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CI 2522 L Green 5 December 2011 National Classification Review Submission by Lelia Green, PhD Professor of Communications, Edith Cowan University, Western Australia Co- Chief Investigator, ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI) International Advisory Panel EU Kids Online I (2006-9) and III (2011-14) Lead author, AU Kids Online (2011, with Dr Danielle Brady, Mr Kjartan Ólafsson, Professor John Hartley, Professor Catharine Lumby), QUT: CCI Correspondence to: Professor Lelia Green School of Communications and Arts Edith Cowan University 270 Joondalup Drive JOONDALUP WA 6027 [email protected] Thank you for including me in the initial round of consultations leading to the National Classification Scheme Review (Discussion Paper) (ALRC 2011, p. 234). I have enjoyed engaging with this important work and have pleasure in responding to the four questions raised in the Discussion Paper in the following terms. Question 7.1 Should the Classification of Media Content Act provide that all media content likely to be X18+ may be classified by either the Classification Board or an authorised industry classifier? In Chapter 6, the ALRC proposes that all content likely to be X18+ must be classified. I would argue that media content likely to be classified X18+ should be able to be classified by an authorised industry classifier. The existence of an authorised industry classifier would go some way to lessen the burden of classification upon the Regulator and, at the same time, removes the uncertainty of timelines and scheduling for the producer. It can be assumed that the existence of authorised industry classifiers will promote an ongoing dialogue between media producers and their authorised industry classifier around classification issues. Question 7.2 Should classification training be provided only by the Regulator or should it become a part of the Australian Qualifications Framework? If the latter, what may be the best roles for the Board, higher education institutions, and private providers, and who may be best placed to accredit and audit such courses? Classification training should become a part of the Australian Qualifications Framework, able to be provided by both higher education institutions and private providers. While theses institutions are subject to their own regulatory and audit mechanisms, both internal and external, the Regulator should accredit and audit these courses. Question 8.1 Should Australian content providers—particularly broadcast television—continue to be subject to time-zone restrictions that prohibit screening certain media content at particular times of the day? For example, should free-to-air television continue to be prohibited from broadcasting MA15+ content before 9pm? Given that the important issue here is Guiding Principle (3), that children should be protected from material likely to harm or disturb them, time-zone restrictions should be lifted as soon as it can be confidently assumed that parental locks and technological restrictions can replace these to keep children safe. It should be noted here that the exemption rightly afforded to news and current affairs means that children may be regularly exposed to unsettling material; while issues around children’s access to adult content on the internet, DVDs, magazines, etc entails active engagement by parents across a range of media in keeping their child safe. Extensive research in Australia and overseas (EU Kids Online and AU Kids Online, both attached) have indicated that many of the experiences and much of the content that unsettles and disturbs children is user-generated, often by the child’s peers. Thus Australian children ranked as the group of children most likely to be bothered by their online experiences when comparing Australian children’s responses with the responses of children from 25 other countries. However, this overall ranking reflects the relatively high positioning of response by Australian children in a number of specific categories. The areas in which Australian children were most likely to say they were bothered were: misuse of personal data (second in 26 countries); exposure to online bullying (3/26); seeing sexual images (4/26); and engaging with potentially harmful user-generated content such as suicide promotion material, anorexia and bulimia support sites, hate sites etc (6/26). Of these, seeing sexual images and potentially harmful user-generated content are most likely to be addressed by Classification standards. The AU Kids Online report has received extensive media coverage since its release at the beginning of November, and some of this is outlined in the file attached (AUkidsMedia11). Also based on the AU Kids Online report, and concentrating upon responding to children’s needs, I made a belated submission to the Convergence Review. This may have been too late to be accepted but it is attached here. Question 12.1 How should the complaints-handling function of the Regulator be framed in the new Classification of Media Content Act? For example, should complaints be able to be made directly to the Regulator where an industry complaints- handling scheme exists? What discretion should the Regulator have to decline to investigate complaints? Where content must be classified by the Classification Board, complaints handling should be by the Regulator. Where classification is not required to be classified by the Classification Board, complaints handling should be by the industry complaints-handling scheme in the first instance and should only progress to the Regulator after those avenues have been exhausted or if the complaint has not been resolved within a specified time frame. In terms of the opportunity presented by this review to address the issue of the Refused Classification category and the possibility of a mandatory filter at the level of the Internet Service Provider, I support the restriction of Refused Classification to materials that are actually illegal and attach my co-authored submission to the Refused Classification Review, Untangling the Net. Attachments: AU Kids Online media coverage (AUkidsMedia11) AU Kids Online (AUkidsOnlineFinal) Classification Review Submission (ClassificationReview11) Convergence Review, Lelia Green’s submission (possibly unpublished) (ConvergenceReview11) EU Kids Online Final Report (Final report) Untangling the Net: the scope of content caught by mandatory internet filtering, submission to the Refused Classification Review by Professors Catharine Lumby, Lelia Green and John Hartley (LumbyGreenHartleyFeb10) References: ALRC (2011). National Classification Scheme Review (Discussion Paper), Australian Law Reform Commission, September, available from: http://www.alrc.gov.au/sites/default/files/pdfs/publications/dp_77_whole_pdf_. pdf (accessed November 12 2011) This e-mail is confidential. If you are not the intended recipient you must not disclose or use the information contained within. If you have received it in error please return it to the sender via reply e-mail and delete any record of it from your system. The information contained within is not the opinion of Edith Cowan University in general and the University accepts no liability for the accuracy of the information provided. CRICOS IPC 00279B Untangling the Net: The Scope of Content Caught By Mandatory Internet Filtering Professor Catharine Lumby, Journalism and Media Research Centre, University of New South Wales Professor Lelia Green, Edith Cowan University Professor John Hartley, ARC Centre for Creative Industries and Innovation, Queensland University of Technology i Table of Contents Executive Summary .................................................................................................................... i Key Findings ..……………………………………………………………………………….. ii 1.0 Introduction ......…………………………………………………………………… 1 1.1 Background .................................................................................................................. 1 1.2 Research Questions ...................................................................................................... 1 1.3 Methodology ................................................................................................................ 1 1.4 Internet Filtering Terminology ..................................................................................... 2 1.5 Structure of the Report ................................................................................................. 2 1.6 Media Content Regulation in Australia ……………………………………………... 3 2.0 The Scope of Filtered Content ....................................................................................... 6 2.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 6 2.2 Current Government Policy: Ministerial Statements .................................................... 6 2.3 The ACMA Blacklist ………………………………………………………...…… .... 7 2.4 Online content regulation: the treatment of X and RC material .................................. 11 2.5 Transparency and the Right to Appeal …….……………………………………….. 14 3.0 International Practice of Internet Filtering ………………………………………... 15 3.1 Europe ......................................................................................................................... 15 3.1.1 Great Britain ................................................................................................................ 16 3.1.2 Germany .....................................................................................................................