US Elections

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy says that the Internet is not special, and just as Australia censors books, television programs, magazines, and movies, it should be able to do the same for online material. The bad news for opponents of Conroy's filter is that he sort of has a point.

In Australia, unlike the U.S., we think it perfectly reasonable for the government to control what speech we are allowed to see or hear. To sell a movie or a book or a video game in Australia, you need to get the government's permission. If it refuses to classify the work in question, then too bad; it's illegal to distribute it. And apart from the occasional complaint Margaret Pomeranz makes when an artsy European flick gets banned, Australians don't bat an eyelid at this.

Even opponents of Conroy's filter seem OK with the government banning other forms of speech. The Herald article I linked above quotes the University of Sydney's Bjorn Landfeldt splitting hairs over different form of censorship:

University of Sydney associate professor Bjorn Landfeldt said the difference between submitting a book for classification and having an organisation classifying and blocking websites without anyone's knowledge was that, in the book case, "it is well known that the book was censored and there can be a debate about the correctness of the decision."

The U.S. has a much more robust conception of freedom of speech, and even though the U.S. Supreme Court does not consider it totally illegitimate for the government to ban certain types of non-political speech, in practice it tends to side with the First Amendment's sweeping instruction that "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech." That's why in America, there is no equivalent of Australia's Office of Film and Literature Classification. Classification bodies like the Motion Picture Association of America are industry-run and submission of content to them is voluntary. Even the infamous Federal Communications Commission, which is a government agency, has authority over a very small slice of American media; it can ban content from network television and radio, but it has no authority over cable.

In America, people consider it far less legitimate for the government to decide what sort of speech is acceptable for adults to make and hear. That's why the U.S.'s own attempt at Internet censorship, the Communications Decency Act of 1996, was found to breach the First Amendment in Reno v ACLU. 

I disagree with Conroy; the Internet is special. It combines content distribution with telecommunications in a way that makes it comparable to neither magazine publication nor telephone discussions. But it is not that special. The reason Australia is even considering joining dictatorships like China and Iran in online censorship is that, unlike the U.S., we consider it fundamentally reasonable for the government to control our speech. It is no wonder the U.S. and Australian governments disagree on this issue; they are operating from different cultural assumptions as to what constitutes free society.

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