Classifying censorship: the shadow without end

Freedom of speech does not give us the right to say anything we please. Words can cause damage, whether it is a company director giving inside knowledge; shouting fire in a crowded room; or knowingly lying about the actions of others. However, that does not mean that we have a right to not be offended. In any typical day we will meet with confronting ideas that do not suit our values. Whether this is non-Catholics having to put up with World Youth Day, or religious school funding, government policy on illegal immigration, or emission trading schemes, we are all put out by different things. An offence free world would be a dystopia without dialogue of anything meaningful. Only the group doing the censoring benefits from censorship.

Classification, though, illuminates: it guides the population about what is and isn’t appropriate in particular situations. These are the rules of polite society that we encourage that make Australia a pleasant place to live.

Censorship has a long history as a tool of control. It is far too easy to abuse. What is censored cannot be known. This is the paradox: people are unable to review whether the censored ideas are actually repugnant, and therefore the public is not in a position to agree or disagree with the censorship. Once a censorship system is in place other ideas are slowly added as different groups hold political sway, or as maintenance of power becomes a consuming goal.

Fear, uncertainty and doubt are the weapons of political control, of those whose fundamental drive is anti-freedom. The reality is that the world is not as scary as fear-mongers would have us believe. We accept risk in everything we do; indeed a full life requires risk. Risk is a statistical reality that humans have difficulty measuring. We are far more likely to die in car accidents than we are in a terrorist attack, yet we will stay up at night worrying about terrorism but won't think twice about getting into our cars.

Fear is a control tool, and a population afraid is easy to control. Repressive forces create fear by spreading uncertainty and doubt then subtly suggesting danger. Claiming certain ideas are something to fear is exactly what censorship is about. It’s an attempt to control the public. It suggests the public are too feeble to make choices properly and that we need the government to do it for us. It suggests that punishment should precede the crime.

If someone tries to make you fear something, ask yourself why. Why be afraid? Why are they attempting to make you afraid? What benefits does your fear provide them? Does it impose their ideas, values and morality on you? Why should their judgment be better than yours … for you? Apathy is ultimately what destroys civil liberties and allows fear to take hold; and it is born by accepting ideas at face value and thinking that nothing can be done.

Australia has some of the most extreme censorship laws in the developed world. Our multiple classification systems have been twisted and corrupted into a censorship system and its reach continues to grow. Publications on euthanasia are banned even though the majority of Australians are generally supportive. Video games deemed unsuitable for 15-year-olds are banned, even though the average age of video game players in Australia is above 30 (this on the say of a single man, the Attorney-General of South Australia).

Documentation of consensual sex acts are illegal to sell throughout Australia. Yet politicians and their staff visiting Canberra are able to (and do) purchase pornography, it’s just their constituents that can’t. The Australian Communications and Media Authority wants to blacklist videos showing the violence in the recent 2009 Iranian election protests on the Internet, yet these same videos were shown on news media outlets like CNN and Sky News Australia.

We should be scaling back censorship laws, not expanding them further as the World Internet Villain of the year, our Communications Minister, Senator Stephen Conroy wants to do. But, even with fearsome ministerial promotion about the dangers to children, most child support groups are against the proposal.

A look at the groups backing censorship of the internet reveals a vocal minority; very vocal, very minor. The Australian Christian Lobby is most vocal, even though they speak for a minority of Australians (Christians have been in decline in Australia for more than a century, and even so, most are more liberal than the ACL). Other supporters include people who will benefit commercially from internet censorship, and companies that will provide the filtering equipment necessary. The profits of these censorship boosters would come from taxpayers, either through government subsidies, or higher access costs and slower downloads.

Until recently, the Federal Government had a reasonable compromise: if parents wanted to filter their children's access they could get software, for free, to do so. Their freedom of choice, and freedom from payment (although, like television, the Internet should not be considered a babysitter for our county's youth). Conroy's proposed system takes censorship and classification out of the Attorney-General's department and into his own, increasing government power and limiting people's freedom of choice.

The current list of material the government is blacklisting has already been leaked multiple times: it already contains political content such as euthanasia, anti-abortion material and now political protests in Iran. It is hardly the “worst of the worst”, and indeed of very poor quality compared to the leaked lists of other countries.

The point shouldn't be whether it is technically feasible to censor the internet (it isn't). The point is that censorship is wrong in principle, and that the shadow of censorship will continue to cloud our lives only if we let it.