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Few Contribute To Aussie Classification Review
dopeywan.kenobi writes "The Australian Law Reform Commission are conducting a review of the Australian Classification laws, the outcome of which will influence Australian internet filtering and/or the long awaited R18+ Video Game classification. Public submissions on the matter have been accepted since 20th May 2011 and will close on the 15th July 2011. From the article : '[A]s yet only 80 public submissions have been made — 80 per cent of them from people who believe in government intervention for the sake of child protection. Considering, the furious debates within Australia's technology communities, does this reflect the national balance?...'It's likely down to the media for failing to inform the public on the matter.' Having read the questionnaire, I can't help but wonder if their convoluted phrasing is contributing to reports that people are only partially completing the form without submitting." I wonder how much of it, too, is that people don't want to be tarred as favoring child pornography just because they're uncomfortable with by-domain censorship.
Since the story hit kotaku there are now 547 submissions
Any Aussies should go to http://www.alrc.gov.au/content/classification-online-submission to fill it out while keeping the report side by side, and working through them together. Its the easiest way.
The report is linked at the top, and you have to register as well.
Cheers
Kactus
Additionally, despite the claim that the main aim of the filter is to block child pornography, only 313 of the 977 total sites blocked is on the basis of child porn. At $40M AU so far in taxpayers funds, the cost so far is around $40,900 per blocked URL. Government efficiency at work...
40 thousand dollars per URL. I think that's really all that needs to be said. Even if every one of those URLs was related to child pornography, I'm sure that spending the $40 million on actually catching people who abuse children would be an infinitely better allocation of resources.
At what stage do you think media hysteria bombarded you sufficiently - as it has done with so many people - to think an image of child abuse is a special case, so much worse than any other sequence of bits which acts as evidence that some abuse has taken place? What about a picture/film of adult sexual abuse? If the adult is developmentally retarded? Animal abuse? A snuff film? An image of a dead baby? A woman executed for being raped? A war crime? Evidence of genocide?
Ask yourself whether your concern is with the image or with the discomfort you feel that someone enjoys the image. Then realise that people may enjoy any or all of the above. Then realise that almost all sexual abuse occurs within families or by other people in trusted caring roles - if you want to use a sledgehammer to crack a nut, you would stop far more child sexual abuse by outlawing the family unit.
The noncommercial distribution of CP seems reasonably to be a privacy issue for the child, as any photo/video taken without consent. Beyond that, all the resources should go toward identifying and stopping the abusers and helping the victims. To inform the abused that money which you are claiming to be using in their interest is going to be invested in pushing images of his/her abuse underground (and as the thin end of the wedge for general censorship) is not only illogical, but cruel.
Also, let's be clear here: the IWF, one of the oldest Internet censorship frameworks in the Western world, doesn't even claim that its aim in blocking is to stop CP (it does help stop CP by acting as a clearinghouse for CP reports and sending evidence to authorities at home and abroad - but that's where its helpfulness ends). It claims that its blocking list is provided to stop people "accidentally" viewing CP. This shows how absurd the situation is: surely the correct response to accidentally doing something which isn't dangerous is to learn from your mistakes so you know how to minimise your chances of doing it again? But no, we're at the "punished for being raped" stage of hysteria, where I must worry about the legal implications of accidentally stumbling into CP. It's not that a single such incident is likely to lead to conviction, but that - in the UK at least - a single such incident may lead to arrest, and my arrest record can be studied by pretty much any potential employer.
Any good government knows how to make anyone a criminal or quasi-criminal at its whim. This is just another method. It has nothing whatever to do with stopping child abuse, and I say that as someone who has fundraised for kids' charities and supported certain groups for abuse survivors for as long as I can recall.