The Internet Filtering in Australia and the Asia Pacific workshop was held at the University of Wollongong on the 30th November and 1st December 2009. The event was organized by Mark Mclelland, and funded by Innovations in Cultural Research, Capstrans, and the Cultural Research Network. The discussions, from international scholars, focused on the impending Australian government internet filtering policy. The history and practices of censorship in Australia, Singapore and Korea was also covered. The ‘cultures of use’ of the internet, of groups that may be censored if internet filtering is introduced, was also addressed. The implications for Australian software businesses of the censorship was also addressed, of business going offshore if games and other software was not available in Australia. Senator Scott Ludlam, Australian Greens Senator from Western Australia joined the workshop via video conference on the 30th of November, and outlined the Greens policy on internet filtering. The link to Senator Ludham’s home page is here http://scott-ludlam.greensmps.org.au/
The workshop was filmed by Jessica Walker. Individual presentations have been uploaded to a video sharing site, vimeo, by Becky and Jessica Walker, and embedded into the ICR blog. They can be found on this site under the individual’s name. Abstracts from the workshop are included below.
Speakers and abstracts
Kath Albury is an ARC post doctoral research fellow at the Journalism and Media Research Centre, UNSW. Her home page is http://www.kathalbury.com/
‘Sexting and Citizenship: Regulation and Representation of 16 and 17 Year Olds’
This paper looks at the ways that current Australian classification laws and media regulations render (consensual) sexual images produced by/of 16 and 17 year olds as unrepresentable. Popular and legal discourses around adolescent ‘sexual citizenship’ are contrasted to recent debates regarding the lowering of the voting age to 16.
Philip Argy is Chief Executive of ArgyStar.com and Immediate Past President, Australian Computer Society
‘The role of professionalism and some hard questions’
- What does it mean to be a professional in the IT security space?
- What does professionalism have to do with Internet content regulation and cybersafety?
- The price of anonymity – should we need a passport to travel in Cyberspace?
Peter John Chen is a lecturer in Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney, home page http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/government_international_relations/index.php?page=staff&id=peterchen
‘Where We Are at and How We Got Here’
This paper places current arguments about online content regulation in
perspective: historical and policy. The paper begins by identifying the established tradition of censorship in Australia and its attempted de-politicisation in the 1970s. From this perspective online content regulation fits within a pattern of recurring challenges to this political settlement. These challenges are motivated by technological developments which generate real or imagined moral risks and undermine established regulatory institutions. The current filtering debate is compared with the similar conflict under the Howard Government (circa 1997-2000). This comparison will identify the universally unsatisfactory policy response embedded in the Broadcasting Services Act (Online Services) 1999, and will draw out key similarities and differences in the nature of the political debate.
Dr Michael Flood, University of Wollongong
50 ways to leave your lover: Social and Educational Strategies Addressing the Harms of Pornography Consumption among Young Men Pornography plays an increasingly significant role in boys’ and young men’s peer cultures and sociosexual relations. There is consistent and reliable evidence that consumption of pornography is associated with shifts in young men’s sexual understandings, practices and relations. In addition, young men’s use of pornography is in flux. Overall rates of exposure (both deliberate and accidental) are increasing, the means of consumption are changing, and the kinds of sexually explicit materials being used themselves are shifting.
Danielle Egan is Coordinator of Gender and Sexuality Studies at St. Lawrence University and has published extensively on cultural constructions of childhood sexuality. She is co-author with Gail Hawkes of Theorizing the Sexual Child in Modernity (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming). Danielle could not make the workshop, but the paper presented by Gail Hawkes was co-written by Danielle. her home page is http://www.stlawu.edu/news/bios/node/8
Gail Hawkes lectures in sociology at the University of New England. She has researched and published extensively on the history of the sexual regulation of young people and is co-author with Danielle Egan of Theorizing the Sexual Child in Modernity (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming). Home page http://www.une.edu.au/staff/ghawkes.php
Kwang-Suk Lee (SungKongHoe University, Seoul)
‘Internet Regulation in Korea, 1993~2009’
I will explore the recent asymmetric relationships between the citizens and the state, especially as they are revealed in the online regulation practices of the Korean government. Since the time the first civilian government took office in 1993, Korea, even more than most countries, has been overwhelmed by the dual effects of the bureaucratic state and the advance of digital technologies. The government considered the broadband Internet to be the first step toward accomplishing a rosy digital future by interconnecting government agencies and public institutions such as provincial administrations and schools at the national level. Within the design of technical codes, however, anti-democratic and retrogressive aspects of the Korean political culture have been deeply embedded. Due to the government’s pro-IT policy, Korean society has accomplished rapid growth in networking and mobile technology, while at the same time the nationwide Internet network, as well as the high penetration rate of mobile phones, has allowed the government elites increasing electronic access to citizens’ data. The new material conditions of electronic networks have enabled the government to synchronize the citizens’ activities with the regulatory system through the state’s surveillance practices, to integrate citizens’ local data into the national computer server, and to sort out the collected information based on the government’s specific purposes in a given situation. I read critically these new patterns and tendencies of the Korean government’s online regulation from the first civilian government of 1993 up to the present. In conclusion, I would like to relate the Korean experience of Internet regulation to plans to increase regulation in Australia, and alert people to the combinative effects of the bureaucratic desire and the Internet regulation.
