I have an opinion piece in today’s Age, expanding on the theme of offensive internet content: do we need Rudd to step in and save us? I’m seeing more and more panic, fanned by the media, and a sense of proportion is quickly being lost.

This also continues on my new favourite theme, “Why should the Internet be any different?” I particularly dislike this sentence, often uttered by Senator Conroy, as it so clearly has a number of obvious answers explaining why the Internet is fundamentally different to other media. More on that later.

The online version of the piece is available here.

Conroy will be facing questions about the filter on ABC Radio National’s “Australia Talks” show at 6pm today, and I’ll be there to ask a few of my own.

Conroy faced the public tonight on Channel 10’s The 7PM Project. I gave my input and let fly a few sound bites for the lead-in piece, but the interesting bit is the discussion that follows. The producers and hosts of the show were well-informed, and asked the tough questions. They demonstrated that filtering won’t help parents, nor will it stop illegal material. Conroy was left with nowhere to go but to rabbit on about RC material.

If Conroy is now reduced to defending the filter as an expensive and complex way to harmonise the classification scheme, it’s a debate he can’t easily win, but I’d be happy to have.

He also repeats a line I love to hate – “How is the internet any different?” I’ve written about this before (most recently, this week at EFA) and will have more to say on the subject. Suffice it to say, the internet is different, in so many fundamental ways. The fact that the Communications Minister doesn’t realise this should worry every Australian.

Here’s a video of tonight’s segment:

The campaign against mandatory internet filtering, which any loyal reader will know has consumed a good portion of my life these last few years, has heated up in recent days in exciting ways.

Reporters Without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontieres, RSF), after writing an open letter to Kevin Rudd late last year, last week added Australia to an “under surveillance” list of countries showing worrying trends in the field of Internet censorship. Although it doesn’t label Australia an “Internet Enemy” like China, Cuba or North Korea, it is a clear expression that our move down this path is viewed with alarm by those overseas concerned with freedom of expression. The Government is sensitive on this issue, and the Minister took issue with my reporting of the open letter in Crikey last December, firing off a volley to Crikey shortly thereafter.

In a clear sign that we have really touched a nerve, Senator Conroy has attacked both EFA and myself for our campaign in the Senate this week. After having a clear go at EFA for “misleading” RSF in question time Monday (summary here, including my rebuttal; also covered in ZDNet) on Tuesday he lambasted myself, and my colleagues at EFA for what he calls a “disgraceful misinformation campaign”.

Following the government’s announcement last year, civil libertarian group Electronic Frontiers Australia repeated the claims of reporters without borders in an article written by its CEO Colin Jacobs in Crikey. While one could possible excuse Reporters Without Borders for being ignorant of the government’s policy, the same cannot be said of the locally run EFA who through Colin Jacobs, chairman Nic Suzor, and board member Geordie Guy, have run a campaign to deliberately mislead the Australian public.

They have argued there is no child abuse material traded on the open internet yet the latest count there were 355 child abuse URLs on the ACMA blacklist and therefore the open internet.

They have argued that filtering will slow the internet and will result in over blocking despite the independent live pilot trial showing that internet filtering can be done…

Here’s Hansard, or an audio clip of this question time snippet. I believe the Crikey article in question may have in fact have been tabled. A document detailing our purported lies was tabled.

The issues the Minister mentions are ones I am comfortable debating. Although others have used the slowing of internet speeds as an argument against the filter, since the filter’s details became known I have been careful to avoid this topic as I don’t believe it is a major factor. Of course, there is child pornography on the open internet; just not very much, and the evidence shows it does not remain there for long. Nor would the filter prevent deliberate access. I am therefore not inclined to modify my arguments based on this broadside.

Despite the seriousness of the charges, this is good news. Not only does the legislation appear to be temporarily delayed, the Minister has all but conceded our campaign against the filter has succeeded in swaying public opinion. Because we have swayed it against the filter, he has labelled it misleading, basically accusing us of lying to the public. We, of course, don’t see it that way, and will stick to our guns.

I am proud to take part in what appears to be a tradition; EFA has managed to equally piss off one or two of Conroy’s predecessors. This document details EFA’s response, via the Senate Privileges Committee, to remarks made by Senator Alston in 1999.  The situation was much the same, with the Howard government coming under criticism by the ACLU for internet censorship plans. Senator Alston accused EFA of being “low grade, undergraduate political activists” and “maniacs”. “Misleading” seems a bit tame by comparison.

There’s a depressing cycle repeating itself in the Australian news. Something nasty happens. The media report the outcry about how nasty it is. Then comes the depressing bit; the politicians, wanting to be seen to respond to the confected crisis, propose some sort of ill-thought-out, knee-jerk regulation to mitigate it.

