Piper

Please continue your questions, this is a vexing issue and Sylvia is astute and able to enlighten all of us.

Thank you.

The Pied Piper: "Sorry Sylvia, I’m probably going to drive you nuts as I try and understand this stuff."

The reason it seems confusing it because it is. We had a fairly well oiled censorship system here in Australia, in the sense that it kept the prudes happy while not inconveniencing everybody else too much. The Internet has destroyed it. Now a 12 year old boy can happily seek out pictures of a cougar doing dogs, if that is what he is curious about today.

There is a huge push to put things back the way they were. The "obvious" solution is to just extend the system that worked so well before to the internet, and that is what our pollies are trying to do. Blind Freddie could see it won't work as the internet isn't the same as a book store, but our pollies aren't as smart as blind Freddie.

Right now the pollies line is to say "it will work if we only ban the really, really bad stuff". So whereas before the ACMA banned an anti abortion site http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=2464 , now they declare this page containing a picture anal homosexual fisting to be PG: http://faculty.unlv.edu/pkane/ART242X/beauty/son.html

The anti censorship mob is reacting to this relaxing of standards by forcing the government to undermine the business models of Big Pond movies and Apple iTunes act by enforcing the current rules. See: http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1280335&p=16#r310

The reason the ACMA can get away with their apparent flexibility is they act in secret. This is in contrast to the existing censorship system for other media for books and so on, which functions very like an open court. The ACMA has to act in secret, because if their list of banned web sites became public, the porosity of Internet ensures it would become a major reference work for the school boys of Australia. (This is another way of saying everybody knows the mandatory the filter won't work, even if they won't admit it publically.) Of course this flexibility means the anti censorship mob their current leniency really is merely temporary political convenience.

Pied Piper,

It helps to understand the evil that the law is trying to address. Generally, there's a difference between the acceptability of unlawful conduct, and the acceptability of film of unlawful conduct. Examples of the latter would be seen often enough in news items.

The particular problem with material designed to please those who get pleasure out of child abuse is that if it's real, then a child was harmed for the purpose of making it. Clearly, that's unacceptable, and if the demand for such material is reduced, then so presumably is the extent of harm to children used to make it. That is the legislative goal. But it would generally be difficult to prove after the event that some unidentified child was harmed, so the law takes the view that if the child appears to be harmed, then that's sufficient.

I don't doubt that if presented with material in which it appears that a child is being deliberately harmed for the purpose of making the material, then the Classification Board would apply an RC classification.

But neither the baby swinging video, nor any of the others I submitted involved an apparent deliberate harming of children for the purpose of filming. Either the filming was apparently incidental, or the harm, if it existed, was not intentional. The classification board seems to be taking the reasonable view that in such cases there's no reason to refuse to classify such material RC (prohibited).

But context is important. The baby swinging video might have been refused classification if it had omitted the beginning where the child willing approaches the adult, and the end where the child is shown smiling.

I suggested a video showing a child being tortured. If that's all it showed, I imagine it would be classified RC. But if it showed the preamble, with the child obviously willingly getting into the torture position, and then at the end the child gets up again, smiles, and starts counting their appearance fee, then the circumstances would be different, and such a video might get an MA15+, or perhaps an R rating.

Rstuart,

The ACMA's decisions have to be seen in the context of schedule 7 to tbe Broadcasting Service Act. The ACMA have no discretion. If content meets certain tests and is hosted in Australia, then the ACMA must issue a take-down notice.

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

The gifting service could be analysed under clause 20(1)(c) thus:

(i) The content is classified MA15+.

(ii) The access (in the hands of the person receiving the gift) is not subject to a restricted access system. Whatever their age they can download the gift.

(iii) The content does not consist of still images.

(iv) Access is provided by a content service.

(v) The content service is provided on payment of a fee (by the person doing the gifting).

(vi) The content service is not an ancillary television subscription content service.

Thus the content that is gifted meets the definition of prohibited content.

So now the ACMA has no choice in the matter. It has to get that content removed.

Whether Parliament would have approved of this outcome had the scenario been posited is unclear, but until Parliament changes the law, the ACMA are stuck with implementing it.

Note in passing that this definition of prohibited content is *probably* not the one envisaged by Conroy in his Internet filter, though it seems difficult to get a straight answer on this.

Sylvia Else: "So now the ACMA has no choice in the matter. It has to get that content removed."

I wasn't trying to say had a choice in the matter. I was just trying to show how the politics is playing out. This particular issue has had more unexpected twists and turns than a good spy thriller. This thread is just one of the better ones. It came about because of your political manoeuvring on the filtering issue, of all things. I find this sort of thing fun to watch, and I thought others might enjoy the show too, which is why I gave some background.

By the by if there was choice, I am sure the ACMA's political masters would have told them to leave Big Pond and Apple alone. If they are to have any chance of getting mandatory filtering up, they must make it appear as harmless as possible. But on this point there were out flanked by the EFA. The EFA knew the old R rating is set in stone, so it would force the governments hand, as you say. The law is clear on that point.

It is not so clear on how homosexual anal fisting should be rated. I never thought of myself as a prude, but somehow giving it a PG rating seems out of step with community attitudes. My guess is the ACMA is being rather flexible here, because they can be and because currently it suites their political masters to appear lenient. And I'd guess you are rather surprised at their flexibility too, given they declined to rate your URL's. Maybe we are both prudes.

Hey Fractelle, I feel I am out of my depth completely. I went and looked up the ACMA. Yeah that was fun.
Thank you for the explanation Sylvia about the way they view whether a child was harmed for the purpose of making a video or not. They probably forgot “grooming” with this particular method of classifying?

Is this for the purpose of filtering/blocking? if something is offensive and then Australia can give it a rating and block people from watching it online or downloading it from this country?

I have to agree with you level of prudishness rstuart, that wasn’t nice.

Do the ACMA go looking for things to rate or rely on submissions?

Can I ask why bother?

Should there be censorship of the internet at all?