Censorship Guide (Introduction)

It has 6 parts:

This part - the Introduction - an overview and what's new or noteworthy.

Part 1 - Legislation - law and codes of practice in Australia and overseas

Part 2 - the players - a map of the government agencies, business and community groups

Part 3 - free speech online - policy challenges in national and international information infrastructures

Part 4 - technologies - an evaluation of filters , age-verfication schemes and other content management tools

Part 5 - offline - censorship of non-digital media as a tool for understanding issues and legislation

new and noteworthy

Researchers at AT&T have announced a two month trial of Publius, a system for "anonymous censorship-resistant publishing on the Web. They include Lorrie Cranor, co-author of the Beyond Concern: Understanding Net Users' Attitudes About Online Privacy study.

Publius works by encrypting files that are then split for distribution over a number of servers on a ‘Publius Network’, supposedly hindering efforts at censorship. The publisher can decide into how many pieces to break the file and how many server owners would have to act together to remove the encrypted document. Accessing a document would involve searching a directory on a Publius-affiliated site, with the network reassembling the jigsaw.

The researchers argue that the Publius network would make it hard to trace the initial transaction and that removal of files on the network would require direct action by the owners of the participating servers, presumably located in lite touch regulatory regimes.

Membership of the US task force on Tools & Strategies for Protecting Kids From Pornography & Their Applicability to Other Inappropriate Internet Content has been announced. The Task Force has been established by the National Research Council.

our position

Censorship is one of the most contentious issues in the regulation of cyberspace.

Our position? Managing access to content is problematical - in principle and practice - whether offline or online. We urge caution in considering some of the easy answers being peddled at the moment. It's clear that some technological quick fixes don't work. Some of the legislative approaches in Australia and overseas are ill-conceived and oversold.

privacy

Pointers to privacy sites, legislation and bodies are available in our Privacy guide.

next part (law and codes of practice)