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Australia Considering iPhone App Censorship

Posted by samzenpus on from the no-apps-mate dept.

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."

27 of 284 comments (clear)

  1. This comment not safe for 15-year-old by mrsteveman1 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Fuck you, Australia

    1. Re:This comment not safe for 15-year-old by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      In more civilized nations, we have no problem with children using extreme language in extreme situations.

      the problem arises when the children think it's fun/cool to use that language everywhere.
      This is where parents should do something, not when government should.

      the same arguments could be used against most things censored.

    2. Re:This comment not safe for 15-year-old by exomondo · · Score: 4, Informative

      As an Australian i'd like to redirect that slightly to 'Fuck you Australian Government'. I can't believe we have such idiots thinking that their 'filter' will censor the net...idiots that have no knowledge of P2P, Usenet, IRC, Anon Proxies, Tor, etc... Their focus has been on child porn and yes this may stop Joe Moron Pervert from going to childporn.com, but are the sorts of people interested in such material really that stupid anyway?

    3. Re:This comment not safe for 15-year-old by exomondo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This is where parents should do something, not when government should.

      Exactly! This is all about lazy parents trying to absolve themselves of the responsibility of raising children.

    4. Re:This comment not safe for 15-year-old by mrsteveman1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Assuming criminals are stupid is a great way to catch fewer criminals.

    5. Re:This comment not safe for 15-year-old by causality · · Score: 5, Insightful
      I don't think you understand that there is no "18 related films" and none is being proposed.

      Why isn't it about the government trying to help parents?

      If it were about trying to help parents, there'd be a category for adults. Then the parent can choose age-appropriate titles and adults can still get the apps they want. There isn't a category for adults. That's why this is not about trying to help parents. This is about censoring adults in the name of helping parents. If you think helping parents is a good thing then this is a mockery of it, a smack in the face.

      Oh, I forgot, the fucking libertarians have taken over the asylum, so if it's done by the government it's necessarily evil.

      No real libertarian would support censoring adults. Especially not when having an adult category does not negate the usefulness of all the other categories. Adding an adult category would be cost-free in the sense that it wouldn't hinder any of the stated goals of this proposal. The omission of it is either institutionalized stupidity or a deliberate attempt to censor. Both can be called evil.

      --
      It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
    6. Re:This comment not safe for 15-year-old by exomondo · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Why isn't it about the government trying to help parents?

      It is! If we had an R18 rating that's exactly what it would do! Instead they absolve parents of their responsibility by just banning anything not suitable for a 15yo.

      It's much more logical and consistent for a parent to be able to say "you can't watch any 18 rated films" to a child rather than "well OK, you can watch this one because I've heard a good review of it and it has artistic merit, but you can't watch this other one because it's too violent/pornographic/sweary".

      Yes, which is why we want an R18 rating for games, but the government won't do that. That's exactly my point, they decide they will just wield the ban-hammer instead of having an R18 rating that parents would have to be aware of.

    7. Re:This comment not safe for 15-year-old by hoggoth · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Funny you should say this (about religion).
      We are nominally Christian. A friend who is much more religious than us urged us to read the Bible to our kids. Thinking it couldn't be a bad thing, we get a Bible and looked through it. HOLY S! I would *never* read these stories to my kids. They are full of the sickest violence and perversions imaginable. There's incest, rape, murder, revenge, and overall a very callous attitude towards extracting violent revenge and causing misery. We told our friend that if the cover didn't say 'Bible' on it she would never allow any of her kids to hear stories like this.

      We tried cleaning up a story. We took the story of 'Lot' and skipped over the part about the townspeople wanting to rape the angels staying with Lot. We skipped over the part about Lot offering to give his daughters to the townspeople to rape instead of the angels (a tempting offer, I'm sure, since Lot told them they were virgins). We skipped over the part where Lot's daughters got him drunk and had sex with their father so they could get pregnant (seriously WTF?! If you tried to make a movie of this without the name 'Lot' on it the religious right would freak). We only told that Lot left the city and his wife looked back and God turned her into a pillar of salt.

      My kids laughed and laughed at how stupid the story was and how mean and nasty God was in the story. They started playing 'I caught you peeking, ZAP I turn you into salt! HAHAHA! It turned into a game of Simon-Says where if you missed an instruction you got turned into salt.'

      Maybe I should show them the movie 'Saw' next, but I'll write 'Holy' on the cover to make it ok.

      --
      - For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat /dev/random (may take some time)
    8. Re:This comment not safe for 15-year-old by commodore64_love · · Score: 3, Insightful

      >>>The problem isn't a lack of R18, the problem is that anything not meeting 'standards' is illegal.

      Good point. The government should not have the power to ban adults from buying items. The government is not your daddy or mommy. I used to think, "Well if America falls to tyranny, there's always the freedom-loving Aussieland," but apparently I was wrong. Australia is ruled by a tyranny of oligarchs that won't even let you play an adult game.

      --
      "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
    9. Re:This comment not safe for 15-year-old by interval1066 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I've been frequently surprised by the Australian Govs at time puritanical, at times "Big Brother" attitude with new technology and its social impact. I've spent time with Aussies in Japan, mostly meeting them at bars and they seemed to be quite good folk. Then I hear about this stuff and I have to ask "Are these really the same people?"

