Australia Considering iPhone App Censorship 284
srjh writes "Having raised concerns about 'the classification of games playable on mobile telephones,' the Australian government has now 'put the wheels in motion to address this.' Under current Australian legislation, video games sold in the country must pay between $470 and $2040 to have the game classified, and due to the lack of an 18+ rating in Australia, if it is not found to be suitable for a 15-year-old, it is banned outright. This is the fate met by several recent titles, such as Left 4 Dead 2 and Fallout 3. Over 200,000 applications are available for the iPhone, many of them games, and developers have raised concerns about the prohibitive costs involved, with many announcing an intention to drop the Australian market altogether if the plan proceeds."
This comment not safe for 15-year-old (Score:5, Funny)
Fuck you, Australia
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In more civilized nations, we have no problem with children using extreme language in extreme situations.
the problem arises when the children think it's fun/cool to use that language everywhere.
This is where parents should do something, not when government should.
the same arguments could be used against most things censored.
Re:This comment not safe for 15-year-old (Score:5, Insightful)
This is where parents should do something, not when government should.
Exactly! This is all about lazy parents trying to absolve themselves of the responsibility of raising children.
Re:This comment not safe for 15-year-old (Score:5, Insightful)
If it were about trying to help parents, there'd be a category for adults. Then the parent can choose age-appropriate titles and adults can still get the apps they want. There isn't a category for adults. That's why this is not about trying to help parents. This is about censoring adults in the name of helping parents. If you think helping parents is a good thing then this is a mockery of it, a smack in the face.
No real libertarian would support censoring adults. Especially not when having an adult category does not negate the usefulness of all the other categories. Adding an adult category would be cost-free in the sense that it wouldn't hinder any of the stated goals of this proposal. The omission of it is either institutionalized stupidity or a deliberate attempt to censor. Both can be called evil.
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"Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it"
the GP seems to have no idea what "
Libertarian" actually means.
Re:This comment not safe for 15-year-old (Score:4, Interesting)
Why isn't it about the government trying to help parents?
It is! If we had an R18 rating that's exactly what it would do! Instead they absolve parents of their responsibility by just banning anything not suitable for a 15yo.
It's much more logical and consistent for a parent to be able to say "you can't watch any 18 rated films" to a child rather than "well OK, you can watch this one because I've heard a good review of it and it has artistic merit, but you can't watch this other one because it's too violent/pornographic/sweary".
Yes, which is why we want an R18 rating for games, but the government won't do that. That's exactly my point, they decide they will just wield the ban-hammer instead of having an R18 rating that parents would have to be aware of.
Re:This comment not safe for 15-year-old (Score:4, Insightful)
>>>The problem isn't a lack of R18, the problem is that anything not meeting 'standards' is illegal.
Good point. The government should not have the power to ban adults from buying items. The government is not your daddy or mommy. I used to think, "Well if America falls to tyranny, there's always the freedom-loving Aussieland," but apparently I was wrong. Australia is ruled by a tyranny of oligarchs that won't even let you play an adult game.
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An R18 rating isn't a solution, but a means to introduce further censorship.
Wrong, it means less censorship. Because anything above the M15 rating would not be just outright banned like it is now.
The fact that there is always something 'worse' wouldn't be the point. Right now you have a rating of what T15? That IS your R18 rating.
No it isn't, anything that would receive an R18 rating is refused classification and banned because M15 is the highest rating.
So you increase the level to R18, what difference would that make. All it would do is give people justification for applying more censorship.
No it would mean that actually have a category of material higher than M15 that would be legal and classified rather than just being deemed illegal.
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I believe the idea of an R18+ rating is that everything which is now considered "Refused Classification" just becomes "R18+" ... i.e. it's a lower, not an upper, limit to content
I understand, but isn't it just easier to just get rid of the damned refused classification all together?
Is there such a difference between someone 15+ and 18? Here is my worry:
Right now you have HUGE support because Refused Classification is a HUGE category of things being literally banned.
