Lotus Says: The Industry Supports Censorship

According to an Australian official, the CEO of Lotus Development Corporation believes:

Industry has no issue with online content regulation. The industry endorses content regulation.

The context is Australia's new system of dumbing the net down for children; here, the words "content regulation" mean simply: "censorship." An excerpt follows.

Senator Alston, Australia's Minister for Communications, is still working to sell Australia's censorship law, which was passed in June and takes effect on January 1st. Essentially the entire continent's internet will be rated like movies, with teeth. Unless something is done before January - which looks unlikely - it will be the worst trampling of net liberties by a Western democratic nation.

One of the compelling arguments against Australia's plan is that it will slow or halt the technology industry - halting progress means losing venture capital and slowing an entire nation's economy; nobody wants that. So Senator Alston has been looking for evidence to the contrary, and in particular he hopes to convince people that the industry itself supports the plan.

In the excerpted speech below, given on September 30, he recalls a conversation with Jeff Papows, CEO of Lotus, and claims Papows voiced support for the plan. (Note that Alston also claims support from Yahoo. Yahoo denies this, but Lotus has not, and had no comment at press time).

The industry itself accepts that there should be these codes of practice and this form of regulation. We have been trying to negotiate it for the last three years with the Internet Industry Association. Their problem is that there are these maniacs - these electronic frontiers outfits - running around stirring up trouble, using quaint expressions and feeding lines to that woman from the Civil Liberties Union [Nadine Strossen] who then gets out there, gets a good run and says that we are global village idiots. This is just a low-grade political campaign. I do not find industry opposing this approach.

I was fascinated when I was in Silicon Valley about two months ago. I waited for industry to raise it, because it was at the height of the furore. It was just after the legislation had gone through and I was doing the rounds of all the IT companies in the valley. I waited for them to raise it with me. The only people who ever raised it with me were journalists who were saying, 'Isn't this a big problem?' I replied, 'Why it is a big problem?' They said, 'It is because it is getting media coverage. It is coming out of Australia. Your Senator Lundy is faxing the New York Times and saying, "Isn't it disgraceful?" and Electronic Frontiers Australia is calling for the minister's resignation. Isn't this an issue?' It is an issue for the media, because it is new, exciting and a lot of fun, but it was not an issue for the industry.

The only people who raised it with me on that visit were Yahoo who thought it was a good idea. I recently saw the president and CEO of Lotus, which is a major player. He was out visiting Australia. Again, I waited for him to raise it with me and he did not. Over the years I have seen a lot of these people and none of them have ever raised it. I thought I might as well ask him what he thinks. His answer was, 'Industry has no issue with online content regulation. The industry endorses content regulation.' In other words, all of the responsible players - and most of these people have kids of their own - do not for a moment want to see the anarchy that is prevailing at the moment.

Lotus' support for this plan comes as a surprise to those who remember that the company was founded by Mitch Kapor, later a co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Comments

Jeff Papows (Lotus CEO) is a fraud!

[linuxguy]

Did anybody read the front page Wall Street Journal story on Jeff Papows. Basically the story said that he is a fraud. He lied through all of his professional life to get where he is today.

Lies about his military experience and education and much much more.

Did anybody else read it? I wish I could find a copy of it. Wait a sec. I'll search Google. Well here is one :

http://www.zdnet.com/pcweek/stories/news/0,4153,10 14538,00.html

and http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB19990430S0026

And see a good picture of him here:
http://www.groupcomputing.com/Issues/1999/JulyAugu st1999/99JAp10_Papows/99jap10_papows.htm l

Does he look like a used card salesman or what?

This is not nearly as detailed as the WSJ article. And remember he is also the same who laughed his ass off when asked if there would be a port of Lotus Notes for Linux. And guess what, now he is a fan of everything Linux.

This guy is a con artist and will say just about everything to make people around him happy to gain favors from them.

Industry regulation vs. government regulation

[alienmole]

There's a big difference between online content regulation that's self-imposed by industry, in response to customer concerns, and content regulation that is imposed by law on all public web sites or web users. The former could be relatively benign, as long as participation is voluntary, e.g. if you want your site to be viewable through filtering software, you have to participate in a rating scheme. There are certainly still concerns here, but nothing like the problems that are raised when governments start mandating aspects of filtering.

The Australian plan is a particularly insidious and unsettling one - while on the surface it seems to allow people to continue to do as they please without repercussions, in fact it requires the individual to acknowledge and accept the government's right to censor material which they view.

There is no voluntary component - under the Australian law, as I understand it, if users choose not to run filtering software on their computer, they are violating the law. Citizens are forced to choose between exercising what many consider a basic human right, namely the freedom to communicate with others, and breaking the law. Some may consider this a minor issue, but it isn't minor when a government begins criminalizing behavior which otherwise law-abiding citizens might reasonably indulge in.

