Source: news.com.au article - 02 February 2010
I would venture to say that anyone who posts here about next month’s election in SA would be subject to that law according to the article.
The Straight Dope wouldn’t be bound to provide real names and postal codes of people debating Australian politics here, right? They’re not an Australian company; and we could always pretend that the people debating aren’t actually Australians.
So nanny nanny boo boo, piece of shit South Australian Electoral Commissioner! You suck, and so does next month’s election!
– DrCube, anonymous internet debater
Of course, now that he realizes it is unpopular (
who would have thunk?), Attorney-General Atkinson vows to repeal the law after the election. :rolleyes: You mean grossly stifling political speech is unpopular? :eek: What is the world coming to?
That may not stop the South Australian DA with making the attempt to identify names and addresses of those who post comments here. Having lived in Australia, including South Australia, it would not surprise me in the least if the DA attempted it, be it here, Facebook or any other web site. The Australian government bureaucratic mind often lives in a world outside of reality.
That may not stop the South Australian DA with making the attempt to identify names and addresses of those who post comments here. Having lived in Australia, including South Australia, it would not surprise me in the least if the DA attempted it, be it here, Facebook or any other web site. The Australian government bureaucratic mind often lives in a world outside of reality.
I think this may be intended for** Cesario** rather than me. I hope.
Anarchy is preferable to the alternative in that case.
It happens.
I’m aware of that. As I said, I rail against the failures of my own country quite often.
Perhaps this will help:
By omission, this section:
Rather strongly indicates that nonaliens are not subject to these penalties.
We are a country that was founded by armed revolutionaries. Said armed revolutionaries wrote at length about when violent revolution is justified in our Declaration of Independence and a number of supporting doccuments, and they enshrined in our constitution provisions ensuring that the populice would not be disarmed by the government.
Thank you.
Sorry Cicero.
Cesario, spot on we never have had a war on our soil except for a few skirmishes and WW2 when we got bombed in Darwin. That might explain why Darwinites appear to be more pro gun than anywhere else in Australia.
Whilst I understand that some may see anarchy as preferable, I am yet to see an anarchaic state that functions anywhere near peak effectiveness in terms of human rights etc.
Not true. We have no government boards or laws that decide what may or may not be published in any medium whatsoever, more do we have any government board whatsoever that rated materials so that purchasers may know in advance the content of material.
Your country has all of this
We also do not have a government sanctioned firewall that bans topics in some protocols, and makes the list of banned sites illegal to publish
Your country bans the list and is seriously close to implementing the firewall.
Perhaps you are not allowed a true picture of what free speech in the US actually is whence inside Australia? How can you really know for sure?
Apparently you are not aware of an entire genre of erotica which purports on the surface to be high minded descriptions about other erotica, the sex life of this taboo group or that…
I will give you a specific example, although there are many that are far more benign than this - you tell me if this one is banned in your country or not:
“Philosophy of the Bedroom” by de Sade.
I will tell you it is quite legal here, for comparison purposes.
Not true.
No movies are banned here due to content. Possible exceptions might fall into national security claims, but those would be very narrow exceptions and sure to be challenged strongly f such a claim were made.
Quite simply, there is no “banned movies” list in the United States.
You need to do a little research before you make claims like that.
The Federal government in the U.S. doesn’t ban books, movies, or whatever, but individual state, county, and city governments can and do.
There are Federal laws about rating television and videogame content, and the FCC absolutely does censor what can and can’t appear on broadcast television.
Your government censors what you can read and view and hear.
Maybe you shouldn’t trust what gets through about OUR government.
There are no state or local censorship boards. IIRC the last one was in Maryland and it disbanded while I was in college in the early 1980s, after about 15-20 years as fodder for filmmaker John Waters.
Whatever rating exists is done by industry organizations voluntarily, for music, film, video, games, whatever.
There is NO prior restraint on publishing in any medium whatsoever in the US, the narrow exceptions being intellectual property related, and state secret related. Pretty much anything else is going to get you a trial to determine if the materail, already distributed, falls afoul of obscenity laws, but there are not really any hard and fast rules there either, they are judged on a case by case basis after they are published, not before.
See the difference?
Dude, his government IS your government :smack:.
Apparently not 
I missed that one before, so for completeness’ sake.
The FCC does NOT do prior censoring, it merely regulates.
