[AusNOG] Happy new year / New rules for age-restricted internet and mobile content after the 20th of january 2008

[David Keegel]

On Wed, Jan 16, 2008 at 05:01:06PM +0000, Andy Davidson wrote:
> 
> On 2 Jan 2008, at 04:06, Matthew Moyle-Croft wrote:
> 
> > "Labor makes no apologies to those who argue that any regulation of  
> > the internet is like going down the Chinese road," Mr Conroy said  
> > yesterday. "If people equate freedom of speech with watching child  
> > pornography, then the Rudd Labor Government is going to disagree."
> 
> We're having this discussion in the UK right now.
> 
> The UK government want to ban 'bad' things using a stoplist.  http:// 
> www.iwf.org.uk/

IWF's "Role and Remit" page lists three specific types of Internet
content that they are concerned with:
    * images of child sexual abuse* hosted anywhere in the world
    * criminally obscene content hosted in the UK
    * incitement to racial hatred content hosted in the UK

It looks to me like IWF have a policy not to block anything else.

(From what I can see at IWF it looks like "criminally obscene"
in the UK corresponds to something like RC in Australia, not
to X rated.)

> The problem is that they are marketing this as a tool to stop child  
> porn, when in fact it's described in law as a mechanism to filter any  
> questionable (from the government POV) content.

Are you saying that in the UK things other than the 3 areas above
can be blocked by UK government/agencies?  For instance could a 
site be blocked because it is critical of government?

Is the issue that the IWF could start adding other types of content
to its stop list merely by IWF making a policy change, rather than
requiring a legislative change to enable it?

Since Senator Conroy seems to be holding up the UK system as a model
of what he would like to see, I'd like to understand the UK system.

-- 
___________________________________________________________________________
 David Keegel <djk at cybersource.com.au>  http://www.cyber.com.au/users/djk/
 Cybersource P/L: Linux/Unix Systems Administration Consulting/Contracting