Censorship is a crime against ships

Minister asks censors to reassess approval of sadistic film

THE federal government has asked censorship authorities to reconsider their approval of an Italian film - twice banned in Australia over its portrayal of sexual sadism - for release here on DVD.

On Tuesday the Classification Board approved the distribution of Salo o le 120 giornate di Sodoma (The 120 Days of Sodom), overturning a 1998 decision to ban the film in Australia.

The board gave the film an R18+ rating and compelled it to carry a warning that it contained ''scenes of torture and degradation, sexual violence and nudity''.

But yesterday the Home Affairs Minister, Brendan O'Connor, asked the Classification Review Board to reassess the decision, although he did not say if he wanted the finding overturned.

Link: SMH

Retrospective bans now... 1984 anyone?

ASP's Fiona Patten gives a talk about censorship.

Talk recorded by the ABC's Big Ideas
First of five videos.

A few talking points:
. Politicians can see porn, Senator Harradine could show it to politicians but we can't see it cause it will harm us.
. Clive Hamilton (The Australia Institute) drove the need to filter... now he's running for the Greens.
. Wallace represents a small minority of people and want to force their ideas onto everyone.
. 30% of politicians attend prayer meetings but only 8% of Australians attend church - they are over-represented.
. Female ejaculation and small breasts will be RC and therefore banned.
. The Christian Lobby has raised $150k to lobby the government.
. ASP questions the tax status of religious proselytizing.
. Sheila Jeffries and ACL are allies in trying to get the filter in place.
. No Australian politician has lost a seat on an anti-sex platform.
. Australian politicians are frightened of the christian lobbies.
. The name "Australian Sex Party" was deliberate. Don Chip said that getting noticed was the hardest part of starting out.
. Greens have approached them on sex issues for comment.
. Books: "The Family" and "God Under Howard"
. Beasley's father was in the "Moral Rearmament" movement.
. Gamers are anti-filter but their homophobia doesn't allow them to support the ASP. Do they imagine that the major parties are on their side.
. Anti-biker laws could stop the ASP from calling a meeting between shops wanting to discuss selling X-rated videos cause it's against the law.
. Political parties are exempt from anti-discrimination laws so they can discriminate against women and minorities.

Parents Music Resource Center

The Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) was an American committee formed in 1985 by four women: Tipper Gore, wife of Senator and later Vice President Al Gore; Susan Baker, wife of Treasury Secretary James Baker; Pam Howar, wife of Washington realtor Raymond Howar; and Sally Nevius, wife of Washington City Council Chairman John Nevius. They were known as the "Washington wives" - a reference to their husbands' connections with the federal government. The Center eventually grew to include 22 participants.

Link - Wikipedia

History doesn't repeat but it often rhymes. Look at the list of songs. Did they really harm you? They didn't harm me.

Government goes to war with Google over net censorship

The Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, has launched a stinging attack on Google and its credibility in response to the search giant's campaign against the government's internet filtering policy.

Link SMH:

I posted a comment (me and nearly 700 other people)
It probably wont get put up.

Conroy's plan to equalize the current censorship of videos and books and the internet has merit. Let's get rid of censorship entirely.

I'm not against classification so that people don't get a nasty fright. The DVD player is such a wonderful baby sitter after all. Classification laws need one more category: Unclassified. Parents know that there could be anything on there so don't give it to the kids.

I'm an adult. If I want to watch adult material - we are talking about just normal sex like hundreds of thousands of Australians are doing right now - what does that have to do with Senator Conroy and his ACMA.

He says that this isn't about banning porn but so much porn is banned. Excellent, sex positive porn like Tony Comstock's films showing positive, conscentual loving sex between loving, sexual partners. That is a definite No-no.

Porn is part of a person's sexuality. According to 'The Porn Report' - based on a long term, peer reviewed study, not a hunch or a religion - 1/3 of people like porn and people either like it or they don't, there is little point in trying to convince people otherwise just like GLBTI people. Conversion doesn't work because our sexuality is hard wired into us. Try converting a straight person to GLBTI, it doesn't work. Politicians have no place interfering with other peoples sexuality.

Senator Conroy announced the filter results to the Australian Christian Lobby before the public. With the Vatican besieged by child abuse allegations I wonder why we allow our actions to be informed by people who claim to have a direct line to god.

How to fix Refused Classification online: start again

On the same day that Google stopped censoring search results in China, the Department of Broadband, Communications and Digital Economy published the 174 public submissions it received on the oddly Kafkaesque issue of improving the transparency of creating a secret censorship blacklist. You can see why Minister Conroy couldn't introduce legislation into the autumn session of parliament as planned. The criticism is comprehensive.

The "Submissions on measures to increase accountability and transparency for Refused Classification material" were meant to focus on how the list of RC material to be blocked by the mandatory internet filter is compiled and managed. A discussion paper put forward six options for consideration.

Crikey:

Attorney-General Michael Atkinson vows to repeal election internet censorship law amid reader furore

ATTORNEY-GENERAL Michael Atkinson will move immediately to repeal controversial laws which sparked an outcry over censorship of the internet.

After backing down late last night to say the laws would not be put into effect, Mr Atkinson told reporters he would follow the advice of Opposition legal affairs spokeswoman Vickie Chapman and use a section of the Electoral Act to immediately repeal the section.

Link:

My fingers are crossed for Conroy getting all "listening to the people" soon too... maybe?

Clinton's Remarks on Internet Freedom

In the last year, we've seen a spike in threats to the free flow of information. China, Tunisia, and Uzbekistan have stepped up their censorship of the internet. In Vietnam, access to popular social networking sites has suddenly disappeared. And last Friday in Egypt, 30 bloggers and activists were detained. One member of this group, Bassem Samir, who is thankfully no longer in prison, is with us today. So while it is clear that the spread of these technologies is transforming our world, it is still unclear how that transformation will affect the human rights and the human welfare of the world's population.

