AAP reports:

A ballot was held in the upper house on Tuesday to decide which minor party or independent senator would be appointed to a federal parliamentary committee on cyber-safety.

In a very close secret vote, Senator Fielding was awarded the job with 34 votes to Senator Ludlam’s 32.

The Joint Select Committee on Cyber-Safety will look at online bullying, stalking, sexual grooming, the development of addictions, identity theft and privacy breaches.

The committee, which was proposed by Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government Anthony Albanese, will investigate and report on:

• abuse of children online (cyber-bullying, cyber-stalking and sexual grooming);
• exposure to illegal and inappropriate content;
• inappropriate social and health behaviours in an online environment (e.g. technology addiction, online promotion of anorexia, drug usage, underage drinking and smoking);
• identity theft; and
• breaches of privacy.
• increasing awareness of cyber-safety good practice;
• encouraging schools to work with the broader school community, especially parents, to develop consistent, whole school approaches; and
• analysing best practice approaches to training and professional development programs and resources that are available to enable school staff to effectively respond to cyber-bullying.

Of course, Albanese also noted that the government will introduce into parliament legislation for mandatory ISP level filtering.

The Australian Classification Board (ACB) has responded to accusations by The Australian Sex Party that material with depictions of women with small breasts has been banned. A spokesperson for the ACB told me today that publications which contain offensive depictions or descriptions of persons who are or appear to be persons under the age of 18 (whether they are engaged in sexual activity or not) must be classified RC.

They said the Board classifies publications on a case by case basis, in accordance with the Guidelines for the Classification of Publications, the Code and the Classification Act and that the Publications Guidelines do not specify breast size.

Female Ejaculation Bans

In response to accusations that films containing female ejaculation would now be banned, the spokesperson said the Film and Games guidelines do not specify female ejaculation, but it does specify that the fetish of ‘golden showers’ will be Refused Classification and have been in the past.

The ACB is yet to answer followup questions about whether it considers female ejaculation to be a golden shower.

The ACB said they do not and could not direct Customs and Border Protection officers to confiscate any material and that Customs and Border Protection have advised that they will only seize material that is Refused Classification or would be Refused Classification if it were to be classified.

What’s Been Banned

Fiona Patten from the Australian Sex Party (ASP) said she attended a ACB training session late last year where they showed examples of publications that had been Refused Classification due to the size of the woman’s breasts.

‘That information is not provided to the applicant when their publication is Refused Classification. When a publication classification is revoked sometimes a little more information is provided’ she said.

According to Patten some of the titles banned included Barely Legal (Hustler), Finally Legal and Purely 18.

‘The general comments on the publications mentioned were that the model appeared under 18′ she said.

However, the titles mentioned are all regulated and records of each model’s age are required to be kept by 18 U.S.C. 2257 and 28 C.F.R. part 75. These regulations are enforced by the FBI.

The ACB’s database of banned publications contains four references of banned copies of Barely Legal, one of Finally Legal, and two of Purely 18.

The Australian Sex Party (ASP) said Wednesday that the Australian Classification Board (ACB) is now banning depictions of small-breasted women in adult publications and films. It comes just a week after it was found that material with depictions of females ejaculating during orgasm are now Refused Classification and Australian Customs directed to confiscate it.

ASP’s Fiona Patten writes on her party’s website that they are starting to see depictions of women in their late 20s being banned because they have an A cup breast size:

“This is in response to a campaign led by Kids Free 2 B Kids and promoted by Barnaby Joyce and Guy Barnett in Senate Estimates late last year. Mainstream companies such as Larry Flint’s Hustler produce some of the publications that have been banned. These companies are regulated by the FBI to ensure that only adult performers are featured in their publications.”

Patten writes that such bans may be an unintended consequence of the Senator’s actions “but they are largely responsible for the sharp increase in breast size in Australian adult magazines of late”.

How can this be happening

The National Classification Code dictates that anything that describes or depicts a person who is, or appears to be, a child under 18 (whether the person is engaged in sexual activity or not) in a way that is likely to cause offence to a reasonable adult is Refused Classification.

