The Minister for Information Technology, Senator Richard Alston, has released further details of a plan for the Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA) to take responsibility for the censorship of obscene or illegal Internet content.
The statement from Senator Alston's office advises that the planned regulatory regime will hand over the regulation of obscene material to the ABA and will even attempt to regulate material from overseas.
'These codes of practice must include a commitment by an online service provider to take all reasonable steps to block access to RC or X material hosted overseas, once the service provider has been notified of the existence of the material by the ABA,' the statement reads.
According to the statement, the government will amend the Broadcasting Services Act to make the ABA the point of contact for people wishing to complain about obscene content on the Internet. The ABA would be responsible for investigating the allegations, and if the content is found to contravene government guidelines then the ABA would direct ISPs to restrict or remove the material.
With the Federal Government's goods and services taxation legislation heading towards the Senate, the crack-down on Internet obscenity seems aimed at appealing to the socially conservative independent Senator Brian Harradine, who currently holds the balance of power.
Kim Heitman, the chair of Internet lobby group, Electronic Frontiers Australia, said that the plan is completely unfeasible.
"Only a few percent of Net content is located in Australia", Heitman pointed out. "Almost all the material being targeted by the government is legal in the United States.So the material our government is trying to ban or restrict access to will remain available from overseas."
Heitman pointed out that the current government stance contradicted previous research undertaken by the Department of Information Technology.
"Suggestions that ISPs should 'block access to such material hosted overseas' are totally impractical.They were rejected in a recent CSIRO report commissioned by Alston's office itself."
