Google has today notified the Australian government that it will not “voluntarily” comply with its request to censor YouTube videos in accordance with the nation’s far-reaching “refused classification” (RC) content rules.
Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, architect of Australia’s reviled content filter, cited Google’s compliance with Thai and Chinese censorship policies in making the request to enforce a similar program domestically.
Google, meanwhile, warned that such a policy would lead to the removal of many politically controversial, but ultimately harmless, YouTube clips. Google further noted that its terms of use already forbid videos that would receive an RC classification, including sex, violence, bestiality and child pornography. The Australian government contends, however, that the controversial RC classification extends further to include euthanasia, safer drug use and petty crimes such as graffiti.
The refused classification (RC) status is one of many game and television ratings available to Australia’s Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC), a federal bureau, which serves a role similar to that of the United States’ ESRB and the MPAA film rating system.
Under Australian law, games and movies assigned the RC status are banned for sale, hire or public exhibition, with violations carrying a maximum fine of AUD$275,000 and/or 10 years in prison. In other words, the RC rating in Australia is tantamount to a ban on the content.
Material likely to receive the RC rating includes that which, “[depicts], [expresses] or otherwise deals with matters of sex, drug misuse or addiction, crime, cruelty, violence or revolting or abhorrent phenomena in such a way that they offend against the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults to the extent that they should not be classified.” The RC rating further applies to materials that “promote, incite or instruct in matters of crime or violence.”
The RC rating has come under significant criticism within Australia and abroad as the government has leveraged it to expand extremely conservative censorship policies to include female ejaculation and small breasts, popular video games, digital downloads and numerous websites the Australian government merely finds in poor taste.
In an interview conducted last night on Australia’s Hungry Beast program, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy nevertheless defended his government, its RC-inspired Internet firewall and its efforts to censor YouTube.
“What we’re saying is, well in Australia, these are our laws and we’d like you to apply our laws,” Conroy said.
“Google at the moment filters an enormous amount of material on behalf of the Chinese government; they filter an enormous amount of material on behalf of the Thai government.”
Google Australia’s Head of Policy Iarla Flynn responded that the company was biased in favor of freedom of expression, and that Conroy’s analogies to Google’s interactions with China were not “helpful or relevant”.
“YouTube has clear policies about what content is not allowed, for example hate speech and pornography, and we enforce these, but we can’t give any assurances that we would voluntarily remove all Refused Classification content from YouTube,” Flynn said.
“The scope of RC is simply too broad and can raise genuine questions about restrictions on access to information. RC includes the grey realms of material instructing in any crime from [painting] graffiti to politically controversial crimes such as euthanasia, and exposing these topics to public debate is vital for democracy.”
It is now believed that Australia may try to force the US company to comply with its requests via the nation’s federal content filter, but concerns of jurisdiction and efficacy leave any such efforts in doubt.
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