the results of a survey taken by The Australia Institute of 200 children, which found that many of them had found pornography on the internet. Over the next few days was a storm of media and political attention, and there were calls for finer internet filters and tougher censorship laws. Analysis of the report showed little new material, and only 2% of girls had admitted being exposed to pornography, while the figure for boys was 38%; such a difference between boys and girls would seem to indicate that inadvertent exposure was rare, contrary to the conclusions of the report. After the controversy died down, no new action resulted from the new report, media attention, or political speeches.^[36]

In 2003, the Labor Party opposed filtering at the ISP level, with Labor Senator Kate Lundy stating

"Unfortunately, such a short memory regarding the debate in 1999 about internet content has led the coalition to already offer support for greater censorship by actively considering proposals for unworkable, quick fixes that involve filtering the internet at the ISP level."^[37]

Shortly before the 2004 federal election, two political parties issued new policies on Internet censorship. The Australian Labor Party's policy involved voluntary adherence by users. The Family First Party released a far stricter policy of mandatory filtering at the internet service provider level.^[38]

The Australian Family Association petitioned the Australian Federal Government in 2004 to further restrict access by children to pornographic material via the Internet. The petition was submitted in December 2004.

On 21 March 2006, the Labor party committed to requiring all ISPs to implement a mandatory Internet blocking system applicable to “all households, and to schools and other public internet points” to “prevent users from accessing any content that has been identified as prohibited by the Australian Communications and Media Authority”.^[39]

On the same day, the then communications minister Helen Coonan stated that to

“filter the Internet will only result in slowing down the Internet for every Australian without effectively protecting children from inappropriate and offensive content”^[39]

[edit] Policy of current Federal Government

On 31 December 2007, Stephen Conroy announced the Federal Government's intention to introduce an ISP-based filter to censor "inappropriate material" from the Internet to protect children. In this announcement, it was stated that adults could opt out of the filter to receive an uncensored internet.^[40]

In May 2008, the government commenced an $82 million “cybersafety plan” which included an additional mandatory filter with no opt-out provision. This ISP-based filter aims to stop adults from downloading content that is illegal to possess in Australia, such as child pornography or materials related to terrorism.^[41]

In March 2009, Stephen Conroy dismissed suggestions that the Government would use the filter to crack down on political dissent as "conspiracy theories". He stated that the filter would only be used to remove "refused classification" (RC) content, using the same rationale as existing television, radio and print publications, and that the Senate could be relied upon to provide rigorous assessment of any proposed legislation.^[42] However, Labor's policy statement on the issue ^[43] and statements made by Stephen Conroy on the ministry website ^[44] and in ministerial releases ^[45] contradict this.

[edit] Two Blacklists

As of October 2008, the plan includes two blacklists, the first used to filter "illegal" content, and the second used to filter additional content unsuitable for children. The first filter will be mandatory for all users of the internet, while the second filter allows opting out. The government will not release details of the content on either list,^[46] but has stated that the mandatory filter would include over 9,000 sites, and include both the ACMA blacklist and UK's Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) blacklist. In December 2008 the IWF list caused problems when a single Wikipedia article was added to the list, as it prevented most people in the UK from being able to edit Wikipedia.

The ACMA definitions of "prohibited content" give some idea of what could potentially be blacklisted. Online content prohibited by ACMA includes:

• Any online content that is classified RC or X 18+ by the Classification Board. This includes real depictions of actual sexual activity, child pornography, depictions of bestiality, material containing excessive violence or sexual violence, detailed instruction in crime, violence or drug use, and/or material that advocates the doing of a terrorist act.
• Content which is classified R 18+* and not subject to a restricted access system that prevents access by children. This includes depictions of simulated sexual activity, material containing strong, realistic violence and other material dealing with intense adult themes.^[47]

In answer to a question in Parliament in October 2008, the government in January 2009 stated that the black list contained 1370 websites. 674 were related to child pornography, and the remainder would be classified as R18+ and X18+.^[48]

