🚀 go-pugleaf

kauer@pcug.org.au (Karl Auer) wrote:

[snip]

>Last Thursday, the final report from the Senate Select Committee on 
>Community Standards Relevant to the Supply of Services Utilising Electronic 
>Technologies was released, entitled "Regulation of Computer Online Services - 
>Part 2".

>Grab it. Read it. Weep that our legislators can waste so much time listening 
>and then demonstrate so clearly that they have heard nothing.

>The complete document is forty odd pages, but here are the recommendations. 
>I've just banged this in, so any typos are probably mine. The general 
>wide-eyed looniness of it is all the Select Committee's though:
[snipped]

>4: That Access and Service Providers be required to verify the identity of all 
>clients and that all clients are over the age of 18 years.

I am confused about the meaning of "client".  If a client is the owner
of the computer system or account, how can a Provider reasonably
verify the identity of the account?  For all my provider knows, I
could be a precocious chimpanzee.
The case of a 16 year old student who at his/her school learns info
tech. and legal studies, owns an account and computer, albeit parent
has signed or co-signed contracts, but student pays for services (it
is not unknown for 16-year old to buy own phone-line in interest of
averting household warfare), isn't the student user the client?  In
this case, as far as I can read it, student (who is learning HTML and
designing home pages in course of studies) is banned from the
internet?  So is sibling who wants to write to the Santa Claus site?

>6: That where Service Providers can demonstrate that action had been taken in 
>good faith to restrict access to objectionable material they should have a 
>defence from liability for carriage of such material.

Hadn't the Senate heard about all this before? - e.g. who is going to
define "objectionable",  to whom is the material being deemed
onjectionable, classification before transmission, etc. etc.  I
haven't read the whole report, so maybe they have come with some
revelationary definition. 

It is bewildering to see this reaction to online systems.  Some of the
children it aims  at protecting (or is it paternalistically protecting
adults?) are not online - they're down at the shop hiring  + rated
videos.  The others online are being assisted by responsible
supervisors.