It's a pity that people like Papows so take for granted the protections that their (U.S.) Constitution provides them with, that they forget how important such protections are. Unfortunately, Australia may need to learn firsthand what the disadvantages of broad censorship laws are before sufficient political will is mustered to eliminate them.

Re:World's 3 most populous countries, in order..

[cpt kangarooski]

Well the reason people want to establish trade with China is the popularity of Chinese food. Hardly any US business people appreciate Indian food, so the whole country sort of disappears from their mental radar.

For future reference countries on the radar are: China, Japan, pretty parts of Europe, Australia, exotic tropical islands, parts of South America where you don't have to see poor people and which have AC, friendly parts of the Middle East, Mexico, anglophone Canada, some parts of SE Asia.

Countries not on the radar: Former Soviet Union and satellite countries, India, Africa (except maybe Egypt. Maybe), hostile parts of the Middle East, places with lots of poor people, francophone Canada, the other parts of SE Asia.

Some of this is because of food preferences, but it's also strongly influenced by what parts of the world you might possibly want to vacation in.

Re:Well, yes.. and no..

[Frater 219]

On the contrary, bondage and sadomasochism websites are a place to learn about bondage and sadomasochism, obviously. :)

I got much better sex ed from alt.sex.* (back before they were spam-havens) and the relevant FAQs than I ever got in high school. Don't underestimate the ability of literate experts in a field, even one like sex or S&M, to produce useful and entertaining documentation.

Censoring "sex" will not just block out the "dirty pictures"; it will also block out the real, high-quality, grassroots-produced information. Why? Because a lot of the people who want to stomp out the dirty pictures also want to keep people ignorant.

(Notice that I didn't say "... to keep children ignorant.")

... which industry was that again?

[Frater 219]

Obviously Lotus does not work in the Internet-service industry, nor the Web-publishing industry, nor the education industry (which often runs its IT budgets on a shoestring and definitely can't support expensive filtering, and further has age-old political objections to censorship).

Lotus makes application software. Internet censorship wouldn't affect their business one bit, any more than regulation of the bicycle industry would affect airplane pilots.

Official Notice

[cpt kangarooski]

As a duly appointed representative of The Technology Industry (TM), I'd like to publicly state that Lotus has just been kicked out. It is my understanding that, as they will no longer be allowed to sell technology products or services, they'll be switching over to afalfa farming.

Thank you, and good night.

Censorship sucks

[merlynn]

I cannot and will not stand idly by and watch as yet another thing in this world be perverted and twisted in political agenda. Censorship has been a hot topic for as long as I can remember. Whether it is books or music or theatre, no one is happy with what is available. Then along comes the WWW. It has no restrictions, whatsoever, except for the occasional password barrier. When it hit, I thought that the world as a whole was going to get past these trifling issues, but I guess we as a world community are just too immature. Sure, there is lots of content on the Web, good AND bad. You cannot have one without the other, I am sorry! Deal with it folks. Let the information speak for itself, and let the intelligent beings of the planet decide for themselves. /rant

Re:Censorship sucks

[BluBrick]

Sure, the physical world has laws to regulate behaviour, but it's not the same as regulating internet (by which most people mean the web... sad but true) content. The web is not the exact equivalent of a public sidewalk or a shopping mall. You have to choose to view a particular site, and there is no requirement to visit or even pass through any other site to get to your destination.

Re:Censorship sucks

[Bob-K]

Of course, every society that has ever existed has practiced cencorship. To be sure, there is very little of it in the US these days, but it exists. Child porn is censored, and only a few will argue that it shouldn't be. Cigarette logos are censored. Politcal campaigns are censored, depending on who is paying for them. Some college campuses censor students' opinions of one another.

Censorship isn't going to go away, and a certain amount of it is apparently compatible with the First Ammendment and has been so for 200+ years. Yeah, there's more of it than there should be. But when colleges are tossing out students for calling each another names, when people are seriously proposing to "reform" our political system by jailing people who campaign in certain ways, when anything that can be chracterized as "commercial speech" is exempted from guarantees of freedom, well, I'm just not going to lose much sleep over Australians' right to surf for porn.

Of course the industry supports censorship!

[brennanw]

Or, rather, the Industry doesn't care one way or the other.

The Computer Industry doesn't make it's money off of freedom of speech, it makes it's money off of computers that push data around. Whether that data is regulated is irrelevant, because regulated data needs computers to push it around just as much as unregulated data.

Since the industry makes money either way, they don't care. And if the industry doesn't care, it will always make nice noises at the powers that be, because then life is better for the industry.

