John Hatzistergos

John Hatzistergos

With so much of my time devoted to filtering, I haven’t had much of a chance to post about all the other stuff going on. Here’s a wrap up:

Art exhibitions: At a SCAG meeting today in Brisbane, NSW Attorney-General John Hatzistergos asked censorship ministers to ‘clarify and streamline the National Classification Scheme as it applies to artworks depicting children’ according to SMH.

“Recent events have indicated that the community could benefit from greater certainty and consistency in the application of the National Classification Scheme, particularly to art works,” Mr Hatzistergos said yesterday.

Filtering in New Zealand: Computer World NZ says the New Zealand government has ‘no current plan to follow Australia into compulsory filtering of internet connections by ISPs.’ ICT minister David Cunliffe told them that New Zealand’s response to undesirable online material emphasises education.

NZ is currently trialing voluntary blocking of known child abuse websites with some ISPs. Cunliffe said there are no plans for the programme to be expanded to other types of illegal material.

No plans now doesn’t mean no plans latter and naturally the nutter fringe wants it to go further and block legal hardcore pornography. The Society for Promotion of Community Standards Inc. said in a press release published November 13, 2007:

“Gay rights activists, paedophiles, homosexuals wanting to ‘hook up’ with underage school boys or view ‘bare-backing’ films, those addicted to hardcore pornography and all those who make a living from marketing such moral filth, have rubbished the Society’s suggestions for the implementation of such controls to prevent injury to the “public good”.”

Sounds like the same dirty tactics being used over here.

That same old ALP form letter: The ALP continues to send standard form letters to those demanding answers about their plans to censor the web. Simon Rumble writes:

Last week I wrote a letter to my local member, Anthony Albanese, detailing my concerns about the proposed internet censorship regime. I received a response last night. I won’t bother wasting electrons copying it in here, because I can just link to the letter Stilgerrian got because it’s exactly the fucking same.

View other MP letters and upload any you receive at the EFP Score Card wiki.