F.E.A.R. 2 fifth game ban this year, 2008 worst year yet
PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 game, F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin, has been refused classification because of high-impact violence. It brings the total number of banned games this year to five, making 2008 the worst year for game bans according to Refused-Classification.com (and it’s not even over yet). GameSpot obtained the ACB’s report: “The violence is...
Clive Hamilton: Straw men, five year old polls & cherry picked libertarians
Guest post by Geordie Guy Were I to commission you with the sum of $145 million to single-handedly cook and eat all of the elephants in existence before Christmas, with what would you season them? I am unaware of any demography that actually eats them, but I imagine they are red meat. Would you apply...
Children’s welfare groups clobber Rudd’s filter plan
Holly Doel-Mackaway, a child rights adviser with Save the Children, shocked many of us last week at the UNSW filtering forum when she spoke out against mandatory ISP filtering. I guess too many of us are used to hearing the “even if it doesn’t work, it’s still good” argument from Childwise, that we sometimes forget...
Live blog coverage of UNSW Filtering Forum – Thursday 27
Tomorrow I (and many others) converge on Sydney for the the UNSW Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre’s Internet Filtering Forum. The good news for those unable to attend is that Stilgherrian will be blogging the event live (he’s also kindly invited myself and Peter Black to join in and offer a word or two). You’ll...
Statistics Laundering: Report on false and misleading online child pornography statistics
Irene Graham has published a comprehensive research paper about the false and misleading statistics associated with the prevalence of child pornography on the Internet which appeared in Australian media reports and articles during 2008. That includes Bernadette McMenamin’s comments in The Australian back in January: ‘Child pornography is one of the fastest growing online businesses...
GetUp! launches Save The Net campaign
GetUp! has launched their anti-filter campaign, Save The Net. The Federal Government is planning to force all Australian servers to filter internet traffic and block any material the Government deems ‘inappropriate’. Under the plan, the Government can add any ‘unwanted’ site to a secret blacklist. Testing has already begun on systems that will slow our...
DBCDE answers ISP questions about live filtering trial
The DBCDE has published answers to 23 questions submitted by ISP’s about their live filtering pilot. Considering the size of the task proposed and the impact it would have on ISPs, DBCDE’s response is rather barebones. Here’s a selection: 1. If this Pilot is run as a voluntary opt in service for the Pilot, how...
Libs shoot down filtering plan: ‘Misguided and deeply unpopular’
The Greens announced their opposition to filtering (or close to it) this morning and now the Liberals Shadow Comms Minister Nick Minchin has issued a press release labeling the Government’s plan as misguided and deeply unpopular. It reads: Senator Minchin said nobody of decency disagreed about the importance of working to ensure the online world...
Greens won’t support filtering plan
The Greens will not support the Government’s net censorship proposal according to News.com.au. Bob Brown told ABC TV “We’re very, very concerned that there’s going to be a unnecessary clamp down on the internet and it has to be watched.” He said Ludlam is working very hard with community groups in Australia to oppose the...
Australian Sex Party answers censorship questions
I raised concerns last week about whether the Australian Sex Party (ASP) would fight for an R18+ game classification, given Eros had been opposed to one (a bad move in my opinion). However, party convenor Fiona Patten promptly responded to my queries over the weekend and informed me that ASP does support the introduction of...
Sunday wrap up: Image filter mistakes Conroy for porn
LogiPik, a PHP image filter for websites which supposedly uses a number of advanced detection layers to accurately classify a pictures level of appropriateness, thinks this picture of Stephen Conroy is porn. Actually, of the five photographs of Conroy I tried, three were considered porn and the one to the right ‘erotic’. Cheers to Eddie...