State Crime Acts are also similar. Victoria’s Criminal Code includes the ‘or appears to be’ clause in its definition of child pornography and it doesn’t need to cause offence to a reasonable adult for it to be illegal.

Even if you are 18 years old but you look younger, taking a photograph of your breasts and uploading it to the Internet could land you or someone you know in serious trouble.

Keep in mind it’s highly unlikely that a naked photograph of a 30, 40 or 50 year old woman with small breasts would ‘appear’ to be child pornography on the basis of her breast size alone. Small breasts do not automatically mean something will be banned or is illegal.

A bad message

Australian adult blogger Ms Naughty says we need to look at what this ruling says to Australian women:

“Why ban small boobs? I can only assume it stems from paranoia that flat chests somehow stir up the pedophiles. And you only need to mention that “p” word to start a full-scale moral panic in Parliament.”

“Shall we put such hysteria aside and look at what this ruling is saying to Australian women? Basically, it’s classing a certain normal female body type as obscene. It’s declaring all flat chests to be automatically juvenile, something that should not be viewed by anyone because of a fear that it will stir up “base instincts” in certain people.”

“Can the Classification Board be any more insulting or sexist?”

Ejaculations

According to Patten, female ejaculations films are being Refused Classification on one of two grounds:

1. That the depictions are a form of urination which is banned under the label of ‘golden showers’ in the Classification Guidelines or
2. Female ejaculation is an ‘abhorrent’ depiction

“Films that show both male and female ejaculation have routinely been given an X rating since 1983″ said Patten. “The new ruling follows a boom in the numbers of adult films featuring female ejaculation since the pioneering research of Professor Emeritus Beverly Whipple was published in her book The G Spot.”

Content Refused Classification will be blocked to Australian adults under the Government’s planned Internet censorship scheme.

“There are over one million sites featuring female ejaculation and for Australia to be banning depictions and discussion of this important issue, takes us back into the Victorian era where they didn’t even believe that women could have orgasms.”

The ACB has been contacted for comment.

Website for the Greens blacked out.

Online Campaign Coordinator for The Great Australia Internet Blackout, Jeff Waugh, shared these figures today:

• 455 verified participating websites (this only includes those who pledged or informed organisers, others are yet to be tallied).
• Websites include (or included) iiNet, Booko, Australian Greens and Australian Democrats.
• The information popup which appears on sites participating in the campaign has been seen more than 270,000 times.
• There has so far been over 196,000 unique visitors to the Great Australian Internet Blackout website.
• Media coverage included a top story on SMH.com.au, as well as articles on ABC,  ZDNet, News.com.au and many more news websites.
• Drive time radio coverage.

When you are a Government of a Western nation about to introduce a mandatory censorship regime unlike anything in the else in the Western world it is a good idea to try to play up comparisons with social democracies like Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland and our Commonwealth cousins the UK and Canada. It is also good to downplay comparisons with authoritarian regimes like Iran, Saudi Arabia or China.

So, naturally enough the Government’s FAQ about their current filtering policy attempts to do this by asking the rhetorical question: “How does Australia’s approach compare with other western democracies?”

It’s a good question, but sadly for the Government the answer only serves to emphasise what is so wrong about the Government’s proposal. In all the countries listed, not one has a mandatory filtering scheme. In all the countries listed, not one attempts to filter anything other than strictly illegal child abuse material.

Just as revealing is the list they did not enumerate – the list of 30 or so Western democracies which, like Australia, do not presently have any filtering regime.

And, of course, it is no surprise to learn that the Government does not list the countries that do have mandatory filtering regimes like Iran, Saudi Arabia and China.

Comparing Australia’s proposed policy with other Western democracies actually highlights how draconian this policy is. Why is it that Australia is the only Western demoncracy to propose a mandatory filter? Why is it that the scope of Australia’s filter is so uniquely broad that it will include material that is actually legal to own and view?

Part of the problem is that Australia is trying to do with ‘taste’ police, what other countries do with real police. Other countries treat child abuse as what it is: a horrific crime against children. Australia is trying to deal with the problem of child abuse by dealing with it as a content classification problem. The Government would have us believe that it can do something meaningful about the problem of child abuse by devoting more effort to content classification and then ensuring that content classification decisions are riguourously enforced at our digital borders (e.g. on the other side of the pipes into your living room).

