Censorship: new blogs, more action, new websites

I posted a little while ago on the lively online scene which has been generated by the Government's plans to implement filtering of the Internet. It has been a recurring theme of this blog.

The Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy has established a new blog, and one of its early postings, a very reasonable and encouraging welcome by Lindsay Tanner, has attracted 787 comments so far - overwhelmingly condemning the Government's plans for ISP-level filtering. The comments are particularly interesting, as you would expect. If you have the weekend free . . .

Further organisations have been established since the last blogpost. In addition to the organisations I mentioned in a previous post, the Digital Liberty Coalition has been established to organise protest, and another website, nocensorship.info, has also been set up.

Big Issues for Libraries

In the recent ALIA survey of members, lobbying and advocacy were given as an extremely high priority. This was unexpected (for me, anyway) but it did prompt me to urge you all (Rebecca has proven that a plural audience might be assumed) to do some reading.

Here are three big issues.

Copyright, and the debate is hotting up about the settlement in the US between Google and the publisher and author organisations. Bernie Sloan, posting to the liblicense list, refers us to a
resource compiled by Timothy Vollmer, an IT policy analyst in DC. You can find it here. Many of the items listed relate to libraries, and the example of a report by OCLC Research on the impact on libraries is given.

Online content regulation (censorship) is interesting too, and there has been a recent article by Derek E Bambauer of the Brooklyn Law School which summarises, in a brief 30 pages, the development of the Australian Government's filtering plans. If development is the right word.

Finally, all of you interested in broadband and things related will want to read the consultation paper issues by the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, just out. There is a link from here, and comments are due by 11 February.

There's a lot going on which might concern us, and one element in successful lobbying and advocacy is being informed. In the meantime, if you are interested in these kinds of issues, or just in helping to put together a library viewpoint, let me know.

Happy Birthday John Milton

Yesterday is the 400^th birthday of John Milton - or today for the American readers of this blog . Why a mention in a library-focused blog? Because Milton, one of our greatest poets, was also the great pioneer of freedom of speech.

Milton's Areopagitica, written in 1644 during the English civil war, is an articulate and passionate case for the liberty of speech. The ideas were not new when Milton published them: the title comes from the name of a hill in Athens, and from a speech by Isocrates in the 5^th century BC.

Many of the statements about freedom of speech that we all half-know are from this book, like this one

"As good almost kill a man as kill a good book: who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye."

and this one

"I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat."

Milton believed that right will out, and access to good and bad argument was integral to this. He believed that freedom and choice we central to what it means to be human - "religion, if not voluntary, becomes a sin".

Areopagitica was written in the contest for freedom of religion that was fought between the armies of Parliament and of the King. Milton was a republican, a supporter of the "good old cause", the uprising of Parliament in the 1640s. He worked for the government of the Commonwealth in the 1650s, and was arrested on the return of the king in 1660. He was imprisoned for a time, but released. And went on to write his great poetic works.

Others are celebrating, too, although the Grand Paradise Lost Costume Ball would seem to miss the point of Milton. The program at Christ's College, Cambridge is more tasteful, quite reasonably, since Milton studied there 380 years or so ago. And for the domain name afficionados, Milton-L is there for you too. I guess for the rest of us, reading Milton is the best way to celebrate, and it is all online.

Happy birthday John, we owe you lots.

Censoring the Internet

There is growing opposition to the plans of the Government to censor the internet. Almost twelve months ago, following a statement by the Minister for Broadband, Communication and the Digital Economy, ALIA issued a press release. It was headed ALIA's Ten questions on censorship for Senator Stephen Conroy. But we still don't know the answers to ANY of the questions.

Senator Conroy said in a recent interview on Radio National's The Media Report (30 October) that the government will first determine what kind of filtering or blocking of internet content is feasible, and then decide what will be blocked. He said ". . . a whole range of people have said, 'Hey, lets expand this', That's a debate that we will come to. What we're trying to establish at the moment, we're no further than establishing at the moment, whether it's technically feasible." So we don't know what the government plans to censor, and neither yet do they.

In the meantime, a number of organisations have taken up the issue. The No Clean Feed website and blog is organised by Electronic Frontiers Australia, which also covers internet censorship on its own site. Another site is the blog Somebody Think of the Children: discussing censorship and moral panic in Australia, and another very thorough personal site is Irene Graham's long-established site. Australians Against Internet Censorship, a Facebook group, is planning a nationwide protest on 13 December. There is also a Getup! campaign on this issue, and 89,000 people have signed their petition. Getup! has an interactive widget you can embed on your web page or in your blog. So there is a lot of action.

ALIA is a player in this, and we have an online content site. Let me know what you think ALIA should be doing. This is an issue which is very important to us, because libraries have always taken a strong stand in opposition to censorship.

