Submission to Senate Committee on Online Regulation

Matthew Arnison
April 30, 1999

I am writing a personal submission about online regulation as a
professional scientist, a recent memory of being a teenager, and a
community media volunteer. I see the proposed bill as an exercise in
centralised government censorship of the internet in Australia. I will
argue that centralised internet censorship will severely impact my ability
to do scientific research. I will also argue that internet access for
teenagers is far more likely to solve social problems than create them.
Finally I argue that centralised censorship will drastically reduce free
speech and diversity online.

Along with my knowledge in science, youth, and community media from the
roles I mention above, I also carry a deep understanding of the technology
of the internet. I have been using it extensively since 1991, ranging
across all its features, and have also had several years experience
teahing others how to use it, and forming and facillitating communities
online. This extensive experience informs my comments on the social
implications of the internet. 

Along with this, since 1995 I have been heavily involved in the technical
side of setting up internet networks and internet servers. I have
established new networks on the internet, web servers, email servers,
domain names, online databases, mailing lists, and much more, carrying out
all the necessary component tasks. Much of this has been informed by my
study of the a wide cross section of the core internet standards. This
deep experience informs my comments on the effect of centralised
censorship on internet technology.

* The Internet - a global scientific community

Since gaining my degree in physics, I have worked for five years as a
professional scientist. I have published refereed journal papers in
international journals, and presented my work at international
conferences. In addition to this extensive physical and offline media
communication, I have seen the vital importance of the internet to working
as part of the international scientific community.

Many of the students we attract to our group find us via the internet. We have
daily interactions with international scientific collaborators by email. On the
web, we can post fresh results, and draft journal papers. Our group stays in
touch day by day with the topical scientific challenges in our specialised
field using email discussion lists.

In this I am not unusual for a scientific researcher. The internet has
become our bread and butter, for ultimately science does not progress in a
vacuum. In fact I would argue the internet has been an enourmous advantage
to Australian scientists in overcoming the tyranny of distance from global
scientific circles.

Now I hear that is about to change. Under government plans, the Australian
internet is to be quarantined from the rest of the global internet, and
internally lobotomised.

I am not referring to the superficial restriction and removal of R, X and RC
rated content. I am talking about the implied impact on the technology itself.
The internet has decentralisation at the core of its technological design.
There is no way to centralise censorship without losing this technological
decentralisation, and this will have serious, if not fatal, side effects on the
Australian internet. It will particularly attack the ability of citizens to
autonomously decide what to publish online and what to read. So serious that it
could no longer be called the internet any longer, as it would violate the
international internet standards.

The resulting degradation in the performance, reliability and usefulness of the
internet will affect my ability to work as a modern scientist. I have outlined
how both reading and writing web pages is a daily part of my research work. I
would be cutoff from this vital scientific communication tool that researchers
in other countries have ready access to. This would apply to all other
scientists in Australia, and will lead to many more of our brightest talents
leaving to work on more enlightened shores, and to a severe damping of
Australia's excellent capacity for scientific innovation.

Commodity prices are going down. The time is nigh when Australia must learn to
live on its wits, rather than selling its soil. Centralised censorship is the
kind of intellectual vandalism that will set us back even further in our global
prospects.

* Youth suicide, and how to help prevent it

Now I don't know if you noticed, but an increasing number of teenagers are
killing themselves. In fact, isn't our teenage suicide rate one of the highest
in the world? I'm sure anyone my age and younger would know someone who has
committed suicide, and many that have attempted. Now what people who are
depressed and considering ending their lives need desperately is a sense of
community and support. The reason they are considering such drastic action is
possibly because they have searched in vain in their suburb or country town for
such support, for a listening ear, in their lives. Human beings are social
animals and grow weak without a tribe to call their own.

There is copious evidence that internet is an excellent communications
technology for sharing personal thoughts and building community. Such
communituies are often defined by interests rather than geography. If a
young person cannot find someone in their local area to relate to, perhaps
we can hope that they make their way online. There I think they are much
more likely to find support from people with common interests, and a place
where they can vent their thoughts, and slowly learn to trust other humans
and find hope in their lives.

We could hope that depressed young people can find humanity this way, and ease
the depression out of their lives.

Or we could remove access to the internet to a young person in such a
situation, where it was their last hope, and watch as the depression stretches
them past breaking point. Into destructive behaviour, from taking drugs, to
taking money, to taking other people's lives, to taking their own life.

I've already outlined how I think an attempt to censor certain kinds of info
from the net reduces its overall capacity for communication. But for a young
person, already distrustful of authority, it does more. Such arbitrary distrust
of a young adult's ability to choose what to read and what to publish further
erodes their trust in other human beings.

