ISSN: 1329-878X

Internet Regulation No 101 November 2001 Order form Abstracts

Contents

Abstracts

Sherman Young: What's the big idea? Production, consumption and internet regulatory discourse
The internet is most often described in technical terms - as a combination of network protocols, infrastructure and access devices. However, rather than reduce the internet to a technical specification, it is more useful to understand it as an assemblage of technology, people and ideas. The dominant idea informing the internet has been one of openness - embracing a desire for freedom of information and the cultural potential of new communicative possibilities. This 'meme' of freedom is predicated on expanded notions of consumption, production and distribution of information. Internet technologies open up a space of possibility that allows for innovative options for information creation and dissemination. This article considers the possibilities of consumption and production that the internet has so far allowed, and suggests that the imposition of new limitations on those activities are indicative of a reconfiguration of the dominant idea of the internet - a reconfiguration that is currently being contested, but one that threatens its ultimate shape.

Some suggest - deterministically - that the internet is a technology of freedom, and that openness is embedded in its design. I argue that, far from being intrinsic to the technology, the 'idea' of openness is merely one of several competing ideas which might define the internet. Recent constraints on internet consumption and production are evidence that a less open network is not merely possible, but central to the more recent imaginings of government and corporate actors.

Gerard Goggin and Catherine Griff: Regulating for content on the Internet: Meeting cultural and social objectives for broadband
Much of the present debate about content on the internet revolves around how to control the distribution of different sorts of harmful or undesirable material. Yet there are considerable issues about whether sufficient sorts of desired cultural content will be available, such as 'national', 'Australian' content. In traditional broadcasting, regulation has been devised to encourage or mandate different types of content, where it is believed that the market will not do so by itself. At present, such regulatory arrangements are under threat in television, as the Productivity Commission Broadcasting Inquiry final report has noted. But what of the future for certain types of content on the internet? Do we need specific regulation and policy to promote the availability of content on the internet? Or is such a project simply irrelevant in the context of gradual but inexorable media convergence? Is regulating for content just as quixotic and fraught with peril as regulating of content from a censorship perspective often appears to be? In this article, we consider the case of Australian content for broadband technologies, especially in relation to film and video, and make some preliminary observations on the promotion and regulation of internet content.

Terence Lee: The politics of internet policy and (auto-)regulation in Singapore
As an extension of my earlier work on 'Internet Regulation in Singapore' (Lee and Birch, 2000), this paper provides an update on Singapore's relentless drive towards new media regulation and ideological/political control. Taking on board the discourse of auto-regulation - that regulating the internet in Singapore is really about ensuring an 'automatic functioning of power' for the sake of political expedience and longevity - this paper offers some new insights into the politics of internet auto-regulation in Singapore, from its humble beginnings of censorship and 'sleaze' control (in the mid-1990s) to recent attempts at restricting free flows of information via new laws governing foreign broadcasters and the 'liberal' stifling of online political campaigning and debates (in 2001). I conclude that, despite its authoritarian leanings, the 'success' of Singapore's internet and cultural policy of auto-regulation gives it a potential to become the global-accepted regulatory mindset.

David Mitchell: Internet content regulation in Southeast Asia: Directions
The movement of Internet content regulation from telecommunications regulatory regimes into the existing streams of media regulation can be seen all over South-East Asia - from Australia and Singapore, to Vietnam and Laos. This paper examines this movement, comparing regulatory regimes for Internet content control in Vietnam, Singapore and Australia. It will show that these countries have moved to integrate Internet content regulation wit in existing media regulatory regimes and that regulation of internet content in countries of widely differing social and political cultures is not as different as may be believed. The regulatory path in a future of converged distribution systems for previously disparate forms of content may however force a re- evaluation of existing rationales for media and broadcasting regulation.

