Slashdot Mirror
AU Internet Censorship Spells Bad News For Gamers
eldavojohn writes "Kotaku is running an investigative piece examining what internet censorship means for games in Australia. Australia has some of the most draconian video game attitudes in the world, and the phrase 'refused classification' should strike fear in game developers and publishers looking to market games there. Internet censorship may expand this phrase to mean that anybody hosting anything about the game may suffer censorship in AU. Kotaku notes, 'This means that if a game is refused classification (RC) in Australia — like, say, NFL Blitz, or Getting Up — content related to these games would be added to the ISP filter. [This would bring up] a range of questions, foremost of those being: what happens when an otherwise harmless website ... hosts material from those games (screenshots, trailers, etc) that is totally fine in the US or Japan or Europe, but that has been refused classification in Australia?' Kotaku received a comment from the Australian Department of Broadband Communication promising that the whole website won't be blocked, just the material related to the game (videos, images, etc). Imagine maintaining that blacklist!"
I mean Heil Crikey!
Once the flood gates of ISP level censorship are pushed open, it's simply going to keep cascading until our Mate's internet connection is "sanitized" to death, where sanitized is on a sliding scale depending on whoever is in power at the time.
Expect no less from the country that brought us the likes of the Fuhrer and the Governator
The upshot of this whole thing is of course that our jobless rate is going to evaporate as we are going to need that chunk of the the population to surf the net and flag possible bad content.
...
I encourage every member of Slashdot to donate to Gamers 4 Croydon. Gamers for Croydon is a political party running against atkinson in his home seat in an attempt to raise awareness about the R18+ restriction on games and to oppose mandatory internet filtering. Seriously, go donate and spread the word
http://www.gamers4croydon.org/
Kids! Bringing about Armageddon can be dangerous. Do not attempt it in your home!
death by bureaucracy... department of broadband communication. are you fucking kidding me?
this is the kind of idiocy that was generally historically corrected by violent revolution... sigh.
gg Australia, way to self-immolate in the present tense. it was nice knowing you, I guess. thanks for all the fish, or whatever condolences I'm supposed to offer.
Sometimes I wonder if I think too much.
Why can't we simply accept that this is the 21st century, and nothing should be censored? Ever. Don't want to see the content within a particular video game? Great, don't look at it. That's your right. It is also mine to masturbate to bloody, mutilated appendages if I so choose. Please replace "video game" above with any applicable form of media.
not much, just being forced to manually insert line breaks into my comment
They felt vaporware deserved it's own classification.
And now...Slashdot is no longer viewable to Australians.
again.
Australia's parliament voted against internet censorship in 2008 and there was a lot less organisation against it then. This close to an election many pollies are thinking of their chances of being re-elected. The Greens still hold the balance of power in parliament and they are dead against the censorship scheme, most of the independents are offside now as well, the Opposition will vote no simply because Labor is voting yes.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
http://www.pirateparty.org.au/join
Remember, it takes 42 muscles to frown and only 4 to pull the trigger of a sniper rifle.
This is especially worrying when you realise how corrupt the government in Australia is, I recently came to realised this when I found out that the Department of Education in NSW block access to ALL search engines accept google for students at public primary and high schools. (apart from yahoo which you can get one page of results from if you go to search.yahoo.com)
null
Imagine maintaining that blacklist!
Imagine is exactly right, because the blacklist will be secret. The explanation being that having a list of RC material available will encourage people to view it... except they won't be able to...
Incidentally, for the people who think this filter is about blocking child porn, consider this: Child porn is illegal, and is the jurisdiction of the federal police. The blacklist will not be maintained by the police, and any ILLEGAL content is to be submitted to the police. The RC filter list is only for UNDESIRABLE content, content that is NOT illegal.
So first Britain treats 1984 like an instruction manual, and now Australia is treating Equilibrium like a How-To film?
This game has been rated EC-10.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
I really don't see a problem with that. Students can go home and search to their hearts content and to my knowledge teachers and administrators act as if their control ends at the school boundary. My son is a grade two student at an Australian primary school. Students have internet access so they can run online educational applications. At home I supervise his internet access. I accept that teachers can't to that every second of the day at school.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I'll go one further than $50, I will bet my left testicle it never happens.
"the Opposition will vote no simply because Labor is voting yes"
Yep and when the Liberals were last in power Labor voted no to madatory filtering.
