With game developers pushing for the availability of an R rating for games in Australia, the federal government is choosing to impose restrictions on the internet, with new laws announced yesterday to introduce tougher regulations on companies that sell entertainment-related content on subscription internet sites and mobile phones. The bill creates new rules for live interactive content such as chat rooms and, supposedly, forums as well, as well as strengthening rules on stored content. The new rules bring the internet inline with traditional media content in Australia, with age verification requirements for R18+ and the banning of X18+ content.
The government said that the purpose of these laws was to protect Australian citizens, particularly children who aren't adequately parented while online, ?from illegal and highly offensive content delivered over convergent devices such as mobile handsets, and also over the internet more generally?.
The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) was given an extra $16.3 million in Tuesday's Federal budget to ?ensure it was adequately resourced to carry out its role as regulator in the increasingly complex communications environment".
lol - good luck enforcing that...
'children who aren't adequately parented while online'
Right there's your problem.
I don't see how this is enforceable
Can someone please think of the children!
Not a snow-ball's chance in hell that this law will prove enforcable and the regulations of chatroons is particularly farcical. Are we going to regulate what people say to each other over mobile phones or evne face to face next?
What a joke.
What exactly are they trying to enforce here? They mentions chat rooms which is, of course, a joke, as the only inappropriate material in them come from what people say themselves. As has been said, good luck with that.
It also seems to imply that it will impose restrictions on sites containing adult content, which is somewhat more applicable to regulation, but what measures are they expecting sites to take? Provide an 18+ logging to view the content? Yeah, that'll stop the kids getting at it.
And of course, in the end this will only be applicable to websites and services owned or hosted in Australia.
Good to see the Australian government is intent on protecting the nation's children from a tiny percentage of online material through easily circumvented and ultimately useless laws.
Clearly MP Sussan Ley has never used the internet before.
Yep, amen to that LiveWire, more useless red tape. Even trying to sanitize the internet with global cooperation between governments would be a hopeless, never ending battle. The internet can be a dangerous place, especially for kids. But at the end of the day, good parenting would be a much more effective defense against what's out there, than some laughable regulations applied to a handful of local companies. It's a shame governments are so afraid to tell parents to do their damn jobs as such and so quick to assign blame to things like video games and the internet. I guess it's just easier on ones own conscience to think the government is doing that part your job for you...
The internet is more likely a dangerous place for governments. Particularly those that behave badly.
Couldn't have said it better myself, Mick.
This would worry me immensely if I didn't know how hopeless the attempt was.