      --
      Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
    10. Re:This comment not safe for 15-year-old by Hashi+Lebwohl · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Please don't confuse us with our politicians - I have no idea where they come from, but it's certainly not the real world!

      --
      I'm in to sadism, bestiality and necrophilia. Am I flogging a dead horse?
  2. Good grief! by Frosty+Piss · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.
    1. Re:Good grief! by jessejackson100 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Oh we elect them alright. The problem is neither of the major parties has a full set of policies that don't suck.

      - Vote Labour and there will be Internet Filtering for all!
      - Vote Liberal and we no longer get the promised high speed broadband network, because apparently 'wireless is the future'.

      EPIC FAIL either way...

    2. Re:Good grief! by exomondo · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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?

      Thank god we have an election coming up in the next couple of days and neither liberal nor labor are looking to be clear winners but it looks like the greens are most certainly going to dominate in the senate so these censorship bills are going to get a serious beatdown very soon! Hopefully we won't have to deal with any of this shit ever being implemented.

    3. Re:Good grief! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Is this really what the average Australian wants?

      Of course not, and it's not what will actually happen either. There's a snowball's chance in hell that the government will form a new body to review hundreds of thousands of applications, and if they tried to lock out the app store altogether... they'd be booted at the next election. This is a publicity stunt that will lead to nothing. There are 2 parties in Australia . .. Liberal & Labour. Labour just ousted their leader, meaning that the new *female* leader (a first for Australia) is ahead in the polls, but standing on shaky ground ahead of the election in a few days time. The Labour party is rallying whatever votes they can and this is an ideal stunt in the "Think of the children" and "We'll catch those tax dodgers" veins to bring more people on board the party line. Note that TFA specifically calls for changes that require no legislation but enforcement was not discussed at the meeting of attorney generals ... translation "We aint doin nothin, but the media will pick up on our concern".

      It's an election stunt, slashdot has officially been trolled by the Australian government.

    4. Re:Good grief! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What is with the Americans? PATRIOT, revocation of habeus corpus, free speech zones, a prison population 5-10 times that of *any* other western nation... even 2257? Is this really what the average American wants? Surely the Yank public is not this stupid? They do elect their politicians, don't they?

      Or we could go across the pond to where it's the House of Lords, of all things, that is standing up for human rights by beating down unprinicipled legislation submitted by the House of Commons.

      Yeah, it's all "those crazy people in Australia". No-one else has whackos. At least our major politicians don't have to mention God in every. damned. speech. Next time you see any quality of life measure, have a look to see which nation is usually nestled under the Scandanavian countries which top the list - it's not the US, nor the UK. But no, you go dwell happily in your caricature that we're weird and repressed.

    5. Re:Good grief! by imakemusic · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Just don't show the hooker's tits!

      --
      Brain surgery - it's not rocket science!
    6. Re:Good grief! by exomondo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Right, assuming by "Greens" you mean "Family First" and by "going to get a serious beatdown" you mean "actually be taken seriously and implemented". A clear win for either of the major parties is a blow to anything this stupid.

      No I mean the 'Greens' - as i have written - and 'beatdown' - again as i have written. Im not sure how you could misinterpret that, seemed pretty obvious based on the words i wrote and you quoted.

    7. Re:Good grief! by tdelaney · · Score: 4, Insightful

      At least I can watch free-to-air TV in Australia that is not limited to what is appropriate for a 12 year old. You can say "fuck" or show naked people (including nipples!) on FTA TV in Australia after 9:30pm. I'm pretty sure you could even get away with "cunt".

      All countries have some fucked up stuff. The US allows all kinds of violence on FTA TV, but not a hint of sex, swearing or (god forbid) blaspheming. Australia doesn't have an 18+ rating for computer games, and has a government that wants to introduce ubiquitous high-speed broadband (yay!) and a very broad (and technically useless) internet filter (boo!).

    8. Re:Good grief! by tdelaney · · Score: 4, Informative

      Actually, it's looking likely that the Greens will probably have enough seats in the Senate to hold the balance of power in their own right.

      If you want to vote for progressive parties in the Senate without the hassle of voting below the line, I strongly suggest thinking about voting for the Australian Sex Party. Their preferences flow through a variety of progressive parties (who are unlikely to achieve a quota) before going to the Greens and then Labor.

      Unlike many minor parties, the ASP don't seem to feel the need to have a policy on every issue. But I find that they don't have a policy I disagree with.

      http://www.sexparty.org.au/index.php
      http://www.sexparty.org.au/index.php/policies

      Remember - parties need to obtain 4% of the vote (I think) to get their deposit back - voting for a minor party can help them even if they don't get a seat.

  3. regulatory capture by advocate_one · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
  4. We have an election coming up.. by nickd · · Score: 4, Informative

    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

  5. Re:Yet another reason not to get an IPhone by benbritten · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  6. Re:Oz border agency to search iPhones ? by srjh · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  7. In Brazil is the same by rsilva · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  8. Re:Oz border agency to search iPhones ? by tehcyder · · Score: 3, Funny

    Fun and games at Oz airports!

    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
  9. What's next? by Drakkenmensch · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.