Ars Technica heeft op de frontpage wat zooi geplaatst over de plannen van de Australische regering om een wet aan te nemen die bedoelt is om een vorm van Internet censuur toe te gaan passen:
When I read about this I was absolutely stunned. The Australian federal government is trying to pass a Broadcasting Services Amendment (Online Services) Bill, intended to shield Australians from "objectionable Internet content." It's already passed in the Senate, and it's going up for debate in the other house. The bill is based on the concept of an Internet Content Host (ICH), which is basically anyone who hosts internet content in Australia. "Internet content" is defined as anything that is "kept" on a computer and available to access via an Internet carriage service. The word "kept" is left suitably undefined so that pretty much everything including email is, prima facie, "Internet content." Any Internet content that is "R rated" must be put behind some sort of access control mechanism that keeps out minors-and this includes content held by private individuals in Australia. If the above isn't fascist enough for you, here's where it gets really bad.The bill proposes a notify-and-take-down scheme, where anyone can file a complaint against an ICH, and the ICH has 24 hours to take down the objectionable content. The government must investigate the complaint and notify the complainant of the outcome. The government, however, is not required to notify the ICH that there has been a complaint filed, nor are they allowed to disclose the identity of the complainant. To make matters worse, if the ICH takes the content down and someone else later uploads or emails them some more "objectionable material", they'll be found in violation and be subject to penalties.
It's all pretty shocking, and I find it hard to imagine how a "democratic" government could pull something like this. I'm actually hoping the articles I read on it were hyped-up or in error, because if this sort of thing can happen in Australia, it can happen anywhere. Here are some links so you can learn more about it:
There's a great summary of the legislation and its impact here. Here's a link to Electronic Frontiers Australia, a group that's been covering this whole fiasco. -Hannibal
Hmm...erg vies. Is dit het begin van het einde? Check Ars Technica voor meer info.