Let's say you cut that down to 18+ but a
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Bullshit.
The official ratings are meaningless to me. I don't care if my kid sees a topless girl, I don't see anything wrong with the human body. But I sure as hell don't want him filling his head with the most disgusting murders imaginable until he's old enough to handle it.
Yet the ratings are very strict with anything related to nudity or sexuality but give a free pass to all sorts of violence.
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They also give a free pass to religion. Religious texts are uncensored and do not have to be submitted for censorship. I don't want to have my child exposed to religion at a young impressionable age. I will leave that to him to decide when I think he is intellectually ready for it. I am personally offended by mixing young children and religion. While I do not agree with censorship this latest push for censorship from the Labor party makes me wonder where it will stop.
I'm voting No1 Australian sex party. The
Re:This comment not safe for 15-year-old (Score:5, Interesting)
Funny you should say this (about religion).
We are nominally Christian. A friend who is much more religious than us urged us to read the Bible to our kids. Thinking it couldn't be a bad thing, we get a Bible and looked through it. HOLY S! I would *never* read these stories to my kids. They are full of the sickest violence and perversions imaginable. There's incest, rape, murder, revenge, and overall a very callous attitude towards extracting violent revenge and causing misery. We told our friend that if the cover didn't say 'Bible' on it she would never allow any of her kids to hear stories like this.
We tried cleaning up a story. We took the story of 'Lot' and skipped over the part about the townspeople wanting to rape the angels staying with Lot. We skipped over the part about Lot offering to give his daughters to the townspeople to rape instead of the angels (a tempting offer, I'm sure, since Lot told them they were virgins). We skipped over the part where Lot's daughters got him drunk and had sex with their father so they could get pregnant (seriously WTF?! If you tried to make a movie of this without the name 'Lot' on it the religious right would freak). We only told that Lot left the city and his wife looked back and God turned her into a pillar of salt.
My kids laughed and laughed at how stupid the story was and how mean and nasty God was in the story. They started playing 'I caught you peeking, ZAP I turn you into salt! HAHAHA! It turned into a game of Simon-Says where if you missed an instruction you got turned into salt.'
Maybe I should show them the movie 'Saw' next, but I'll write 'Holy' on the cover to make it ok.
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What is the problem with that? Sure it can be an annoyance, but I'm not sure it would qualify as a real "problem". If kids want to fit in under some circumstances, they won't use extreme language, if that is improper. If they don't care about fitti
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But extreme language is not a question of legality, it's a question of manners. We would like kids to have manners mostly (we wouldn't like them to bow down to the next Hitler, though, but to tell him to go fuck himself). Point remaining: I don't think etreme language is that much of a problem. There might of course be an underlying problem of some anti social nature, but getting ones longjohns in a twist over the symptoms of foul language wouldn't be the correct approach any way, I think.
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Given the choice of religious snapcase Tony Abbot or Gillard with that censorious Stephen Conroy, I can forecast the upcoming Australian election with complete confidence; everybody will be disappointed.
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Is it?
I thought Apple was already censoring the App store.
Though judging by their choice of censor [reuters.com], their level of hypocrisy will match that of our Australian politicians quite nicely.
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>if you don't agree with laws please go forth and make them change. this is a democracy after all.
Aww, look. He actually thinks the system works! How quaint.
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said that, if you don't agree with laws please go forth and make them change. this is a democracy after all.
I would refer you to this profoundly insightful and informative George Carlin clip [youtube.com].
"It's a big club, and you're not in it."
This comment not safe for the sarcasm-impaired (Score:3, Insightful)
>the problem arises when the children think it's fun/cool to use that language everywhere.
What problem? If that's how they want to express themselves, let them. They're just words for gods sake...
If people don't get offended about something, how can they feign injury and use that to justify their demands that others conform to their expectations? Why, they'd have to resort to being patient and tolerant (in the true sense) and to using their counter-example to protest against whatever it is they don't like. If that happened their egos might shrink and become less inflamed with fewer high horses to mount. They might see the petty power struggles for what they are, and they might enjoy life more onc
Re:This comment not safe for 15-year-old (Score:4, Informative)
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This has nothing to do with child pornography. We have already totally debunked the governments claims that the filter is intended to block child pornography. Wikileaks even has one of the blacklists.