Companies exist for one reason: to make money. Mitch Kapor may be very ardent about free speech, but he is not now nor has he ever been Lotus Personified. Even if he were still in Lotus that would be Lotus' stance, and he would be expected to back it up publicly or probably lose his job.

Companies only weigh in for rights when it affects their bottom line. That's why corporations are so gung-ho about loosening restrictions in encryption -- they want to sell it. That's why corporations are so gung-ho about whether or not the Govt should reign in Microsoft -- either they'll make more money without Microsoft, or they'll make more money WITH Microsoft.

That's also why Corporations are so hot on doing business in China, despite China's atrocious record on human rights -- they can make money in China. That's also why Corporations fought bitterly against Apartheid Sanctions.

Corporations see the green before anything else. It makes me sick, but that's the way it is.

So if Australia wants to censor the internet, why not? Unless you're an ISP, it doesn't affect your bottom line. So the Computer Industry is fully behind Censorship, as long as they keep making money...

Re:Of course the industry supports censorship!

[miscellaneous]

That's not necessarily true...I've got two major issues here:

a) The popular acceptance of amorality in business is a relatively recent phenomenon, and a bad one, IMHO. Nevertheless, there are several more pragmatic arguments that are relevant here.

First, there is the slippery slope argument, which I doubt I need to elaborate upon, except to say that this regulation may open the door for more regulation which, at some fuzzy point in the future, may expose Lotus (etc.) to liability.
Second, just because a company isn't in the content business now doesn't mean that they won't be in the future. This doesn't require you to visualize some fuzzy point in the future. Take Yahoo! for example: they may have had some liability under this stature before they purchased GeoCities, but that purchase certainly increased their exposure exponentially; given the lightning pace of mergers and acquisitions in the industry, it's not at all inconceivable (although not terribly likely) that this regulation could negatively impact Lotus' mid- to long- term exposure. It's easier to keep legislation from being passed than it is to repeal it; legal inertia, you might say.

B) Accusing companies of being [im/a]moral for dealing with China jumps to a rather unwarranted conclusion.

This is true because it assumes that doing business with China is bad for the Chinese people (assuming that you have their welfare in mind), a conclusion that isn't really supported by the facts. Perhaps pouring money into the PRC actually improves the political situation there; there certainly is a correlation between prosperity in post-Mao PRC and individual freedom, although you might be premature to jump to a cause-effect conclusion there.

On the other hand, there is a fair body of supporting evidence for that hypothesis: Taiwan comes to mind, and Cuba and North Korea stand out as examples of the situation getting worse or not changing when investment is withheld. One might surmise that withholding investment hurts the masses (not the leaders), and investing helps everybody out (a rising tide lifts all boats, or something like that). I'm no friend of big business, but even as a stopped clock is right twice a day and you can lead a horse to a cheesy aphorism, but you can't make him read it, they might be doing the wright thing for the wrong reasons here.

Or, they may be doing the wrong thing, but it's definitely not a black and white choice.

Re:Of course the industry supports censorship!

[Hobbex]

Corporations see the green before anything else. It makes me sick, but that's the way it is.

There is a quote I remember the QT movie Jackie Brown, where Samuel L says something like "I know I can't trust her, but I can always trust her to be herself."

This goes with corporations. Companies do not have morals, ethics, consience or anything else beyond what is good PR. Companies have profits and losses. That is the way they work. This is the only way they can work.

Trying to put a moral standard on companies is as stupid as trying to apply it to an animal - as entities, they just don't operate that way.

We can never rely on companies to ensure our human rights, we need individuals (hopefully ourselves) for that. The really awful things that corporations do (pollution, suing 3 year olds who posts Teletubby pictures) cannot be blaimed on the companies, but on the inadequasy of the legislation we have set up to rule them. Corporations are like script kiddies constantly attacking your security: if there is a hole, they will find it, but so bluntly that any reasonably attentive sysadmin can patch it before any real damage is done.

The problem is not in the companies, but rather in our governments who have let us down completly. They are awful, awful sysadmins. Countries like the USA and the EU are more or less ruled by corporate lobbyists today - giving the companies power over us through an institution established to achieve the exact opposite.

That, if anything, makes me sick...

-
/. is like a steer's horns, a point here, a point there and a lot of bull in between.

Re:Ratings systems=cenorship ? Yup.

[rlk]

It's bad enough that movies are de facto mandated ratings (theaters won't show unrated or NC-17 movies). As for video games and comics, are they rated (in the US, at least)? I wasn't aware of that. If people WANT to rate themselves, that's fine. If not, it's another matter.

