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December 23, 2008
China's reimposition of censorship on websites run by the BBC and other news organisations and other politically unacceptable content is held to be a matter of international concern. Only repressive countries (China, Burma, Cuba, Egypt) restrict Web access and Internet freedom is the argument.
Authoritarian regimes censor web content, encourage self-censorship, demand real-name registration, actively surveil and block online communications, and even limit Internet access altogether. They also punish activists who attempt to use the Internet as a medium to dissent or challenge state authority.
Yet the Rudd Government in Australia is planning to do the same with child porn and illegal and inappropriate material. Inappropriate content, from what we can judge, includes gambling and euthanasia sites plus peer-to-peer file transfers. No other democracy has comparable mandatory internet censorship of this kind --presumably because secret, unaccountable, censorship is incompatible with democracy. It represents a denial of the marketplace of ideas.
As Irene Graham points out
Unlike Australia's offline censorship regime, the Internet censorship regime is secret and unaccountable. Offline material is classified by the Classification Board, an independent statutory body comprising publicly named members.Titles of banned and classified material are publicly available in the Board's online database. In stark contrast, decisions to add content hosted outside Australia to ACMA's blacklist are made by unnamed government agency (ACMA) staff and all information about material on ACMA's blacklist is secret. Freedom of Information legislation was changed in 2003 to exempt all such information from disclosure under FOI (changes voted against by Labor).
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