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Australia Considering iPhone App Censorship
srjh writes "Having raised concerns about 'the classification of games playable on mobile telephones,' the Australian government has now 'put the wheels in motion to address this.' Under current Australian legislation, video games sold in the country must pay between $470 and $2040 to have the game classified, and due to the lack of an 18+ rating in Australia, if it is not found to be suitable for a 15-year-old, it is banned outright. This is the fate met by several recent titles, such as Left 4 Dead 2 and Fallout 3. Over 200,000 applications are available for the iPhone, many of them games, and developers have raised concerns about the prohibitive costs involved, with many announcing an intention to drop the Australian market altogether if the plan proceeds."
Fuck you, Australia
What is with the Australians? This is just the latest in a long line of this sort of shit. Is this really what the average Australian wants? Surely the Assie public is not this stupid? They do elect their politicians, don't they?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
a fine example of it as only the big boys can absorb the costs and this effectively closes the market on their smaller competitors.
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Aside from the government making money. Applications that get classified as RC wouldn't be affected by any of the RC restrictions. The biggest restriction is that RC material cannot be sold in brick and mortar stores. iOS Apps aren't.
Basically:
If the liberals/nationals coalition gets in, we are all kinds of fucked (they have become the religious extreme with their preferences going straight to the Christian Democratic Party and Family First after themselves)
If labor gets in again - we get the only visionary policy any of the politicians have to offer - the National Broadband Network, but they saddle it with filtering, censorship and the lack of an R+18 classification for games.
So the only decent vote left is the Australian Sex Party - which is a civil libertarian group who are anti-censorship, pro same sex marriage and also want to remove the tax exempt status for religious organisations.
Next election we will hopefully have the Australian Pirate party fully formed to be able to run a candidate.
This election is really a case of trying to pick a candidate that is the least awful.
Ugh
This has nothing at all to do with Apple, it applies to any mobile app. So even if you have android, the developers who want to sell apps in Australia will have to pay to have their apps (well, games) rated.
This is growing up pains ...
...
None of all these things have come to pass.
They come up with them, the realise they don't work, and they let them go.
No better way to learn, it is the process of making laws.
What is an iPhone app ? They only reason they are attacking, is because they are contained by apple.
What next, webapps ? Android and HTML5 and FLASH will make them indistinguishable to a normal app.
I would much rather they try and get it out of their system, than winge for ever
You might be joking, but they are already doing it for pornography.
Along with the standard "did you spend time in agricultural regions" and "are you carrying more than $10,000 cash" is a question about whether travellers are carrying pornography. Not just child porn or videos intended for redistribution in the country, but any porn whatsoever, including your honeymoon snaps. Privacy isn't really something that is taken quite seriously by successive Australian governments. The one we end up with on Saturday won't be any different, regardless of who wins, but at least it looks likely the Greens will hold the balance of power and keep whoever wins accountable.
Brazil has the same rules since the start, hence in Brazil the appStore does not carry any games.
What people do here is to have accounts in other countries, usually Argentina. Then the country looses the taxes...
Since taxes are outrageously high for video games in Brazil, this is probably better for the costumers here.
Oz immigration officer: Do you have any criminal convictions?
Brit wit: No, I didn't realise they were still necessary entry requirements.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Australian government soon to ban all forms of evil sorcery, including phones, television and the telegraph. Story at 6 on smoke signals and tam-tams.
>the problem arises when the children think it's fun/cool to use that language everywhere.
What problem? If that's how they want to express themselves, let them. They're just words for gods sake...
If people don't get offended about something, how can they feign injury and use that to justify their demands that others conform to their expectations? Why, they'd have to resort to being patient and tolerant (in the true sense) and to using their counter-example to protest against whatever it is they don't like. If that happened their egos might shrink and become less inflamed with fewer high horses to mount. They might see the petty power struggles for what they are, and they might enjoy life more once they stop participating in them and wasting so much energy on them.
Clearly we cannot allow this! We must reinforce the easily offended lifestyle. We clearly need to legitimize it with political power and by taking it seriously at all times. At all costs must make sure to never tell anyone to grow up and get over any otherwise harmless thing that offends them. Any authority figure must especially take seriously and whenever possible, kowtow to whoever screams the loudest with no regard for the actual legitimacy of their grievance. Young people must grow up seeing the repeated examples of parents, schools, and media who model this behavior and never question or critically examine it, because then it will be normal and all they've ever known. That's the precedent we want to set and the message we will send.
Otherwise people might adopt a "live and let live" philosophy otherwise known as freedom, and might get the idea in their heads that there's something wrong with so much concern for what other adults want to read, listen to, watch, or what games they play. Shit man, they might even think it's good enough that they can choose such things for themselves and that it's proper to allow other adults to do the same.
If we allowed that, then the next thing you know, entire political campaigns and party platforms will have to find some other basis. The tacit assumption that "they must be up to no good" might shift to the busybodies and away from those who want to be left alone by them. This could really spiral out of control! It would become difficult to try to legislate morality. It could even lead to more people believing that it's silly to blame any of our problems on inanimate objects, and with that goes the War on (some) Drugs and all the great justifications for expanded police powers that it has faithfully provided all of these years.
So you see, Australia must stay the course. If they allowed a category intended for adults and restricted to adults, it'd be a small and seemingly harmless step down a very slippery slope. Do you know what's at the bottom of that slippery slope? Why, a world where other people might say or do things that someone else doesn't like. Do you understand now the danger that we are in?
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
How did Australia devolve from the cool tough guys of Gallipoli/"That's not a knife" to this bunch of pussies?
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