One obvious problem with mandatory ratings of web sites is: who's going to do the rating? There are so many web sites and they change on such a continuous basis that there's no possible way that a centralized rating authority can assign ratings to every web page (or really every separately addressable object) in existence. That means that content providers have to supply their own ratings. There's obviously a conflict of interest here. The Australian law seems to try to get around that by requiring that the ratings coincide with what the central censorship bureau would assign the site. That makes it difficult, to say the least, for people to safely rate their own sites. This issue has been discussed in a lot more depth elsewhere, and I don't feel like a lot of typing.

As for this issue of parents vis a vis children, if you want your children to be that coddled, then you can bloody well find the time to research every single thing your child wants to buy/see/use. If you don't want to, you can buy filtering software to do the job for you. If you complain that it doesn't work well enough, then write better software yourself to do it. But don't ask the person running the erotica site to admit that his material is morally wrong and to do your work for you. If nothing else, it won't work. Mandating that every web site be correctly rated is impossible. Don't pretend that it will work -- it won't, and your child will be exposed to all the "garbage" (distinctly a value judgment) that he'd be exposed to anyway. If you think that "mandatory" ratings will relieve you of any effort, you're fooling yourself, I'm afraid.

Besides which, ratings are a very limited way of measuring something. I presume you're thinking about ratings for erotic and violent contact. But what about an Islamic parent who doesn't want his son to see pictures of women with their legs uncovered? Or a Jewish parent who doesn't want her children to get all caught up in Christmas? How does any rating system "protect" them?

Isn't it better to teach your children how to properly handle material that you or they consider undesirable than to pretend that you can magically stop it?

Nobody Cares About Censorship, Says He?

[ewhac]

Does anyone have a SnailMail address for The Distinguished Gentleman from Australia? I'd like to disabuse him of a few misconceptions.

Schwab

Re:Nobody Cares About Censorship, Says He?

[ewhac]

His staff have a standing order to dump mail on this matter.

If true, then he has abrogated his duties as a public servant. I hope efforts are made to inform his consitituents of this fact come the next election.

Schwab

Re:*cough*

[Signal 11]

I'm not bitching and moaning. I'm ridiculing your elected officials for wasting your tax dollars by trying to do the impossible. They'd likely have more success building a warp drive than stopping people from downloading pornography online!

--

Re:Ratings != Censorship is correct

[wapentake]

Dictionaries are incomplete when considering the implications of a concept. For example, your definition of censorship ignores the fact that silence is a form a expression. Thus a governmental demand that one speaks against one's will is censorship. When someone is forced to rate and categorize the ideas which flow from their mind, they are forced to express themselves in a way which was not ever intended. The content of the original message is the whole point of the expression! Reducing it to a rating is really disgraceful. And it is censorship, because it forces one to say something against their will.

Re:Politician distorts the facts. Film at 11.

[Large Green Mallard]

As an Australian, I really must agree with the fact that the international "clever country" image is a sham. What the government doesn't like people to know is that the majority of our aboriginal population lives in conditions which make the shanty towns in South Africa look good, and frankly, no-one seems to care.

And high speed net access in Australia? Unless you're Kerry Packer (professional rich bastard), or one of a *very* and I mean *Very* limited number of people living in a few exclusive suburbs of Melbourne or Sydney which have cable internet access, you can forget it. It would be cheaper to fly to hawaii, rent a house and download stuff onto a zip disk from a @Home connection than it would be to get single channel ISDN here.

Heck, most of areas inside Australia's state capitals don't have cable TV, with neither of the people providing it (both of which who happen to Telcos.. *urg*) planning on a big rollout any time soon. It's not so bad.. we still have 6 TV Stations. Well, 1 is government run and generally not that great, the other one is mostly foreign stuff, another is a public access one, so we effectivly have 3 channels. woohoo. And if you're outside Perth, capital of WA, a state hrm, three/four times the size of Texas, there's two stations, including the gov't run one.

The one great thing about Australia I do have to say however is that I'm perfectly allowed to trash the country's name any way I like. We do have freedom of speech in that way. Hell, in Indonesia a few days back they were burning our flag.. the general response of people seemed to be "hmm, well make sure nothing that's actually important catches on fire".

Re:Education industry anti-censorship?

[Frater 219]

By "education" I meant colleges and universities, which do have a tradition of "academic freedom" and resistance to censorship.

If I meant public high schools, I'd say "indoctrination" or "alienation" or "degradation" maybe. :)

(Just to clear things up...)

Perjurers and Fools

[SoupIsGood Food]

Is this the same Papows who is compelled to lie extravagantly over almost every part of his personal life? Decorated Gulf War combat ace (was a radar operater in the reserves, and never left the states), Tai Kwon Do black-belt (attended three classes before he quit) and orphan (his upper-middle class parents bought him his own horse.)

The WSJ had a -very- interesting expose on Mr. Papows earlier this year...

