Recently proposed laws in an attempt to combat abuse online are currently being talked about by MP's in New Zealand. The new laws would allow for anyone to send a complaint about online content and in fair of large fines, Any host in new Zealand would have to remove the content in question due to large fines associated with failing to comply.
Similar to what happened in the UK, Online Censorship Laws have been given a front of "Protecting the People" from online material that could harm the young and prove to be negative to the governments vision of the internet. To help support the new laws, The NZ Government is blatantly using the negativity towards a journalists articles through Facebook as reasoning to go through with these laws. "Journalist Ian Wishart said attempts to shut down abusive Facebook groups that had attacked and threatened him over his book about Macsyna King, mother of the dead Kahui twins, was like playing "Whack-A-Mole". It was a struggle to get Facebook to close the pages"
However the largest New Zealand Telecommunications company "Telecom" sees the flaws in these new laws that will lead to censorship of any person who could hold a counter belief, Calling into question the effect on Freedom of Speech on the internet that would be caused by these laws stating "under the proposed laws internet firms that hosted websites or social media forums would end up removing content as soon as someone complained, to avoid potential penalties."
However Netsafes director, Martin Cocker (As pictured) is playing down these claims of censorship stating "Nothing in [the bill] will break the Internet ... but it will change how people act,"
If you ask me, that is a form of censorship, Making internet users and hosts fear having an argument against the wishes of Big Brother leads to reduced posts and further more, restriction on Freedom of Speech. Forcing peoplle to change by imposing laws on what they can post due to fairs of fines on hosts who generally dont care for much more than the profit margin in cases where they would receive fines for other peoples beliefs removed the power of speech from people without directly imposing censorship on the people.
All in all, There is one thing I am sure about. These laws have been played down from the get go. Very little has been released by the NZ Government on these proposed laws and chances are we would not know about it if it was not for Telecom and even then it is still being swept under the rug so to speak
Just remember folks, its for the childrens! Hopefully they will be able to block illegal websites too (sarcasm)...
So what is this bill called, is anyone aware? I think we need to find the name of the bill, the people pushing it and tweet/email/write our MPs.
For those not from NZ we had a TV celebrity recently who, suffering from depression, took her own life. Some of her friends say this was due to "cyberbullying" from people tweeting her driving her to do this.
This prompted other TV "celebrities" (read: newsreaders/newsanchors) to read out tweets that they had gotten that they felt were cyberbullying on a breakfast show. The tweets were harmless, they were being big sooks, and they wouldn't know cyberbullying if it slapped them in the face. One tweet was along the lines of "You're hot, fucking boring, but hot". Oh noes!
It later turned out that some of the "celebrities" had mistaken the reason for reading out tweets to be comedic in nature, and had made their ones up to try to be funny (like Jimmy Kimmels segment).
Anyway this started a whole other debate about cyberbullying.
This debate was also started before when some Facebook douchebags caught the media attention because they had a Facebook page called "The Roastbusters" where they boasted about their exploits with getting underage girls drunk enough to sleep with them.
With no privacy settings.
On the public internet.
Where everyone could see.
Not the smartest tools in the shed.
So now the media is trying to make people think that we need web censorship because some people are getting offended by Facebook and Twitter posts. Like little whiney bitches.
So anon, got anymore information on this bill?
I am keeping my eyes out and have made a few calls but other than telecom who have been unable to comment, Its all Hush Hush. All I know is that their pushing this bill and Telecom/Stuff.co.nz are current facing some sort of breach of information act for releasing information on the bill to the public.
There is also a large backing from unnamed corporations.
Ill keep looking but im out of the country in just over a week for a month so dont expect much.
It is interesting however that both Telecom and Vodafone censor the internet already. Part of a volitery program by the government that censors child pornography and other illegal activity.
Got it! It's called the HDC Bill or Harmful Digital Communications Bill. Here is the actual text for this bill: http://www.legislation.govt.nz/bill/government/2013/0168/6.0/DLM5711810.html
Check out http://techliberty.org.nz/ they have lots of info too.. throw HDC into Google and you will see quite a few results as well. I haven't read it yet, will check it out later.
Also the one you are talking about that "censors" child porn is the Digital Child Exploitation Filtering System (DCEFS) run by the Department of Internal Affairs: http://www.dia.govt.nz/censorship-dcefs
The funny thing is, in other countries the blacklist behind such a filtering system was made public and then the public made a script that auto-notified entities hosting such content. As a result, all that content was taken offline rendering the filtering system redundant. Can't have that in NZ.. why? Maybe the DIA are a bunch of pervs who don't want the content taken down, because a) they can get around the filter (not all ISPs are filters IIRC) and b) they have the list of kiddie porn. Sick fucks.
