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?"
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).
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.
Believe with me, my saplings.
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!
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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