Then again, it sounds as if the govermental turkey was fibbing more than a bit, too. Probably wanted to pick an industry figurehead who's denials wouldn't be believed when he fabricated his "indistry support" song and dance...

SoupisGood Food

Contact The Minister

[nihilogos]

The Minister is interested in your views and encourages feedback on the issues and activities in his portfolio.

If you would like to suggest to the Minister that perhaps he has misunderstood the "industry", or that the views of "industry" are not necessarily those of the people he represents please send an email to the Minister.

Well, yes.. and no..

[Kitsune Sushi]

We already have rating systems for movies, video games, and CDs (and lots of other things, for that matter). I'm thinking most adults are pretty aware of how these things are used. Seriously, who here actually thinks that watching a rated-R movie is going to warp some kid's mind? Even if it did, which part?

Sex? Well, it's something kids need to learn about anyway, and if you ask me, sex ed. is the worst place (that class made me sick.. ugh..). Not that I know the best, but you know, kids are going to learn about sex no matter what, and if you ask me, it's probably better that they learn about it some other way than by having it at 13 or 14 when they probably don't know enough about STDs and whatever to be too health-conscious about it. However, if that's what they want to do anyway, it would be good if they learned about it in a healthy fashion beforehand so maybe they won't screw their lives over so early on.

Besides which, the "child" in question viewing the movie is either old enough that they've probably already had sex (surprise mom/dad!) or they're too young and don't even care.

Violence? I'd just like to say that after watching Nightmare on Elm Street, I went on a homicidal rampage and butchered my whole neighborhood. I'm typing this behind prison walls on Death Row. They treat us good in here. Good food.. Yeah, right. Get real. Kids in general think it's cool to see violence in movies, not to reenact it in real life. Those who are violent irl are fscked in the head to begin with, and not because of the movie.

Profanity? I'm sorry, but even in Catholic school will you hear more profanity than any other part of your life other than a real high school. The profanity found in movies will not be nearly as creative, either.

In short, I could probably give a fsck less what movies my kids watch when they get "old enough" (this being determined on a case by case basis, though I can assure everyone it will be at much lowers ages than the MPAA or U.S. gov. would like it to be), should I ever choose to have them (I just might, just so that more intelligent people roam the land =P). Besides, if you can't keep your kids from seeing movies you disapprove of, you're probably a bad parent one way or the other, and need to relax your death grip on them or actually spend time with them for once. Ratings are abstract, and serve no purpose other than to attach a stigma to "bad" movies (you have to stay under the dread NC-17 mark or else no one will ever see your movie.. well, or else over it, and even then only porn freaks will). An "R-rated" movie could be a total homicidal freak show, or it could just say "fuck" once too often. Real specific, guys!

Video games.. Pretty much the same thing, except there's not likely to be too much sex or profanity. And guess what? The violence isn't likely to be too realistic. But you get to control the violence! I'll sum it up right here: After playing Mortal Kombat for the first time, I ripped my friend's spine out! It kicked ass! Yeah.. I definitely see people's point when they say violent video games and role-playing games are the cause for why our children are fucked up. Personally, I think it's because our delusional parents are twisted renditions of the Antichrist painted in biggotry and ignorance. Grr.

Down with Big Brother and all his evils! CDs with sexual/explicit content.. Oh come the fuck off it already! I already said we'd have more profanity in high schools! You have to be 18 to buy CDs with "explicit content"? I'm not sure if that's the age limit, I thought I remembered my favorite girl mentioning something about that. That's straight up stupid. What do they expect kids to listen to? Country/western music? Ugh.. Not for all of us, thanks.

I'm sick of rating systems! I'm sick of censorship! I'm sick of regulation! I'm sick of "editing" for what-the-fuck ever content! All it does it make me angry, and make those cavorting devils in the extreme right all warm and fuzzy inside because they can sleep better at night knowing they've raped me so that parents everywhere can sleep soundly knowing their children have no rights to decide for themselves! Did I say rape ?? Yes, I did! Why? Because my freedom has been taken away from me by force ! My freedom, you say? Well.. yes!

Everyone has the right to choose for themselves (or should). It's my life. I decide who I'm going to be. I decide what I'm going to watch, listen to, play, whatever. Someone else wants to force their ethical/moral values upon me? They're going to get a clue-by-four upside their fscking skull! They should live their own lives, decide their own decisions, not take the "burden" off of the rest of us by deciding for us too. Those kind of people make me sick, and ought to be ejected from this country and sent to a true police state where they'll feel right at home. They don't want to go? We have plenty of electric chairs, guys.. *evil grin*

Welcome to the Land of the Kings..
What!? The Land of the Free..?
Whoever told you that is your enemy!