A good example is Senator Nick Xenophon’s reaction to the tragic murder of Carly Ryan. Apparently, her killer lied about his age online to entice her into a meeting. The Senator’s proposal, therefore, was to outlaw lying about your age to minors online. Can anything be said in defence of such a proposal? Never mind that the crime is vanishingly rare. Isn’t it enough that rape and murder are already illegal? How many murderers would balk at a little lie, legal or not, in pursuit of a victim?

The trend is worse when it comes to the internet. Recently we’ve had flaps about racist speech, and do you remember the furore over a stupid web game called “Muslim Massacre”? If there is a politician who can resist the temptation to forcefully condemn something so obviously tasteless, I’ve yet to see one.

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If you’re a politician, and something nasty is brought to your attention, what do you do? The best and sometimes only tool in your toolbox is the one you reach for. The tool is this: to pass a law banning it. Therefore, although it’s always discouraging, a story like this one, is far from unusual or surprising. “Laws to tackle racism on the Internet are set to be beefed up,” it announces.

“Authorities warn they are often powerless to act against online content, which is responsible for almost one in five racial vilification complaints,” it continues, then:

Attorney-General Robert McClelland has ordered the Australian Human Rights Commission to conduct a sweeping review of ”arrangements for dealing with racist material on the internet”.

”While freedom of expression is one of the most fundamental rights, this is not at the expense of the rights of people, while using the Internet, to be treated with equality, dignity and respect,” Mr McClelland told The Sunday Age.

Certainly, nobody likes hate speech. But these words, by our Attorney-General, are concerning. Firstly, they show a terrible lack of  consideration of the complexities of the issue, and secondly, they demote freedom of speech in a significant way.

Banning racist content on the Internet might seem like a good idea on the surface, but you don’t have to dig very deep before the idea becomes problematic. The existing laws throughout the states grapple with some thorny issues. How do you define hate speech? “Kill all Jews” certainly counts, but what about “Liberate Palestine”? Is Holocaust revisionism hate speech? What about an honestly held  opinion on the undesirability of immigration from a certain part of the world? Does this inspire “hatred, contempt or severe ridicule” against a group of persons? These ambiguities will become more problematic if a new national law is introduced that applies to every blog on the Internet.

The proposal also shows a considerable lack of understanding about the realities of censoring the Internet. The Internet, it should go without saying, is global. Billions of web pages are out there, far beyond the reach of Australian lawmakers, and reflecting a multitude of different cultural values. Content hosted in Australia can be removed, but it can just as easily be moved or copied overseas by its authors. It is therefore questionable whether any law could have a meaningful impact.

The comments by the AG and others pay lip service to freedom of speech, but their words lack conviction. Freedom of speech is fine, but “not at the expense of the rights of people… to be treated with equality, dignity and respect.” That sounds like a noble sentiment, but are we certain that freedom of speech shouldn’t include the right to be mocking, disrespectful and offensive? There are definitely limits to freedom of speech that we can all agree on. But the above comments seem more like a dismissal of free-speech concerns than a debate of their merits.

We need to ask ourselves, is this the best way to tackle racism in Australian society? Is racist web content a cause of racist attitudes, or merely a symptom of it? In our view, other, more substantive and community-based policies are needed if we want to see a real improvement in this area.

I think Tim Dunlop missed the point yesterday in his Crikey piece about the Men at Work/Kookaburra case. Trying to decide whether they did or did nor borrow the melody from the folk song seems, to me, insignificant compared to the question of “should it matter if they did?”. Here’s my response (as a letter) in today’s Crikey.

Re. “Music copyrights and wrongs: money hits the right note“. Tim Dunlop’s piece seems to have missed some of the larger issues at play in the “Kookaburra” case. To me the question shouldn’t be whether a musical riff was borrowed consciously or unconsciously, was part of the composition or the arrangement. It’s not who owes whom money. The question is whether culture can grow and thrive under conditions where a few notes can land you in a courtroom.

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Stilgherrian has been covering the iiNet trial for Crikey (good job, Stil), and wrote yesterday about Conroy’s rather worrying remarks on the subject indicating that the ISPs and entertainment industry should get together and sort out a way to solve this problem.

This makes some sense if the two parties get together and and discuss a new business model that brings entertainment to Internet users in a way that is convenient and fairly priced, or even if it allowed users to opt-in to a revenue sharing deal that legitimised peer-to-peer file sharing. It seems highly unlikely, though, that the copyright lobby will suddenly wake up and smell the reality. Instead, if they get together with ISPs at all, it will be to find a way to spy on users and shut down Bittorrent any way they can. They will wield the cudgel of legal action without restraint.

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