What ever happened to the separation of Church and State?

Censorship Australian Style 2012

"The Christian lobby says children as young as 11 are regularly accessing porn online. Research had also found that 84 per cent of boys and 60 per cent of girls had been exposed to internet sex sites accidentally." Michelle Gratten, 9th November 2012: http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/backdown-on-internet-filter-plan-20121108-290qr.html#ixzz2BhVpWh1G

As a child growing up in the 1960's - 1970's I was "accidentally" exposed to porn, not through the internet of course which was only available widely in Australia by the time I was in my mid 20's. My father had a "collection" of porn magazines, hidden badly, we found them "accidentally" as Michelle puts it. When you are 5 you are not looking for porn, you are looking for secrets, lollies, treasures. You are at your nosiest as a little child and those who will remember know that curiosity takes you for a walk and you just have to follow. We were all very little and went through this "collection" with eyes ever widening, utterly transfixed amidst much giggling. Even when you are little you can't look away from some imagery. Colourful and intriguing? Yes, but harmful? No. In the years that followed New hiding spots for the "collection" were randomly discovered. Some of the imagery I encountered remains vivid to me and it taught me a little about the naked form in a way. Not in a disturbing way the Christian Lobbyists will be sad to know or find difficult to understand. Images are powerful but they can't alter the essence of who we are. We are more than the sum of our individual experiences which include what we are ingesting or digesting through seeing, hearing and reading. Statistic such as those quoted by The Christian Lobby, if correct, only tell us that children encounter porn (who'd have thought) but not that this is harmful. Statistics also tell us a significant percentage of sexual abuse of children is perpetrated by religious leaders such as priests or similar, nuns,  or officials belonging to various denominational religious bodies, which we know, without requiring statistical proof, is harmful to children.

Why the Christian Lobby is not concentrating more on addressing the sexual or physical abuse of children by Catholic, Anglican etc, nuns, priests and others belonging to the Christian Church realm is beyond reasonable comprehension. Abuse of children within these bodies existed prior the internet and still does. A form of Nanny cam lock on the Australian internet is not any sort of solution to protect children but represents a real and potentially damaging attack upon what  freedoms of expression, thought and access to information we do have in this country. Such an act of parliament would open the door wide to do so for any purpose deemed to be harmful to the public palate. Art, literature, music, poetry, thoughts, ideas, politics all could slowly be sucked into a sticky web of censorship for reasons of public protection. Political rivals labelled harmful etc. And, all in secret. Suddenly and without warning a site and or its content could be deemed harmful and blocked. Attacking the perpetrators of any internet visible crime such as child porn and shutting down that industry at its source is the solution. Finding and shutting down the physical criminals, the who and where they operate. Technically internet filters will be detoured around by correctly skilled and resourced criminal networks. Use of the internet to locate and target them using their own medium is the logical remedy. Still this does not address the ultimate aims of The Christian Lobby of course which deems all porn harmful. It isn't, it never will be and it isn't criminal though some forms of porn may be, normal adult consensual porn is not in and of itself evil, harmful or illegal.

The internet is of course a kind of unfettered filter in itself and mostly it is a valuable delivering in its warts and all way a summation of human generated content. Good, bad and ugly the public domain needs to remain visible to us, not hidden. The laws and processes to address the criminal aspects of the net additionally need to remain transparent and open to challenge when wrongly or unfairly applied. Just as with the physical world, open and transparent works best in the digital space. Secrecy in law supports suppression of information which conceals actions that may further suppress our natural freedoms and rights. Then we will have censorship and Government power over the individual is ensured to be lead out of balance. If Government is pliable, yielding and swaying to suit a Lobby or Faction with greater influence than the general public then the temptation for Government is to widen the ambit of legislation beyond its original scope. In order to curry or gain favour in tough political times a Government under the influence can be tempted to make changes that suit a few but damage the rights of many. This is never more the case when acceding to religious or cultural pressure when it is the case that human rights must come first and foremost before the religious or cultural. Bad legislation by weak Government leads to bad Government through corrupted decision making. Religious influence over Government decisions is undesirable any way you look at it. Religious causes that successfully apply pressure to produce legislation of questionable benefit outside of a religious criterion is religiously inspired cronyism and it is insidious as it will ultimately destabilise secular democracy. 