Two websites are known to be on the ACMA blacklist after they were submitted to ACMA for review. When ACMA responded with the advice that these sites had been placed upon its blacklist, ACMA's response was in turn posted back to the Internet by the original submitters, with the purpose of demonstrating that political content would be censored by the mandatory filter. One was an anti-abortion website, with details posted to Whirlpool, and the other was a copy of Denmark's own internet blacklist, with both the blacklist and ACMA's response posted on Wikileaks. The web hosting company for Whirlpool, Bulletproof networks, was threatened with $11,000 in fines per day if the link was not removed, so Whirlpool voluntarily removed the link to the restricted site. Civil liberties campaigners regard the inclusion of these sites on the blacklist as a demonstration that it is not difficult to get a site placed on the blacklist, and that the blacklist includes sites which are themselves not illegal to view.^{[4][49][50][51]}

[edit] Leaking of the ACMA blacklist

March 18, 2009: WikiLeaks publishes a list which is

"derived from the ACMA list for the use of government-approved censorship software in its "ACMA-only" mode."^[52] Included in the list were "the websites of a Queensland dentist, a tuckshop convener and a kennel operator".^[53]

19 March 2009, Australian media sources report that the ACMA blacklist has been leaked to WikiLeaks

"The seemingly innocuous websites were among a leaked list of 2300 websites the Australian Communications and Media Authority was planning to ban to protect children from graphic pornography and violence."^[54]

ACMA stated that the list which appeared on the Wikileaks website was not the ACMA 'blacklist', as it contained 2300 URLs: the ACMA list contained only 1061 URLs in August 2008, and has at no stage contained 2300.^[55] The ACMA report on the issue noted the similarities between the two lists, yet addressed only the claim reported in the media that the list was the blacklist. The report only contains the following claims about the two lists:

• "The list provided to ACMA differs markedly in length and format to the ACMA blacklist."^[55]
• "The ACMA blacklist has at no stage been 2300 URLs in length and at August 2008 consisted of 1061 URLs."^[55]

20 March 2009, WikiLeaks published another list, this time closer to the length published by ACMA. Wikileaks believes that the list is up-to-date as of the time of publication^[56]

March 25, 2009, Stephen Conroy has stated that this list closely resembles the ACMA list.^[57]

26 March 2009, Bill Henson's website, despite the PG rating given to his photographs by the same body, appeared on the blacklist due to a technical error according to Stephen Conroy^[58] which was met with light laughter by the audience.^[59] The ACMA has since released a statement claiming the technical error was a "computer system caching error" and further stated "found that this is the only URL where a caching error resulting in the URL being incorrectly added to the list."^[60]

[edit] Minority senators

While the Family First party and Nick Xenophon have only a single senate seat each after the 2007 Federal Election, both have an extremely strong negotiating position, as the composition of the senate is such that they will often cast a deciding vote.^[61]

In October 2008, Family First senator Senator Steven Fielding was reported to support the blocking of hardcore pornography and fetish material under the Government's plans to filter the internet.^[62] A Family First spokeswoman^[who?] confirmed that the party wants X-rated content banned for everyone, including adults.

A spokesman^[who?] for independent senator Nick Xenophon said

"should the filtering plan go ahead, he would look to use it to block Australians from accessing overseas online casino sites, which are illegal to run in Australia".

Senator Xenophon has, however, stated that he has serious concerns about the plan, and in February 2009 withdrew all support, stating that "the more evidence that's come out, the more questions there are on this." He believes that money would be better spent educating parents and cracking peer-to-peer groups used by pedophiles.^[37][63]

As of October 2008, neither the Liberal Party nor The Greens support the mandatory filtering of the Internet.^[64]

Greens senator Scott Ludlam asked questions related to the trial at the end of 2008, for which the Government provided answers in January 2009:^[48]

• When asked about the stated public demand for Internet filtering, the government responded that the filtering was an election commitment
• The internet filter would be easy to bypass using technological measures
• 674 out of 1370 blocked sites on the mandatory list relate to child pornography; 506 sites would be classified as R18+ or X18+, despite the fact that such content is legal to view in Australia

Ludlam believes that the Labor party may have hit a wall of "technical impossibility", and the filter does not suit its purpose:

"This isn't a great advertisement for the workability of any large scale scheme. The proposal has always been unpopular, now perhaps the Government is starting to come to grips with what the industry has been saying all along: if your policy objective is to protect children online, this is not the way to go about it."^[48]

In February 2009, opposition communications spokesman Nick Minchin obtained independent legal advice confirming that a mandatory censorship regime would require new legislation.^[37] In March 2009, after the ACMA blacklist was leaked and iiNet withdrew from the filtering trials, he stated that Stephen Conroy was "completely botching the implementation of this filtering policy".^[65]

A political party associated with The Eros Foundation, the Australian Sex Party, was launched in November 2008 and plans to campaign on issues including censorship and the federal Government's promised Internet filter. ^[66]

[edit] Live filtering trials

The government has committed to trials of the mandatory internet filter before implementation.

