Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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