Side Notes on Australia’s New Censorship Law Proposal

This "refused classification (RC)" refers to a wide variety of web content, such as child pornography or behavior problems, known to be morally and socially harmful.

The Government's implications in users' security by filtering malware is surely a good idea - since it adds an extra layer of security to online transactions and everything else but the kitchen sink - blocking actual content may be restrictive and even unconstitutional.

A wide segment of the computer users are already using content filtering technologies "imposed" by third parties, either implemented by antivirus software solutions (parental control, malware checks etc.) or by the favorite browser (which ensures that the desired content is malware-free or that the bank's Web page is actually what it claims to be), and there have been no complaints in this respect.

Unfortunately, the Government's approach doesn't include peer-to-peer file sharing, instant messenger, live chat environments, and other communication protocols, which are the lead source of illicit materials and where malicious software is more likely to dwell. The list used by ISP is to ban Web sites based mostly on arbitrary requests or complaints received from users.

How would this regulation impact on the average Australian Internet user? If the law proposition passes, then every Australian Internet Service Provider would be forced into filtering URL requests at their local gateway by using the above-mentioned list of "Refused Classification" resources. This would reflect in financial losses for ISPs (who will be forced into purchasing, deploying and testing various content-filtering technologies), but the entire filtering technology is likely to fail because:

• It would not be able to "heuristically" filter content shared between users via peer-to-peer or instant messaging;
• It would not be able to censor telephonic conversations or internet broadcasting stations as long as users can establish a physical connection between them and the monitored resource;
• Various resources that are not blacklisted because they comply with the current Australian content regulations can shift their content to "illegal" overnight - more than that, over one million webpages are created daily. Facebook® - for instance - estimates a growth rate of between 300 K and 600 K new profiles per day, while Twitter^TM, Blogger^TM and WordPress report a total of about one million new accounts per week. This is a tremendous amount of content that is less likely to be manually checked and approved or refused.

Apart from the technological shortcomings enounced above, the moral and social implications go even deeper, since sensitive aspects of the private life are likely to get filtered.

 Australia's affiliation to a restrictive measure like this one could mean that a Big Brother-like supervision is beginning to appeal to various governments and, unfortunately, the negative moral repercussions are difficult to anticipate. Freedom of Expression on the Internet is under scrutiny: centralizing the use of Internet and coming up with access lists is in fact censorship. With China, Taiwan, Iran, Singapore as examples, it's hard to believe that Australia's sorting solution is not, in fact, an expensive though false idea of security.