Mandated Filtering

Lately there have been many ideas about what kinds of things might be screened from the Internet user by their ISP (internet service provider), or perhaps monitored. Suggestions include things that are illegal, content which infringes other people's rights, and things that others just don't like.

Within Australia there has been recent discussion around the so-called "clean feed" has been based on requiring ISPs to block some categories of material. The focus has been on material which is refused classification - banned - in Australia. A recent report in The Australian (26 February) outlines plans by the Commonwealth Government to test ISP-based content filters.

One of the ambiguities in the whole debate about clean feeds and other filtering approaches is the lack of clarity over just what would be filtered out. The use of vague terms like "harmful and inappropriate material" compounds confusion and rightly attracts derision, according to a recent piece in Business Week.

In fact, ISPs already filter out a great deal of material, and you may not have a clear idea of what they do filter out. They may not.

Discussion of what may be monitored or filtered out from your internet experience is much wider than pornography. It has extended to the copyright sphere.

Michael Geist has an interesting post on mandated filtering in relation to copyright here. He points to recent developments in Belgium, France and the UK where music and movie interests are seeking mandatory filtering of Internet content by ISPs to identify and block "copyrighted content." "Such an approach", Geist suggests, "would be an enormous threat to the free flow of information online, it would curtail consumer rights, place new burdens on education and research, and create great harm to personal privacy."

An interesting piece in PC World discussed the work between AT&T and the Motion Picture Association of America on a fingerprinting system that could identify copyrighted material on the network. AT&T has no current plans to be "an enforcement agent or a policeman for content transported on our network", according to AT&T, "and in fact, there is no technology solution available at this time."

Plans for filtering are not just confined to pornography and copyright infringement - here is another example. ACMA (the Australian Communications and Media Authority) produces a blacklist of web pages which are refused classification, and sends this list to Australian ISPs. These are sites which it is, generally speaking, illegal to possess. The Australian reported recently that ACMA has also recently sent out a list of illegal gambling pages for ISPs to block. ACMA clarified that they normally send out a list (about 800 web pages) which combines illegal online gambling sites with other illegal material. The term "inappropriate" was used the describe the gambling sites.

There are so many things on the internet that someone thinks should be blocked to everyone. The new government has issued statements about access to information on the internet, but they are all about blocking things. Where is the balancing statement about our right to access information? Does the Government have a point of view?

Word of the day

Thank you to Gary for providing the term traffic shaping. This is now applied to the many ways in which ISPs, telecommunications carriers and corporate IT departments might manage Internet traffic - by filtering out things they don't want.

In fact, traffic shaping is a term used for many years to refer to management of internet traffic to optimise performance. It has recently been extended to refer to eliminating low priority bandwidtgh-heavy uses of a connection, such as media, non-work related sites, file sharing downloads and the like. While the original term related to management of bandwidth, people are increasingly demand that internet traffic be managed on other grounds too.

For example, the Sydney Morning Herald has a piece on The Rudd government contemplating a three strikes policy. ISPs would monitor access by their users to pirated music, TV shows and movies; on the third offence, they would cancel the offender's internet access. Another projected government policy aimed at traffic shaping was the policy announced by Senator Conroy before the election for mandatory filtering of Internet content to remove illegal and inappropriate material such as pornography.

If you don't like something, see if the government can make ISPs eliminate it.

Odd Alliance

In his piece in The Age yesterday, Peter Chen refers to "an odd alliance of librarians, libertarians, industry hard-heads, IT geeks and computer experts." He refers to this odd alliance as backing Senator Kate Lundy some time ago in her opposition to internet censorship. At the same time, an editorial in The Australian reinforced Peter's comments on internet censorship and made many of the same points.

These articles are two of many which have appeared in response to the recent announcement by Senator Stephen Conroy, the Minister for Information Technology. The Minister announced that the Government proposed to require all internet service providers to provide "clean feeds" - internet content that is "free of pornography and inappropriate material." This would be mandatory for all households, schools and libraries.

Although there have been many critical comments, it is not at all clear what the Government plans to do, or whether what it plans to do can be done - depending on what it plans to do (this is a circular statement, yes). If the government plans to filter the internet for all Australians without slowing down response times, then it won't be filtering out much; as Peter Coroneos (Internet Industry Association) points out, the more you filter out, the longer it takes. Logical and true.

At these stage there seem to be a couple of logical steps. First, it might be a good idea to put together that odd alliance to which Dr Chen refers. And second, we must ask questions and see if we can find out what the Government plans to do, if "plans" is not too precise a term for its intentions.

Online Content and Plans for Censorship in 2008

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) issued a press release on 26 October outlining new plans for Internet content regulation, with responses to be made by 16 November.

