Internet Blacklists in Australia

The Sydney Morning Herald looks at web blacklists and threatened censorship by Australian cummunications regulators:

The Australian communications regulator says it will fine people who hyperlink to sites on its blacklist, which has been further expanded to include several pages on the anonymous whistleblower site Wikileaks.

Wikileaks was added to the blacklist for publishing a leaked document containing Denmark's list of banned websites.

The move by the Australian Communications and Media Authority comes after it threatened the host of online broadband discussion forum Whirlpool last week with a $11,000-a-day fine over a link published in its forum to another page blacklisted by ACMA - an anti-abortion website.

In a related story, The Guardian follows the money in its look at internet censorship:

Yet the global nature of the internet means that it perhaps makes less sense these days just to point the finger at isolated cases. It's not just a question any more of naming and shaming repressive regimes – western businesses are implicated too. I don't just mean Google and Yahoo for their activities in China, but the software and hardware companies that design the filtering software and infrastructure that makes censorship possible.

Saudi Arabia, for example, blocks undesirable websites with Californian software and the Chinese have Cisco to thank for their routers and switches. As the writer Xeni Jardin has observed, the US is now in the business of exporting censorship. For the first time in history, censorship has become a profitable enterprise, not just a matter of political control.

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

Visit our Toronto Law Firm website: www.wiselaw.net

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Human Rights Commissions: A Reader Wants To Know

Frequent commenter Allan was apparently perturbed that I devoted space to last weekend's Mats Sundin trade deadline saga:

"Mats Sundin to Stay a Leaf" yeah a really important topic.

You have been strangely silent about your darling friends on the kangaroo courts.

I wonder why.

You're right Allan, Mats Sundin doesn't matter.

Ezra is where the real action is.

And speaking of Ezra...

Mr. Levant is now embroiled in yet another controversy that may find its way to the courts.

This time, it is with Richard Warman, a Canadian human rights advocate and lawyer, who is threatening litigation over certain blog articles by Mr. Levant that are alleged to be defamatory.

On February 24, 2008, Mr. Levant posted a PDF of correspondence received from Mr. Warman's lawyer, Brian Shiller, alleging libel against Mr. Levant and demanding "complete retractions" by Mr. Levant of certain, specified postings that are excerpted in the letter.

Beyond that, I've said much on free speech and Canada's human rights commissions already.

Readers know where I stand.

And particularly given the bang-up job Big City Lib has been doing with this topic, I'm note sure I have much to currently add.

BCL, by the way, has been on fire this week.

......

Dave at the Galloping Beaver has been discussing a real censorship issue, now playing courtesy of the Stephen Harper government.

Mr. Harper has introduced changes to the Income Tax Act that would allow the government retroactively "to pull financial aid for any film or television show that it deems offensive or not in the public's best interest – even if government agencies have invested in them."

The Harper government plans to use the Income Tax system as a weapon to stifle anything they don't like - after it's made. It's a weapon and it is censorship. Once this bill passes no producer of Canadian film or television will know if they have the advantage of the Income Tax Act. The Canadian Revenue Agency won't be able to determine, based on a set of strict guidelines either. So a producer will never know, until after the government views the finished product, if a Canadian production meets the Harper government's unpublished standards.

In short: If you don't toe our line, we have the power to cause you personal financial damage.

Scott Tribe has pointed us to a Facebook Group, Keep your censoring hands off of Canadian film and TV! No to Bill C-10!, which is a grass-rooots effort to oppose this legislation, initiated by Professor David Kahane of the University of Alberta's political science department.

Also see Critics slam plan to limit funds for 'offensive' films from CTV News.

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

Visit our Toronto Law Firm website: www.wiselaw.net

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Radio Nowhere

Is it 'cause he's too old?

Or maybe, just a bit too... political?

Whatever they may have been thinking, Clear Channel has tried to silence The Boss.

(Like that's even possible!)

Blogger Howie Klein comments:

Republican radio network Clear Channel, a monopoly in many cities and a dominant player in most of the rest, isn't interested. Is it because Springsteen has been an outspoken campaigner for Democrats and progressives? Clear Channel has taken a political stand with its programming in the past. Just think back to their boycott of the Dixie Chicks.

,,,Of course, Clear Channel hasn't publicly said they are boycotting Springsteen's music. But they are. Fox News, hardly a hotbed of liberal alarmists, reports that "Clear Channel has sent an edict to its classic rock stations not to play tracks from Magic... no new songs by Springsteen..

I guess the music will have just have to do the talking - this is Bruce Springsteen's Radio Nowhere:

(h/t - Dave Johnson at Seeing the Forest)

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

Visit our Toronto Law Firm website: www.wiselaw.net

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