"most of the independents are offside now as well"
That was the whole point, Mr 2% lost interest pretty fast when his own anti-abortion sponsers *somehow* made it onto the proposed list. This shit has been going on for at least a decade, the two major parties take turns at being good/bad cop in order to screw over the nutjob independents who keep poping up in the senate.
As I have been doing for the last 2-3yrs with these stories I will again issue a challenge to anyone who thinks this crap has a real chance of becoming law. Point out a single quote where Conroy has said he is in favour of mandatory filtering. I've yet to see one. I've seen plenety of quotes where he says he is in favour of trials/inquiries, and sure he put up the legislation but it's his turn to be the bad cop and like any Aussie with half a brain he knows full well it will fail to pass the senate.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
What really strikes me here is that all this "Refused Classification" stuff has been in the media circus for a really long time now, and there's been an instant backlash from those who get it - IT guys, gen Y, etc. But Aussie politicians just don't seem to get it at all - their attitude toward the whole thing, their reactions and replies to all the backlash so far can all be explained with the following assumption:
They think the internet is some sort of extension of traditional media like newspapers and radio. And they are trying to treat it it as such - attempted censorship, case in point.
What they have yet to realise that these traditional media are broadcast media - i.e. Single source, many recipients, very minimal feedback loop.
The internet is a direct contradiction of this media type - the feedback loop is the main thing (Slashdot, or any any other forum, case in point, especially this comment). Many sources, many recipients. Lack of centralised control.
And all of this applies to the world of HTTP ... don't get me started of p2p networks and VPNs...
IMHO, if they really understood the internet properly, they would see the pointlessness in censoring it.
Not really - just one state level Attorney General (Michael Atkinson - South Australia's AG) has this attitude, highlighting the problem of giving any one of the AGs the ability to veto major decisions where there is otherwise a majority opinion.
The major problem here is that Michael Atkinson is a complete wackjob with his opinions - and he doesn't care about any return fire because noone in his political party dares removing him from the position.
22 million australians... apparantly a majority voted for this administration. Why care if that country wants to hide behind a second great internet wall?
Hey we Aussies stop playing games shortly after turning 15! So what's the big deal with wanting to protect our children from these nasty video games aimed at corrupting our youth?
And as far as I have been told by our overlords.. sorry government. Is that child porn is rampant online and you stumble across it far too often, if the solution is as easy as blocking a website why not let them do it to protect us? While they're at it they can protect us from websites that are pro-abortion, that help teenagers deal with being gay and block any depictions of women with small breasts.. *shiver* We like em big down under!
Germany has many more banned games than Australia can brag with, and if an 18+ game is actually published here it's most likely censored - green blood, ragdoll removed etc. Want to play Gears of War in Germany? Forget it. OK, GoW is not banned, it is just "on the index", which is one step harsher than "18+". You are actually allowed to import the game from the UK, but don't even dream about downloading extra maps from XBox Live. Not only do you need a fake UK account for that, but you'll also have to set up some kind of VPN to a free country as there's also an IP blocker in place that prevents any downloads from a german IP. In addition to those games on the "index" we also have a third classification for video games which is "beschlagnahmt". Those are actually banned, and I'm talking about stuff like Mortal Kombat or Condemned here, not some weird Nazi propaganda stuff or animal porn games.
There are four times as many germans as there are australians, we are located in the middel of the oh-so-liberal Europe - but there's no international outcry because of our growing amount of censorship which also includes internet filters since our state president signed a totally idiotic law last week. Could everybody start calling the germans bookburning nazis, please? Sometimes international pressure helps - and at the very least it would give us german gamers the fluffy feeling that somebody cares for us.
Brains? Really?
I guess when you outlaw brains, only outlaws will have brains.
(points at the Aussies faces)
ah-ha!
Games and related content are distinct pieces of material, a game with one rating doesn't mean that DLC, snapshots or it's own site would be under the same classification as they are "distinct works", they would be classified independently.
One of the main differences between rich countries and poor countries is how the law is regarded by the population.
In developed countries there is a general sentiment among the people that obeying the law is something that benefits everybody. In the Third World the general sentiment is that the law is something created by those in power for their own benefit.
The way things are going, expect a major increase in corruption and violence in the currently rich contries in the next decades. You cannot keep creating law after law that go against the wishes of the majority of the people without unwanted consequences.