As I read it, the intention is to prohibit on the open internet all content which is classified as MA15+ or R18+, including material which is likely to be classified as MA15 or R18+. There would be a requirement relating to "providers of hosting services, live content services, link services and commercial content services ..." However, if these entities have access restrictions (which limit access to adults, or people over 15, as appropriate) in place, they would be allowed to host restricted material. They also intend that there will be a take down procedure so that access can be removed to content that is subject to complaint.

The scope and impact of these plans appears to depend on how much material is classified, what it means that material is "likely to be classified", and the extent to which people complain. It also depends on what is hosted in Australia, and what is hosted overseas - only the former is affected.

One problematical issue is just what would be prohibited. For example, if an imaginary Australian YouTube-style site included material which was likely to be classified as MA15 or R18+, as it does, would any prohibition apply to the whole site, or just to the offending part. It seems most likely that a take down notice would apply to the site rather than individual videos, which has major ramifications for the Internet in Australia.

This was all announced in a press release dated 26 October, with comments due by 16 November - three weeks, in the middle of an election. The announcement received very little publicity.

Another angle. In response to ALIA questions, the ALP has a plan to provide a so-called clean-feed, or requirement for ISPs to provide filtered access for domestic users of the Internet, with the possibility for the user to opt out of the filtered access. The ALP said "ISP filtering under a Rudd Labor government will be applied to all households (unless they choose to opt-out), schools and public internet points accessible by children, such as libraries."

But it is not at all clear what ISPs would be required to filter out. Would they just have to filter out material which is banned in Australia (RC or X18+) or would they also have to filter out material which is classified as unsuitable for minors or for children under 15, or which is likely to be so classified? (MA15 and R18+). It does appear from Kim Beazley's original statement in March 2006 that ISPs may be obliged to filter out some material which it is legal to view, and it appears that they will take instructions on what to filter from ACMA (the Australian Communications and Media Authority). There are other problems with the policy, too, and many are highlighted in the interesting 36-page critique by EFA (Electronic Frontiers Australia).

What does the Coalition say on these issues? In response to the ALIA questionnaire, they pointed to the Prime Minister's announcement on 20 August 2007 of the $189 million Protecting Australian Families Online initiative. The statement on filtering in libraries was much more nuanced. At this stage the Coalition is not in favour of ISP-level filtering, and it is suggested that "The use of filters in libraries needs to be tailored to the circumstances and client profiles of different libraries . . ." Moreover, while libraries are encouraged to work with the Government to install PC-based filters, it is recognised that "legislating the use of content filters by librarians would be a blunt approach that would not be effective, particularly as the regulation of public libraries is generally a matter for state, territory and local governments."

There is a lot to be concerned about here, and no great evidence of having thought through the issues. What do you think?

Word of the day

Not a word, but yet another acronym apparently mixing letters and numbers - PR2K. In fact, the 2 really means "to", in a style we are becoming accustomed 2 thru text messaging. In this case, it is a conference (the 2007 Public Right to Know Conference) run by the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism, and the topic is a serious one for us - the free flow of information.

Recently, John B Fairfax, a director of Fairfax Media, spoke strongly about "recent curbs by the Government on press freedoms ..." Mr Fairfax is a supporter of Right to Know, a coalition of media organisations established to express concerns about the state of free speech and the free flow of information in Australia.

One of the factors is the increasing preoccupation of governments with media relations - that is, with manipulating the media to ensure that unfavourable stories are minimised, Mr Fairfax said. This is accompanied by the erosion of the impact of Freedom of Information (FOI) legislation. There is no single cause or issue, but the cumulative effect is that it becomes harder to find out and publish things people want to know. The scorecard of press freedom published by Reporters without Borders (RSF) lists Australia at number 35.

Those of you interested in censorship issues, please rock up to the Outside a Box anti-censorship event at the State Library of Victoria on 4 December. Those of you interested in letter/number acronyms, please send me examples.

Internet Freedom

Phillip Roberts, in a recent post to the IAMEMS list, points out a forthcoming report on global web censorship. The report is the work of the Open Net Initiative (ONI), which is a partnership of four universities - Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard and Toronto. The report is titled Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering and the New Scientist has a recent article about it. A growing number of countries filter access to particular parts of the Internet, and the number of countries which do this appears to be increasing.

Amnesty International in the UK is running a webcast on 6 June from 18.30 to 21.00 UK time entitled Some People Think the Internet is a Bad Thing: the Struggle for Freedom of Expression in Cyberspace. You can check it out in advance.

Open Net has a couple of interesting features. There is a map showing which countries do block or filter Internet content, and a URL search facility, so that you can find out whether a site is blocked somewhere and, if so, where. It has some flaws, but it is interesting.

This should all be core business for librarians. If we believe in the free flow of information, we certainly do not believe in country-level restrictions on access to the world's major information source, the Internet. What do you think?