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posted by
martyb
on Wednesday April 17 2019, @05:49AM
from the waiting-until-they-try-to-legislate-"abhorent"-text dept.
from the waiting-until-they-try-to-legislate-"abhorent"-text dept.
Australia has rammed through another law requiring “abhorrent” video, audio or still images to be removed within an hour. This will apply to content providers both in and out of Australia as long as the content is available to Australians. Individuals and companies face jail time and/or huge fines if the content is not removed "within a reasonable time". If the content is found to be hosted in Australia then the Australian government must be alerted. This is yet another knee jerk reaction to the NZ shootings which were streamed live online.
Who is paying for someone to be awake at 3am to curate and remove this stuff?
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Australia Passes Law Requiring Social Media to Remove Content Within one Hour
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Hacking's just another word for nothing left to kludge.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by janrinok on Wednesday April 17 2019, @02:10PM (6 children)
The courts might decide that 'Never' is appropriate sometimes. You are making assumptions.
And I suspect that you are an American? Your views on freedom of speech are not shared by other countries, and your laws regarding freedom of speech are not applicable in other countries. And while we are discussing your freedom of speech, what about Assange? An Australian who is accussed of committing a crime outside of the USA. but the US does not support his right to speak of things that have embarrassed the US Govt, They seem determined to enforce US 'justice' to everyone no matter who or where, even those to whom US laws do not apply. The information was provided by Manning, who has been punished. That is a strange view of freedom of speech, in my view. If Assange had been a Russian living in Russia, would the US still be trying to extradite him with any expectation of success?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 17 2019, @02:54PM (1 child)
"May". That's not in the law now (I doubt the enforcers will agree that "never" is a reasonable period of time).
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday April 17 2019, @06:58PM
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 17 2019, @05:54PM (3 children)
Flat Earthers have views on the shape of the Earth which is not shared by others too.
At some point, you have to decide what's important to you, laws or speaking your mind without concern that some bureaucrat or personal enemy will find a way to punish you for that and/or hide your speech. Here, freedom of speech is an issue no matter what the rules of the land are. The law supposedly targets "abhorrent" content. But what happens down the road when your criticism of a government policy becomes the abhorrent content? What happens when the forum you wrote your criticism decides to excise your inconvenient words using the excuse that it violates their terms of service (even though you aren't)?
If you live in a society that you would like to become and stay a democracy, then you need really broad freedom of speech even if the "viewpoint" is otherwise.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday April 17 2019, @07:07PM (2 children)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 17 2019, @07:22PM (1 child)
Those nations aren't Australia. Australia has passed this law, indicating intent to change laws on free speech. Further, it's worse than most such laws because it mandates the creation of censorship apparatus which can then be reused - we already have problems with that. This sort of thing does have the power in conjunction with other underminings to collapse democracy.
Even North Korea is on that spectrum. It permits some forms of speech after all. It's not a valuable observation to make.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 18 2019, @12:50AM
You are Australian?