Of course, ideologues like the limitless possibilities censorship offers when it comes to shaping the thoughts of the population by making inconvenient material unavailable. It also helps them get re-elected. But in this case, censorship has a very clear business aspect: it means that if you as a publisher don't pay up, they have the power to make your product disappear. Not only will your website disappear from view, the censorship filter makes it impossible for people to even talk about your product. So this is about corruption, clear and simple.
Going by the current average age of gamers (30) I don't see why there should be Refused content, for instance with the gaming aspect if the games were rated it can follow a similar stance with movies, you're a parent you don't think blowing up zombies with large rockets or brutally murdering people with plastic bags is something that you want yours kids to see/play here's a tip: Take some god damn initiative and exercise your parenting skills - Don't buy them the game or let them play it for that matter, it's truly becoming sad when it becomes apparent over time that we're just becomming so totalitarian we have to be told where to smoke, what to watch/view, what to read and what we can play i think it's safe to guarantee we give them an inch they will take the whole mile (Giving it back to us 6inches at a time over a table)
The problem with that is students are taught that google is the only option and will refuse to use over search engines, which may or may not be better.
Especially at high school, students frequently have to use the web and it is my understanding that the same filter will be applied at school and at home w/ the release of the laptops for all yr9 students.
The filter is supposed to stop inappropriate use of the internet. About 85% of the sites that I use for research are blocked, leaving wikipedia a few government sites and a few that no one else has been to (It's a black list but if a student goes to a site it soon gets blocked as uncategorised for an unspecified period of time).
Also I fail to see how bing, yahoo or Altavista are inappropriate (bing is blocked as teachers only, the others as search engines/portal sites).
null
Did you verb brains?
For $5 a month I can setup a virtual server in Germany with a VPN to it, running squid and a monthly quota of 350 gigs (which I can tell you is many times my Australian data quota) and do all my Kotaku web surfing through it.
That shows how stupid the mandatory Internet censorship is.
Now all I need to do is package it as a service for the point-and-click crowd :-)
I'm just wondering how they intend to blacklist part of a website that is using SSL to encrypt its pages. Do they have some magical power they can use to interfere with the traffic? I know governments do sometimes... but I somehow doubt this is the case here.
I'm Australian, you insensitive cl%^!@#(&$%[NO CARRIER]
It seems australia is "opt-out" of the new technology know has Internet.
I myself would not stop posting comments about any game, even indie games that will never be "validated" by these people. You can't adapt internet to your laws, australia, you must addapt your laws to internet, since Internet is a global thing, and can't be modified by the will a single ( and maybe all ) countrys.
-Woof woof woof!
it is my understanding that the same filter will be applied at school and at home w/ the release of the laptops for all yr9 students.
Deals Direct had an asus netbook for $250. Its not like people can't buy their own gear. Or they could just run a live cd. If the school owns the laptop there isn't much you can do about filtering.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I'm sure its a pain in the ass now, but I don't think it can last forever. In the UK in the eighties, loads of fringe films were banned for being violent, and all it served to do was make them famous! Driller Killer, anybody? These days every so often one of them gets free publicity from being unbanned. I guess they changed their minds. So they shoot themselves in the foot, because without the list, Mortal Kombat would just be a crap game with lots of blood and gore!
You forgot "Small breasted women".. Seriously.
Bah, wait until you hear that government departments aren't going to be filtered. The logic makes as much sense as the rest of the plan, but it means public servants have to get their porn at work.
I thought Freedom of Expression was part of the Human Rights Convention?
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1998/ukpga_19980042_en_1
Section 12
You say i in jest, but this report alone might be already enough. We're talking about RC games here. Is mentioning a "banned" game enough to get hit by the censor bat? Is reporting about a "censored" event, practice or even fad enough to be censored?
If so, it basically means that censoring ANY medium is perfectly possible in Australia now. Fox reported badly about the Aussie Prez? Let's see, did they have something about happy slapping lately? Yes? Great, *POOF*. BBC disagreeing with Australian foreign policy? Hmm... browse their documentaries, I'm sure we find something that matches our filter criteria. /. repeatedly slapping our censoring policy? Now, that should be easy, I'm sure they have something about copyright in one of their stories that make them censor worthy.
