It is imperative that Australian Christians make themselves aware of legislative changes being proposed by the government. Under the guise of measures to “improve safety of the internet for families”, Senator Stephen Conroy recently announced that mandatory filtering of content that has been refused classification, or rated ‘RC’, will be enforced through legislation.
Such a proposal might seem attractive to Christians. After all, Scriptures such as Matthew 18 makes it clear that protecting children is a priority. However, the statement made by Senator Conroy was far more wide-reaching than child pornography—the original goal of the filtering trials. It covers all material that has been refused classification by the Office of Film and Literature Classification. Senator Conroy says this is because RC content includes “child sex abuse content, bestiality, sexual violence including rape, and the detailed instruction of crime or drug use” (source).
While about a third of the sites on the blacklist that was leaked in 2009 showed child pornography and sexual violence, the list also included anti-abortion and anti-euthanasia sites, as well as pages from YouTube and Wikipedia. The potential for stifling political debate is frightening, with a recent study by the University of New South Wales, Edith Cowan University and Queensland University of Technology finding that a significant body of politically sensitive material would be caught up in a ban of all RC material. Respected former High Court judge Michael Kirby has said that it is likely to stifle debate of politically sensitive issues and could even result in the “Berlin Walls of the future” not being broken down (source).
Websites discussing euthanasia and abortion could be blocked. Guides on how to safely use an IV needle could be banned. If one wonders why the use of IV needles ought not be banned, we should remember that safe use of needles is one way that Australia was able to stem the rising AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. As Iarla Flynn, Google Australia’s Head of Policy puts it, “… we believe that government should not have the right to block information which can inform debate of controversial issues” (source).
The government’s consultation paper ‘Mandatory internet service provider (ISP) filtering: Measures to increase accountability and transparency for Refused Classification material’ suggests that the net may be cast even further than expected with the banning of non-RC material possible under the scheme proposed by the government. The government’s own papers are ambiguous, and a request for clarification from a government spokesman did not receive a response.
The government’s FAQ on this subject says that items will be added to the filter list following complaints made to the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA). ACMA will review the complaint, and if the material is refused classification, it will be added to the list. Clearly this does not limit the list to child pornography, the government’s original target.
For Christians, it is possible that groups that find the message of the gospel ‘offensive’ could make a complaint to ACMA. ACMA would not have to deem the material offensive; simply refusing it classification would be enough to suppress it.
There are still many questions about how that blacklist will be managed and monitored. Senator Conroy said that, “The Government will immediately undertake public consultation with the release today of a discussion paper on additional measures to improve the accountability and transparency of processes that lead to RC-rated material being placed on the RC Content list” (source).
The blacklist will need to be published to every ISP in the country. That means that it’s not likely to be a secret for very long. The original blacklist that was trialled in early 2009 was leaked to wikileaks.org and became public knowledge within hours. In effect, the government produced a shopping list of pornographic websites to anyone who wanted them.
However, address blocking of illegal material is unlikely to really work. Many child pornography rings have enough technical smarts to be able to circumvent URL blocking easily by changing the URL and IP address of their servers. They can deploy, use and dismantle a distribution website in hours. This is the very mechanism that’s used by many malware distributors. Sure, some sites might be blocked, but this is unlikely to make any impact of child pornography distribution rings.
The government is putting a lot of faith in the ENEX Testlab report to support the effectiveness of filtering. However, the very same report concluded that “a technically competent user could … circumvent the filtering technology” (source). So not only is the URL blacklist likely to not work in its blocking of the distribution of pornography by organized distribution channels, but anything that is on the list can be accessed easily.
Furthermore, one other side-effect of the filtering was that all of the ISPs involved in the trial reported blocking material that was not considered to be inappropriate—media that it was assumed would be either rated G or M. In fact, about one in every 30 attempts to access unrestricted material was blocked.
So what can you? As a committed Christian, it’s important that you remain informed. Be prayerful and consider what this important legislation really means. If you believe that the legislation will be detrimental, then write a letter to your local member. It’s possible that your ability to express your faith might be limited if this legislation is passed.
That’s a great article Anthony… nice work. Very well argued. Great to see a Christian standing up with a logical, fact-based argument and demonstrating that not all Christians should be lumped into the same group as “conservative Christians”.