On 28 July 2008, an ACMA report entitled “Closed Environment Testing of ISP-Level Internet Content Filtering”^[67] showed performance and accuracy problems with the six unnamed ISP-based filters trialled.^[67] EFA analysis of the report showed that:^[68][69]

• One filter caused a 22% drop in speed even when it was not performing filtering;
• Only one of the six filters had an acceptable level of performance (a drop of 2% in a laboratory trial), the others causing drops in speed of between 21% and 86%;
• The most accurate filters were often the slowest;
• All filters tested had problems with under-blocking, allowing access to between 2% and 13% of material that they should have blocked; and
• All filters tested had serious problems with over-blocking, wrongly blocking access to between 1.3% and 7.8% of the websites tested.^[69]
• The trial tested speed on a simple 'black listed or not' basis for all simulated clients on all systems, yet the report outlines the ability of the filters to provide customised filtering to each client (as would be required by the two levels of filtering which ACMA is proposing) which would significantly impact test results.^[67]

In November 2008 the Government hired Melbourne company ENEX TestLab, an RMIT spin-off, to design a live pilot test on a real network.^[70] In this trial, in which several ISPs have expressed an interest, 10,000 blacklisted "unwanted" websites would be blocked in addition to 1,300 websites identified by ACMA.^[71] As an incentive for participation, the department states that participating ISPs <blocquote> "will be recognised for their participation in the Pilot. This recognition will strengthen their brand image with the community."

These ISPs will also be allowed to keep any software and hardware purchased by the government for the trial. The trial may include some ability to block or alert on the presence of proxies. Both filtered and unfiltered users will be surveyed as part of the trial.^[72]

ISPs participating in the Live Trial will be required to enter into a non disclosure agreement with ACMA^[73].

Communications from Senator Conroy's office have indicated that the live trial will occur without the participation of any customers due to concerns about the impact on network performance of filtering 10,000 URLs. Telstra and Internode have stated that they will not take part in the trial. iiNet has stated that it will take part in the trial only to show that the filtering will not work. Optus has stated that it will only test a heavily cut-down filtering model containing only 1300 URLs in a limited geographic area, and customers will be allowed to opt out.

At the end of 2008, Stephen Conroy anticipated that the live trial would test the filtering of Bittorrent traffic,^[74] but in March 2009 he stated that the proposed filters would not be effective on peer-to-peer traffic.^[75]

The trial was originally scheduled to be commenced in December 2008, but, after the existence of a report critical of the trial became known, the trial was pushed back.^[76] On 11 February 2009 a new filtering trial was announced, initially with the ISPs iPrimus Telecommunications, Tech 2U, Webshield, OMNIconnect, Netforce and Highway 1. Testing with each ISP will take place for at least six weeks once filtering equipment has been obtained and installed, and iPrimus expects the trial to begin in late April or early May with five or ten thousand participants. The trial will be opt-in, with ISPs asking for volunteers, although all WebShield customers already receive a filtered service. None of the top three ISPs, Telstra, Optus and iiNet, have been included in the trial, although both iiNet and Optus did expect to be involved at a later time. iiNet withdrew itself from consideration for the trial in March 2009, with Michael Malone giving as reasons the media storm around the leaked blacklist, the changing nature of policy, and "confused" explanations of the trial's purpose.^{[77][78][79][80]}

In July 2009 some results from the trials began to emerge. Five of the nine participating ISPs reported minimal speed or technical problems associated with the trials. Some ISPs reported that thousands of their members had voluntarily participated in the trials; others, that less than 1% had participated, and that this was not a representative sample. Some customers complained about over-blocking, and withdrew from the trial. One example was the blocking of the pornography website redtube.com: ACMA refused to confirm or deny if the site was on the list, or if the site was legal.^[81] Leading Australian statistic experts^[who?], however, have labelled the trials as unscientific, lacking in proper methodology, unrepresentative and "about the worst way you can do it" ^[82].

