Australian House and Senate has decide to put rated restrictions on the Internet material. A minor can not view any rated R material, and all citizens can not view rated X material. For example anything that depicts porn, extreme violence, and anything that really "offend against the standards of morality, decency, and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults". The government seems to be pushing for a Jane Austen movie content on the Internet where everything is all manners, and no serious adult situation material can be found.
Now this would be easy if the government was dealing with a small scale group to just review their work on, but this is challenging millions of people. The amount of man power to keep up with this would be great because there will be people finding loopholes to get around this. This can be compared to one country famous for its restrictions is China and how they ban certain martial on the Internet. Now Australians will have to face what Chinese citizens go through when trying to ban certain material to the public when the public itself sees the Internet as an object they pay for so its up to them what they can or can't do.
Not only that, but there are bound to be fines made if an individual was to participate against this law. Now I don't imagine it can be as harsh as execution when Chinese staff to foreign journalists are trailed for "giving country secrets away", but there would be consequence put. The ban towards minors can be seen as a good thing though there are tools of parent control that can be used. This seems that the government is trying to be the parent where citizens should not have need for. The attention on this should be going towards something more productive as getting rid of illegal business done on the Internet. Another last point I would like to make is that this law is completely useless because even if Australian government bans it the crowd will find a store connection to get this. It is like a young child plays adult video games because the older sibling has it so they have access to it. Australian citizens will find loopholes like this to get the material they want. So this law will indeed be just bloated text.
I had no idea that Australia was restricting internet access. Good example! But... the article you reference is from 1999. It would be interesting to provide another, more current example from Australia to see how the legislation has changed, for better or worse, since 1999. All in all, you might try to integrate outside sources better. Be sure when you quote, it's clear where the quote comes from. Don't link a download-ready PDF file to a word like China. You need to introduce your sources by saying "In this article by Rebecca MacKinnon, we can see why China is famous..." then link the words "this article" and maybe include PDF in parentheses so people know that when they click, the PDF will download. Also, in that last paragraph, try to be clearer about your point. You talk about China, but then switch to Australia, so I am not quite sure what you mean.
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