HAM433 Week Four Blog Response: Convergence and Regulation

This is a comment to the article written in The Australian about regulation needing to catch up with current technology. Other comments can be found here.

I think that the film and game classification system should be extended to the internet. There are currently filter programs available for parent that can block sites not safe for kids. Unfortunately this relies on the developer of the software maintaining a list of unsafe sites. All websites in Australia should have a rating embedded in the page that can be read by the web browser. This way any Australian site can be self-censoring.

Another issue with website regulation is that the Internet is international. Only the country that the website host resides can remove an offensive site. Something that is legal in one country can be seen in a country where that content is illegal. In Australia the law varies in each state as to what happens when people view illegal material. Victorian law considers a crime to be committed in the place where person is viewing the material. Other regions believe the crime is committed in the place where the website is hosted.