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This has nothing to do with child pornography.
It's the same bunch of idiots with the same moronic spiel.
Re:This comment not safe for 15-year-old (Score:4, Interesting)
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This is the iPhone we're talking about, right? What's the use of downloading apps from IRC if you can't install them?
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Morality and Intelligence are completely separate traits. Just look at history...
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Are you suggesting that people who look at child porn are intelligent? Seriously?
Anyone who is that dumb and looks at child porn has already been caught, or will be within the week.
Re:This comment not safe for 15-year-old (Score:4, Insightful)
Assuming criminals are stupid is a great way to catch fewer criminals.
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That's how I tagged this article.
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No Left 4 Dead 2? When the zombie apocalypse comes, I expect Australia to be totally wiped out. It will serve them right, too!
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This just in: Australian Government stupid. News at 11...
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Sorry but Australians are much like Americans. We can swear at each other as much as we want. We can shoot each other in the face, but for the love of god don't show any tits.
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Good grief! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Good grief! (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh we elect them alright. The problem is neither of the major parties has a full set of policies that don't suck.
- Vote Labour and there will be Internet Filtering for all!
- Vote Liberal and we no longer get the promised high speed broadband network, because apparently 'wireless is the future'.
EPIC FAIL either way...
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There is a choice, don't vote for the major parties...
Here in the USA, voting outside the Democratic Party by liberals bought George W. Bush four more years.
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I confidently predict that after the election the never ending inquiry into internet filtering will rapidly be dropped in favour of a never ending inquiry into renewable energy.
Re:Good grief! (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, it's looking likely that the Greens will probably have enough seats in the Senate to hold the balance of power in their own right.
If you want to vote for progressive parties in the Senate without the hassle of voting below the line, I strongly suggest thinking about voting for the Australian Sex Party. Their preferences flow through a variety of progressive parties (who are unlikely to achieve a quota) before going to the Greens and then Labor.
Unlike many minor parties, the ASP don't seem to feel the need to have a policy on every issue. But I find that they don't have a policy I disagree with.
http://www.sexparty.org.au/index.php [sexparty.org.au]
http://www.sexparty.org.au/index.php/policies [sexparty.org.au]
Remember - parties need to obtain 4% of the vote (I think) to get their deposit back - voting for a minor party can help them even if they don't get a seat.
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Re:Good grief! (Score:5, Interesting)
What is with the Australians? This is just the latest in a long line of this sort of shit. Is this really what the average Australian wants? Surely the Assie public is not this stupid? They do elect their politicians, don't they?
Thank god we have an election coming up in the next couple of days and neither liberal nor labor are looking to be clear winners but it looks like the greens are most certainly going to dominate in the senate so these censorship bills are going to get a serious beatdown very soon! Hopefully we won't have to deal with any of this shit ever being implemented.
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No sane person votes for the Religion First party. The only reason they've ever had -one- senate seat was due to preferencing by Labor. I guess that could conceivably happen again with the Liberals preferencing them this election, but it was enough of a fluke in the 2004 election.
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I'm not sure what's worse, the Family First party or a prime minister who got up on national television and told everyone he believes girls should remain virgins till they get married. I mean putting aside the absurdity of this, it comes from a party who previously gave monetary bonuses to people who had
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Are you really proposing girls getting pregnant out of casual sex as a way of sustaining Australia's population? I have got to say that this is one of the most call
Re:Good grief! (Score:4, Insightful)
Right, assuming by "Greens" you mean "Family First" and by "going to get a serious beatdown" you mean "actually be taken seriously and implemented". A clear win for either of the major parties is a blow to anything this stupid.
No I mean the 'Greens' - as i have written - and 'beatdown' - again as i have written. Im not sure how you could misinterpret that, seemed pretty obvious based on the words i wrote and you quoted.
