Starting February 4 next year, the ACMA has decreed that all devices with a digital TV tuner must include a parental lock feature that will allow parents to lock off certain programming for younger viewers.
ACMA today announced that they’ve given Optus first dibs on some extra 2100MHz spectrum for 972 sites across regional Australia. That means better 3G service in the country… Who can argue with that?
So we all knew that Channel Nine was going to be broadcasting the State of Origin in 3D this year, but the ACMA has just announced officially that it has granted a special license to Channel Nine and SBS to conduct a scientific trial of 3D broadcasts for two months, starting May 19.
Mark Newton, Internode engineer and superhero in the battle for a filter-free internet, has pointed out another fundamental flaw in the Australian classifications system: Rather than fixing an obviously broken setup, the ACMA would prefer to force Apple to remove the “Gift this movie” option from iTunes in Australia to deal with Internet classification.
After yesterday’s story that Wikileaks had published the contents of the ACMA blacklist, both Senator Conroy and the ACMA have released (almost identical) announcements decrying the list’s publication, while denying that the contents are actually the same as their blacklist.
How much evidence does the government need before it recognizes the fact that their mandatory filter just won’t work. Asher Moses over at SMH has just reported that the ACMA’s website blacklist – which will form the basis of the Government’s internet filter – has been leaked to Wikileaks.
This whole online censorship debate keeps getting murkier and murkier. The latest example of its futility: Online forum Whirlpool (or more precisely, their web host Bulletproof) received the threat of an $11,000 a day fine for posting a link to a blacklisted anti-abortion website. Needless to say, Whirlpool took down the offending link. But the really scary part is that the ACMA blacklist now includes parts of Wikileaks, the whistle blowing website that is so set in their raison d’etre that they’ll publish their own sources.
