Australia on Sunday defended its plan to block some Internet content, such as that featuring child sex abuse or advocating terrorism, after a media rights watchdog warned it may hurt free speech.
The Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) on Friday listed Australia, along with South Korea, Turkey and Russia, as countries “under surveillance” in its Internet Enemies report.
The report, which was released to coincide with to World Day Against Cyber Censorship. identified 12 “enemies of the Internet,” including China, Burma, North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Iran
While Australia does not rank alongside Iran or North Korea in terms of censorship, its proposal to place a mandatory filter on the Web to remove illegal and extreme material has raised concerns, RSF said.
Australian Communications Minister Stephen Conroy wants Internet service providers (ISPs) to filter the Web to bring the online world in line with censorship standards applied in Australia to material such as films, books and DVDs.
“The government does not support Refused Classification [RC] content being available on the Internet,” a spokeswoman for the minister said.
“This content includes child sexual abuse imagery, bestiality, sexual violence, detailed instruction in crime, violence or drug use and/or material that advocates the doing of a terrorist act,” she said.
Under Australia’s classification rules, this material is not available in news publications or libraries, and cannot be viewed at the cinema or on television and is not available on Australian-hosted Web sites.
“The government’s proposal will bring the treatment of overseas-hosted content into line by requiring ISPs to block overseas content that has been identified as being RC-rated,” the spokeswoman said.
“There are no plans to block any other material that is not RC,” she said.
However, Geordie Guy, spokesman for the online rights group Electronic Frontiers Australia, said the filter was still a bad idea.
“In the construction of a censorship system like this, Australia will be building the framework for a broader censorship system if this government, or any future government, sees that that is what they wish to do,” he told reporters.
Guy said despite concerns about whether the filter will be possible to implement for technical reasons, from a rights perspective it was still a worrying development in an open and democratic country.
Conroy, however, yesterday disputed that he ever dismissed critics of his plan as advocates of child pornography.
He said the material cited by RSF had been supplied by the Electronic Frontiers Australia and he challenged the group to to produce a quote where that was said.
“I challenge each and every one of you to come up with such a quote, because it does not exist,” he said.
“Electronic Frontiers Australia have one of the most disgraceful misinformation campaigns and have misled Australians.”
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY STAFF WRITER
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