Magazine Censorship in Australia

Australian nutters are calling for a ban on the sale of pornographic magazines from newsagents, milkbars, convenience stores, supermarkets and petrol stations.

The group has asked censorship ministers to review the rules under which magazines such as Playboy , Penthouse, People, The Picture, Zoo and Ralph are reviewed, saying they are increasingly explicit and contributing to the sexualisation of children, Fairfax newspapers report.

A letter to the standing committee of attorneys-general/censorship ministers signed by a former chief justice of the Family Court Alastair Nicholson, the chief executive of World Vision Tim Costello, actor Noni Hazlehurst and 34 academics, child professionals and advocates says such material should be restricted to adults-only premises.

They are particularly disturbed by the prevalence of teen sex magazines featuring women apparently aged more than 18 but looking younger and styled with braces and pigtails but in highly sexualised poses and sometimes performing sex acts. Under Australian censorship laws it is illegal to use under-age models or models who appear to be under 18.

Julie Gale, director of the nutter group Kids Free 2B Kids, said easy access to the internet means young people are experiencing unprecedented exposure to pornographic images, voluntarily or involuntarily: But allowing pornography and overtly sexualised images to be sold in the public arena with easy access for children and teens tells them that this is acceptable. It gives it public validation.

Australia's strongest critics have been swift and vocal in their condemnation of the filtering, citing concerns over freedom of speech, and referring to the filter as handing control of the internet to the moral minority .

But there still fears among those with more moderate views that the filtering system might be a step too far, with groups such as the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) and the Inspire Foundation claiming that the subjects covered by Refused Classification are too diverse to successfully implement a ban.

And now search giants Google and Yahoo have joined in the call for the Australian government to rethink the controversial plan, making public their submissions to the government's consultation process.

Google says it will not voluntarily comply with the government's request that it censor YouTube videos in accordance with broad refused classification (RC) content rules.

As it prepares to introduce legislation within weeks forcing ISPs to block a blacklist of banned RC websites, the government says it is in talks with Google over blocking the same type of material from YouTube.

YouTube's rules already forbid certain videos that would be classified RC, such as sex, violence, bestiality and child pornography. But the RC classification extends further to more controversial content such as information on euthanasia, material about safer drug use and material on how to commit more minor crimes such as painting graffiti.

Google said all of these topics were featured in videos on YouTube and it refused to censor these voluntarily. It said exposing these topics to public debate was vital for democracy.

In an interview with the ABC's Hungry Beast, which aired last night, Conroy said applying ISP filters to high-traffic sites such as YouTube would slow down the internet, so we're currently in discussions with Google about ... how we can work this through . What we're saying is, well in Australia, these are our laws and we'd like you to apply our laws, Conroy said: Google at the moment filters an enormous amount of material on behalf of the Chinese government; they filter an enormous amount of material on behalf of the Thai government.

Google Australia's head of policy, Iarla Flynn, said the company had a bias in favour of freedom of expression in everything it did and Conroy's comparisons between how Australia and China deal with access to information were not helpful or relevant . YouTube has clear policies about what content is not allowed, for example hate speech and pornography, and we enforce these, but we can't give any assurances that we would voluntarily remove all Refused Classification content from YouTube .

The scope of RC is simply too broad and can raise genuine questions about restrictions on access to information. RC includes the grey realms of material instructing in any crime from [painting] graffiti to politically controversial crimes such as euthanasia, and exposing these topics to public debate is vital for democracy.

Hacking attacks, dubbed Operation Titstorm , have targeted the websites of Senator Stephen Conroy and the Australian Parliament House, taking them both down with Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) for a period of time.

Anonymous' Operation Titstorm is protesting Australia's upcoming Internet censorship legislation, in particular the proposed banning of images of small-breasted females and female ejaculation, and also claims it will follow up with pornographic emails, spam faxes and prank calls to government offices.

Australia's laws on internet censorship are already among the most restrictive in the western world. Their government filters more internet content than any other Parliamentary Democracy. For some elements within the Government, including Telecommunications Minister Senator Stephen Conroy, this still is not enough. Late in January of 2009 he proposed legislature that would lead to mandatory ISP filtering for all of Australia. The stated goal is to prevent Australia from viewing 'illegal and unwanted content' on the Internet, Anonymous said in an email release to Australian media.

The ambiguity of the term 'unwanted content' is completely unacceptable. No government should have the right to refuse its citizens access to information solely because they perceive it to be 'unwanted'.

The Wentworthville branch of the New South Wales Police recently submitted two Aussie graffiti magazines to the Classification Board for rating.

Death From Above Issue 1 (May 2003) was banned according to www.graffiti.org

City Circle Magazine Issue 2 (May 2009) was rated M (Not recommended for readers under 15 years).

Family First national director Bob McCoskrie is calling on Shell and BP service stations to follow their Australian counterparts' lead and ban porn magazines from their stores.

A year and a half ago Australian petrol stations sealed adult glossies and have now gone a step further and banned them completely.

McCoskrie says it is a precedent New Zealand ought to be following.

Petrol giant BP has removed porn magazines with an R-rating from 250 stores nationwide.

The move, which was welcomed by women's groups, will ensure that publications given a Category 1-restricted classification will no longer be available at the outlets.

Although the titles have been deemed inappropriate by the organisation, it can only lobby for their removal from a further 1150 nationwide stores that it has a co-branding arrangement with.

Update: Shell Follow Suit

4th December 2008. See article from somebodythinkofthechildren.com

Shell/Coles Express follow suit removing Category 1 magazines nationwide. Julie Gale says ‘The Federal classification system and its State and Territory enforcement arms need an overhaul. They are not working.'