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Is this really what the average Australian wants?
Of course not, and it's not what will actually happen either. There's a snowball's chance in hell that the government will form a new body to review hundreds of thousands of applications, and if they tried to lock out the app store altogether... they'd be booted at the next election. This is a publicity stunt that will lead to nothing. There are 2 parties in Australia . .. Liberal & Labour. Labour just ousted their leader, meaning that the new *female* leader (a first for Australia) is ahead in the poll
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It's an election stunt, slashdot has officially been trolled by the Australian government.
I now understand Conroy. Nobody could be that stupid. I think my head's going to explode.
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There's a snowball's chance in hell that the government will form a new body to review hundreds of thousands of applications, and if they tried to lock out the app store altogether...
Isn't that the point of the administration fee - to pay for someone else to review the app? As for them being kicked out if they tried to lock out the app store, well they're not suggesting anything they don't already do with traditional (and much bigger) game markets. If that's not sufficient to generate enough uproar to get the law overturned, what makes you think smart phone owners will have any more impact?
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This is not what the average Aussie wants. There was a petition that set the record http://bit.ly/aJuLUO [bit.ly] in Australia for the most number of supporters, for anything, ever! There was also a public debate http://bit.ly/cts8kl [bit.ly] showed 98.2% support for a higher rating from over 60,000 submissions.
The current government may well be voted out this week, but the problem is, the state attorney generals decide classification guidelines http://www.ag.gov.au/www/agd/agd.nsf/Page/Classification_policy [ag.gov.au]. And if only one
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No. Just like the rest of the democratic world, we are allowed to choose which fox we want to let in the hen-house for the next term of office. They've spent the last couple of centuries creating a two-party system with a false dichotomy, so no matter who you vote for, nothing changes.
Representative democracy (Score:2)
That's the issue with representative democracy, party politics and lobbying.
Suppose 33% of the voters support A, 30% support B, 20% support C and 17% support D
Furthermore, suppose that unrelated to this general policy choice, 90% of the voters support X.
Now, suppose that the 10% that would lose when a policy favoring X would be in place, are actually rich enough to lobby parties A, B, C, and for all it matters don't bother lobbying D. For all it matters, party D can even find a niche in actively defending X
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What's your alternative? Direct Democracy? Watch California for how much of a clusterfuck that can be. Some form of oligarchy? Read about the french revolution for the clusterfuck that that was. Monarchy? Benevolent dictator? Really, I'm all ears. I know how much Democracy sucks, but as Churchill (?) said - it's the worst political system there is, except for all the others. I'd love to hear a good alternative.
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Did I propose any system that was better? Churchill was pretty much spot on.
But if you want a direct democracy that works, forget about Cali and go to Switzerland.
Re:Good grief! (Score:5, Insightful)
What is with the Americans? PATRIOT, revocation of habeus corpus, free speech zones, a prison population 5-10 times that of *any* other western nation... even 2257? Is this really what the average American wants? Surely the Yank public is not this stupid? They do elect their politicians, don't they?
Or we could go across the pond to where it's the House of Lords, of all things, that is standing up for human rights by beating down unprinicipled legislation submitted by the House of Commons.
Yeah, it's all "those crazy people in Australia". No-one else has whackos. At least our major politicians don't have to mention God in every. damned. speech. Next time you see any quality of life measure, have a look to see which nation is usually nestled under the Scandanavian countries which top the list - it's not the US, nor the UK. But no, you go dwell happily in your caricature that we're weird and repressed.
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What is with the Americans? PATRIOT, revocation of habeus corpus, free speech zones, a prison population 5-10 times that of *any* other western nation... even 2257? Is this really what the average American wants? Surely the Yank public is not this stupid? They do elect their politicians, don't they?
Yeah, well... Umm... At least we have the most violent video games available without much real restrictions... Most Americans don't know how to say "habeus corpus", let alone what it means... But *BY GOD* we have Grand Theft Auto with fucking HOOKERS and MACHINE GUNS...
