- Feb 5, 2002
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COMMENTARY: The most recent attempt by an Australian government entity to enforce its rulings beyond national borders alarmed internet users worldwide and earned a rebuke from an Australian federal judge.
A government agency in Australia recently tried to exert its global influence in a case that may become a litmus test for the line between online safety and censorship.
In 2015, Australia established an e-Safety Commission, which describes itself on its website as the “world’s first government agency committed to keeping its citizens safer online.” On its surface, the commission seems like a good thing. It presents a robust set of guidelines for people of all ages to stay safer online, and it even recently proposed an age-verification road map to the Australian government as a means to protect young people from accessing adult content.
However, there is a fine line between benign safety and blatant censorship, and the e-Safety Commission appears to be toeing that line quite closely.
Case in point: When a video of Assyrian Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel in Australia being stabbed multiple times began circulating online in late April, Australia’s e-Safety Commission filed a legal injunction against the X social-media platform (formerly known as Twitter), forcing it to hide the video from users’ feeds. The commission did so on the grounds that the video falls under 2021’s Online Safety Act as “Class-1 material,” which it describes as content that includes depictions of violent crime, child sex offenses, or other “revolting or abhorrent phenomena that offend against the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults.” Past instances of media bans by the Australian government, however, suggest that when it comes to Christianity, their standards of safety are driven more by ideology than morality.
Continued below.
www.ncregister.com
A government agency in Australia recently tried to exert its global influence in a case that may become a litmus test for the line between online safety and censorship.
In 2015, Australia established an e-Safety Commission, which describes itself on its website as the “world’s first government agency committed to keeping its citizens safer online.” On its surface, the commission seems like a good thing. It presents a robust set of guidelines for people of all ages to stay safer online, and it even recently proposed an age-verification road map to the Australian government as a means to protect young people from accessing adult content.
However, there is a fine line between benign safety and blatant censorship, and the e-Safety Commission appears to be toeing that line quite closely.
Case in point: When a video of Assyrian Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel in Australia being stabbed multiple times began circulating online in late April, Australia’s e-Safety Commission filed a legal injunction against the X social-media platform (formerly known as Twitter), forcing it to hide the video from users’ feeds. The commission did so on the grounds that the video falls under 2021’s Online Safety Act as “Class-1 material,” which it describes as content that includes depictions of violent crime, child sex offenses, or other “revolting or abhorrent phenomena that offend against the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults.” Past instances of media bans by the Australian government, however, suggest that when it comes to Christianity, their standards of safety are driven more by ideology than morality.
Continued below.
Judge Blocks Australia’s Worldwide Ban on Bishop Attack Video
COMMENTARY: The most recent attempt by an Australian government entity to enforce its rulings beyond national borders alarmed internet users worldwide and earned a rebuke from an Australian federal judge.
