“Penal colony” wasn’t a slam against Australia, it was a swipe at Conroy and his goons. From what I’ve read, that’s HIS vision of Australia; a country of people who can’t be trusted, but whose communications must be carefully filtered to insure that they’re not up to anything naughty. And obviously, any virtual world where nasty stuff could potentially be discussed (or, gasp, even enacted) without filters can’t be permitted.

I’m especially not slamming Australians for electing this nutjob, because the US elects very similar nutjobs all the time. The “protect the children!” cry echoes down the halls of Congress on a regular basis, and nobody wants to be the big bad ogre that hates children.

So far the “save the children” scams in the US have been shot down, either by the legislature or the courts. But the only guarantee that they won’t gain traction is the constant vigilance of people devoted to preserving our Constitutional liberties.

Bring it on, I say. So far only a few relatively forgettable games have been refused classification. But if Conroy tries to take our WoWcrack the screaming will be heard for miles, and maybe finally something will change.

I’ve just posted about this travesty over on my blog. The post is called Slouching Towards the Nanny-State.

The problem is, with respect to Rob, that it IS an issue of censorship. Currently adults can get around the problem of unrated games by ordering them from overseas or by downloading them online. In a free society there is nothing wrong with that, provided it doesn’t break any laws. (And it doesn’t as the laws governing pornography (not the child kind) are based around distribution, not ownership).

The internet filter that Conroy is proposing blocks websites based on a secret blacklist that only the govt knows about. Ostensibly it’s supposed to be to prevent child porn, but it is slowly being expanded to include other content that the govt considers illegal.

The crazy thing is that this could even be used to block a childrens webgame developed in another countrie AND classified under that countrys system simply because those games aren’t classified in Oz.

It’s heading towards the situation where they might as well block everything and just white-list what they consider appropriate.

The issue here is NOT censorship. The issue is an out of date classification system that never needed to classify video games because, once upon a time, they didn’t exist at all. Then, in their early days, they were never classified (remember the Atari and Intellivision days?) and, as time went on, they were classified up to the equivalent of MA15+, which was considered “enough”. In the past decade, games have become more violent and more sexual, but the classification system hasn’t changed to reflect that. So the games aren’t “banned” — they are unclassifiable. So what is happening now is a move to get the classification upgraded to better reflect today’s games, but one state attorney general, who appears to be a complete prude, is blocking the whole thing. So, please, all you fold out there making comments about penal colonies without actually knowing what’s going on: can it. We classify everything else, books, magazines, DVDs, etc, up to R in every state (and that’s a higher level of R than in the US), and in our two territories, stuff clasified as X can be bought as well. So we’re hardly out of the loop, or prudish as a nation.

If true, it’s boneheaded. I dont think Australia bans books and movies intended for ages 15+, do they?

Yes, we do. The OFLC laws are federally based. So in order to change them, it requires all the states’ Attorney to pass it. South Australia currently will not pass any change to allow a 15+ rating for games. So as of now all 15+ games are refused classification (RC) in Australia. That means they are currently illegal…. the same as child porn or rape films.

So any online game would need to be classified by OFLC before being allowed to be played.

Once a penal colony, always a penal colony? I expect this will further invigorate the thriving Australian black market, in their cheerfully defiant campaign to give Nanny the finger. The scary part is that these thugs are democratically elected. Don’t say it can’t happen here; it can and will if we don’t keep our guard up.