GoFuckYourself.com - Adult Webmaster Forum - Aussie internet censorship debate

No sex, please: a blueprint for safer surfing
March 4 2003

Both censorship and education may be needed to protect children more effectively. Adele Horin reports.

The internet would be censored to protect children from pornography under a radical proposal to be released today.

Under the scheme, Australian internet service providers would be required by law to filter all internet content for pornography. In a reversal of the current system, adults would be able to opt out of - rather than opt for - a filter system.

Adults would be able to access X-rated pornography on the internet only through use of a credit card or smart card that verified they were over 18.

The measures are part of a strategy, including "pornography education" in high schools, designed to protect children without infringing the civil liberties of adults.

They are proposed in a new study by the Australia Institute, a Canberra-based social research agency. It says the Federal Government's current system of internet pornography regulation is "manifestly failing".

The report says: "Too often the global nature of the internet has been used to argue that nothing can be done about the problem of pornography".

The authors, the executive director of the Australia Institute, Clive Hamilton, and Michael Flood, a specialist in gender studies at the Australian National University, say it is feasible to make the internet safer for children.

They say some types of filtering through service providers have proved very effective, though others are almost useless.

Australian providers are forbidden to host material that would be rated X or R, or would be refused classification, and most pornography comes from overseas.

The proposals follow the institute's release of an earlier study, reported in the Herald yesterday, showing teenagers' wide exposure to pornography.

The latest study, Regulating Youth Access To Pornography, says: "Five minutes of surfing the internet will prove that (the current regulatory system) is in fact next to useless".

It said the Minister for Communications, Richard Alston, who has supported it, would only need to type common sex words into a search engine to recognise this fact.

Tens of thousands of sites giving access to pornography, including rape and bestiality, would be generated.

The current regulatory system relies on complaints being made to the Australian Broadcasting Authority, which can order material to be removed, and on voluntary use of filter software. But complaints have been few and take-up rates of filters low.

In defending mandatory filtering, the authors say: "There is a good case for society acting to protect itself from the consequences of parental failure, just as it does in the case of teenage drug use or, indeed, access to X-rated videos."

It says the opt-out system would protect civil liberties because any adult user could gain access to X-rated material simply by communicating with their service provider.

The study calls for "pornography education" to become part of the high school curriculum and cites drug education as a model.

It says teenagers need to be taught how to analyse and critically evaluate pornography in order to counter its worst effects, such as sexually aggressive behaviour towards women.

The researchers believe education would be more effective in the long term than technological solutions. However, they say mandatory filtering and effective age-verification technology are also needed.

Under the proposal, service providers would be permitted to host pornographic websites if the content had received an X rating. This would allow an Australian online pornographic industry to develop, the report says.

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Bear in mind this is just a think tank study, not a governmental proposal but it's re-igniting the censorship debate...
conversions from aussie traffic would go up at least. lol..