Aussie Internet Already Policed?
The ACMA issues a link take-down notice to Whirlpool.
Earlier this year, we reported on a curious incident involving a Whirlpool reader pushing the buttons of the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA). This was in a bid to find out just how far the authority’s stance on ‘prohibited’ internet content goes. It’s an interesting test, if only because the ACMA will be the one responsible for maintaining the list of banned websites in Australia, should the mandatory national internet filter be enacted.
The reader pointed the ACMA to a web page on an anti-abortion activist website, which features some fairly graphic photographs of decapitated foetuses. It responded in an email saying “the content is prohibited or potential prohibited content.” We included the ACMA’s full response in the aforementioned article, as did the Whirlpool reader in his forum post. The ACMA’s response, itself, contained the link to the web page in question.
As reported by Australian IT, the ACMA recently demanded that Whirlpool’s Australian host, Bulletproof Networks, see to it that the link is removed within 24 hours or it would face fines of up to $11,000 per day. After speaking with Whirlpool, the website complied, not wishing the host to get in the line of fire. The link the ACMA demanded be removed was found within the response to the Whirlpool reader, who had decided to publish the outcome on the forum. The authority has previously stated that “There is no prohibition on complainants publishing the outcome of their complaints, as has happened in this case.”
What’s particularly strange is why the ACMA chased down the host rather than the website owner, Simon Wright. “ACMA should have contacted us first,” Wright tells Australian IT. “We felt compelled to remove the link to avoid getting Bulletproof into trouble,” he adds.
Is this the beginning of what we’ll see with a national internet filter? Well, actually, this appears to be more like a storm in a teacup, as it seems this was simply a pre-emptive take-down notice as the result of a complaint that the ACMA is yet to investigate. Admittedly, it is a shame it operates in such a knee-jerk fashion.
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