Apparently, numerous Web sites are flouting Australia's new content regulations. And the government has issued takedown orders for 27 of the sites, including Telechat and some other porn sites. Telechat says they got their e-mail from the Australian Broadcasting Authority in January, ordering them to take four pages of its teenager.com.au site down by 6 p.m. the following day, but they pulled the site offline instead - and relocated it to a U.S. server.
Reports indicate there's little if any protest over the takedown orders. And Peter Coreonos of the Internet Industry Association, which represents Australian e-companies, says it's now a question of empowerment, not censorship. Meaning, he continues, that instead of blocking the sites outright, Australian regulators want to try co-regulation: they look into sites only when someone complains about it.
Australia's new offensive Web content regulations took effect Jan. 1. The ABA says it's received some 90 complaints since and sent out the 27 takedown orders. But the new regulations don't cover non-Australian Web sites. And most of the takedown orders involve sites dealing with sexuality. An RC classification (for "refused classification") usually includes such content as pedophilia, "abhorrent" fetishes, incest, and "sexual violence," according to Reuters.
Coreonos says he gets exasperated about how the Australian Net content regulations have been discussed overseas. He disagrees with those who fear the way the regulations are approached could lead to takedown orders for non-sexual but controversial materials. "Some of the big U.S. companies are pretty freaked out by this because you are not talking about smoke-and-mirrors self-regulation; you are talking about real self-regulation," he tells Reuters.
But the regulations originally included a measure to force Australian Internet service providers to block foreign porn sites and were attacked by local industry and consumer groups alike as "turning Australia into the Net's village idiot," the wire service says. It was then that Coreonos' group worked to turn it into the regulation code of practice for ISPs and, by last December, helped make it into a legally enforceable item.