- Rage Against the Machine

In short, Joe Public may not know much about computers, but even if he did, he wouldn't give a fuck. He'd still want the censorship to continue. Why? He's a lazy fucking idiot who shouldn't have procreated in the first place.

P.S. If my favorite girl is reading this, I'm not suggesting we have kids. Don't hurt me. =P

Re:Am I really reading this..?

[Shadow Knight]

I swear, the zero responsibility attitude of parents these days is dragging the world down into the bowels of hell itself. Would it be so bad if more people learned how to raise children effectively or were forced to give them up for adoption (or better yet, not have them at all)? This "pass the buck" mentality is driving.. me.. in.. sane..

OK, I'm only going to respond to this part, because I agree with all of it... I just wanted to add something. It just occured to me that the "zero responsibility" attitude, at least as it applies to internet censorship, comes from computer phobia on parent's parts. That is, the parents are too scared of the computer to monitor their children's access themselves. This may sound ridiculous to us, but I've worked in retail computer sales, and it's a very real phenomenon. People old enough to have children accessing the internet are, in general, scared to frikin' death of the computer. They don't want to touch it, they don't want to mess with it, nothing. The kids are 100% in charge of the computer. This is why these parents go and cry for external help in regulating it. Now, I'm not defending the regulation, nor am I defending these parents. Personally, this phenomenon makes me extremely angry. These people need to learn not to be scared of the computer. Then they need to learn to raise their own children. Of course, I'm not a parent yet, so maybe I don't know what I'm talking about...

Internet as high seas

[Imperator]

Rather than international space (did you mean the portions of the universe outside of Earth's atmosphere? the whole universe is governed by international treaties), adapting the law of the high seas to the Internet would make more sense. Each nation has sovreignity over the actions of its own citizens, but can't interfere with any other countries' citizens. It's unreasonable to expect countries to set aside their national borders (a monopoly on sovreignity is profitable), but countries should acknowledge that they have no influence over other countries. If they want to firewall off their entire country (China), require registration of Internet users (Iraq), or mandate filtering software (Saudi), they have the right to do that. (Whether the government has a right to exist is another question entirely.) Just as they don't have any right to force us to do anything, we don't have any right to force them to declare a zone of anarchy that extends into their boundaries.

::shrug:: In an ideal world... well, this isn't one and there's no use pretending it is.

The Industry Supports Money

[Elias Ross]

The industry is about making money. It seems to me that they'll lose nothing when censorship in Australia goes into effect.

It sounds like a way to sell more software, like imagine a new version of Lotus123, with Australian Approved(tm) CensorMate3000 (tm). "Austrialian Brand CensorMate(tm) keeps you legal: Intelligent word count features track the usage of explicatives and racial slurs. AutoCensor(tm) features turn 'shit' and 'fuck' into Australian Approved words as you type!"

I just hope the laws are enough hassle to those who actually have to work harder to provide "censorship approved" content. Maybe some companies would step up and do something about it.

Cabletron & Censorship

[Dacta]

Back in July or August, at the height of this debate, when every sensible tech. company on earth was telling our (I'm Aussie) goverment how dumb this plan was, Cabletron (Swich manunfacture & Cisco competitor) wrote to the Alston and said what a wonderful idea it was, and how well their products would deal with it.

Surprise, surprise, Cabletron now have a nice fat government contract!

Can we expect Lotus to annouce some multi-million dollar sale of Dommino server sofware to the the Australian government in the next few weeks? I'd bet on it.

It's worse than that.

[schon]

Or, rather, the Industry doesn't care one way or the other.
The Computer Industry doesn't make it's money off of freedom of speech, it makes it's money off of computers that push data around. Whether that data is regulated is irrelevant, because regulated data needs computers to push it around just as much as unregulated data.

This is all true, but it goes beyond that.

The person who claims that "the industry" supports censorship is 100% accurate - it's not that they're indifferent to it.

The issue isn't "regulated or unregulated" data, it's HOW the data is regulated.

Regulated data requires more storage (to hold the list of what's accepted and what isn't,) more CPU power (to make decisions based on those lists,) and more software (to drive the CPU's.)

What dies this translate into? MORE MONEY that has to be spent on software and computers; which means more money for the "industry." Which, since that's what they're for, is why they support it.

Of course, for the ISPs (who have to put up the money to buy all of this,) this doesn't apply (I guess they're not "industry".)

Yes, censorship sucks.

[Pascal Q. Porcupine]

There's a difference between free speech and what you describe as free speech. Unsolicited commercial email is not free speech; advertisements are not protected. However, free speech that is (well, is supposed to be) protected but is under threat is more than just pornography. For starters, what about kids who think they might be homosexual or transgendered? Where are they supposed to go if all sexuality information is banned? What would you do if, because of decency laws, you suddenly couldn't download a piece of text just because it has the word 'fuck' in it? You may not think that would affect you, but in that case, you might want to do a grep on the Linux kernel source.

