The Australian Human Rights Commission has threatened legal action against a widely read but controversial US-based website over an article that encourages racial hatred against Aborigines.

But online users’ lobby group Electronic Frontiers Australia said that trying to stamp out the deplorable content would only create the “Streisand” effect, whereby an attempt to censor online content only brings more attention to it.

In a letter to Joseph Evers, the owner of Encyclopedia Dramatica (ED) – a more shocking version of Wikipedia that contains racist and other offensive articles dubbed as “satire” – the commission said it had received 20 complaints from Aborigines over the “Aboriginal” page on the site.

The same page was in the news in January when, in a rare move, Google Australia agreed to remove links to the article from its search engine following legal action from Aboriginal man Steve Hodder-Watt.

On the Australian Communication and Media Authority’s blacklist of “refused classification” websites, which was leaked in March last year, encyclopediadramatica.com was included. This means the entire site will most likely be blocked under the government’s forthcoming internet filtering plan.

This website entry for aborigines really is unfunny degrading racist shite, but censorship is not the answer. I note that the gutless article didn’t link to the offending page. The equally gutless federal government is sure to use this as more fodder for their web filtering campaign.

UPDATE : I had a conversation with a sysop from ED after they banned me for a comment critical of that page. Here’s a couple of direct quotes.

“I agree that the Aboriginal article is crap, and it needs improvement. There are big changes coming for it soon, I promise, but at the moment, it’s creating a lot of drama in Australia so it has to stay as it is. However the general theme of taking the piss out of Aboriginals must stay.”

“With over 8000 articles, and only forty sysops, its hard to keep quality control on all pieces.

We’ve made our bed, and now we have to sleep in it, however the last thing we want to do is bow to pressure from interest groups or governments and modify the article.

As I’ve said, watch this space and you’ll see a, what I hope to be, funnier iteration of the [[Aboriginal]] article.”