Eros Foundation spokesman Robbie Swan
SYDNEY - Both supporters and opponents of Australia's new website content regulations are claiming victory because only 31 sites have been ordered down since the law since it took effect January 1.
The new law gives the Australian Broadcasting Authority the power to make Australian Web hosts take down "offensive" material, based on complaints the ABA receives. Most of those received since January - 124, according to various reports - involved sexually oriented material, some of which involved child porn.
ABA spokesman Stephen Nugent says the early figures show "an orderly beginning" to the life of the law, adding there wasn't a flood of complaints that had merely been built up. But the Eros Foundation, Australia's adult goods and services industry, said that, against a background of huge media attention which leaves "few unacquainted with how it works," the numbers mean nothing.
Australian media and Net officials have estimated that, based on six million Web surfers logging online once in a single year period including the law's early life, the complaints break down to about one per 12,000 Internet usages.
Eros Foundation spokesman Robbie Swan called that a sign Australia was "chasing phantoms" with the new law. "It just shows there was no need for legislation," he told the Australian press. "Politicians clearly freaked out about something they really weren't in a position to comment upon."
He also said the Internet is big enough that, for the most part, users just go right past the parts they do not want to see. "It's just like real life," he said. "A vegetarian doesn't go into a butcher shop, and a born again Christian doesn't go into an adult bookshop."
The 31 takedown orders came from 71 investigations built from those 124 complaints. Many of them involved non-sexual sites or pages, such as bomb-making instructions or overtly violent sites.
