Posts Tagged ‘Australia’
April 9th, 2010
A draft decree by the Fiji’s military-backed regime calls for
tighter control of the media and increased press censorship. The proposals, announced on Wednesday, would require daily monitoring of all news stories, as well as new restrictions on cross-media ownership. This would directly affect Fiji Times, one of the nation’s oldest and largest newspapers which is owned by the Australian company News Limited. Breaches of content regulation could result in media organisations, publishers and journalists being fined and imprisoned for up to five years.
March 31st, 2010
The American games company Envoy has
dropped its libel suit against the English blogger Bruce Everiss. Envoy was
suing Everiss for libel in an Australian court over a series of blogposts on Everiss’ website,
bruceongames.com, in which he had claimed that Envoy had previously been owned by a Chinese company, UMGE, linked to a Chinese “gold-farming” business. Everis alleged UMGE employed low-paid workers to earn virtual money in online games, and then sold it, against the game’s rules, to other players. Envoy dropped the case, halfway through its second day, telling reporters that the decision was driven by criticism from its customers.
March 30th, 2010
Plans for a mandatory ISP-level filtering system for internet users in Australia has come under attack from leading business giants such as Google, Yahoo
as well as the US government. US State Department spokesperson Michael Tran stated that they have raised their “concerns” over the matter with Australian officials. Critics have commented that if such a programme were to be implemented, it would
“put Australia in the same censorship league as China.”December 21st, 2009
The Australian internet company, auDA that runs the .com.au domain registry has been accused of censoring a website satirising Australian communications minister Stephen Conroy’s proposed internet censorship laws. On Friday, Sapia Pty Ltd, the company behind the website, was told by auDA that they had three hours to explain its use of the domain or it would be withdrawn. The firm said on its
new site Stephenconroy.com.au was subsequently taken down a few hours later. Read more
hereDecember 19th, 2009
Canberra is making alarming advances in web censorship, says John Ozimek
(more…)
December 15th, 2009
The Australian government has announced that it is to go ahead with controversial internet censorship plans after trials of the new filtering system were found to be accurate. The filter laws will be introduced in parliament in August 2010 and will take a year to implement. Critics said the trial results were not surprising and the policy was still fundamentally flawed. Read more
hereDecember 2nd, 2009
Indonesia’s censorship board has banned an Australian-made film about the alleged murder five journalists by Indonesian troops during the 1975 invasion of East Timor. The ruling came just hours before a planned premiere screening of Balibo was due to take place forcing organisers to cancel. Jakarta maintains they were killed accidentally in cross-fire however in 2007 an Australian coroner concluded that the journalists had been executed. A sixth Australian journalist was killed in Dili shortly afterwards while investigating the deaths. Read more
hereAugust 17th, 2009
Australia has announced plans to amend its anti-terrorism legislation to give more power to the police. Australia has gradually extended laws on detaining and interrogating terrorism suspects since 2001. There are plans to broaden the definition of a terrorist to include individuals planning to inflict psychological damage as well as those intending to cause physical injury. Read more here
