MEDIA RELEASE

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Wake Up to ‘Net Benefits, ACS Tells Legislators

Sunday 29 June 1997, Canberra - The Australian Computer Society (ACS) has called for Parliamentarians on both sides of politics to reject outright the controversial recommendations of a Senate committee.

The Senate Select Committee on Community Standards Relevant to the Supply of Services Utilising Electronic Technologies tabled its third report on Internet regulation on Thursday, proposing heavy censorship and random police searches of Internet users in Australia.

While welcoming most of the recommendations made in the report, ACS President, Tom Worthington, said the committee had too narrow a focus and concentrated too heavily on the negative aspects of new technologies.

The committee made fifteen recommendations for Internet regulation, supported by four government and one independent Senators and with minority reports by three non-government senators.

Mr Worthington praised the committee for making the report available on the Internet promptly, saying he particularly supported the creation of codes of practice for Internet Service Providers, education for parents on keeping undesirable material from children, plus Australian and international work on content labelling standards.

However, he was critical of the report's more controversial proposals, including the creation of new laws making it an offence to transmit material likely to cause offence to a "reasonable adult" and random on-line searches by police looking for illegal activities.

"On the same day as this Australian report was released, the US Supreme Court ruled as unconstitutional the Communications Decency Act, which contained similar provisions," he said.

Mr Worthington pointed out it was already illegal under existing laws to place material, such as child pornography, on-line.

"We don't need new laws for this. We need scarce police resources to be concentrated on investigating people suspected of breaking the law, not wasting their time randomly searching Australians on-line. There are also other serious matters the committee has not addressed, such as the effect of on-line gambling."

Mr Worthington called for the committee to be replaced with a new "net committee" which could look at the broader issues of Internet use.

"If established, a net committee should focus on how to maximise the benefits the Internet offers to Australian culture, education and commerce, as well as minimising any negative effects."

Citing John Nieuwenhuizen's new book, Asleep at the Wheel - Australia on the Superhighway, Mr Worthington said Australia has suffered from a lack of public debate over the information superhighway.

"The Australian Parliament has failed to provide needed leadership and should now wake up and take the wheel. While others in the community have grappled with issues of maximising benefit for Australia from IT, this senate committee has stuck to its narrow focus and has not served Australia well."

The ACS’ call has already received the support of the Internet Society of Australia, which has also expressed grave concerns about the more controversial recommendations in the Senate Committee’s report.

Andrew Freeman, Director of the ACS Community Affairs Board, recently attended an international meeting which included some discussion on Internet regulation. He will discuss the outcomes of that meeting live on the Internet tonight, at 7.30pm EST, Sunday, 29 June 1997 (channel #acsremote IRC server: sydney.nsw.au.undernet.org - Port: 6667)

This press release is located on the Web at and includes links to the reports mentioned:

* Senate Committee third report 26 June 1997

* Hansard transcripts

* ACS Community Affairs Board submission 28 April 1997

* Media Release: 5 May 1997

* MSN broadcast 8 May (starts 1 hour 49 minutes into recording)

* Supreme Court ruling on Communications Decency Act

* Report by Andrew Freeman on International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Technical Committee 9 (TC9 - Computers and Society) meeting (Corfu, Greece. May, 1997)

* ACS members views on internet regulation issue

ENDS

Media Enquiries:

Tom Worthington, ACS President, Tel: (0419) 496 150, Email: tomw@acslink.net.au

Caroline New, Caroline New PR, Tel: (02) 9630 2108 or (0411) 889 456, Email: cnew@acslink.net.au