Re:Good grief! (Score:4, Insightful)
Just don't show the hooker's tits!
Re:Good grief! (Score:5, Insightful)
At least I can watch free-to-air TV in Australia that is not limited to what is appropriate for a 12 year old. You can say "fuck" or show naked people (including nipples!) on FTA TV in Australia after 9:30pm. I'm pretty sure you could even get away with "cunt".
All countries have some fucked up stuff. The US allows all kinds of violence on FTA TV, but not a hint of sex, swearing or (god forbid) blaspheming. Australia doesn't have an 18+ rating for computer games, and has a government that wants to introduce ubiquitous high-speed broadband (yay!) and a very broad (and technically useless) internet filter (boo!).
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You can do that.
Hell, you could even flash a nipple during the AFL grand final (largest sporting event in the nation) and not hear a single word of protest. Unlike during the superbowl.
Have you ever watched Australian TV, compared to American
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I recently spent about 6 months in Australia, after having spent months in the US, a couple years in the UK, France, but also time in the Ukraine, Belgium, the Netherlands, and so on.
By far, Australia has one of the most "nanny-state" governments around. Maybe I just visited at a wrong time, maybe the politicians were really trying to make an impression or something, but good grief. This being said, in my experience, what the politicians are trying to do doesn't really reflect the view of most medium-class
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By far, Australia has one of the most "nanny-state" governments around.
Sorry you had to watch our TV. I don't. Can you give me some specific examples to back up your assertion?
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I suspect that, on average, Australia is a lot less prudish than (for example) the USA. Our national broadcaster's "Youth radio station [abc.net.au]" for example frequently plays songs with swear words in them, including "fuck", though I think "cunt" is still "out of bounds [wikipedia.org]" despite some more recent attempts and discussion [smh.com.au].
As for why some parts of our government occasionally seem to get on their high horse, this song from last nights TV probably explains it best [youtube.com].
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Is this really what the average Australian wants? Surely the Assie public is not this stupid?
No and no. The problem is that just like in any other western democracy internet issues tend to be more of a sideshow. People focus on the economy, healthcare and education. This allows fuckwit politicians to sneak in these laws once elected.
Still, even though Labor's likely to win the election this week, there'll be a big swing to the Greens. Add that to the fact that the Liberals (conservatives) have said they'll
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Australia is a penal colony the British Empire shipped its worst troublemakers to - you know, the people who even the American Puritans refused to take. When a maximum security prison is run by the inmates, what do you expect - justice?
Australian Government - By the Criminals, For the Criminals!
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With an election coming up, the Labor party is likely to win a second term, but is unlikely to win by a large margin. Since Labor is directing preferences to the greens (who will oppose the suggested legislation), Labor can safely curry favor with the sort of people who support censorship without the risk of having to follow through. All they have to do after the election is blame the Greens when they are unable to keep their promise.
What's even better is that since most opponents of censorship are more l
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The cost of seeking classification amounts to de facto censorship. Having to throw down upwards of $470 is not a trivial cost for small-scale developers. I'd imagine as well that there'll be delays in publishing.
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Perhaps you missed the part about games being effectively banned completely if the state deems them inappropriate for a 15 year old
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I grew up in and used to live in South Australia. Considering the "tough on crime" and other nanny-state approaches the state government has, I'd put it down to the government playing on various ignorant people within the population. Also they've had a Labor state government for a while because last time the Liberals were in they either severely neglected or privatized public services and property.
I'm pretty sure there are many people there, and in fact in every state in Australia who are sick of the two ma
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I don't think the nickname for Adelaide (The capital of South Australia), "The City of Churches" is a coincidence.
Many of their working age people are off in different states. They return to die, hence the thriving funeral industry.
regulatory capture (Score:5, Insightful)
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No, this isn't regulatory capture by competitors, if you've been paying attention, Australia's been having problems with censorship for several years now. Somehow the religious faction has gotten a strong hold on part
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From the people who find cartoons pornographic. (Score:2)
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Your signature so succinctly shows how we ended up with Australia as a country to begin with.
