Way to go! Google won't help Rudd Government build the Great Firewall of Australia

Google Australia's head of policy, Iarla Flynn, said the company had a bias in favour of freedom of expression and Senator Conroy's comparisons between how Australia and China deal with access to information were not ''helpful or relevant''.

Google has threatened to pull out of China, partly owing to continuing requests for it to censor material.

YouTube's rules forbid certain videos that would be classified RC, such as sex, violence, bestiality and child pornography. But the RC classification extends to more controversial content such as information on euthanasia, material about safer drug use and how to commit minor crimes.

Google said the topics were featured in YouTube videos and it refused to censor them.

''The scope of RC is simply too broad and can raise genuine questions about restrictions on access to information,'' Mr Flynn said. ''RC includes the grey realms of material instructing in any crime from graffiti to politically controversial crimes such as euthanasia, and exposing these topics to public debate is vital for democracy.''

Stephen Conroy swims against the tide

"When Government seeks to use its full power, including the criminal law, to command where a person may get his or her information or what distrusted source he or she may not hear, it uses censorship to control thought." (U.S. Supreme Court on 21.01.2010)

Newton zings Conroy over claims that Internet filter was never going to be the complete answer to Net nasties

Ah, yes: "Not a silver bullet," which is politician-talk for "We know this won't work but we're going to do it anyway."

"The rest of the policy is largely ignored by those who oppose it" because if you take the "clean feed" out of the ALP's (ridiculously-named) Cyber Safety policy you end up with something that's largely supportable.

But even there the Minister isn't quite on-point, because he misses the fact that some of us actually have spent time talking about other parts of the Government's policy. For example, where he points out that his policy includes "$49 million for an additional 91 Australian Federal Police officers for the Child Protection Unit," some of us have made hay about how that's actually a budget cut, given that the previous Government committed nearly $3 million more for staff that'd have started work an entire year earlier. Rudd's razor-gang cut it back and delayed it, yet now Conroy portrays the reductions as some kind of triumph.

Oh well. If he wants to draw attention to it that's his loss.

The other thing the Minister has defended in this article is the use of the Refused Classification category for a mechanism to ban content for adults.

Despite his contentions in this article, the Minister knows that RC content has never been illegal.

Read the rest in Crikey comments

Censoring the Internet - an Adelaide LOL

 

If someone's on the Internet reading and commenting, what on earth makes Atkinson think that bloggers living in other states and publishing from international platforms are going to obey his attempts to gag debate.

He needs to detach himself from Conroy's teat!

SOUTH Australia has become one of the few states in the world to censor the internet under laws created by Attorney-General Michael Atkinson.

The new law, which came into force on January 6, requires internet bloggers, and anyone making a comment on next month's state election, to publish their real name and postcode when commenting on the poll.

The law will affect anyone posting a comment on an election story on The Advertiser's AdelaideNow website, as well as other news sites such as The Punch, the ABC's The Drum and Fairfax newspapers' National Times site.

It also appears to apply to election comment made on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

The law, which was pushed through last year as part of a raft of amendments to the Electoral Act and supported by the Liberal Party, also requires media organisations to keep a person's real name and full address on file for six months, and they face fines of $5000 if they do not hand over this information to the Electoral Commissioner.

The Right to Know Coalition, made up of Australia's major media outlets including News Limited, publisher of The Advertiser , has called the new laws "draconian".

"This is one of the most troubling erosions of the right to free speech in Australia for many years," Right to Know spokeswoman Creina Chapman said.

BEAT THE CENSOR: Have your say now. Normal moderation rules apply - until the writs for the March 20 election are issued.