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New Zealand Looks at Internet Censorship
David writes "The New Zealand Government 'Select Committee', upon reviewing censorship law, has issued a report which among other things, recommends that ISPs face compulsory licensing "in order to control their behaviour", the forcing of a code of conduct upon ISPs, and recommends the implementation of an internet filtration programme not dissimilar from that of Australia's (although it is hazy on the details of what this would mean). They're starting to become really worried about the dangers of the internet."
New Zealand film classification features two types of restriction; R, which means "you must be verifiably of a certain age to view the material". The second is a series of "guideline" classifications, which hint at the content, but are unrestricted.
t ml
For more details, see
http://www.movie-ratings.net/movieratings_nz.sh
'where is Old Zealand?' in Holland.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
M is for Mature. It means that we get to see all the gory/good bits that they cut out of the American and Australian versions of (most/some) movies ;^P
:D
The report is a "a recommendation to a select parliamentary commission"...hmm...considering the 'quality' of the New Zealand politicians...it'll never get anywhere. They are useless. Which is a good thing in this case
This is a company that also limits the bandwidth available to customers through specific ports (think P2P). It doesn't matter that the customer has paid for the connection - they still tell (force?) you to use it as they want.
Prices for data? 128kb/s ADSL with 5GB monthly cap - NZ$65
up to 8Mb/s (usually around 2MB/s) ADSL (home) 500MB per month $49 1GB per month $69
up to 8MB/s (usually around 2MB/s) ADSL (home or business)
600MB - $62
1200MB - $120
1800MB - $176
3000MB - $292
5000MB - $458
10000MB - $888
20000MB - $1800
These are NZ$ (multiply by .6 to get $US equivalent) plus 12.5 % sales tax, and ISP fees, as this is just for the data flowing over Telecom's network.
And you thought sensorship was our biggest problem - I don't see why are they would sensor us anyway - it's not like we have the means, financially or technically to access much anyway.
And /.ers thought there wasn't a need for ASCII porn... ..k
The Mothership
The Films, Videos and Publication's Act requires all films for public exhibition to be classified. There are six standard classifications which may sometimes have a cautionary note attached.
G Suitable for general audiences of all ages.
PG Younger children may require parental guidance.
M Suitable for mature persons over 16 years of age.
R Restricted to persons over 16 years of age unless accompanied by a parent or guardian.
R16 Restricted to persons over 16 years of age only.
R18 Restricted to persons over 18 years of age only.
"Maybe with some divine intervention, the next version of Microsoft's OS will actually be good." - Linus Torvalds
My summary on the key points made in the Internet section of the report are:
- Child pornography and other obscene material is more readily available because of the Internet (and is already illegal material).
- Peer to peer systems makes it harder to control the distribution of such material - suggests law changes to make clear offering files on a P2P system is "supply"
- Recommending that filter software be made available (ideally free of charge)
- Education of users should be encouraged
- Live shows are not covered by censorship/classification rules - "let's change that"
- Ability to execute a search warrant on grounds of possession, rather than trading
- Have ISPs adopt a code of practice - if they don't (and NZ Telecom's Xtra is noted as dragging it's heels), then force one on them.
Nothing in there that alarms me too much.Child pornography is the bogey man, and the vehicle on which everything else rides, if anything extreme is going to be introduced.
Recycle PCs and build a wireless community network www.hillsborough.org.nz
The listed aims are:
- To ensure the fairness and accuracy of disclosure of business terms and conditions to the user public and community in general;
- To improve the standard of conduct within the industry;
- To provide public access to complaint handling and cost-effective redress mechanisms;
- To impose and regulate industry standards;
- To improve customer relations;
- To protect rights of access and free speech;
- To ensure that information and procedures are in place for the protection of minors from accessing objectionable material over the Internet;
- To ensure that the information and procedures are in place so Internet users know how to limit access to protect a user from accessing inappropriate or objectionable material
Note the positive phrasing - to protect the rights of access and free speech. I like that. In fact I like all of it. It seems very customer friendly. Which is why I expect Telecom's Xtra doesn't like it - it talks about the right of services being forwarded if you change providers - Xtra wouldn't like that.The onus is on the users, not the ISP to know how to protect themselves from objectionable content.
It suggests ratings systems like PICS. I have to say - it all looks good to me.
Recycle PCs and build a wireless community network www.hillsborough.org.nz
I don't like New Zealand Telecom any more than a lot of people here, but it's not fair to slag them just because of those prices. The Internet in New Zealand has always been expensive.
Firstly, your currency conversion rate was slightly on the high side. It's not 0.6, it's about 0.56. Secondly, if you don't like the Telecom port blocking then you have plenty of alternative ISP's to choose from that offer competitive rates and services.
Apart from that, New Zealand is an Island nation, so what do you expect? National traffic has always been dirt cheap, but most people can't live on national traffic because there's almost no useful content here.
Compare this with the US, which has a massive localised infrastructure where the majority of content that people want is nearby. International traffic isn't in as much demand, and it doesn't cost any extra because it's not a huge overhead for the ISP's on top of the national infrastructure already available. If 100 million Americans all suddenly wanted to access Australian content on a medium term basis, international charges in the states would go through the roof.
Irrespective of how much money they have, it cost Telecom a lot of money to get the Southern Cross cable laid, and in an age where many applications are beginning to demand a lot of bandwidth, there's still a limited amount of bandwidth that can flow through it.
The combination of everyone wanting international traffic and only having a limited infrastructure to provide it with leads to the international traffic cost that we have.
As for your MMP voting system, never heard of it, sounds a bit complicated, interested in learning more though.
e lect.html
http://www.elections.org.nz/elections/esyst/govt_
IMHO it is a good system. Like any sysyem, its not perfect, but I believe its mostly the best of several worlds. Your 'party vote' determines who the next government is (most likely a coalition) but your 'electorate vote' helps determine who the individual people are in that government. Its nice to be able to support a local candidate even if you don't like their party. The electorate vote lets you do this.
One of the most significant things about MMP is that it gives minor parties a much bigger chance of being part of a goverment than the old 'first past the post' system where a minor party could get sigificant numbers of votes in many electorates but not win any, therefore ending up with nothing and therefore lots of people were not represented. There is a threshold of 5% or one electorate member before a party's party vote counts. This tends to avoid the problem if one weirdo holding the balance of power in the house.