There’s been much lighter posting recently as I’ve been busy helping organise the Digital Liberty Coalitions protest against the Rudd Governments Online Internet Filtering scheme. Whilst I’ve already posted here about the Howard Governments 2004 legislation (supported by the Labor Party) to make it illegal to discuss suicide techniques online, it turns out there’s already a whole raft of online censorship occurring, well before Rudd’s filter is implemented: (H/T Catallaxyfiles)

SMH.com.au : The Australian communications regulator says it will fine people who hyperlink to sites on its blacklist, which has been further expanded to include several pages on the anonymous whistleblower site Wikileaks.

Wikileaks was added to the blacklist for publishing a leaked document containing Denmark’s list of banned websites.

The move by the Australian Communications and Media Authority comes after it threatened the host of online broadband discussion forum Whirlpool last week with a $11,000-a-day fine over a link published in its forum to another page blacklisted by ACMA – an anti-abortion website.

ACMA’s blacklist does not have a significant impact on web browsing by Australians today but sites contained on it will be blocked for everyone if the Federal Government implements its mandatory internet filtering censorship scheme.

But even without the mandatory censorship scheme, as is evident in the Whirlpool case, ACMA can force sites hosted in Australia to remove “prohibited” pages and even links to prohibited pages.
… Already, a significant portion of the 1370-site Australian blacklist – 506 sites – would be classified R18+ and X18+, which are legal to view but would be blocked for everyone under the proposal. The Government has said it was considering expanding the blacklist to 10,000 sites and beyond.

Electronic Frontiers Australia said the leak of the Danish blacklist and ACMA’s subsequent attempts to block people from viewing it showed how easy it would be for ACMA’s own blacklist – which is secret – to be leaked onto the web once it is handed to ISPs for filtering.

1370 sites. No debate, no notice, no chance for the media or other politicians to question the wisdom of any of the selection of any of these web sites. This site, for instance, a fairly graphic but politically orientated Anti-Abortion site is on the list:

In a test of Senator Conroy’s claims that the ACMA blacklist contains only illegal content, whirlpool community user xFoadx sent a random page from abortiontv.com to the ACMA complaints department. This was the response he received:

Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2009 15:45:00 +1100
From: online@acma.gov.au
I refer to the complaint that you lodged with the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) on 5th January 2009 about certain content made available at:

http://www.abortiontv.com/Pics/AbortionPictures6.htm

Following investigation of your complaint, ACMA is satisfied that the internet content is hosted outside Australia, and that the content is prohibited or potential prohibited content.

This is why the campaign against the internet filter is so important. Not only does our Government already censor such material, but with a filter in place it will make it impossible for anyone to access such sites & let anyone but the bureaucrats judge what is suitable and unsuitable content. And whilst most of the debate has been about pornography (especially featuring children), it’s only a short step to start banning political content as well.

We wouldn’t tolerate this offline, why should it be ok online.

So if you are in Canberra or the surrounding region come let your voice be heard in opposition to the filter:
http://marchinmarch.org/
Saturday 21st March
1pm
Federation Mall Canberra (the Grass right in front of Parliament House)
With music (Super Best Friends are playing) and other entertainment for the crowd.