I happen to like MUCKing. While I MUCK I happen to like certain activities as an intellectual challenge that would likely be banned simply because they have sexual content. What is wrong with sexual content? The point of life and the goal as stated in most religions (particularly Christianity) is procreation, but the acts which lead to procreation are taboo. I find this highly hypocritical and disturbing.

My mind, also, would likely be censored. I have thoughts and feelings which many find objectionable but which are part of me. I can't change my very nature just to try to conform to the world, but because of my very nature I am immediately a sinner who can, at best, go to hell by the arbitrary standards setup by many ignorant Christian fundamentalists who are self-contradictory. (Not that all Christian fundamentalists talk out of their asses. I know several who know what they're talking about, and they don't have the same views as me but don't think I'm, by default, unsavable.) I'd also be censored because of my views about these religious groups.

I'm sick of people using porn spam as the example of what "free speech" is trying to protect, because it's not, and never has been. Freedom of speech in the United States of America is specifically to protect people with differing views, lifestyle choices (as long as they don't harm others, of course), and religious beliefs. Information on paganism and homosexuality would certainly be some of the first stuff to be censored after all of the so-called smut were cleared out. Also, my personal religious beliefs (or lack thereof) include that there's nothing wrong with people expressing their sexuality as long as it doesn't interfere with anyone else; getting, creating, and selling pornography is fine by me.

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"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.

Interesting logic...

[Wakko Warner]

The guy asks two IT people their opinions on internet censorship, gets two favorable responses, and assumes the rest of the world thinks the same way. Well, I'm sure glad to know that, I, as a member of the IT industry, fully endorse content filtering!

Human intelligence is constant. The population grows...

- A.P.
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"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad

Unenforceable

[NatePuri]

The Aussies are going to have a hell of a time enforcing these rules. It is too easy to remote admin a server used for web publising. One can own several servers across the globe, employ colocation, etc. The only laws governing the internet that will ever really have "bite" are treaties. The internet is a global phenomenon and can only be governed globally, much like the open seas are now governed by international treaties.

The internet should be officially declared international space. Then we will get some sensible resolutions to the conflicting values inherent in international intercourse. Until that happens, we can safely evaluate all domestic attempts to govern the internet as ineffective. There is no international enforcement mechanism (nor should there be, arguably); but until there is one, moving from violative status to non-violative is a simple matter of pointing the DNS entries to different IPs (in a foreign jurisdiction where the regulations do not apply). This will remain the case for the foreseeable future.

*cough*

[Signal 11]

As an official representative of The Rest Of The World, I would like to inform you that we don't give a hoot what the Industry likes, dislikes, wants, or desires. We Are The Customer, And The Customer Is Always Right.

Since when does the industry dictate to the rest of us what we will, and will not, see and do? This isn't television - there are no marketing directors and stuff to tell us what's 'hot and what's not'. We set the agenda. If we want porn, goddamnit, we're gonna have porn and there's not a thing you can do about it. And if you ask me, I think if these politicians got some more often they wouldn't be so damned stupid. :^)

Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated into the Collective.

This reality check brought to you by the makers of Reality, who choose to remain anonymous because the police are still looking for us....

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Politician distorts the facts. Film at 11.

[Bilestoad]

Clearly, Senator Alston could not find his arse with both hands, and has conveniently forgotten that:

1. The Internet censorship laws exist for no other reason than to ensure the support of the puritanical Senator Brian Harradine in the Government's quest to pass legislation allowing the sale of a further portion of Telstra. Senator Harradine holds the balance of power in the senate, and can single-handedly reject legislation which the House of Representatives wishes to enact provided the rest of the senate votes along party lines. Hence this religious old Tasmanian holds a very big stick.

2. This legislation was universally opposed at the time it was debated by not only those electronics frontiers "maniacs" but the Australian Computer Society, every ISP, and numerous other professional bodies. Not that there was much debate - they not only rushed it through, they smokescreened it very effectively with "the republic debate" and the Olympic circus.

3. Lotus are now an irelevant producer of software which is almost universally reviled for its poor interface, sorry performance and general instability. Seriously, it's worse than anything Microsoft has done. It survives mainly because there are those IT manager types whose job security depends on nobody finding out about free, better alternatives, and there are those managers who still like to parrot buzzwords like "groupware".

Perhaps the minister was mistakenly talking to theatre groups or bankers on his recent visit - almost everyone I meet who is remotely connected with the net has a good laugh at my government's attempts to treat the net like television. It's not nice to hear my country compared to such freedom-loving nations as Singapore.

