Slashdot Mirror
Australia Wants to Regulate Internet Streaming
Paul writes "After an incident that occurred on a popular television show's internet stream, the Australian government has once again demonstrated that it simply does not understand the internet by indicating that they intend to regulate streaming video. I wonder what these geniuses plan on doing with porn streamed from Europe?"
Why Ted Stevens' internet took five days to get to him! All that streaming filling those tubes...
As an Australian, I can only shake my head and say "we're not all like this". Originally our Prime Minister wanted the broadcaster to take the whole show off the air. I guess this latest response is after someone pointed out that you could originally only see the offending footage live over the net at 4 in the morning (really, someone needs to get a life if this is what they are doing at 4 am).
What a terrible article to link on the issue. It has next to nothing to say about any kind of regulation of online content other than that content broadcast live online is not covered by current laws. It seems quite sensible to bring this in line with other laws governing online content - it's what those other laws are which is the sticking point. The relevent federal minister's statement on the events can be found here - a link I found in a good blog post (on the news site linked in the summary) here. I would say that this is a classic case of governmental over-reaction and bumbling misunderstanding, but you can't really tell that from the article linked in the summary. In fact, I would say that the real fallout from it hasn't been seen yet - we'll see what legislation brings.
Whacking it like they're 12 again?
Trust me, there's a lot more porn coming from the US.
Not that i'll know it
Knock yourself out! Here is a video of the incident.
Does it go on forever?
Maybe watch it after the wife goes to bed!
"Australian government has once again demonstrated that it simply does not understand the internet by indicating that they intend to regulate streaming video. I wonder what these geniuses plan on doing with porn streamed from Europe?"
k ing.html
This is a poor summary of the situation. It's clear from the article that the government's intention is the review regualtion, not necessarily (as the poster snidely suggests) to impose regulation on porn streamed from Europe. The outcome of such a review could reasonably be that material streamed from within Australia should meet certain guidelines. While this doesn't prevent trash coming from overseas sources, it does ensure that broadcasts where responsiibility lies within Australia meets certain standards. This is typically what governments seek to do, and would lead towards consistency with other broadcasting formats for shows which have a large, youthful viewership such as Big Brother.
About eight years ago the government did show naivity on internet regulation by passing measures that were unworkable and which were panned within the IT community and within sections of the Liberal party itself. However, the current minister has cleaned things up a lot. Her approach to internet regulation has been to encourage education of parents and availability of client-side filtering - which is exactly the approach that I'd expect most of the slashdot readership would endorse.
Notice that of all the players with something to say in this article the government is the most restrained - calling for a review but not going overboard with censorship demands. In fact, it has been the federal opposition in recent times which has called for ridiculous measures while the government has been realistic in its approach, even by the reasonable (but in earlier times typically conflicting) standards of Electronic Frontiers Australia. See http://www.efa.org.au/Issues/Censor/mandatorybloc
Slashdot editors - panning Australians for our bad internet regulation system may once have been fitting. However, it would be nice if you could review things a bit more carefully based on the evidence rather than knee-jerks to posts making grand claims about Australian policy. It's annoying to see my country being portrayed as stoneage based on bad evidence. This snide post is not a story and it shouldn't have been put through.
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If you don't have a broadcast license you should be able to do whatever you want with your webcam. Television has a lot of power. Setting up a webcam in my kitchen isn't going to draw hundreds of thousands of viewers, but when a TV station comes along and does it, with all the promotion and hoo-ha that goes with it, then people will watch it. Their web broadcast should be covered by the same standards as their TV broadcasts.
No charges - see here. And if you watch the footage and consider the circumstances, it bedazzles me how it can be blown out of proportion that much. They are three young adults who have been living together for 70 days, 24 hours a day. The girl and the 2 guys were very comfortable with each other and slept in the same bed, with her being topless and all of them hugging. There was some sort of sexual tension between them, so this did not come out of nowhere. The girl even said "Are you going to turkeyslap me now?" so she saw it coming. In the end she did tell them to stop and so they did.
It is a TV show and there is a lot of bullshit and manipulation through the way it is broadcast. However, these people do live their lives in there and form relationships that are probably stronger than one can imagine watching 10 minute blurbs of footage each day.
The politicians are just proving that it is not the TV show, but rather themselves who deserve the title Big Brother!
You know, we Aussies have a bunch of pricks for a government, but what's worse is we have an even dumber bunch of pricks for an opposition. The leader of the opposition Kim "OMFG" Beazley is actually gunning for a great firewall of Australia - *opt-out* violence and pornography filtering placed mandatorily *at the ISP level*. Not only is that a major affront to civil-liberties, he has precisely no idea just how infeasible this idea is technically. And he expects it to help him win an election.
The sad thing is, pandering to the conservative right like that might just help him. God I wish there was an opposition worth voting for. I'm not asking for much, just some people who, you know, present alternative ideas, and have a clue. Oh, sorry, I forgot these guys are career politicians for a second, ignore me.
The government is just trying to stop the TV stations from exploiting loopholes in the legislation. Capital 10 (one of the Big Five stations in Australia) broadcast some sexually explicit material live through their website. Apparently that's legal because it wasn't broadcast over the television band. The government reckons that's a copout and I agree.
Now bear in mind that Australia has some very relaxed rules for sexual content on TV. The stations are allowed to broadcast sexual intercourse, full frontal nudity, and even fetishes. One of the stations SBS is sometimes called "Sex Before Soccer" because they'd frequently schedule something blue from Europe before the live soccer broadcasts. The stations just have to show that content at certain times and put an appropriate disclaimer at the start of the show. There is censorship but it's very mild (eg, no penetration unless it's educational).
In this case, Capital 10 stepped over the line and was enabling children to view filthy content via the Internet. The dominant audience for Big Brother is the 12-14 year old teen market. Do you think it's appropriate for young teens to see a bunch of dimwitted Big Brother contestants teabagging a female contestant who was being held down against her will? I don't.
I think the government is doing the right thing here. Personally I wish they'd say "we're backdating this new legislation and slapping you with a big fine for being jerks". I'd support any bending of the law necessary to force Big Brother off the airwaves.
Well, there's a big difference between internet and TV.
At least in the US, the reasoning goes that the government is entitled to regulate the content of TV broadcasts because the airwaves belong to the public. The amount of spectrum available for broadcasting is limited, and since the people are allowing private entities to use that limited resource, they (through their representatives) have the right to decide how it may be used. Cable TV doesn't use public resources, so it can't be censored except under the same laws that could be used to censor books or magazines (obscenity, copyright, national security, etc.).
The internet works differently. As we all know, it's a series of TUBES, and those tubes belong to private entities. Furthermore, unlike broadcasts, which are pushed invisibly from a transmitter through the air in your home (and which are passing through your body right this second!), internet streams are delivered only to those who request them. Whether or not you have to pay for the stream is irrelevant; either way, it isn't forcing itself upon anyone. It's like comparing a mass mailing to a box of pamphlets which you can take if you're interested: it'd be silly to complain about the content of the pamphlet when you made the decision to seek it out.
Finally, the kneejerk "protect the children" principle never has any weight, because there's no evidence whatsoever that children need to be "protected" from content like this. It's an argument based on gut feelings rather than fact.
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Where's the link for the porn streamed from Europe?
That's what I was thinking. Hire some people to carefully watch every European porn flick, so they can properly rate it. As an European, and thus familiar with said movies and the culture that created them, I'd like to offer my services and expertise to the Australian government for a small consulting fee. All in the interest of the public good and protecting the children from smut, you understand
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