In January I started this discussion about a pro-abortion site that has been blacklisted by the ACMA:

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=2464#54915

Recapping briefly, xFOADx complained about an anti-abortion site to the ACMA. The ACMA deemed it inappropriate material and added it to its blacklist. xFOADx then announced all this on Whirlpool, posting a link to the banned page and the ACMA's decision:

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1123716&p=35#r685

xFOADx later said he was attempting to show how mandatory internet filtering would stifle political speech, since adult Australian's would be banned from seeing any web page on the blacklist. As a political maneuver it was wildly successful as on seeing this senators the government was relying to support filtering have changed their mind. The odds are now against the proposal making it into law.

And that, you might think, would be the end of it. But no:

http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,25181408-15306,00.html

The web page xFOADx made his announcement on has been issued a take-down notice by the ACMA. If the site isn't fixed and the ISP hosting it doesn't remove it the ISP is libel for fines of $11,000 per day. Why? Because under existing law passed by the Howard government you are not allowed to post links to blacklisted sites on web pages hosted in Australia. Neither are you allowed to post links to links.

Which raises a conundrum. The blacklist is material inappropriate for children (MA15+ and up). I suspect the web page concerned is fine for adults. It is after all just pictures of aborted fetuses, similar to what you find in a medical textbook. However adult Australians will now find it dammed difficult to talk about it or the ACMA's ruling on it, since we can't show others what we are talking about on web forums like this. This is true even though it is perfectly legal for adults to view the web page concerned.

In the previous discussion runner said it was worth sacrificing the anti-abortion web page; I presume to protect the children. But is it worth sacrificing our ability to discuss the particulars an ACMA decision here?

Unfortunately many people get upset when faced with the reality of killing unborn babies. The truth is to much for them to face up to. They would rather we have freedom to watch pornography (perversion) despite it leading to child sexual abuse, divorce, degradation, fatherless kids. As I have sent on other posts we now call good evil and evil good. It won't be long before the earth worshipers make it illegal to preach the only message that can save mankind from their corruption. The message certainly uncovers their false morality and hypocrisy. The good news is that it will force those who know the truth to get off the fence instead of being to scared and gutless to identify with what is right.

In the context of link deletion notices, the legislation specifically uses the word "link". It doesn't define it, which is unhelpful. Given the context in which it appears a court might, or might not, construe it to be a hyper link - that is, something you can just click on. But I doubt the courts would go as far as construing it to mean any information that allows a person to reach the proscribed content. So I think it would still be possible to provide the web site address, and separate information about where to find the particular file or files within that site.

There is a right of appeal to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT), but if the ACMA issues a link deletion notice, then it's the content service provider that has to appeal to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, and the service provider is not usually going to be bothered, regardless of the apparent merits of the case.

The person whose website is affected has no rights in the matter. So anyone wanting to pursue this course would have to establish their own content service provider. Not that that's particularly hard - you just need a fixed IP address and a system running a web server.

On the wider topic, there's always going to be a problem with censorship in an allegedly free society, in that if you allow people access to the prohibited content so that they can discuss whether or not it should be prohibited, then you might as well not have censored in the first place.

Sylvia.

Gradually the ripples spread. The Wikipedia page on the AMCA described the incident and gave the link, so the ACMA has now banned its own Wikipedia page. Wikileaks doesn't have banned material, but does have links to other countries filter lists, so it has been banned as well.

http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/295977/australia_internet_filter_ruled_by_single_bureaucrt

The incident is gradually appearing on news sites around the world - it appeared on Slashdot today. I presume that will be banned. I expect the major news sites around the world will now pick up on the story. If they publish the link (which is after all a link legal in every country including Australia), they will be banned as well. I wonder if they banned the google cache? It contained the banned link. It is a bit hard to know of course, as the ACMA won't say.

Hey Sylvia, remember this article? http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=8369 It was about the Qantas nose dive incident off WA. The article speculated the incident was caused by a bug in the Airbus fly-by-wire software. You questioned the relevance of the article at the time, given how much time had passed since the incident.

The OLO article finished up by saying the only thing that saved the Qantas jet in the end was the height it was flying at. It speculated on what might happen it the bug struck when the aircraft was near the ground. Well it appears it did strike an aircraft flying near sea level off France over Christmas. Everybody on board died. Fortunately, it was "only" a test crew of 7 or so.

As far as I am aware, Airbus still hasn't found the bug.

Since the ACMA's list remains secret, we cannot directly know what is on it. The ACMA's own Wikipedia page now contains a link to the material, the ACMA could issue link deletion notices to anyone who includes a link to that page. If content services have received such notices, they could presumably say so, but I haven't yet seen any such claims.

I seriously doubt that the original content fits the definition of potential prohibited content. If it were classified, it would possibly achieve an MA15+ rating, but not an RC or R18+ rating. Consequently, since it consists only of text and still pictures, I do not believe it is capable of being potential prohibited content.

See

http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/bsa1992214/sch7.html

section 20, for the definition of prohibited content.

Rstuart, on the aircraft issue, I'll post something to that thread.

Sylvia

Am I reading this situation correctly? Is it now the case that by posting a link to a now-blacklisted site, in, for example, a post to a thread on OLO, that that thread (or indeed the whole OLO site) will be automatically blacklisted and filtered out?

If so, it would appear that a way has been found to shut down in its entirety that part of the internet that is interactive. All that would have to be done to black out sites like OLO, or any blog upon which comments could be left, would be for any hostile or disruptive poster to put up such links to already blacklisted sites.

Such disruption could well be orchestrated on a large scale, not so much by malicious individuals, but by governments morphing into tyrannies simply to suffocate any criticism. The blogosphere would be a prime target, as it is now becoming recognised that it is increasingly the area in which intelligent dissent can be expressed. I used the plural, governments, as a foreign government could orchestrate the posting of links on Australian fora or blogs to blacklisted sites in order that our stupid skippy filtrator would automatically black out Australian sites upon which content critical of that foreign government resided.

That would have to be Conroy's Gap!

The Myanmar (Burmese) government, for example, unhappy with something being said on OLO, becomes able to AUTOMATICALLY enlist the Australian government apparatus in blacking out the critical site. Me an' mah drover's dog done gone gunna shut youse bloggers all down!

Come on, somebody throw the first stone. Let's get rid of Steven and this skippy stupidity.

On second thoughts, can someone book him a flight on one of those Airbuses with the dicky software?