Australian Internet Censorship Laws

The internet censorship regime was implemented in relatively recent years and has been the topic of many heated debates. The Australian internet censorship regime is comprised of both law and regulation. These are implemented at both commonwealth and State and Territory level. This is because the Constitution does not have the power to issue this regime independently.

The Commonwealth part of this regime applies to the any “objectionable” material or anything that is deemed unsuitable for children. If there is anything on the internet that falls into these two categories the sites will be issued with a “Take Down” notice. This will be issued by the government regulator OFLC. They will be given a time frame in which they are to remove the content.

The State and Territorial side of this regime then tag team with the Commonwealth and can prosecute the providers or creators of the “objectionable” material. The procedures however vary from state to state and territory to territory.

The Censorship regarding the internet has raised many questions about the restrictions and the impact that these have on free speech. In relation to any other parts of the western worlds, the internet censorship laws are the most restrictive. They operate in secrecy and withhold some information about how categories are judged. This has raised more that a few eyebrows with not only activists, but also the general public.

Having it in the law that the internet is restricted, filtered and monitored, creates some issues with the people who brought this regime in.

The Australian internet censorship laws consist of two filters. One of which is mandatory and prevents any “Unwanted” material to be viewed by the general public, along with filtering any illegal material as decreed by the internet laws. These laws are comprised of: The Protection of Children Act, 1978; Civil Government Act, 1982; Sexual Offences Act, 2003; Memorandum of Understanding, 2003.

No one is questioning the filter preventing the illegal content coming through; in fact this can only be a positive thing helping to squash such internet sites. The public, however, have an issue with the “Unwanted” aspect of the legislation. This has never been defined by the Telecommunications Minister and this dictates what the filter prevents the country from seeing. However there was no survey or vote taken place as to what the general public feel is “Unwanted”.

The law is there to safe guard the vulnerable and young, and ministers argue that it has been successful in this, although there is yet to be any formal evidence of this.

Bypassing Internet Censorship

It sounds strange, I mean the need to bypass Internet censorship. I mean why should we all be treated so differently on the internet? Why are the people we trust to run our countries, governments and legal systems be allowed to control what we see, say or do on the internet.

Of course I’m not talking about the plainly illegal activities, we’d all be better off if all the countries could unite to catch and jail these people. No I’m talking about matters of opinion, freedom of speech and just plain social interaction with our fellow man. Isn’t that what the internet is about?

So is there a need to bypass internet censorship?

Well yes, I believe there is, take for example a country I spend lots of time in – Turkey. A wonderful country with warm and kind people, a place you can feel safe and where there is a tangible sense of democracy. A vast secular country, a republic created by an inspirational man called Kemal Ataturk. But Internet access is not following his secular ideals, or more to the point certain elements are using weaknesses in Turkeys Internet policies to censor content and websites.

For instance, you’ll find until recently that all of wordpress self hosted blogs have been banned and blocked in Turkey. It’s true a website which contains words and expressions from millions – all blocked because a few people disagreed with some content. Same goes for Youtube although I believe this might have changed since my last visit, Turkey had recently blocked access to the whole site.

Pretty bad, huh and turkey are rightly taking some flak from this ridiculous censorship from other democratic nations.

To be fair they are trying to change this – there is an interesting article here on some of the issues – Turkish Internet Censorship – the original article from Columbia University seems to have been removed.

The simple fact is that there are very real reasons why we should bypass internet censorship. No government has the right to block free speech and open political discussion at least if it wants to be though of as a democracy.

So if you won’t to learn how to bypass the censorship on the internet, please keep reading and I’ll explain some issues and methods where you can browse the internet freely.

Keep your Identity and IP Address Secure

Why do you guess that people go to the trouble of utilizing software that hides your IP address? Whenever you investigate, you’ll find there’s lots of reasons but here are a few.

There are plenty of countries where you risk your safety should you speak freely online
Using the internet means you’ll be routinely monitored and have little privacy
The web is full of information and identity thieves
Some people just don’t like our every move online being logged

Obviously the internet has it’s fair share of criminals who wish to hide their IP address aswell. Just as they use other forms of communication like telephones, faxes and the mail! The irony is the evil doers always protect their connections so you inevitably end up with governments, agencies and hackers all spying on the innocent majority.

This is what so annoys me about the ‘if you’ve got nothing to hide’ argument, the majority who do are hidden. The rest of us are subject to surveillance, spying and intrusion by even the most democratic western governments. The European Directive instructs ISPS to log all the web sites, emails and electronic communications of it’s citizens for up to 2 years.

However it is also worth reminding people that using a simple piece of hide your ip software, or some super elite proxy you found listed on a web site is going to help your privacy. Most of this software doesn’t do much at all, remember HTTP is clear text protocol and that’s where most of your browsing happens through. These Hide your IP programs simply obscure your IP address from the website that you visit and that’s all. But every other details of your browsing is in the clear and traceable to your IP address, sitting in your ISP is a list of virtually everything you’ve ever done online over the last two years or so.

Beware most of all thought the software that simply routes your connection through free proxies found on the internet. They then route all your web browsing through the fastest, free proxy that they find available. It wouldn’t matter if the proxy was being run by a gang of identity thieves (which many of them are) purely to harvest user details, the software would still send you there. You would be much more secure using nothing than one of these, see one of the best and most secure programs here.

Simply staying secure online actually does take some work, too many people are misled by tales of free proxies and they actually put themselves at huge risk. You need to use secure private proxies, you should know who is responsible for them and ensure that the logs are deleted instantly. Any proper security product will also ensure that all your browsing is encrypted as otherwise your details and IP will be visible all along it’s route.

Surf securely and protect yourself online

Watching Media Sites like Hulu on the Internet

It’s actually quite frustrating, all the incredible media sites that are available online like Hulu, Pandora, BBC and NBC to name but a few but most people can only access a fraction of them. The culprit is a technology called geotargeting which controls what we have access to online.

Geotargeting works in quite a simple way, when we connect to the internet our IP address is readily available to every web site we visit. This IP address can be used to locate our exact geographical position and that’s what many web sites do. When we connect to a site they look up in a database where the IP address is registered to and this determines what content we see.

In many instances this is quite beneficial, for instance the search engines use this technology to give us relevant results to our queries. When we type in a search query, the results are tailored to our actual position – meaning if we search for an electrician we will get local results rather than ones in a different continent.

The other effects of geotargeting are not so useful, American users get blocked from online casino sites due to their laws on gambling, media sites restrict access to local audiences due to licensing issues. You’ll not get blocked when accessing web sites based in the same country, but you will if you accessing from a different one. People who emigrate or spend a lot of time outside their own country are especially affected, I travel a lot and when I’m away from home I can’t access the BBC Iplayer abroad for example.

This video may help –

The only way to access these sites is to disguise your IP address, you can do this in two main ways. The first is to use a proxy server – this is a server that sits between you and the website you visit forwarding requests as required. The benefit of this is the web servers only registers the proxy server address not yours. Many of the media sites like Hulu and NBC though will block this access and you will need to connect through a VPN (virtual provate network) . There’s loads of information online about these workarounds, so just check online for a solution.

Proxies

So is there a need to bypass internet censorship?