February 19, 2000

Australia Using Law to Go After Objectionable Sites

By JAMIE MURPHY

ERTH, Australia -- Australian legislation intended to restrict access to online pornography took effect on Jan. 1, and, slowly but surely, Web pages that officials deem objectionable are disappearing from their Australian Internet hosts.

The Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA), which examines a site only after receiving a complaint, has invoked the new law against a handful of sites. If the content is deemed objectionable, according to guidelines from Australia's Office of Film and Literature Classification, the broadcast authority will order Australian pages taken down. For offensive content housed outside Australia, the ABA will forward the banned Web page addresses to providers of government-approved filtering products.

The broadcast authority fielded about three dozen complaints -- almost all via an online complaint form -- during January and subsequently ordered just under 20 pornographic Web pages removed from their Australian hosts.

Related Article Nearing Deadline, Australia Has Yet to Outline Net Restrictions (December 11, 1999)

But, as critics pointed out before the law was enacted, removing the pages from Australia may not mean removing the pages from the Web. One banned pornography site, hosted by Telechat Pty Ltd., a telecommunication and entertainment company based in Frankston, Victoria, simply shifted content to a server in the United States.

And although the government and some industry representatives say they are pleased with Australia's attempts to limit possibly offensive material online, critics are already faulting the law and its implementation.

Heath Gibson, author of a report released this month by the Centre for Independent Studies, a nonpartisan institute that studies public policy in Australia and Asia, is arguing for further review of the legislation, formally called the Broadcasting Services Amendment (Online Services) Act 1999.

"It would be a great loss to Australia," Gibson said, "if the economic, political and personal promise of the Internet was watered down or lost because we failed to understand the issues fully before regulating it."

Electronic Frontiers Australia, an electronic civil liberties organization, demonstrated how to circumvent the law by moving its site to the United States under the same URL, or domain name. Although the group's site does not host anything illegal, Greg Taylor, vice chairman of the organization, said the group moved it as a protest and to demonstrate how easy it is to move a site anywhere in the world outside local jurisdiction.

Most users, he continued, "wouldn't know where a site is physically located, and the fact that it's URL ends in .au [Australia's country code] is of no relevance as to its actual location."

Taylor predicted that commercial Australian sites that are banned "will jump ship, taking some revenues offshore with them."

Stephen Nugent, manager of online content regulation for the broadcasting authority, admits that "there are naturally some hiccups with the implementation," but he said that so far the ABA was happy with the process.

Every country is grappling with how to handle objectionable Web sites.

One of the more controversial aspects of the legislation, which was passed last summer, proposed that Australian Internet service providers take responsibility for blocking access to objectionable foreign content. But the law also called upon the online industry to suggest an alternative plan.

After several revisions, the Internet Industry Association (IIA), which represents hundreds of Internet companies, submitted its "codes of practice" for ISPs, which the government accepted. The plan called for "self-regulation," whereby Australian Internet users could install optional filtering software, rather than have government require ISPs to block access to illegal offshore content.

The broadcast authority will continue to review the process and suggest improvements through semi-annual reports to its minister and author of the bill, Senator Richard Alston, as well as through a review of the "codes of practice" within 18 months and of the whole process before January 2003.

As for those sites that keep their .au address but shift overseas, the ABA will give the offensive addresses "to the approved providers of filtering software," Nugent said.

Even though the legislation is in its early stages, Peter Coroneus, executive director of the IIA, said he was pleased so far.

He said that while every country is grappling with how to handle objectionable Web sites, he added, "The work we have done in this area, most recently in response to the legislation, is now arguably the most advanced of its kind."

Coroneus said he believed that self-regulation, combined with consumer education and filters, was preferable to a purely legislative approach.

Some Australians however, are not so pleased with efforts to curb the new electronic medium.

John Arfield, the librarian for the University of Western Australia, said he deplored what he called "heavy-handed attempts to obstruct access by ordinary people to whatever they might wish to see, read or listen to."

Arfield also said he questioned the law because it was passed without important enforcement provisions -- details later ironed out by the IIA and the government. "What other government would enact a law without deciding how it will be enforced?" he asked.

Others argue that the government knew exactly what it was doing -- trying to please the voters.

Kimberly Heitman, a lawyer in Perth and spokesman for Electronic Frontiers Australia, compared the new law to similar legislation in the United States.

"Like the U.S. legislation under the Communication Decency Act and the Child Online Protection Amendment, the Broadcasting Services Act amendments were political posturing, designed to create the illusion that that government was 'cleaning up the Internet,' while in fact the amendments have done nothing to stop any end-user accessing anything they please."

People on both sides of the issue, he continued, "could rightly consider the laws to be unworkable and dangerously vague."

And just as both American bills faced legal challenges, the Australian legislation may soon be contested in court. Fiona Patten, spokeswoman for the Eros Foundation, which represents Australia's adult industry, said the organization plans to file a court challenge on the legislation's constitutionality -- the right to freedom of trade, travel and communication between states -- this April.

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Related Sites
These sites are not part of The New York Times on the Web, and The Times has no control over their content or availability.

• Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA)

• Office of Film and Literature Classification

• Australian Broadcasting Authority's online complaint form

• Centre for Independent Studies

• Electronic Frontiers Australia

• Internet Industry Association (IIA)

• Internet Industry Association's "codes of practice"

• The University of Western Australia Library

• Eros Foundation