Barely concealed attempts to enact legislated censorship such as the internet filter bill must not take 5 years to fail. Though we can't blame the Christian Lobby necessarily for attempting to pursue their religious agenda by influencing our socio-political framework via their political sympathisers, that they are formally being give so earnest an ear by our Secular Democratic Government is of great concern. 

What ever happened to the separation of Church and State? 

It is more than of passing concern now that this Labor Government, since Kevin Rudd, are not just seeming to be but are full on emerging as more religiously reactive, sensitive, acquiescent and influenced overall.The Christian Lobby and the current Labor Government are obviously too close. It would otherwise never have taken 5 years to rule out this filter nonsense and if they were listening to public temperament at all, we'd have legally recognised same sex marriage in Australia by now. Clearly the Australian Government are not listening to what the Australian people want, it can't hear them as it is only a few are being provided their full attention.

Iran to cut off Internet...completely

Iran's theocracy is taking further steps into isolation.

What is this a prelude to?

Something to view with concern...

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57411577-93/iran-expected-to-permanently-cut-off-internet-by-august/

Meanwhile in Iran

...Nasrin Sotoudeh remains in prison sentenced to 11 years (originally) for the equivalent of sedition.

Freedom to Receive and Impart Information

baleful-worship-submission

The Internet is a publishing vehicle for the transmission of information and ideas to the World Wide Web. It isn't unusual that people will use the tools available to them in order to communicate or receive information.


The European Convention on Human Rights states "Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers." (Article 10, 1.)1


This is an open statement which does not preclude the type of publication or form the transmission of information and ideas assumes [takes]. It can be argued the Internet has no frontiers or boarders, only ones created by deliberate interference for purposes of good or ill. It would seem to deliberately interfere could be regarded as being in breach of this convention. 
[It is relevant to note that Australia though a signatory to the UN Declaration of Human rights which includes Article 19 upon which the European convention is based only recognises this right in a limited form.
Australians have an implied right to freedom of speech on the basis of the UN Declaration but this comes with limitations being that this right is only recognised within the narrow ambit of political commentary. Known as: "Freedom of Political Communication".]


Within the ambit of a publishing an article to the Internet, any claim that the article might contain "defamatory" elements creates confusion in Australian law with regard to who is the publisher. Who can be blamed or held liable on the charge of defamation? The law is confused as to whether the ISP (Internet service provider), who hosts the content, is as much a "publisher" as the author uploading the content. So in Australia who transmits this content as well as who authored and uploaded the content to the Internet is jointly a "publisher". An ISP may host hundreds of thousands of sites, all with different content providers who perform their own uploads; these content providers "author" then "publish" content to the Internet. The basis for this confusion is likely due to the case of Godfrey v Demon Internet Limited2, in which anonymous comment, claimed to be false, was posted on a forum. As the originating author could not be established the court reasonably held the ISP responsible. However, to view all activities surrounding the actions of a known author as complicit in the claimed publication of false comment makes a mockery of this judgement. It is without logic to consider a Host Provider of a connection to infrastructure to be a publisher.


So who is ultimately the publisher? In the case above the author was not known so it was the ISP. As this ISP did not remove the content as it would cyclically self remove anyway, they became the target of the defamation action. In Australia an ISP needs no further warning than the demand to remove claimed defamatory content even if the author and publisher is clearly identified and identifiable. It does not matter here. Even a telco like Telstra will force the removal of the content though they cannot claim to be any more than a connectivity provider, an entity that merely provides connection/transmission to the internet (as happened in our case). A telecommunication provider connects an ISP to the web via the telecommunication infrastructure. With regard to the intent of Article 10, 1 forced removal by an ISP, of claimed - not proven - defamatory content is a true hindrance to the freedom to "...receive and impart information". However, cutting off a self hosting ISP author from the telecommunications infrastructure establishes a vastly different level of "interference" on a "public authority" scale.

