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.”

While Italy’s laws are a lot different than ours and there’s a lot of European bad will toward Google, imagine if this inspires new laws here. Impossible? The music and movie industries are trying hard to get other country’s extreme anti-piracy laws here. Pay the right politicians the right amount of money and…

On Wednesday an Italian judge delivered a stunning verdict in a long standing case against Google. The ruling sentenced three top Google executives — David Drummond, senior vice president and chief legal officer; George Reyes, former chief financial officer; and Peter Fleischer, chief privacy counsel — to a prison sentence of six months for violating privacy laws. A fourth employee, marketing executive Arvind Desikan, was found not guilty.
[...]
Despite the fact that the verdicts is largely a symbolic gesture, it represents a serious threat to the current way the internet is structured. To understand this, you must explore the case first.

Google describes the incident that started the case, writing, “In late 2006, students at a school in Turin, Italy filmed and then uploaded a video to Google Video that showed them bullying an autistic schoolmate.”

Vivi Down Association, an advocacy group for people with Downs syndrome, complained about the video a couple months later to Italian authorities. Google went out of its way to try to cooperate with them. It took down the video immediately. [...] Despite that cooperation, Italian prosecutors decided to take the bizarre step of next charging a handful of Google executives for “allowing” the video to be uploaded.
[...]
The stunning verdict sets an alarming precedent. The decision, if upheld, threatens the freedom of having blogs, video sharing sites, internet hosting, Wiki pages, news sites with comments sections and virtually any other kind of user generated or user interactive content, for fear of criminal prosecution if users misbehave.

The giants of the film industry have lost their case against ISP iiNet in a landmark judgement handed down in the Federal Court today.

The decision had the potential to impact internet users and the internet industry profoundly as it sets a legal precedent surrounding how much ISPs are required to do to prevent customers from downloading movies and other content illegally.

But after an on-and-off eight-week trial that examined whether iiNet authorised customers to download pirated movies, Justice Dennis Cowdroy found that the ISP was not liable for the downloading habits of its customers.

In a summary of his 200-page judgement read out in court this morning, Justice Cowdroy said the evidence established that iiNet had done no more than to provide an internet service to its users.

He found that, while iiNet had knowledge of infringements occurring and did not act to stop them, such findings did not necessitate a finding of authorisation.

He said an ISP such as iiNet provided a legitimate communication facility, which was neither intended nor designed to infringe copyright.

He said it was only by means of the application of the BitTorrent system that copyright infringements were enabled, but iiNet had no control over this system.

“iiNet is not responsible if an iiNet user uses that system to bring about copyright infringement … the law recognises no positive obligation on any person to protect the copyright of another,” Justice Cowdroy said.

Common sense prevails. Whoda thunk it!

UPDATE : Some interesting elements extracted from the judgement can be found here.

At a UN-sponsored Internet Governance Forum in Egypt, anti-censorship group Open Net Initiative was startled by a demand from UN officials to remove a poster mentioning Chinese Net censorship. When ONI refused the request, security personnel arrived and took away the poster. The group was promoting a new book, Access Controlled, a survey of Internet censorship, filtering, and online surveillance. A witness said, “The poster was thrown on the floor and we were told to remove it because of the reference to China and Tibet. We refused, and security guards came and removed it. The incident was witnessed by many.”