SYDNEY, Australia -- The Australian government's controversial online content law will face twice-yearly reviews as a method to monitor its effectiveness.
These reports are certain to provide opponents a regular opportunity to call for change or repeal of the controversial measure. It could also cause the government to seek harsher controls against online content, rights advocates say.
The law, which becomes effective 1 January, allows the government to force domestic Internet service providers to remove content deemed obscene or offensive from their servers. The government can also require ISPs to provide means of screening obscene or offensive material housed overseas.
The big question now is whether ISPs can follow through by providing filtering software for customer's home computers, or by offering tiered commercial services with various levels of filtering by ISPs. Under the law, ISPs aren't legally liable for material passing through their domains if they remove or block access to it once notified in writing by authorities.
But organizations such as Electronic Frontiers Australia worry that this will prove just a first step toward forcing ISPs to become surrogate censors for the government.
Indeed, EFA chairman Kimberly Heitman worries that if regular reports show the law is ineffective in its current form, the government could be goaded into seeking sterner measures to control content accessed by Australians.
"It may be a case of King Canute calling for more buckets to stop the tide," Heitman said. "The government's response to failure may be to reintroduce the notion of transmission offenses and mandatory proxy filters."
A transmission offense means holding a carrier liable for content passing through its lines. Proxy filters are installed at the ISP level. Critics have argued that the looming content law is ineffective at best, a harbinger of government "thought-control" at worst.
For its part, the government says the law is aimed only at providing online protection for children. Terry O'Connor, spokesman for Communications Minister Richard Alston, who shepherded the bill through parliament, acknowledges the law isn't perfect.
But he said something had to be done to protect minors. "If the parliament wants six-monthly reports, fine."
O'Connor said he believes the report will provide a means for the center-right Liberal-National party coalition government to clear up mischaracterizations about the law being spread by opponents.
The motion to require the biannual reports was passed by the Australian Senate earlier this week, after being introduced by a member of the opposition left-of-center Labor party, who was supported by members of the country's third major party, the populist Democrats.
The motion claims the Broadcast Services Amendment (Online Services) Act -- as the law is formally known -- won't achieve the government's objectives, but instead will stymie investment in "sunrise information" technology businesses in Australia.
Opponents of the bill say they support the idea of online content control. But they feel such decisions should be exercised on an individual basis by end users, and by parents on behalf of their own children.
