Australia Threatens Social Media Laws That Could Jail Tech Execs (cnet.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: Following the livestreamed New Zealand mosque shooting that left 50 dead in Christchurch, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is looking to crack down on extremist content on social media. Morrison will on Tuesday meet with Australian executives of Facebook, Twitter and Google to discuss extremist content legislation that would punish these companies' executives with jail time, the Australian Financial Review reports. Local internet service providers will also be present at the meeting.

Details of the proposed legislation aren't yet known. However, Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which applies to any company operating in the continent, showed that tech companies can change their global practices to appease local legislation. News of Morrison's meeting with tech executives comes on the same day that his government announced increased punishment for companies misusing user information. Maximum penalties for misuse of private data was raised from AU$2.1 million to AU$10 million -- or 10 percent of the company's domestic revenue, or three times the value gained from that misuse of data.

Comments

tech will just take an ausexit then

[Joe_Dragon]

tech will just take an ausexit then

Re:tech will just take an ausexit then

[TimothyHollins]

Possibly, but unlikely. It is still a lucrative market, the only difference being that the margins get somewhat smaller.

On the other hand, if the big players left it would create a valuable vacuum allowing startups to compete. And a Twitter or Facebook without the information stealing scheme would be a real threat to the big guys if it ever managed to gain traction (such as grabbing 100% of the Australian market).

So for our sake, I hope you're right.

Size matters

[Anonymous Coward]

Whilst GDPR shows that tech companies can change their global practices to appease local legislation - Australia is tiny compared to Europe, so I suggest the big tech companies show the Australian Government the finger, stop providing all services into Australia, and then wait for the inevitable citizen uprising which will force the Government to retract from their stupidity.

Re:Size matters

[sinij]

While it is appealing to support such move when Australia is so clearly in the wrong, just think through implications of corporations prevailing over governments. Do you think for a moment that corporations won't abuse such newfound power? If Australia can be subdued in this way, so can any Middle East, Africa, South America, Baltic, Scandinavian, non-China Asia, Canada and so on countries. This is more than a half of the world where rule of law potentially could be subverted. There is no way this would end well for citizens of there.

The only reasonable outcome to cheer and hope for is that compliance with this misguided proposed legislation would make these services awful, such as YouTube with only lolcats videos and 6 months+ review and approval queue to publish anything new.

Re:Size matters

[thereddaikon]

Read up on the East India Tea Company. Was very much an international corporation with a standing army and navy and successfully subjugated empires on its own. Their downfall only came about when they bit off more than they could chew. People look to SciFi for hypercorps like Tyrell and Wayland-Yutani that have more power than nations but they should look to the past. They existed once.

Re:Size matters

[desdinova 216]

strange, I seem to remember that in the days before hyper targeted ads and tracking ads were more clever and creative. I would welcome back the creative ad overlords.

Re:Size matters

[lgw]

Read up on the East India Tea Company. Was very much an international corporation with a standing army and navy and successfully subjugated empires on its own.

Sort of. Mercantilism is hard to understand in a modern context. The East India Company was far more in bed with the government than any modern corporation, and its only because of that that it was allowed it's own armed forces. The British government saw it as a free British army/navy, and there was enormous overlap between ownership in the EIC and power in the government.

Much economics of the time was of the form "you pay the government for a monopoly (or earn it by supporting the government militarily), you make whatever money you can" and while the EIC was a bit abstracted from that, it wasn't far. While it wasn't "Lord Soandso has the salt monopoly as part of his domain granted by the Queen" it was "the EIC is granted a charter by the Queen, and Lord Soandso owns a big chunk".

Anybody remember freedom of speech?

[walterbyrd]

That was awesome. Too bad freedom of speech is dead now. Ah well, it had a good run.

Re:Anybody remember freedom of speech?

[Anonymous Coward]

Old joke:

In Communist Poland we have freedom of speech. In Imperialist America you have freedom after speech.

Re:Anybody remember freedom of speech?

[BringsApples]

Live-streaming murder is illegal. They're simply telling the execs that run these businesses, "You sure look like you don't give a fuck about the results of what you're putting out in the world. You should give a fuck, or you'll be taken away from the world and put into a cage."

Re: Anybody remember freedom of speech?

[Chris Mattern]

Pepperidge Farm remembers!

But Pepperidge Farm ain't just gonna keep to Pepperidge Farm's self free of charge. Maybe you go out and buy yourself some of these distinctive Milano cookies, maybe this whole thing disappears.

Re:Anybody remember freedom of speech?

[squiggleslash]

What does that have to do with livestreaming it? You surely understand that terrorism is far more effective when the terrorist himself is able to speak directly, right? You do understand that those who deliberately amplify, or ignore that they're amplifying, the words of terrorists are ultimately complicit?

Re:Anybody remember freedom of speech?

[lgw]

Freedom of speech has never been absolute, at least not in the US.