In December 2009, the results of the filtering trial were released. Stephen Conroy stated that "The report into the pilot trial of ISP-level filtering demonstrates that blocking RC-rated material can be done with 100 percent accuracy and negligible impact on internet speed"^[83] However, concerns have been raised about the report: only a small minority of ISP users participated; the trial did not test using any high-speed internet connections similar to those available with the National Broadband Network; there is evidence that the filter was evaded; and with only 600-700 sites on the RC blacklists, then the effect of the filter would be marginal at best.^[84]

[edit] Filtering Technology

The Swedish vendor NetClean reported that its own product, WhiteBox, will be trialled in Australia.^[85] WhiteBox is a hybrid filtering technology which routes web traffic, for IP addresses known to host objectionable material, through a transparent proxy.^[86].

Some risks and limitations of hybrid filters have been identified, including heavy congestion when blocks are applied to busy web servers, and a procedure to use the filter itself to identify all sites on the blacklist.^[87]

Some vendors^[who?] have approached smaller ISPs and offered to provide them with required equipment to take part in the filtering trials.^[48]

[edit] UK IWF blockage of Wikipedia

The IWF blacklist will form part of the mandatory blacklist used in Australia. In December 2008, hybrid filtering technology implemented by UK providers^[88] caused disruption of Wikipedia operations in the UK when a Wikipedia page was added to the IWF watchlist.^[89] When Wikipedia blocked UK vandals by their IP address, this block affected all users coming from these IP addresses. As these IP addresses belonged to the filter proxies, some Wikipedia users in the UK, depending on their ISP, attempting to edit an article without a login name were blocked. Some proxies also collapsed under load generated by Wikipedia traffic.^[90]

After widespread coverage, the IWF removed the Wikipedia page from its blacklist, citing the availability of the image on other websites as a factor:

"IWF’s overriding objective is to minimise the availability of indecent images of children on the internet, however, on this occasion our efforts have had the opposite effect ... We regret the unintended consequences for Wikipedia and its users."^[91]

[edit] Opinion Polling

The ISP Netspace asked their customers to participate in a survey to see what they thought about the Government's mandatory filtering proposal. Almost 10,000 responded, and a clear majority of customers were against mandatory filtering in any form. A minority of customers expressed an interest in purchasing a filter from their ISP.^[92]

In February 2009 a national telephone poll of 1100 people was conducted by Galaxy and commissioned by GetUp!. It found that only 5 per cent of respondents want ISPs to be responsible for protecting children online, and only 4 per cent want Government to have this responsibility.^[37]

[edit] Anti-censorship campaigns

Protests involving hundreds of people were held on the 1 November 2008, with people in all capital cities nation wide marching on state Parliaments,^[93] and on 13 December 2008, in all capital cities.^[94] The Digital Liberty Coalition organised these protests, declaring an intent to rally continuously until censorship as a whole is taken off the table. ^[95][96]

The internet-based political activism organisation, GetUp!, which has previously run mainstream campaigns action against Work Choices and to free David Hicks, is backing the offline action of the DLC to oppose the internet censorship plan. GetUp! first called for donations during December 2008 to raise awareness of internet censorship in Australia. The group raised an unprecedented $30,000 before the end of the appeal's first day.^[93]

Getup! teamed up with award winning ^[97], non-traditional and digital creative agency Fnuky Advertising to launch a campaign in Australia to raise awareness of the Australian Government's flawed plans to introduce internet censorship. The campaign impersonated the Australian Federal Government by presenting internet censorship as a mock consumer product branded as Censordyne,^[98] a parody of the toothpaste brand, Sensodyne. Fnuky Advertising's Creative Director, David Campbell selected toothpaste as the platform for the campaign after Stephen Conroy stated the purpose of internet censorship in Australia was to 'Fight Moral Decay'. The Censordyne campaign was launched online during July 2009 by a single Twitter post by fake Stephen Conroy, a popular impersonator of the Australian Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy. The campaign featured an online video ^[99], a Censordyne product website ^[100] and a Censordyne search engine ^[101]. Within 24 hours of launch, the words GetUp and Censordyne were the number 2 and 3 most talked about brands on Twitter worldwide. The campaign received widespread coverage in most major Australian newspapers and news websites. Censordyne become a topic of discussion on Nova 96.9 radio in Sydney and was featured on the Australian ABC television program Insiders.

