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Australian firm threatened for link to forbidden website
by Scott Gilbreath ~ March 17th, 2009
The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) threatened to fine a company up to $11,000 per day over a link to an anti-abortion site on ACMA’s list of verboten websites. Nowhere does the lengthy news story in The Australian address the issue of why an anti-abortion site is on the “top-secret list of banned internet web pages”.
On March 10, ACMA issued Sydney web hosting company Bulletproof Networks with an “interim link-deletion notice” for allowing its customer, the Whirlpool internet community website, to post the link to an anti-abortion web page blacklisted by the regulator.
[...]
The interim notice, obtained by The Australian, stated that on February 19, ACMA received information that a Whirlpool forums page “may contain links to other websites that may contain ‘prohibited content’ or ‘potentially prohibited content’”.According to the notice, ACMA determined that end-users in Australia could access the content on the blacklisted web page.
ACMA gave Bulletproof around 24 hours to act.
And act Bulletproof did. Whirlpool removed the prohibited link in very short order.
ACMA sent the notice after it received a “complaint” about “offensive content” from an anonymous internet user.
h/t: Australian Politics
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March 17th, 2009 at 07:56 PM
Well done on your misleading article.
You complain that they don’t tell the full story but neither do you in an attempt to make it look like anti-abortionists are being victimised.
The anti-abortion website, of which you no doubt approve and support has abortion images that are graphic in the extreme.
As a test of the Australian censorship laws it was reported as offensive. The ACMA correctly decided it should be banned.
March 18th, 2009 at 05:40 AM
How could I possibly know whether I “approve and support” a website I haven’t even seen? But I do know that, unless it contains direct and credible threats against particular individuals, I have no objection to the site’s existence or links thereto.
The ones being “victimised” here, in my view, are Australians who believe in freedom of speech and press. As you admit, Australia has “censorship laws”. Australia used to be a proud country with a strong tradition of civil liberties, but now it’s become a nanny state with laws that purport to tell people what they can and cannot read or say. How sad.
March 18th, 2009 at 04:39 PM
So what’s worse: what we allow to be done to the innocent unborn, or pictures of it on a website? Australia says the latter.
http://www.abortiontv.com/
Here’s the site. Ugly, but millions of dead pre-born infants is far uglier. So is internet censorship, of forbidden topics as chosen by some panel of ‘betters’.
Australia is going the way of soft-fascism, and losing her once proud and independent soul. Don’t blame the protesters, but the petty-tyrants.
Binks
FreeMarkSteyn
March 18th, 2009 at 07:09 PM
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