The best response to parents concerned about what's online is to offer
education. A national hotline, that people can call, which informs them
about software options for personal control over censorship (not
centralised government censorship). And which suggests the best response
to fears about their children's media habits is to talk to them about it.

You have to be mad to want to use bombs or guns to kill people. Once you've
reached that point, you will probably find some way to be destructive, and it's
a tragedy for all of us if people believe the solution is to kill anyone,
including themselves. 

The point is to rescue people before they go over the edge. To recconect people
to society, eventually their local community, but even a virtual community is
far better than no community. The internet, but only a free and decentralised
one, could be one of humanity's best tools for rescuing our ailing culture from
chronic depression. It's a tremendous opportunity. You must not clip the wings.

* Free speech and diversity - how to destroy it

Community Activist Technology (CAT) is a non-profit group helping people
publish alternative information that isn't easily found in the mainstream
media. For a long time CAT used video as our medium, nowadays we increasingly
concentrate on using the internet. The internet is a huge technological
improvement in the ability of people to share alternative stories. Censorship
is incompatible with the basic nature of the internet - effective censorship
cannot coexist with the internet as the core internet technology was designed
to encourage all participants to create as well as consume. 

You could argue that all government censorship is bad, but I'd like to say why
I think that such censorship of the internet in particular is far worse than
censoring the print and broadcast media. You cannot simply extend the argument
for other media into the internet, it is not a valid analogy. The internet is
hardly a broadcast media any more than a phone call is. 

Books, newspapers, radio and television are all to a certain extent inherently
centralised by the technology. With TV, while there are four million people
living in Sydney, there are only six TV transmitters. This means all but a
handful of people are passive consumers, as they have no control over what goes
to air, it is highly centralised. On the internet, there would be thousands of
web servers in Sydney. Anyone who is online, for any time, is a potential story
teller, and also has the ability to be highly selective about what they see and
read. They are editors in both senses, both in choosing what to publish, and
what to read. This many-to-many two-way communication is unique to the
internet, and it is what makes the technology such a powerful agent of
community building and positive social change.

This two-way nature is given by default, at the lowest technological
level, whenever a computer is connected to the internet. To try and impose
centralised control is a fundamental change to the nature of the
technology, just as much as installing a compulsory centralised
switchboard with a human connecting and monitoring all phone calls would
be for the telephone. The lobotomisation that would result is the same
kind of drastic change that this bill contemplates making to the
Australian part of the internet.

You could argue that the centralisation of control in TV means that if you are
going to censor, that censorship also needs to be centralised. The technology
offers us little other choice, it's all or nothing.

That argument is completely invalid for the internet. Parents have complete
control over what kind of censorship, if any, they apply to their computer.
Given a clear choice between personal choice over censorship, and centralised
government compulsion, I think that overwhelmingly most citiziens would choose
personal choice. Some individuals may even choose the government to be their
censor, even this is also possible without forcing centralised censorship on
the entire population.

I feel that the Australian government proposals to introduce centralised
censorship to the internet will will either fail, or result in the
corruption of the internet in this country that will lead to extreme
erosion of free speech and diversity and the usefulness of the internet as
a tool for communications betwen humans. The only good part of the bill is
the mention of a national hotline, as this could be a method of educating
concerned parents about software options: how they can choose personally
whether and how to censor their child's access. The rest of the bill is as
dangerous to society as any effort to suppress free speech, and looks
likely to destroy the heart of one of the most important tools for
positive social change that has been created this century.

* In conclusion

The senate must throw out these proposals to impose centralised government
censorship of the internet. Instead, spend the time and effort educating the
community about their options for controlling what they read and see, and also
what they publish. This will be far more effective in easing community concern.

Central censorship of the internet is more than "too hard," it's an
oxymoron. We must choose between the internet, or compulsory censorship.
The censorship option is urged by a minority (as shown in repeated
surveys), a minority who could easily exercise censorship over their
personal and family's view of the internet without any government
involvement at all. This minority must be prevented from forcing their
choices on the rest of society.

The internet has already demonstrated its enourmous potential for building
community and for positive social change. I think most Australians given a
clear informed choice between a free internet and compulsory censorship, would
go for the freedom option. I myself, most certainly, most passionately, argue
that we should hold on to the internet with all we've got.

(This submission is my personal opinion, and does not necessarily reflect that
of the University of Sydney, or Community Activist Technology.)

Matthew Arnison - phone 02 9351 6874 on weekdays
Ph.D. Research Student
School of Physics
University of Sydney NSW 2006
mra@physics.usyd.edu.au

and

Member
Community Activist Technology
PO Box 13 Enmore NSW 2042
http://www.cat.org.au
cat@cat.org.au