P.S. I’m reminded by what I wrote above that the word “conservative” is so fraught with misinterpretation. It should literally mean cautious and opposed to unneccessary change. But in practice, it represents a broad group of people ranging from those who are merely cautious all the way through to bigoted, ill-informed, greedy, fearful “Chicken Little”, ego-centric, concrete types. I think the world needs a greater variety of words in common use to describe this spectrum of people…!
Anthony, there are a number of factual errors in your article which completely undermine your argument.
The blacklist your refer to was never determined by the independent OFLC. ie the anti-abortion and anti-ethunasia sites were never deemed illegal “Refuse Classification”, This “Howard Govt” child friendly blacklist was complaint based only. Completely different beast.
Hi Jeremy
Thanks for your comment. I don’t believe I have made an error. I didn’t suggest that the blacklist that was leaked by Wikileaks was reviewed by the OFLC. The point I was making was that any blacklist that is distributed to ISPs for enforcement would be leaked.
Also, comments made by Senator Conroy and other government representatives have made it clear that their net will be far broader than child pornography.
Regards
Anthony Caruana
Yes, “Refuse Classification” material is broader than child porn – its sexual violence, bestiality and terrorism related material. But there is a little bit of scare-mongering going on in your comments to then claim that therefore the Govt will ban Christian material.
So –
1. What RC material do you think Christians should have access to?
and
2. what evidence do you have that the OFLC has ever deemed anti-abortion material RC?
BTW – I’m concerned about the proposal because I maintain there are transparency problems with the Govt proposal in that by definition banned urls cant be published.. But surely its worth waiting until we actually see the Govts proposal before making somewhat OTT claims?
Jeremy – you asked “What RC material do you think Christians should have access to?”
I don’t think that I can answer that question. However, I will say this. It’s clear that the Bible calls us to live a Godly life. My personal view is that regardless of any government’s content management regime it’s up to Christians to manage their own content consumption. For example, the TV show Californication has received lots of attention. It’s been deemed to be acceptable for broadcast. Would you watch it?
With regards to the OFLC blocking anti-abortion material. I don’t have specific evidence in hand. However, many independent, reasonable people have grave concerns about what could be blocked.
Thanks for your feedback
Preposterous (medically indicated use thereof is licit, as one might find following an operation.)
Fantastic post. It is my deeply held belief that the people of faith of this country (Christians such as ourselves and all other faiths) need to make an INFORMED decision on this mandatory filtering policy. Simply trusting that it will “protect the children” is not only incorrect, but dangerous, as well as worrying as to what else will be blocked other than illegal content.
Senator Conroy has already requested of Google that they carry out the same censorship methods employed in China and Thailand. Australians live in a democratic society in that we choose what is appropriate and the Government acts upon that, not the other way around.
Keep up the good work, I’m so glad to hear another Christian taking up the cause.
The main problem I have is that once the infrastructure is in place, it can be used for purposes other than limiting access to RC material. With a blacklist that cannot be legally published, we are leaving ourselves open to future oppression.
There are a number of problems with the way that the proposed legislation has been publicised, not mentioned in your article. One is that, because at present the proposed URL blocklist is only for RC material, it does nothing to block most of the websites that I, for one, would not like my children to see. So all the publicity about `protecting children’ is just fluff.
For another thing, the proposed legislation if implemented will be ineffective at preventing RC material from being viewed in Australia. Anyone who wants to view it, will be able trivially to circumvent the block.
So what does the blocking achieve? As far as I can tell, it will:
Is this what we really want?
I think that the whole RC model breaks down on the Internet, so trying to introduce it via filtering is doomed to failure.
RC isn’t a perfect block in the current book/TV world (I’m sure that I could find the stuff if I really wanted), but it works in restricting access to a wide audience because producing copies, by printing or broadcasts, is relatively expensive. This means that there is a relatively small number of presses, distributors and TV stations in Australia, which makes enforcement, via inspection at these locations, feasible. In other words, the social goals of RC could be achieved by exploiting the way economics shaped distribution of material.
On the internet the economics are completely different. Distribution costs are basically zero and consequently anyone, anywhere, be a distributor and can change the distribution mechanism (web page, bittorrent, etc) without great difficulty. This makes restricting RC material to the same level as print really hard, for a host of technical reasons, and we shouldn’t just think that the current proposals will work.
As Christians, I think that we need to re-think what RC social goals are and come up with mechanisms, for our families and for the wider society, that will work in a era of zero distribution costs.