Or, at least, it used to believe this. It is clear that the Government now understands that a mandatory filter can’t contribute to fighting child abuse because it now states that the purpose of the mandatory ISP-level filter is merely to “reduce the risk of inadvertent exposure” to Refused Classification material. It readily admits that a technically competent user with the motivation to do so can circumvent a mandatory filter.

However, even this more modest aim is still far more draconian than those of other Western democracies that have some kind of filtering policy. These countries seek only to minimize inadvertent exposure to illegal child sexual abuse material which is a far more restricted category of material than that which is rated Refused Classification by the Australian National Classification Code.

Consider this: in 2003 Margaret Pomeranz, the ABC’s film reviewer, attempted to give the Refused Classification film “Ken Park” a screening before a crowd in Balmain, Sydney. Police physically intervened to prevent her breaking the law. Yet it is exactly material of this kind that will be subject to Conroy’s censorwall. Is Stephen Conroy prepared to call Margaret Pomeranz, a purveyor of “the worst of the worst” kind of internet filth? Or is she instead a decent person who strongly believes the National Classification Board made an error when it gave “Ken Park” an RC rating?

The ALP’s policy on ISP-level filtering has changed on numerous occasions since it was first drafted in 2006. At that time the policy was about mandating that ISPs offer a cleanfeed to families that wanted it. In December 2007, it was about mandating that ISP’s impose a cleanfeed that people could opt out of. In 2008, the policy changed again and opt-out ceased to be an option.

All along we were told that a mandatory filter was necessary to prevent Australians who seek child pornopgraphy from viewing it.

The Government has since learnt that a filter will be utterly ineffective for that task, primarily because most child pornography is traded on networks that are invisible to an HTTP-based filter. It now, at least, readily admits that the filter can be technically circumvented with ease. So, in recognition of these cold hard facts, the Government now insists that the mandatory filter is no longer about preventing criminal access to illegal material. It is now merely about preventing inadvertent exposure of ordinary citizens to Refused Classification material.

Think about that.

The Government insists that it must filter your Internet connection to prevent you being inadvertently exposed to material, such as the movie “Ken Park”, that the National Classification Board has deemed unsuitable for any other classification.

How paternalistic. How patronising.

There would be less (but not much less) disquiet about the mandatory filter if the Australian government chose to target, like the European governments it wants to compare itself to, only strictly illegal material. Yet the Government, despite the wriggle room afforded by changing its position once more, has explicitly decided not to go down this path. It has deliberately chosen to continue down the path of ensuring that the National Classification Code is uniformly and universally applied to citizens as if each and every one of them were themselves film and literature distributors.

People who are “inadvertently exposed” to films such as “Ken Park” are at little risk of abusing children because of that exposure. People who deliberately access child sexual abuse material are. Making it more difficult for Margaret Pomeranz to download “Ken Park” from the web does precisely nothing about the problem of child sexual abuse, irrespective of Minister Conroy’s persistent angry insistence otherwise.

Republished with permission. Visit Broadbanned Revolution for more of Jon’s writing.

A Facebook page for the event has been set up, with over 1700 people already confirmed as attending. Specific protest locations are still to be announced, but one is planned for each capital city. I’ll update this page when I find out more.

Also happening around the country:

Sydney: A public meeting discussing what the Government has planned will be held from 6:00pm – 10:00pm Sunday evening at the Lansdowne Hotel. Full details here.

Brisbane: Meeting Monday 21st December at 7:30pm to discuss what can be done to stop the filter. QUT Gardens Point campus, Room Z-205. I’ll be at this one. Full details here.

Sky is also running a poll to find out whether you support the Government’s policy of ISP level Internet filtering.

Jim Wallace

Managing Director of the Australian Christian Lobby, Jim Wallace, has urged his members to write to Senator Conroy and thank him for ‘protecting kids’ with the Government’s Internet filtering plan.

Wallace says members of the sex trade and civil libertarians are violently opposed to the plan and it’s important Senator Conroy hears from them. Of course it is. It’s also important he hears from YOU (as should your local MP).

