MANDATORY FILTERING OF INTERNET CONTENT TOO EXPENSIVE?

The long awaited Review of the Operation of Schedule 5 to the Broadcasting Act 1992 was tabled in Federal Parliament on May 13, 2004. This review examined the effectiveness of the present system for regulating objectionable content on the Internet and considered the feasibility of alternative approaches.

There is no doubt that there is a major problem with pornography on the Internet, in particular the ease and frequency with which children are exposed to pornographic images.

In early 2003 the Australian Institute released a paper demonstrating that 38% of 16 and 17 year old boys were deliberately using the Internet to see sexual material. The Australian Institute called for more regulation of Internet content.

In November 2003 staff from the Child at Risk Assessment Unit, Canberra Hospital reported that exposure to pornography on the Internet is one significant factor in children younger than 10 years old sexually abusing other children.

In the first six months of 2003 the Unit had identified as many as 48 children under 10 years of age that had engaged in sexualized, sexually abusive behavior. There has been a dramatic escalation in the reported incidence of this type of behavior since the mid-1990s when staff recall an average of 3 children per year coming to their attention with this problem.

Most children in this category had accessed pornography on the Internet. For 25% of these children, deliberate viewing of pornography was their main use of the Internet. While several children first came across pornography on the Internet accidentally, 25% of the children had been shown how to access pornographic images by another person.

Unit staff presented a case study of a nine year old boy, Steven, who first came across Internet pornography accidentally. He tried to avoid it until he saw his mother's current de facto (her fourth since Steven was born) watching pornography on the Internet and concluded that this is an acceptable activity. He then got involved in viewing pornography. Soon he was making his four year old half-brother Deacon act out homosexual acts with him. He also made younger girls at school participate in sexual acts with him and threatened to hurt them if they told anybody. While Steven certainly had significant social and development problems the specific expression of these problems in sexually aggressive behavior with younger children was shaped by his exposure to graphic sexual images on the Internet.

A ny realistic solution to this problem must involve filtering at either the national or ISP levels, of online content of a sexually explicit nature(equivalent to R and above in print and film classification schemes) regardless of the origin and location of the web site, Australian or overseas. The present scheme relies on a very limited use of "take down" orders by the Australian Broadcasting Authority that only applies to Australian located web sites. Offensive overseas sites are simply added to the lists on the filtering software that each end user may choose to install on their computer. This, of course, does nothing to protect children like Steven, who are already living in vulnerable situations.

Tragically the Review considers that mandatory filtering at the ISP level would be effective but too expensive! It estimates costs at $45 million for setup and $33 million annually for maintenance of the scheme.

In his media release launching the Review, Minister for Communications, Daryl Williams seems to concur with this view. He said "The review of the Online Content Co-regulatory Scheme found that, while some types of server filtering are technically possible, mandating them would be excessively onerous and limit filter performance. It also found that the Internet safety would be improved by more active promotion of filtering technologies by Australian Internet service providers (ISP's)."

Australian parents, and anyone concerned for the well-being of Australian children, should urge the Government to reconsider this position.

Mandatory filtering at an ISP server level would cost just $10 per user set up costs and $7.33 annual fees. The simplest and fairest scheme would be for the Government to invest the initial $45 million in the interests of Australia's children and then to administer a levy scheme to ensure the costs of the ongoing filtering are shared equitably between end users. It may be, as the reports itself admits, that these prices could be brought down through competitive tendering between vendors of filtering software.

Contact your local branch of the AFA and request a petition addressed to the Senate,or download one here petition calling for legislation to provide for mandatory filtering.