What is the difference you might ask?
Prior censoring means there is a review, PRIOR to broadcast (or whatever as the medium may require) by a government agency that decides whether or not that item may be broadcast.
I was surprised to learn in this thread that Australia has many such agencies across many media.
I was even more surprised to learn that our Australian correspondents here are mostly either for it or neutral.
In the US, it is pretty common knowledge I thought, that to radio stations and TV broadcasters , who are subject to FCC regulations, do NOT submit material for prior approval, and that the FCC generally only acts on a large series of complaints, followed by hearings, long after the material is out there.
The Janet Jackson Super Bowl incident is a good example. Similarly, sometimes at sporting events, the crowd might start to chant expletives, and the mic picks it up. The FCC can not and does not man the dump button, even assuming the event is on delay with a dump button in the first place.
It is the threat of license renewal and fines that keeps people in line and willing to obey regulations. Some stations skirt the line pretty heavily, perhaps assuming that in so doing, they will earn enough money to pay the fines and then some to make it worth it.
Maybe that is not all common knowledge, and people in the US think that all programming is approved by government censors? These days, nothing would surprise me what the American public thinks - anyone here know anyone that thinks that about programs and censor?
Another potentially interesting link for readers of this thread. link This one is about Google refusing requests to censor youtube videos in Australia.
Take a look at the “location” at the upper right of the post you replied to. I live in Montana, U.S.A. Mi gobierno es tu gobierno (English translation: “my government is your government”).
That’s all fine and dandy, but it has nothing to do with what I said. I give talks every year in schools about censorship of books (go to the American Library Association website and look at the “Banned Book Week” pages). School boards, cities, counties, and states can and have banned books. This is censorship by local government; it is not covered under our First Amendment because it isn’t the Federal Government.
I know this one, too. I served on one of the television technical standards committees, and we had to deal with the government-mandated implementation of the V-chip, which is a rating system for television content. It is not voluntary.
I never said “prior restraint.” Censorship doesn’t have to happen before-the-fact. Most of the time, in fact, it happens afterwards.
I understand completely, and have no need to ask. The FCC sets rules in advance concerning what’s allowed, and punishes violations of those rules.
You’ve set up a lovely bunch of arguments, not_alice, but none of them correctly address what I said.
What are your thoughts on the Supremacy Clause?
All charged with, and doing, very little. You seem to have formed this view that Australia is subject to heavy censorship, based on quite simply nothing. Your view on this does not seem to be one amenable to evidence. A few posts ago you were, in all seriousness apparently, telling us that maybe we didn’t know about the US’s lack of censorship due to Australian censorship. This is laughable. You just don’t seem prepared to take any notice at all of the very limited extent of censorship here. In fact, as it turns out, as **Gary **explains, you know less about US censorship than I do.
So the fact that US has censorship is somehow OK because of this?
The industry that I have the most to do with used to work on a regulated system: it was OK to do unless the government told you beforehand it wasn’t. About ten years ago this industry moved to “self regulation” which is where you have to decide if what you are doing is OK, and if the government decides afterwards it wasn’t OK you are subject to heavy penalties. The latter is much more restrictive in practice, because people self regulate more heavily out of fear.
And I say this as someone who thinks Australia has too much censorship: even those on your side think your position is silly.
In general, or as it applies to freedom of speech?
(Disclaimers: The following are–as requested–my thoughts. I am neither a lawyer, nor a Constitutional scholar. I speak only for myself here, not as a moderator or representative of the Straight Dope.)
Assuming the latter, it really isn’t applicable to state or local-level censorship. The first amendment specifically states that “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech.” Congress has, indeed, made no such law, and there is no Federal law that a state or municipality violates when it inhibits freedom of expression. Thus, state-level censorship does not violate the Supremacy Clause.
The Chicago Reader is well within its rights to say, “you may never mention slow lorises on the SDMB.” Your local school district may rule that no books including pictures of marmosets having sex may appear in the school libraries. Your city may pass an ordinance prohibiting the sale of magazines with gerbils on the cover. None of these things violate United States law.
While I agree that private citizens should have right of suppression (e.g., if I don’t want to sell astrology books in my bookstore, you shouldn’t be able to force me to), I abhor the concept of local governments engaging in censorship.
Does that answer the question?