In a press release yesterday Wallace also said the report proved the technological principle of filtering can be extended to ‘other harmful X and R rated material on the Internet’. He said such content filtering should be reviewed and practiced in three years.

Here is Jim’s letter in full (first published on Whirlpool).

In Brief:

* Government moves to filter porn from internet.
* Sex trade and civil libertarians violently oppose this.
* Please write to Communications Minister Stephen Conroy to thank him for protecting kids.

Dear ACL Supporter

It is important Governments don’t just hear from us when we want something. It is vital we thank them when they announce good policy.

Yesterday the Communications Minister Stephen Conroy announced that the Rudd Government will make it compulsory for Internet Service Providers to filter the worst of the worst pornography and violence from the internet.

This means that child porn, rape porn, bestiality and anything else judged as Refused Classification (RC) under Australia’s classification laws, such as instruction in crime and drug use, will be blocked.

This is a great first step in protecting children from the harms of pornography online.

Legislation is to be introduced next year giving effect to this policy. In addition, ISPs will be encouraged, and given incentives, to offer optional filtering of X and R rated pornography on a voluntary basis.

No one argues that books, films and magazines should not be subject to this form of appropriate censorship. Now this is beginning to be extended to the internet, where of course children are particularly susceptible to being exposed to harmful content.

Trials have shown RC content from overseas websites can be effectively blocked with negligible impact on internet speed.

Sadly, the sex trade, and some internet civil libertarians who believe there should be no control over the internet, are violently opposed and are putting out much misinformation in the media.

It is important that the Communications Minister Stephen Conroy hears from us – real people with real concerns for the safety of kids online. Please take a moment to write to Senator Conroy and thank him. A personal letter would be most effective, but we also understand this is a busy time of year and an email may be more convenient. His contact details are:

Senator Stephen Conroy
Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy
Level 4, 4 Treasury Place
Melbourne Vic 3002

His e-mail address is senator.conroy@aph.gov.au.

Thanks in anticipation of your response. May I take this opportunity to wish you and your family a blessed Christmas.

God bless

Jim Wallace AM
Managing Director

See Bernard Keane’s guide to writing to Ministers and get cracking.

For the latest media coverage (and there’s lots of it), click here.

• Minister’s Press Release
• EFA’s Response
• List of media stories

More to come.

Commsday reports that the cooperative effort to block a blacklist of RC websites is ‘an attempt to combat child pornography’ but at this stage it remains unclear whether the ISPs actually intend to block all RC material or limit it to child pornography.

What is RC
‘Refused Classification’ is a broad classification category and in most cases content which falls under it is legal to possess and view in Australia (the exception being Western Australia and some indigenous communities in the Northern Territory or where the content is illegal under criminal codes such as child abuse). RC includes material surrounded by political debate like The Peaceful Pill Handbook, as well as films like Ken Park, adult pornography with fetishes (such as spanking) and even content that depicts or deals with drug misuse and addiction. Find out more about RC and other classification types at Libertus.net.

Since the Government announced it would introduce mandatory filtering many media outlets have shown a complete lack of understanding about the types of content classified Refused Classification and Commday’s report could well be another case of that. Until details are confirmed by the ISPs involved, what this plan means for Australians and the Government’s own plan is uncertain.

Six important questions that I want answered:

1. What is the aim of the filter? Is it to block only child pornography websites?
2. How will it work?
3. Who will supply the blacklist? ‘RC websites’ suggests it will be ACMA, but would a combination of lists be used (including the IWF list)?
4. If the ACMA blacklist is used, how will the ISPs block only child pornography websites (if that is the intent) or RC websites when the contents of the ACMA list are not categorised by content or classification, or available to view.
5. Will this system be mandatory or opt-in? Opt-out?
6. Has there been any consultation with the Government?
   

In related news, Commsday also expects the Government’s report on live ISP filtering trials will be released this week.

Update 11:30PM: iiNet’s Michael Malone informs Whirlpool members that iiNet won’t introduce compulsory filtering unless required to do so by law.

“I’ve been very vocal on this, consistently over many many years. iiNet won’t introduce compulsory filtering unless required to do so by law. It’s not a sensible solution to anything. Read my recent comments in the media on this.”