I could mention that Australian government departments use net-nanny software which blocks a seemingly random array of sites... I could quote the price of ISDN to residents in Australia... I could contrast some of the salaries that I used to earn in Australia to what software engineers typically make here... I could tell you that Australian companies do NOT give out options... but I'll just say that I am so happy I came to live in the bay area instead of staying in Melbourne. Australia is a great place - and one day I know I will live there again - but with just a little common sense it could be so much better. I look forward to the minister taking over the portfolio for say, agriculture.

Content Regulation is okay

[dustpuppy]

When I heard that the Australian government wanted to implement 'content regulation' I was pretty ticked off (since I live in Australia).

I still am - but I have also thought about the issue a whole lot more without trying to jump on the 'censorship is evil and the work of the devil' bandwagon.

If I was a parent, I could see the benefits of content regulation. I would hope that I would be a parent who would take an interest in what my kid does and who would make sure that I knew what my kid was doing on the Internet. However, I cannot be around my hypothetical kid all the time and if content regulation helps me control when my kid is exposed to elements of society that are of the more unsavory kind, then so be it.

However,

where I have the biggest issue with content regulation is that the Australian government has decided to implement the content regulation on a nation wide level irrespective of who is trying to look at the content.

To me, this is synonomous to saying that since drivers aged between 18 and 25 cause the most accidents on the road, we should ban all drivers.

The brush is simply too broad and everyone is being tarred.

In my mind, this is the issue with content regulation - the fact that it is applied on a macro and not a micro level.

So, with regard to the Lotus CEO, I too agree with content regulation, just not how it is being implemented at the moment.

Am I really reading this..?

[Kitsune Sushi]

This will probably have low signal/noise ratio due to the fact that I stayed out of the last censorship discussion (though I was a very active part of the one before that), and have some pent-up energy about it all.. You've been warned. =P

You know, after seeing all the crazy laws in Europe and Australia, I find it quite laughable when the true "intellectuals" from those parts of the world who post here on Slashdot talk about how horrible and stupid the U.S. government is.. Sorry, I just can't get it out of my head when people say things like "it's good to snub your nose at America". That said, I'm still above slamming countries and regions myself. I see little to condemn about long stretches of dirt, anyway. =P

The industry itself accepts that there should be these codes of practice and this form of regulation.

Hmm. The "Bertelsman industry" (sp?) maybe. =P

We have been trying to negotiate it for the last three years with the Internet Industry Association.

If it's so widely accepted and agreed upon, why are they "trying to negotiate".. and why would it matter that:

Their problem is that there are these maniacs - these electronic frontiers outfits - running around stirring up trouble, using quaint expressions and feeding lines to that woman from the Civil Liberties Union [Nadine Strossen] who then gets out there, gets a good run and says that we are global village idiots.

What.. people wanting their civil liberties? They are maniacs! This is just slanderous. Certainly "low-grade".. Speaking of which!

This is just a low-grade political campaign.

Talk about a total fscking hypocrite! You'd think this guy could think of something more intellectual to say. Hell, I could think of a more eloquent way to put it, and I'm still blown away by how well-versed spokespeople from, say, the ACLU, are in the English language.

I do not find industry opposing this approach.

I've heard that it is often difficult to find something you are not looking for..

In other words, all of the responsible players - and most of these people have kids of their own - do not for a moment want to see the anarchy that is prevailing at the moment.

Anarchy!? That's really funny. If I have to deal with one more "save the children" campaign that is aimed at censoring the Internet (or anything else), I'm going to murder someone. I think it's interesting to note that someone said in a previous discussion that once Australia and/or Europe have workable laws in place concerning "regulation" of Internet content, the U.S. will follow suit.. What, like a cow being led to slaughter? I kind of doubt it. The one thing the judicial branch excels at is protecting the First Amendment rights of U.S. citizens. =P

At any rate.. Isn't anarchy a political "structure"? This guy obviously has not a clue what true anarchy really is .. I swear, the zero responsibility attitude of parents these days is dragging the world down into the bowels of hell itself. Would it be so bad if more people learned how to raise children effectively or were forced to give them up for adoption (or better yet, not have them at all)? This "pass the buck" mentality is driving.. me.. in.. sane..

Update to this story

[Trick]

Oct 4 - Sydney: In an attempt to cool the strong public outcry following his statement that Lotus Corporation supported Internet cencorship, Senator Alston, Australian Minister for Communications, defended his position.

"These people say I have only two backers in the technology industry. This is a complete lie. I have three."

Alston has published his recollection of a discussion with highly-regarded members of the industry, at which he recalls W. Warner saying:

"...I, as a member of the IT industry, fully endorse content filtering!"

Warner was unavailable for comment at press time.