Blacklist snares Bill Henson fan site
March 26th, 2009From the Sydney Morning Herald:
OFLC site hacked during ABC’s “Q and A” program
March 26th, 2009The official web site for the Office of Film and Literature Classification (www.oflc.gov.au / www.classification.gov.au) has been hacked tonight. A comment on the online board for ABC’s live “Q and A” show stated:
Ask conroy about govt classification website being hacked. Check now
(http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/)
Stephen Conroy is one of the guest panelists for the night.
Conroy’s response to list leak
March 19th, 2009Senator Steven Conroy today released a statement regarding the supposed leak of the ACMA blacklist:
Internet list publication grossly irresponsible
Selected extracts:
“I am aware of reports that a list of URLs has been placed on a web site. This is not the ACMA blacklist.”
and
“There are some common URLs to those on the ACMA blacklist. However, ACMA advises that there are URLs on the published list that have never been the subject of a complaint or ACMA investigation, and have never been included on the ACMA blacklist.”
Meanwhile the WikiLeaks web site, including it’s published list of URLs, appears to be currently unavailable…
ACMA blacklist leaked?
March 19th, 2009Update on Australian Internet censorship…
It appears the ACMA’s blacklist may have been leaked. Web site WikiLeaks claims to have received the list and published it on their website. We will not link to it directly, but it is easy to find. See the following articles for more information.
Filmmaker seeks uni students to auction their virginity online
March 17th, 2009Not sure what to make of this… an article from news.com.au…
Monash University bans doco audition posters
- Filmmaker seeks virgins
- Offers students cash
- Recruiting students to sell virginity
A FILMMAKER has caused outrage by trying to recruit students to auction their virginity online - and film their attempts.
Victoria’s Monash University called police after receiving complaints about posters offering $20,000 each to a male and female virgin to appear in a feature-length documentary.
(Note the obligatory comment from religious lobby group, the Australian Family Association.)
UPDATE: An interview with the directory, Justin Sisely, here. Includes this gem:
“The crux right now is provocation and publicity so I want to start advertising before it even gets made. We want to create a little bit of media hype and attention throughout the public, they’ll follow the story and by the release date we’ll already have an audience.”
“Outrage as TABs open for Good Friday”
March 17th, 2009From an article on the ABC site:
Religious groups are furious Tabcorp has decided to open for gambling on Good Friday for the first time.
The decision to allow punters to place bets at agencies and hotels comes as New South Wales authorities consider an application by big retailers to open on Easter Sunday.
There appear to be 3 separate issues here:
- the relevance of restrictions on business based on traditional Christian religious holidays;
- the prevalence of gambling, and its associated problems;
- industrial relations implications, with staff possibly being required to work on public holidays.
Even in the USA, religion loses ground
March 10th, 2009A new American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) has found that almost all religious denominations have lost ground since the first ARIS survey in 1990.
Some excerpts from this article (emphasis added):
So many Americans claim no religion at all (15%, up from 8% in 1990), that this category now outranks every other major U.S. religious group except Catholics and Baptists. In a nation that has long been mostly Christian, “the challenge to Christianity … does not come from other religions but from a rejection of all forms of organized religion,” the report concludes.
Church hits out after nine-year-old’s abortion
March 10th, 2009A sad story, with no redeeming features, just gets worse - thanks to the Catholic church.
The first part of this article:
Brazil’s influential Catholic Church has raged against an abortion carried out on a nine-year-old girl who had been pregnant with twins after allegedly being raped by her stepfather.
An archbishop for the northern region where the termination was conducted, Father Jose Cardoso Sobrinho, told reporters the church was excommunicating all those responsible for the abortion: the medical team and the girl’s mother.
The operation - carried out on Wednesday because of doctors’ fears the slender girl might die if she carried the foetuses to term - was a crime in the eyes of the church, he said.
“God’s law is above any human law. So when a human law … is contrary to God’s law, this human law has no value,” Cardoso told the news television network Globo.
So apparently God’s law says that if a girl is raped by her stepfather from the age of 6 and is pregnant with twins at 9, she must carry the foetuses to term. Doesn’t matter that there’s very little chance they will survive, and that their 9 year old mother could die. Apparently the girl’s welfare and the way she became pregnant in the first place are minor considerations.
Australian Internet filter plans in doubt
March 10th, 2009We can only hope…
Senator Xenophon speaks out against Internet content filtering
South Australian independent senator raises concerns and says there are better ways to spend the money
Survey results - Internet filtering, Conroy’s performance
The federal Government’s communications policies have taken a battering in a survey that attracted about 20,000 respondents.
Is anyone else worried that the global economic situation is going to overshadow all other issues, allowing things like the Internet filter to slip in under the radar? (Perhaps Conroy can find a way to link the filter to workplace relations or economics, then he can update his catch-cry from the rather tired “If you oppose the filter you’re a paedophile” to something more current, like “If you oppose the filter you hate working families”.)
Update: Australian Internet filter
January 7th, 2009More recent articles regarding the Australian federal government’s proposal to introduce a mandatory Internet filter:
- US dumps unpopular Internet filter plan
- Internet censorship and the revolt of the masses
- Opinion - Why Kevin Rudd’s Internet censorship plan won’t work
Grass roots activism group GetUp! are running a campaign against the proposed filter. As of writing more than 93,000 people have signed their online petition calling on Communications Minister Senator Conroy to abandon the proposal. (The widget below shows the current number of signings.)