George Michaelson: Intellectual Property issues on IP networks
Some fundamental behaviours of the current (and foreseeable) global internet do not fit well with the requirements for successful digital rights management (DRM) and for control of access to IP rights-protected content. This has implications for longer term development of regulation in the digital domain. This paper considers some of these behaviours from a broad and unashamedly biased perspective. For the purposes of this paper, it is assumed that effective digital rights management depends on being able to constrain people not to use the network for direct, rights management-avoiding purposes. If we can assume total law-abiding communities, much of this discussion is pointless. The polemic probably lies in the area of suggesting that the value proposition for DRM is weak, and that such claims as are made in respect of ability to limit use are overstated.

Peter Coroneos: The operation of Australia's internet content legislation
This paper considers the workability of Australia's recently introduced internet content legislation from the viewpoint of the national industry body, the Internet Industry Association (IIA), which campaigned for amendments to the legislation, then developed industry codes for it.

Irene Graham: Shrouds of secrecy: The operation of the Online Services Act
An analysis of the Report on the Co-Regulatory Scheme for Internet Content Regulation covering the period July to December 2000, released by the ABA on 19 April 2001, demonstrates that the scheme has had a minimal impact on internet content hosted in Australia. The ABA's refusal to release any further information about the content that has been removed, under freedom of information legislation, suggests the government believes that secrecy is necessary to foster the perception that the scheme is actually effective. However, its limited effectiveness does not justify its cost. This paper maintains that taxpayers' money would be better spent in funding the police to track down and prosecute the producers and distributors of child pornography.

General Articles

Carmen Luke: New times, new media: Where to media education?
Have media education and media literacy reached an impasse? Media literacy scholars and educators are beginning to raise issues of relevance of 'old-style' media studies in the context of new times and new media. Media literacy is formalised as part of the Australian National Literacy Framework, yet it remains largely marginalised as an elective in the senior school syllabus. In contrast, computer education - or computer literacy - has been embraced by governments, educators and parents with blind and cheery optimism. I argue here that media studies, cultural studies, computer and technology studies can no longer be taught independently of each other. The fervour with which computer education has been embraced, and the relatively modest incursions media and cultural studies have made into mainstream curriculum, suggest that blending media-cultural studies with information and communication technology (ICT) studies can inject new life into both fields of study. Largely bereft of a critical orientation, computer literacy education can benefit from the theoretical and critically analytic orientation of media-cultural studies which, in turn, can be 'mainstreamed' through broader exposure typical of computer education in schools today. Media studies must contend with new information technologies, and computer education needs the critical analytic tools and cultural framing approach typical of media studies.

Lynne Ciochetto: Outdoor advertising and social change in contemporary Russia
This study investigates contemporary advertising and social change in the context of the breakdown of state socialism and the expansion of capitalism in contemporary Russia. The focus is on what outdoor advertising communicates about the expansion of capitalism in the emerging capitalist economy in Russia in the 1990s, including recent changes in the Russian economy as it has embraced international capitalism, and also the overall standard of living of the Russian consumer.

Christina Slade: Global media generation memories: Australia and Mexico
This paper compares Australian and Mexican focus groups discussing the media memories of their youth. It forms part of the Global Media Generations 2000 project, in which cohorts of three generations have been interviewed in 12 countries. The first radio, television and internet generations were asked about the media environment of their youth, about the major local and international events they recalled, and finally about a number of significant international events. This paper uses the results of two countries to argue for a version of media relativism: that the way events are remembered is in part determined by the media available.

Lorna Kaino: The 'problem of culture': A case study of some arts industries in the south west region of Western Australia
This paper presents a case study of three glass art studios situated in the southwest of Western Australia. The study is designed to provide a model for a larger study of the arts industries that will contribute to a strategic analysis of cultural policies for arts industry development. Its purpose is to offer insights into why arts policy frameworks and arts development strategies in southwest of Western Australia appear to have had limited outcomes consistent with their arts industry objectives. It proposes that one of the reasons - difficult to formalise in policy documents but a persistent theme in informal discussions I have had with arts practitioners all over the southwest region - is a conceptual problem related to instrumentalities charged with the responsibility of implementing arts policy and development. I propose that this is a 'problem of culture'. I explore this proposition in relation to cultural policy planning and development at the regional level within a wider framework at the state and federal levels in Australia and internationally.