Terence Lee is Associate Professor – Communication & Media Studies, School of Media Communication & Culture and Asia Research, Centre Murdoch University, profile page http://wwwarc.murdoch.edu.au/staff/lee.html
‘Internet Filtering and Regulation in Singapore’
As one of the first countries in the world to implement Internet filtering and censorship en masse, Singapore’s regulatory approach towards the management of the Internet is legendary. Despite such draconian or authoritarian modes of regulation, Singapore has continued to score impressively in the technological competencies of its citizenry and government. Statistically and on appearance, developments and investment in Singapore’s Internet-driven economy have not been hamstrung by such regulatory constraints. The Singapore government can thus be said to have achieved its aim to regulate the Internet with a ‘light touch’, or what I have described in earlier works as an ‘auto-regulatory regime’ where regulation is indirect and subtle, and seeks to attain political compliance, economic progress and socio-cultural discipline.
This paper will present the Singaporean model of Internet filtering and regulation since the advent of mass Internet access in the mid-1990s and consider the effects on Singapore and the broader Asia-Pacific region via the following perspectives:
- Economic growth and development: to consider whether Internet filtering has enhanced Singapore’s standing as a regional economic test-bed or global hub and whether Singapore remains a model for others to follow;
- Social and cultural control: Censorship and blockage of ‘high-impact’ pornographic sites has been defended as symbolic of Singapore’s conservative Asian values and to protect minors. The mass rollout of high-speed broadband, wireless-fibre (wifi) broadband and the embrace of social networks and other web2.0 devices have put pressure on such controls. The paper will examine and consider if ongoing proposals to filter undesirable sites remain viable.
- Political control: This section of my paper will expound on the politics and ideology of internet regulation as it has played out in Singapore and questions if the real intention has always been to quell alternative media and dissident voices, contain civil society and thereby maximise political compliance and control.
Brian Martin, Professor of Social Sciences, University of Wollongong, profile page http://www.uow.edu.au/~bmartin/
‘Tactics of Net Regulation’
The issue of regulating the Internet can be conceived as a struggle between proponents and opponents, each using tactics to achieve their goals. One set of tactics operates at the level of technology, including the mechanics of filters and technical options for avoiding or bypassing filters. At a political level there are tactics of mobilising support. These include rhetorical techniques, including arguments about the benefits of protecting children or the costs of slowing Internet access; another rhetorical technique is to frame the issue in a convenient way, for example as protection or censorship. Another tactic is to cast aspersions against partisans on the other side, for example labelling them as not concerned about child pornography. Analysis of Internet regulation in terms of tactics shows the strengths and weaknesses of the approaches used on each side. Should filtering be introduced, the likely array of tactics used will change, especially as new constituencies are brought into the fray.
Brian chose not to have his presentation from the workshop recorded.
Chris Moore, Lecturer in Digital Communication, UOW
The Double Bind: Australian Games Classification and ISP Filtering
The missing ‘restricted’ (R18) ratings category for video and computer games has produced a tricky double bind for the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Stephen Conroy and Australian gamers. The proposed Internet filter has conflated the already problematic ratings and classification system for games in Australia, with unsubstantiated and vague claims made by the Senator’s office in response to questions of ‘unregulated’ adult content in online multiplayer games. As it stands, the proposed filter will prevent access to online (multiplayer) games, downloaded games and even websites that allow games not ’suitable’ for a 15-year-old audience (yes even Facebook). Due to the lack of the R18 classification for games and the inability to opt out of the proposed Internet filter, the effect on games like SecondLife and World of Warcraft are largely unknown and widely feared amongst gamers. This paper will explore the categorically flawed assumptions of age and gender of Australian gamers, and the current access and content of games, and will speak to the potential future of games as social spaces in national, regional and globalised contexts.
David Turner
software consultant, discussed the detrimental implications of censorship on Australian software and games sellers and businesses.
David Vaile, Executive Director of the Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre, UNSW, http://www.bakercyberlawcentre.org/About_the_Centre.htm
‘Prohibited Packets and the Great Firewall of Canberra: Inspecting the Despicable, Assessing the Unacceptable’
Exploring the chain of policy thinking that invested public funds into a proposal to introduce ubiquitous ISP-based monitoring and selective blocking of all Internet requests originating in Australia, against one secret fixed blacklist of unknown but tiny extent, and one or more others made up as it goes along. Implications for participatory and open governance of the Internet. Potential liability for unintended technical and other consequences when the objectives, requirements and risk tolerance are not articulated. Challenges to the practicality of accurate ‘classification’ of the trillion things on the web, or even the 10-60 billion a month that change. And what are the real needs of young people from tot to 18-year-old, ‘digital natives’ on the scary new frontier when their parents are not? Does filtering meet these needs? If not, what would?
Jason Wilson, Lecturer in Digital Communication, University of Wollongong, http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/ssmac/staff/UOW054629.html
‘Mistaken Identity: Computer Game Regulation in Australia’
This paper will offer a history – encompassing the period from the late 1980s to the mid 1990s – where the classification regime for videogames was developed in Australia. It will consider the role of ‘media panic’, a convergence of censorious political programmes, the acquiescence of the games industry, the lack of player representation, and importantly, the absence of media and cultural studies scholars, just as the infamous ‘policy moment’ was unfolding. It will consider the lessons it has for current considerations around Internet policy – the contest around emerging cultural capital and technological literacies, the desire for states to implement exemplary regulation, and the key role for media and cultural studies in intervening in the regulatory process.