Aussie Govt to Filter Online Video Games

Downloadable games, flash-based games, and sites that sell physical copies of games with rating greater than MA15+ (suitable for 15yos) would be blocked, even for adults.

Australia’s ridiculous plan to censor the Internet gets more ridiculous by the day.

It all started as a voluntary effort to “protect children,” but quickly spiraled into an all out attempt by the Australian govt to make it mandatory for ISPs to filter the Internet of all “inappropriate content” and “offensive and illegal material.” It quickly deteriorated from an attempt to somehow safeguard children from things like child pornography to things like legal pornography, gambling, and even P2P traffic, making Australian citizens rightly upset.

Now it’s being reported, and apparently confirmed by Broadband Minister Stephen Conroy, the main proponent of the govt’s efforts, that the filtering plan will include video games by targeting sites that host or sell ones that don’t meet the MA15+ standard (suitable for 15yos) being that Australia lacks an R18+ or X18+ classification.

This means downloadable games, flash-based web games, and sites which sell physical copies of games will all come under fire and is an affront to adults who will be limited to a Disney-esque Internet experience.

“For one, this latest expansion of the scheme has to be seen in the wider context of the plan as a whole,” Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA) writes in a press release responding to the news. “Sold to the electorate as a plan to protect children, it actually only targets websites that an adult is likely to encounter, and applies indiscriminately to all Australian homes and businesses. Due to technical limitations, it can’t and won’t stop the traffic of child abuse material. The blacklist is secret, there is no appeal, and what goes on there is controlled by Government. The potential game ban is only one alarming aspect of the plan as a whole.”

The EFA has warned the govt filtering of the Internet would expand over time and it has. As I mentioned before it went from child pornography to gambling, P2P, and now video games, all without public input of any kind.

“It’s simply impossible to imagine this and future governments resisting the temptation to add content to the list when politically expedient or in response to powerful lobbies,” adds the EFA. “Even if the blacklist was just targeted at child abuse material, it would soon expand to include hate speech, violent games, copyright violation, incitements to crime, adult pornography, and any other political panic of the day.”

Eerily enough, the plan is remarkably similar to China’s Green Dam efforts to censor pornography in that country, govt blacklists and all.

Stay tuned.

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Jared Moya
I've been interested in P2P since the early, high-flying days of Napster and KaZaA. I believe that analog copyright laws are ill-suited to the digital age, and that art and culture shouldn't be subject to the whims of international entertainment industry conglomerates. Twitter | Google Plus

Man have I ever got the strangest looks from people a few years back when I was expressing my worries over this censorship and privacy business. Over the years since though, I've gotten fewer people thinking I'm nuts as such plans became (as I predicted) more and more insane. Just another iteration of why censorship and over-broad surveillance should be resisted.

VAMPYRE BLADE

I am sure i will get crap about this, but ever since they let their government take away their right to own firearms all their other rights are slowly starting to slip away as well.

soulxtc

Never thought of it in that context, but certainly puts the 2nd amendment in better perspective.

mountain_rage

Ya I've argued about that with you before. Your an idiot and you blame everything on gun laws, last I checked the gun laws didn't prevent your government from spying on its own citizens, stop 9/11 or even prevent any of the numerous school shootings. Stop with the confirmatory hypothesis testing, this is simply a case a political system with not enough public oversight.

Even though you are too blind to see it, we have more freedoms in this country then any other and its because we do have the right to own firearms. Its a fact that many countries that restrict firearm ownership abuse their people all the time.

Sorry Vampyre, but I'm going to disagree with you on this one. How many videos have you seen in the middle east where crowds of people are celebrating in the streets firing AK-47's into the air for whatever reason. You can't tell me Iraq has more freedoms in the United States. Trust me, the US having more freedoms than any other place in the world may have been true 10-25 years ago, but that sort of thinking simply holds no water today after the copyright bills, surveillance legislation, war measures act, the drafts in the past (Canada has yet to draft people into the army last I heard), the treatment of people of Asien decent during WW!! (Canada did the same thing, I won't deny that), etc., etc. My money is that there are a few European countries that have more freedoms these days.

than in the United States* WWII*

Well if I'm so blind, how does you owning a gun prevent the government from passing a censorship bill? If someone wants to acquire a gun for an assassination they will acquire a gun for an assassination, having the legal right to own such a gun changes nothing.

The best example of the importance of our 2nd amendment is back in germany when they passed sweeping gun control and everyone turned them in, then hitler decided the jews needed to go and they had no ay to protect themselves because they were unarmed. you can disagree all you like but that right we have protects us when if we arent armed, because those that mean to do us harm dont know if we are or arent. look at england, the people there are sorry they have given up their firearms, you can look up the videos for that as well. best thing about this forum is being able to disagree, and not having to worry someone is coming to get you because of it.

This represents my view of how useful a gun is in a modern military. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWdHENEig34 Sorry to tell you this, but the Jews acquired guns, and developed IED during WWII. It helped some communities, but few were able to fight off the Nazi's either way.

I think the point being that gun laws only prevent LAW ABIDING people from owning them. Nutjobs, criminals, and other neer do wells will always own them. Only people who respect the law actually obey the law, and so gun control only ensures that this segment of the population is the one victimized by those who get to keep their firearms - criminals and the govt. Examples of the Mid-East are a poor comparison because they don't have much respect for any of the norms or cultural traditions that we have, and would just as easily replace AK-47s with stones and machetes.

So how does this affect the passing of censorship laws, it doesn't. Laws are passed based on political systems and government ideologies, it has nothing to do with gun laws. Case and point there is no link between censorship and the 2nd amendment, one does not prevent the other.