The Sydney Star Observer (largest gay and lesbian newspaper) will be publishing the following opinion piece in it's edition tomorrow. still looking for an outlet for a longer piece and would welcome suggestions/connections. cheers paul canning -- Net censorship: Alston's plan for a 'clean universe' Paul Canning Censorship has been in the news lately - the attempt to ban Lolita that is. But Federal Communications Minister Richard Alston is pushing a far more dangerous and insidious threat to our liberties to deafening silence from Australia's media. His plan to censor the Internet and, as he told ABC radio, create a "clean universe" will place Australia in the same league as Singapore and Saudi Arabia. Why? Because there's no 'opt-in' feature here. Your Internet access will no longer be direct but forced through a primitive software filter. One that blocks access to Rape Crisis Centres and breast cancer info. Or The NSW Gay & Lesbian Rights Lobby, whose site is blocked by iSEEK, as is Mardi Gras' innocuous (no tits or ass) site. Alston smiled for the cameras at iSEEK's launch in Brisbane last month. Other filters he's promoted include CyberPatrol, which blocks Holocaust information, and NetNanny, which won't let you sign up for a HIV/AIDS or feminist mailing list. He's not the first politician to reach for the technobabble. Jeff Shaw brought Internet users onto the streets in 1996 with far worse proposals. There has been a steady stream of politicians polishing the sound bites about 'protecting the children'. As usual they don't mean gay kids. The Net is where many young people are finding their feet and connecting with a community. Works for isolated Muslims. Works for a thirteen-year-old in Bathurst. The threat to their access is already real. The NSW Education Department uses a misnamed filter called SmartFilter. It smartly filters out access to a NSW Health funded sex and drugs education site aimed at teens. The drugs campaigner Dr. Alex Wodak is so concerned that he is currently seeking signatures from prominent Australians for a letter to the press. There are thousands of other examples of inappropriately blocked sites, the Industry calls them 'collateral damage'. The software makers don't want you to know this. Sites that are critical - like Peacefire, which was set up by kids - are blocked. Critics have been mail bombed, where you get 800 replies to questions they don't want to hear. The lists they devise are 'trade secrets'. And they don't even, according to studies like one for the Canadian Libraries Association, do their stated task of blocking porn. Alston calls filters "guessing engines". The media has portrayed Alston's plan as unfeasible, pushing the Internet industry's line. Of course some geeks or those with access to International Corporation's private networks will work around it, as they do in Singapore. Kids will continue to trade Alston's PIN numbers like they do porn site passwords now. But for the vast majority going through BigPond or Rainbow.Net the government will enforce privatised censorship. That's the plan. He wants the Australian Broadcasting Authority to 'rate' sites reported to them. Which sites are likely to be the first reported? Gay sites. It costs $4000 to get a film rated and for some gay sites it would mean access would be blocked because they're 'unrated' or they'd be banned. Many local sites are housed at free space providers like GeoCities or Tripod. These are often blocked en mass because some member sites are 'pornographic'. This is like bulldozing a library because it contains a few 'dirty books'. Filters are also about monitoring people. Whether it's a child in a bedroom or a worker in an office cubicle. They're like permanent video cameras and use fear and intimidation. In constructing one Australian site aimed at gay kids the designer built in these limitations, so it's not easily spotted as gay-related in the logs. Net Censorship by countries such as Saudi Arabia and Cuba warns us of the very real threat of our own government blocking access to information they don't want us to have The breaking by Internet 'snoop' Matt Drudge of the Monica Lewinsky story hardened the desire of American politicians - like Hillary Clinton - to control the Internet. Appalled by Drudge, much of the mass media has resisted serious analysis and portrayed the Internet as alternately saviour and demon. Corporations stand to make millions from stoking this moral panic, which greatly exaggerates what amounts to a fear of the unknown, fear of the digital future. Some truly bad stuff does lurk on the Internet but there are no easy technical solutions without us becoming the sacrifice. The decisions being made now are determining access to information for all of us. They are way too important to be left to people with little knowledge of what they're dealing with (including journalists) and politicians driven a need to win votes in the Senate. URLs http://www.peacefire.org For more on Net censorship see http://www.rainbow.net.au/~canning/censorship -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.alexia.net.au/~www/mhutton/index.html Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