(Clinton) Link:

Conroy, with his censorship glass half full, latched on to:

Now, all societies recognize that free expression has its limits.

Unfortunately, or conveniently, he overlooked a previous paragraph to do it:

Some countries have erected electronic barriers that prevent their people from accessing portions of the world's networks. They've expunged words, names, and phrases from search engine results. They have violated the privacy of citizens who engage in non-violent political speech. These actions contravene the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, which tells us that all people have the right "to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." With the spread of these restrictive practices, a new information curtain is descending across much of the world.

Senator Conroy. You are not on America's side here. They are trying to gently tell you that you are on the wrong side in this debate.

Links for further reading"
US warns against internet censorship
EFA commentary: Government: "Global Internet freedom" means censorship

Another censorship wedge...

All R-Rated Films To Be Treated Like Porn In South Australia

Maybe all lazy parents should move to South Australia, because everyone's favourite state government seems to want to do all your parenting for you. The South Australian government is now enforcing a law that requires all R-rated films for sale or hire to be segregated from all other movies of a lower rating. Not only that, but advertising R-rated films will also be illegal.

Link:

A little bit of censorship starts a rash of censorship. It becomes a competition between various governments to censor because this is held up to be a constructive thing to do to make children safe. Who doesn't want to make children safe. I never speed through school zones. I don't trip children in the supermarket. I don't smash beer bottles in sand pits. All of these things can be shown to do harm to children. People arguing for censorship need t show how children are being harmed by adult material. There was adult material when I was a child. It hasn't harmed me. What has harmed people has been weird reactions to sex that are illustrated by the calls for censorship. If a child sees an adult movie, and you can't tell me that the Bruno or The Hangover covers can possibly harm children unless some moralising fool teaches them an adverse reaction. The hysterical flapping of hands and tutting causes the child to be upset. They just don't see things. I didn't notice porn in my house for years until I really got going with puberty, suddenly they were interesting to me and I snuck a peek, then another, and so on...

So, parents out there, understand that this material probably wont harm children if they aren't exposed to it too heavily (not arguing that all children should watch adult movies) so that your reaction is appropriate.

Google's fight: US-China lock horns.

GOOGLE'S fight with Chinese censors risks escalating into a fullblown US-China showdown over cyber warfare, as claims emerge about the unprecedented scale of Chinese attacks on US commercial and defence systems.

Conroy's mentors are up to no good again.

Link:

Iran's censorship list

They said the list, drawn up by a "committee of experts", bans any site that contains pornography, prostitution, sexual deviation or anything considered to be "contrary to the morals of society" in the Islamic republic.

Link:

Conroy is taking his lead from the Iranian government. This is where we are headed. The same absolutist morality, one from Catholicism and one from Islam being forced onto people who do not subscribe to this moral code.

Crackdown on television smut

Now the prudes are after television nudity! Why wont these people just leave others alone. How did it become their business to tell me what I should watch on TV? I don't care what they think. If they don't want to watch a show, change the fucking channel. Mind your own damn business.

Where will I be able to complain about stuff being cut out of TV shows? Is there a complaint form that I can fill out about their hacking of the groin feeling scene from Crocodile Dundee?


Herald article:

Censorship, where will it stop?

Once censorship gets a bit of momentum one never knows where it will end.

Wikipedia page on the most challenged books in USA.

At what point does internet filtering become censorship?

Access could be denied to sites on which victims of sexual abuse detail their experiences, sites that provide educational information about drug use and academic sites that describe the motivation and behaviour of terrorists.

Perhaps that's a price the Government is willing to pay in order to - as its spinmeisters put it - "improve the safety of the internet for families". But at what point does "filtering" undesirable content to protect families become censorship that undermines free speech?

Link:

Commentary: Why we don't need a filter. ITWire

Mark Newton tells us about the conflation of RC and Illegal Material with the help of a Gladys.

I swear, if I see one more commentator buying-in to Senator Conroy's spin about child pornography on the Internet I'm going to pop an artery.

There are plenty of other places where you can read all about how the Enex Testlab report released by the Minister on Tuesday decimates the case for the Government's policy, so I'm not going to rehash that here.

Link to ITWire

If anything comes out of this discussion, I'd like to see Australian media commentators (who are more affected by censorship than virtually any other segment of the Australian population) understand that "RC" is not the same as "illegal" or "child pornography." Joining the two concepts together is a manipulative rhetorical tactic the Minister is using to garner support for his obnoxious policy, and I'm sure that the protectors of the Fourth Estate are clever enough to avoid being drawn in to it.

I just wanted to look up the name of a drug

What is the name of the date rape drug?

That was the question in my mind. So, I typed "date rape drug" into google. There it is. I've broken Conroy's thought crime law. I have wanted to look up the name of a drug that can be used in date rape. WTF!?

Anyway, the wikipedia article on date rape drugs mentions Rohypnol. That was the word I was looking for. According to Conroy's thought crime laws looking this up is looking up instructions on how to commit a crime so it should be filtered out. WTF!?

Democracy and censorship By Margo Kingston

Here's a piece on the censorship debate Labor's shadow minister for the arts and information technology, Senator Kate Lundy, wrote for Webdiary. It's got resonance with Howard's refusal to tell us the truth about why he wanted to invade Iraq and what that momentous decision means for our foreign policy direction and our security in the region. What I like about the piece is that Kate is not afraid to discuss what democracy means, and to apply her concept of it to the case in hand. Isn't that what we'd love our pollies to do more of?

Link to 2003 article by the then communications shadow minister