Getup! raised over $45,000 in donations from the general public during July 2009 to see the Censordyne commercial on TV and on Qantas flights during the month of August 2009, where all Australian politicians would be travelling to Canberra. Following the Censordyne campaign launch, Qantas chose to censor the anti-censorship campaign from their flights ^[102][103]. It was later revealed that David Epstein, the Qantas executive who stopped the Censordyne campaign from running on Qantas flights was the former chief of staff for the Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd ^[104].

[edit] Response

The debate over Internet filtering has incited some tension in Australia, with threatening phone calls and emails being received by advocates of both sides of the debate.^[105]

The leaders of three of Australia's largest ISPs (Telstra, iiNet and Internode) have stated in an interview that the internet filtering proposal simply cannot work for various technical, legal and ethical reasons.^[106] The managing director of iiNet, Michael Malone, has said of Stephen Conroy "This is the worst Communications Minister we've had in the 15 years since the [internet] industry has existed," and plans to sign up his ISP for participation in live filtering trials by 24 December to provide the Government with "hard numbers" demonstrating "how stupid it [the filtering proposal] is."^[107]

Dale Clapperton, then chairperson of EFA, argued that the Labor party cannot implement the clean feed proposal without either new legislation and the support of the Australian Senate, or the assistance of the Internet Industry Association. As the Liberals and Greens have both stated that they will not support legislation, it can only be implemented with the support of the IIA.^[108]

International lobby group Netchoice, which is backed by companies including eBay, AOL Time Warner, Oracle Corporation and some trade associations^[who?], is likely to oppose the mandatory filter.^[70] Google opposes the filter primarily because the scope of content to be filtered is too wide.^[109]

Internode engineer Mark Newton was the subject of a letter of complaint from Stephen Conroy's office for his participation in a Whirlpool forum showing the negative impact of the filter on internet speeds.^[110]

Some child welfare groups ( Save_the_Children / National Children's & Youth Law Centre ^[111] ) have attacked the filtering plan ^[112] as ineffective, stating that resources would be better spent elsewhere, and agreeing with the opposing position presented by Australia's ISPs. Other child welfare groups continue to support the filters.^[113] In 2008, ChildWise defended the plan as "a victory for common sense,"^[41]

NSW Young Labor has abandoned the internet filtering plan, passing a motion rejecting Conroy's plans, and calling on him to adopt a voluntary, opt-in, system.^[93]

Colin Jacobs, vice-chairman of Electronic Frontiers Australia, said that the pitfalls of mandatory ISP filtering were illustrated by the problems in the UK caused by the blocking of a single Wikipedia page. He also said of the IWF blacklist:

"In Australia, not only would the Government have the ability to secretly add any site to our blacklist, but an unaccountable foreign-based organisation would as well".

Conservative South Australian Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi does not support the mandatory internet filter. He considers Stephen Conroy's plan to be "so devoid of detail" that it is impossible to form an opinion on it, and says

"Parental responsibility cannot and should not be abrogated to government - if it is, our society will only become weaker ... Yes, illegal content should be banned from the web ... but it is wrong to give the government a blank cheque to determine what is appropriate for us to view on the internet."^[33]

Clive Hamilton, a senior ethics professor at the Australian National University whose think tank the Australia Institute was responsible for the initial media attention for a mandatory internet filter in 2003, argues

"The laws that mandate upper speed limits do not stop people from speeding, does that mean that we should not have those laws? ... We live in a society, and societies have always imposed limits on activities that it deems are damaging. There is nothing sacrosanct about the Internet."^[41][114]

Retired Justice Michael Kirby believes that it is a bad example for the the government of a democratic country like Australia to take control of what people hear and what information they get, and made comparisons to the situation in Iran and Burma^[115]

In an open letter to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, Reporters Without Borders states that the internet filter is not the solution to combating child sex abuse, and the plan entails risks to freedom of expression. The blocking of websites by ACMA, rather than a Judge, is in contravention of laws. The criteria for blocking "inappropriate" websites is too vague, and it would be a dangerous censorship option to target "Refused classification" sites, many of which are unrelated to sexual abuse. Subjects such as abortion, anorexia, aborigines and legislation on the sale of marijuana would all risk being filtered, as would media reports on these subjects.^[116]