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Obviously the average Aussie is too drunk and/or lazy to actually to anything about it.
What's the point? (Score:2, Interesting)
We have an election coming up.. (Score:5, Informative)
Basically:
If the liberals/nationals coalition gets in, we are all kinds of fucked (they have become the religious extreme with their preferences going straight to the Christian Democratic Party and Family First after themselves)
If labor gets in again - we get the only visionary policy any of the politicians have to offer - the National Broadband Network, but they saddle it with filtering, censorship and the lack of an R+18 classification for games.
So the only decent vote left is the Australian Sex Party - which is a civil libertarian group who are anti-censorship, pro same sex marriage and also want to remove the tax exempt status for religious organisations.
Next election we will hopefully have the Australian Pirate party fully formed to be able to run a candidate.
This election is really a case of trying to pick a candidate that is the least awful.
Ugh
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so the only chance the politicians have to get any votes is to peddle to the few % of extreemist that do. It is the tragedy of democracy
G
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This election is really a case of trying to pick a candidate that is the least awful
C'mon its always like that.
Relax people (Score:3, Insightful)
None of all these things have come to pass.
They come up with them, the realise they don't work, and they let them go.
No better way to learn, it is the process of making laws.
What is an iPhone app ? They only reason they are attacking, is because they are contained by apple.
What next, webapps ? Android and HTML5 and FLASH will make them indistinguishable to a normal app.
I would much rather they try and get it out of their system, than winge for ever
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uh huh. Tell that to Blizzard.. they were delivering unclassified games through Steam and got the same smackdown from the Australian government. It's literally about keeping the fees running into the classification board. You think they aint gunna go after every possible source of income?
Oz border agency to search iPhones ? (Score:2)
Will that also apply to someone bringing in a Linux install CD that may have some games [ubuntu.com] on it ?
Fun and games at Oz airports!
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Re:Oz border agency to search iPhones ? (Score:4, Informative)
You might be joking, but they are already doing it for pornography [smh.com.au].
Along with the standard "did you spend time in agricultural regions" and "are you carrying more than $10,000 cash" is a question about whether travellers are carrying pornography. Not just child porn or videos intended for redistribution in the country, but any porn whatsoever, including your honeymoon snaps. Privacy isn't really something that is taken quite seriously by successive Australian governments. The one we end up with on Saturday won't be any different, regardless of who wins, but at least it looks likely the Greens will hold the balance of power and keep whoever wins accountable.
Re:Oz border agency to search iPhones ? (Score:4, Funny)
Oz immigration officer: Do you have any criminal convictions?
Brit wit: No, I didn't realise they were still necessary entry requirements.
too much government (Score:2)
When society creates too much government, it has nowhere to go but down. The economy will have nowhere to go but down.
It's because there are too many people, who become leeches on society, they are unproductive, they don't do anything useful and they start coming up with justifications for their own existence and leeching, they don't do anything useful anymore, they are just parasites.
Government is a parasite of society - produces nothing, takes away everything it possibly can.
Seems like a waste of a step (Score:2)
What does Apple think? (Score:2)
In Brazil is the same (Score:5, Informative)
Brazil has the same rules since the start, hence in Brazil the appStore does not carry any games.
What people do here is to have accounts in other countries, usually Argentina. Then the country looses the taxes...
Since taxes are outrageously high for video games in Brazil, this is probably better for the costumers here.
What's next? (Score:5, Funny)
Mick Dundee wept (Score:3, Interesting)
How did Australia devolve from the cool tough guys of Gallipoli/"That's not a knife" to this bunch of pussies?
Re:Yet another reason not to get an IPhone (Score:5, Informative)
This has nothing at all to do with Apple, it applies to any mobile app. So even if you have android, the developers who want to sell apps in Australia will have to pay to have their apps (well, games) rated.
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It's election time guys, have your say. This is rediculous.
The idea that they would try this blue me away!