Copyright Law

Aussie Govt to Filter Online Video Games

By soulxtc

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.

jared@zeropaid.com

Full post as published by ZeroPaid on June 29, 2009 (boomark / email).