Internationally, the publisher of online content is the uploader of the content. Above is a screenshot of Adobe's web publishing and authoring program, Contribute. It is described as "a powerful web publishing and website management tool that integrates authoring, reviewing, and publishing in an easy-to-use WYSIWYG HTML editor". Other html editors such as SeaMonkey, freely available on the internet, include a publishing component, that includes the means by which content can be uploaded, published, to the internet. Somehow Australia's techno-dazzeled legal fraternity disregard the international definition of "publisher". 

In the USA or Sweden for instance a court order must first be obtained, in most cases, before pages or sites are ripped from the World Wide Web. Australia Law fails to protect defendants of defamation claims where the internet is the form of publication and essentially is complicit in an act of censorship on a public scale. All of which is irrelevant to the substance of what is being transmitted being true or false. No hearing or submission of evidence is required, the demand is made and the claimed defamatory information, and more, is immediately suppressed.


Australian Law (a derivative of class defined English Common Law) in prosecuting argument for a defamation case holds the Internet in an unnecessarily separate light to other forms of publication. It basically does not understand the Internet (fears it perhaps?) and views it with suspicion. The Internet is the Gutenberg Printing Press of our time. The transmission of information in terms of its rate and timeliness is extraordinary but is it any different in effect? Information is imparted and received. This discriminating lack of understanding overly complicates the defence position when embroiled in persistent, unreasonable and deliberately damaging defamation action. 


Outside the defences for defamation, Truth, Duty to Inform and Fair Comment, a defendant must additionally justify (against what measure?) the transmission of the claimed Defamation over the World Wide Web. In the context of publishing one format is essentially as public as another, Internet or not. Because the Law misunderstands the Internet as being something other than another publication tool this aspect is then exploited as a weakness by plaintiffs to then be used to delay, suppress, or legally slow the process to trial causing higher and higher expense for a defendant. In the case of a defendant with less financial means than a plaintiff has this ability to legally harass with the aim to delay trial if not make it impossible to get to trial creates an imbalance for equivalent engagement in the legal system by both parties. Where truth is not a problem for the defence and where a  "...claimant is incapable of further defamation..."3 this tactic is utilised.


In Australia, unlike the EU, we do not have the right to freedom of expression as defined by the EU Convention nor a right to freedom of speech as enshrined by the US Constitution. Neither of these jurisdictions encourage or support a citizen's right to publish lies about another and there are stringent laws protecting an individual or entity with mechanisms and rights for the defence of their true fame. My co-defendant* calls this "natural fame". It is the fame one has developed and earned from their own actions and deeds. Publishing the "natural fame" of another is hardly defamation, the reputation earned and won by their actions has already affected the perceptions of others as to their character and person. Particularly if these actions and behaviours have had years of repetitious airing across countless public forums. The truth will confirm already held opinions rather than form them.


Defamation Laws favour the privileged with an interest in maintaining false reputation. The laws are wielded as a useful weapon against the less privileged whether by a corporate Goliath like McDonald's4 or a well off individual. Both have the financial means to manipulate process via intentional delay5 and censorship in order to affect an opponent's financial or motivational resolve before a complaint ever sees the inside of a court room. 


Apart from the freedom to do so truth is an essential component of any quest to receive or impart information. Truth is the responsibility of those imparting the information, in fact or by establishing grounds for honest opinion whilst ensuring the receiver has an interest in receiving the information and the freedom to check its validity. If a defendant can tick these boxes then they should simply hang on as "natural fame" will rise to the top.


1Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights
2Godfrey_v_Demon_Internet_Service
3Wikipedia on Defamation
4English_defamation_law_The_McLibel_case
5The Mickelberg Stitch


*Demetrios Vakras