The Howard Government commissioned a number of independent technical experts to examine internet filtering. The resulting report was delivered to the Australian Government in February 2008, and released publicly in December 2008. Professor Bjorn Landfeldt, one of the report's authors, stated that filtering technology simply does not work, as it can easily be bypassed and slows the internet by up to 87%. In response, Stephen Conroy has stated that the report involved no empirical testing, and was simply a literature review of material available from other sources; any problems raised by the report would be tested during the filter trials scheduled for mid-January 2009.^[117][118]

A report by Tim Stevens and Dr Peter Neumann for the London-based International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (ICSR) analyses each of the available ISP-based filtering solutions and concludes that they are ineffective against the fight against terror. A hybrid filtering scheme was rated the best, but it is ineffective against dynamic content such as chat pages and instant messaging, and had political implications because it required the existence of a blacklist of blocked pages. The report instead advocates the use of take-down notices for extremist content, and prosecutions to "signal that individuals engaged in online extremism are not beyond the law."^[119]

The Metaverse Journal suggests that because internet filtering logs every site visit, and some information about who is visiting the site, then it is ripe for abuse by whoever runs the filters. It potentially allows surveillance of any user of the internet, such as journalists, political opponents, or even the family members of politicians.^[120]

Australian radio presenter and writer Helen Razer dislikes the filter because she enjoys pornography, does not believe it causes harm to adults, and doesn't think that children are at much risk:^[121]

"I enjoy pornography. Perhaps not quite so much as I enjoy living among citizens who take an entitlement to free speech for granted. But I do like it quite a lot. And it seems that my porn is endangered. If Conroy's clean feed works, which some tech sceptics argue that it cannot, it will prevent access to all pornography ... I can report that one doesn't simply amble into X-rated or even R18+ material ... I have become adept at this; children, presumably, have not. And if they have, clearly they are the issue of the world's most reprehensible parents and should be sent to live with Hetty Johnston forthwith ... Despite the best efforts of some, there is no evidence that pornography will negatively affect me or other consenting adults ... The only lasting effect of my access to porn is a reflex giggle when the pizza delivery man knocks on my door."

[edit] Attacks on Government Websites

On 26 March 2009 the Australian Government Classification website, www.classification.gov.au, was attacked by unknown persons automatically redirecting them to a page on the same site with a message mocking censorship efforts:^[122]

This site contains information about the boards that have the right to CONTROL YOUR FREEDOMZ. The Classification Board has the right to not just classify content (the name is an ELABORATE TRICK), but also the right to DECIDE WHAT IS AND ISNT APPROPRIATE and BAN CONTENT FROM THE PUBLIC. We are part of an ELABORATE DECEPTION from CHINA to CONTROL AND SHEEPIFY the NATION, to PROTECT THE CHILDREN. All opposers must HATE CHILDREN, and therefore must be KILLED WITH A LARGE MELONS during the PROSECUTION PARTIES IN SEPTEMBER. Come join our ALIEN SPACE PARTY.

In September 2009 the group Anonymous reawakened, in Operation Didgeridie, in order to protest the policy of internet censorship^{[citation needed]}, and on 9 September initiated a Distributed Denial of Service attack against the prime minister's website. As a result of this attack, the site was taken offline for less than one hour.^[123]

[edit] See also

• Censorship in Australia
• Internet censorship
• Content-control software
• For The Children (politics)

[edit] References

[edit] External links

This article's external links may not follow Wikipedia's content policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links. (September 2009)

• Australian Internet Industry Association
• Comments on Mandatory Filtering and Blocking by ISPs
• Electronic Frontiers Australia
• ISP Filtering Live Pilot - Questions and answers
• Labor’s Mandatory ISP Internet Blocking Plan
• Graphic website added to the ACMA blacklist, posted to Whirlpool forum, and subject to take-down notice.
• Somebody Think Of The Children a blog documenting censorship and moral panic in Australia
• Virtual Nation. The History of the Internet In Australia.
• Filtering in Oz: Australia's Foray into Internet Censorship by Derek E. Bambauer, Brooklyn Law School, Legal Studies Paper No. 125
• Australian government secret ACMA internet censorship blacklist, 6 Aug 2008 (Wikileaks)
• Content filtering trial results as reported by Australian ISP, Exetel, in April 2009
• ACMA Research and Developments reports The ACMA reports on internet filtering technology of which the final report shall be submitted in 2009
• DBCDE report on results of filtering trial released in December 2009

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