The Sidney Morning Herald published recent comments regarding the increase in governmental censorship of the internet by the head of policy and government affairs for Google Asia Pacific, Ross LaJeunesse. Basically he says censorship is on the rise and that China is only one of many countries that actively try to control what their citizens are allowed to see on the internet.
While China is perhaps the most dramatic example of Google confronting online censorship, it is not the only one. Google products – from search and Blogger to YouTube and Google Docs – have been blocked in 25 of the 100 countries where we offer our services. In addition, we regularly receive government requests to restrict or remove content from our properties.
Unfortunately he makes some comments that play into the hands of those who use the excuse of protecting children as a justification to setup a mechanism for systematic filtering of all internet content:
Obviously, child pornography has no place on the internet or anywhere else.
The problem, Mr. LaJeunesse, is that most government definitions of what constitutes child pornography go way beyond material that involves children. In Australia, merely looking young or having small breasts is all that’s required to ban content. While child porn laws in the U.S. require that the persons depicted in the material must be under age, the government side-steps that requirement by using obscenity laws to prosecute people for material that does not use any real children in its production. In the U.S. the public goes berserk over Calvin Klein billboards showing children in underwear and state and federal prosecutors have established a history of harassing those who produce or sell any material that merely shows children naked without any sexual overtones. Stunningly, the U.S. encourages local one-hour photo labs to report bath time snapshots of naked children that used to be considered standard fare for any family album. No, Mr LaJeunesse, there is nothing obvious about how laws should address child pornography.
While we oppose the Australian government’s proposal, it’s important to note the current public debate about the government’s filtering plan is itself a testament to Australia’s free press and vibrant democracy – it’s a public debate that wouldn’t occur in many parts of the world.
But while we view comparisons of Australia’s filtering proposal to China’s censorship regime as unhelpful and inappropriate, we also worry the government’s plans to enforce mandatory filtering could legitimise government censorship elsewhere.
The problem with censorship is that you must attack it before it becomes a powerful tool of government. In the U.S. the government passed the Patriot act that forbade people from even discussing their victimization by government search and surveillance. While those provisions have since been struck down, the barrier against such laws is exceptionally fragile in all democracies where the government constantly wages a war against its citizens’ civil liberties.
