🚀 go-pugleaf

On Nov 21, 1995 revdoc@uow.edu.au wrote in a message to All:

>Did anybody see the article in _The Age_ about the new Internet censorship
>laws being rushed through the Victorian state parliament?  The headline
>says "New laws take state off-line", and the laws will make it a criminal
>liability to provide WWW access (by deeming cached data to be "published").
>Of course, since it's Jeff Kennett's government, the chances of reasoning
>with them don't look all that good.

ru> I've seen neither the article nor the legislation, but
ru> advise caution. Papers are notorious for cocking up stories
ru> like this (just as governments are notorious for cocking up
ru> legislation like this).

According to the Computer Age on Tuesday, the new Victorian censorship laws have already been passed. There is a possibility that the Government may hold off proclaiming the online provisions. It seems that the need for the legislation was driven by media coverage of pornography on the net. A Liberal party member said that "In the first nine months of 1995 the two Melbourne dailies published over 80 articles on the threat of pornography via the Internet... as a result the Government decided to deal with the new problem of Internet pornography".

It seems the Government did little, if any, research of its own into the problem and took the newspaper reports at face value. No discussion seems to have taken place with anyone in either the Internet or BBS field.

And where is the EFA? We now have legislation in Victoria, Queensland and WA that may seriously affect the way I run my hobby. So far not a word from the EFA. Earlier in the year, the EFA posted plenty of information about similar proposed laws in the USA and encouraged us to voice our disapproval. In contrast there has barely been any statement from the EFA about these pieces of local legislation and how it affects me as a BBS operator.

mgm

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