The threat isn't so much that we might not get to play some computer game. The threat is that it becomes easily possible to silence media outlets that are deemed "unwanted". Oh, you cannot block them for their anti-Aussie-Government stories, but they will for sure carry something that makes them blockworthy.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's not quite a done deal, but has a smooth ride through Parliament. Party discipline in Australia is absolute, and any Labor member who votes against party lines (except during a declared "conscience vote") will be deselected automatically. Kevin Rudd, a self-defined social conservative, supports it. Meanwhile, the Coalition are headed by Tony Abbott, a hardline religious authoritarian culture-warrior often nicknamed the "Mad Monk"; for it to not get through, he would have to not only oppose it but exercise party discipline across the Coalition to prevent anyone from crossing the floor. And there are certainly enough social conservatives there to make up the numbers easily. The Greens, Xenophon, &c. are irrelevant at this point.
So if it gets to legislation being tabled and voted on before the election, it's as close to a dead certainty as can get in politics. The main chance of stopping it would be for the Labor Party to realise that they're making a terrible mistake and to kill or neutralise it. Which also looks unlikely; Rudd and Conroy are both ideologically committed to it, and polls show that opposition to it could only make a political difference in two electorates: the inner-city seats of Melbourne and Sydney, both safe Labor seats. So politically, it's not a liability (and probably an asset, given the legendary apathy of the Australian electorate).
China called. They'd like to compare notes on internet filtering.
I find being offended by me offensive.
They are completely broken and taken together are in fact draconian.
Here are the parts:
1. Material refused classification cannot be sold.
2. Any Attorney General has veto power over the rating of something.
3. South Australia has ~7.2% of the total population of Australia.
That means that 82.8% of the population is subject to the whims of a politician they _cannot_ vote for or against. The only thing they can do is to change the system as a whole. They can't touch Atkinson.
People like to point fingers at Atkinson but who the fuck created a system where one state can veto _anything_? With no chance of overriding said veto. That's not democracy.
I find being offended by me offensive.
Wouldn't it be interesting to create services such as excessive content mirroring creating a great amount of very similar addresses pointing to the same content in order to artificially grow the blacklist exponentially until it becomes impossible to manage or use?
I never forget those, they are what I prefer :)
This is the sig that says NI (again)
Brains could incite zombies to violence, therefore Australia has banned them.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Yes, but year 9 and 10 students are required to use the issued laptops at school (the network is locked down and they won't just connect any laptop). Also the software on the laptops is worth a lot more (in the area of thousands of $s) then any that would come with an asus netbook making it unreasonable to buy for school use (including homework in some cases).
Which still leaves the problem that students are being taught to only use google as most students won't have the technical knowledge to transfer the Onenote books back and fourth between computers and that is where most of the homework will need to be done.
null
I just mean: If you want to do your own stuff buy a cheap netbook.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
People like to point fingers at Atkinson but who the fuck created a system where one state can veto _anything_? With no chance of overriding said veto. That's not democracy.
"We", where "we" is our predecessors, did - Australia is a federation of states, and the balance of power that allows one state to veto is due to the fact that the smaller states were afraid of being subject to the whim of the more populous states. This is also responsible for the Senate, where each state has equal representation despite the disparity in population. It's not a perfect democracy, but we've lived with it for a hundred years, and the Americans have lived with a similar one for over 200.
Man who leaps off cliff jumps to conclusion.
Now I know why so many people are coming to the U.S and Canada from Australia, this just boggles my mind that this is even going on! One has to wonder what they are thinking. I can't say more as I do not live there and do not know the facts,but what I am reading on the news and web has me wondering how much longer the people of Australia are going to let this go on. From what we hear, when they took most of your firearms the crime rate has gone up and keeps going that way. I do wish we got more new's here in the states on what the full story is. As this will affect us all in the end. Even to the point of how we make our sites if we want to be seen by Australian's .
So in order to prevent the small (population) states from being subject to the whim of the larger states you set up a system where any state can force it's views on all other states; resulting in exactly the thing you were trying to avoid?
I find being offended by me offensive.
So in order to prevent the small (population) states from being subject to the whim of the larger states you set up a system where any state can force it's views on all other states; resulting in exactly the thing you were trying to avoid?
The irony is not lost on me =) The federal-state system in Australia is in dire need of reform, with Federal governments increasingly pulling powers from the states by fiat, but the strategy has been pursued by both sides of federal politics irrespective of the competencies or constituencies of the states, so someone to push that reform is not yet in parliament...
Man who leaps off cliff jumps to conclusion.
There's a simple fix for media. Allow the sale of unclassified material. I don't understand why not being classified prevents sale. Other than censorship that is.
I find being offended by me offensive.