Australian government launches “e-democracy” “blog” whilst trying to censor the internets

The unfortunately acronymed Australian government department DBCDE is currently running what it calls a “future directions blog” inviting comments on the digital economy here. It’s really more of a website with the ability to comment; it has a moderation policy and a terms of use agreement, is written in a formal and anonymous official kill-speak and is generally quite unbloglike.

The idea seems to basically be using the internet as a sped-up, internet-capable version of a regular senate inquiry: calling for submissions from the public on an issue, then writing a report on it, then being ignored by the government of the day. That’s all fine, it just isn’t a Blogolution or anything profoundly different.

I’m not sure that there’s a real future in this e-democracy caper at all. To mangle an old quote, the best argument against e-democracy is a five minute conversation with the average blogger. Regardless, I suppose this is a good thing. In theory, it shows a willingness to use the medium to get public comment, but of course questions remain about whether any of this will get listened to, at all, given other actions by the government of late.

The real problem is that this comes simultaneously with a ludicrously draconian, ill-thought-out, useless, MANDATORY internet filter plan so over-the-top that everyone in the IT industry is against it, the Greens and conservative opposition are against it, along with most other people except some church and family groups which want to filter things like gambling and pornography too. And of course the minister responsible keeps equating opponents with child pornography advocates. Of course. However, even some children’s groups are against what is, ostensibly, supposed to combat child pornography. The Electronic Frontiers Australia group is the centre of the fight against it, this is a good summary of exactly what is being proposed and implemented.

So of course, the first “blog” “post”, a ministerial welcome, immediately got innundated by hundreds of comments attacking the filter proposal. I suppose that it’s good that they’re being published, at least.

This “clean feed” is hardly the only example of draconian attempts to regulate and censor the internet in Australia of course. We have a proud history of having some of the strictest laws in the western world on issues of censorship and technology – videogames and movies can be, and are, banned here, there’s no right to fair use so digitially copying your own music is technically illegal. In two recent incidents involving the judicial system, Queensland police have been attempting to charge people for reposting a Youtube video of a man swinging a baby, and a NSW judge charged somebody for possessing animated Simpsons porn.

Maybe if the “clean feed” gets defeated I’ll start to take the pretensions of “e-democracy” a little more seriously, but at the moment what is striking about the DCBDEDCBE’s “blog” is that this clean, filtered, sanitised version of a weblog seems to fit perfectly with the vision of a regulated, monitored, controlled internet this country’s government and law enforcement seem to want.