It very nearly is. Speech that will provoke clear and immediate violence is not protected, but this very rarely comes up, That's really about it, other than the blatantly unconstitutional obscenity laws (and even then, most of those are restrictions on business rather than speech per se), and arguably some bits of the DMCA.

Most of the examples people like to trot out are not criminal, but instead torts.

Re:Anybody remember freedom of speech?

[ChatHuant]

Freedom only functions for those that do what they should do.

Used to be, people were free to do whatever laws didn't specifically forbid. You seem to advocate that people should only be free to do what the laws specifically allow. That's not freedom. That's a cage.

the words "narcissist" and "sociopath" come to mind

Yes, people who behave in non-approved ways clearly have psychiatric problems and, for the good of society, need to be treated - preferably in isolated places where they don't risk to infect the general populace with their madness. There are some great precedents too.

 

Nobody reads the titles

[MBGMorden]

This doesn't make any sense to me.

Being from the US it's tempting to make a "freedom of speech" argument, however since this is Australia I won't even go down that path. Looking at it from a purely logistical standpoint - how on Earth is a company supposed to suppress LIVESTREAMS of "extremist content". Even a human reviewer won't know what's going on until sometime specific happens.

The best they could ever hope for would be to just have a really good user reporting system but even with that you're not going to stop the first group of people from seeing it. All this will do is enforced is basically to make tech companies simply not allow livestreaming. And heck even outside of livestreaming for something like Youtube they can't possibly human review all uploaded content to know if it's against the rules.

To me, whether there's nefarious motive behind it or sincerely good intentions, this seems like a governmental push to get us back to the 1950's era of curated content only coming from official sources, rather than people actually sharing information among themselves.

Re: Nobody reads the titles

[Anonymous Coward]

^^ Parent has hit the nail on the head.
Govts HATE the loss of media control and will jump on any excuse to seize it back.

Re:Nobody reads the titles

[mark-t]

So basically, don't allow live content anymore, right?

You realize that for this to be effective, you would also basically have to outlaw skype or any form of group chat that has video as well, don't you?

Re:Nobody reads the titles

[guruevi]

They could detect gunshots, that technology exists. As someone above said, they started the censorship with automatically blocking keywords and people that indicated a non-leftist political perspective. Now they have to endure the race to the leftist bottom, where nobody is allowed to speak freely.

And yes, I know that free speech also allows for the most vile disruptive people to have a platform. The founders of the US knew that, everybody that advocates free speech knows that and that's the price we are willing to pay.

Re:Nobody reads the titles

[Goldsmith]

I think you're arguing from the wrong perspective. It's not the government's job to protect anyone's business model, particularly if that model is facilitating serious crime. Facebook and Google built video entertainment businesses that they can't effectively manage. That's their problem, not Australia's.

People may not remember 20 years ago, but we were able to share information prior to Facebook and Google. They did not invent video sharing, free speech, or message boards.

Re:Nobody reads the titles

[MBGMorden]

Gunshots don't imply extremist content. It could be someone reporting on a situation. It could be shooting a gun at a gun range for target practice. Or it could even be a loud car exhaust (see video below where some guys get descended upon by the local SWAT team who thought their car exhaust was a machine gun).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:Nobody reads the titles

[MBGMorden]

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety".

I don't buy into the "maybe we don't need livestreams" argument. The free and open exchange of information and ideas is paramount to a free society. Restricting that speech is a crime far greater than any terrorist could hope to achieve.

Re: Nobody reads the titles

[desdinova 216]

I don't think it's the governments, I think it's more the legacy media companies.

Re:Nobody reads the titles

[penandpaper]

Remember, you can still setup your own server and host your own livestream

Up until your hosting providers cuts you off. Or until you are de-indexed. Or your payment processor cuts you off. Or your bank refuses your business.

What we have learned is that it doesn't matter if it is "your own ". Harpies will form a mob until that person/entity/idea is gone from the internet and destitute in meat space.

At what point is it of similar burden to create your own phone network to make a phone call to your neighbor than it is to air a controversial opinion online? Why is it acceptable for "nazi's" to speak hate speech on a phone line and not the internet?

Stupid politicians

[pete6677]

Yay, another politician looking to make a name for themselves by regulating something they have no understanding of. What could go wrong?

How about a two month cool down period?

[ruddk]

Politicians should not be allowed to suggest any new laws and regulation until they have calmed down. Tragic as it is, clearly you need it, overreacting does not help.

well sure

[cascadingstylesheet]

Infidel beheadings, of course, will continue to be broadcast unimpeded ...

Fines from Global revenue

[nicolaiplum]

"Maximum penalties for misuse of private data was raised from AU$2.1 million to AU$10 million -- or 10 percent of the company's domestic revenue,..."

That's where the Aussies are going wrong.

The EU is feared because they fine based on global revenues. It's not just a few dollars of Aussie revenue at stake, it's billions at stake for companies who do wrong in the EU.

This also stops games like claiming revenues are low in one country because the money paid by the consumer in that country are sent to a different country to "provide services".