This is pretty much straight news-blogging. It’d be easy to editorialise on it, but I suspect you know exactly what I’m going to say. Australia is already known for its lack of an actual real 18/R rating, so banning any game that would get over a 15 here. It’s also known for its [forwarding - Ed] net-censoring, with active network-level blocking of sites [being proposed -Ed]. It’s being reported that they’re bringing these wonderful developments together, wanting to block access to sites including any content that doesn’t hit that 15 rating, including everything from shops that will ship real games to Australia to flash games to any other downloadable adult-rated game. Do read the full story, which does explore some of the implications – like, say, World of Warcraft not being rated in Australia due to being an online game. So… is that going to be banned? We’ll follow this one carefully.
Actually, let’s editorialise a bit: Piss Right Off.
Related Stories:
something something prison colony.
that said, this is some pretty dangerous stuff.
As they say…
…get fucked mate…
…editorialy speaking.
@Real Horrorshow:
What makes you think it could never happen in the US?
http://news.filefront.com/top-ten-banned-video-games/ shows at least one game that was banned in the US. Why not more?
As far as I know, several states have at least temporarily banned violent games (even if they’d had to lift the ban again soon after). So far, it has been mostly talk, exactly like in Germany and Australia. Neither country have banned violent games yet. Politicians have talked about doing it. Just like more than a few US politicians have.
I don’t see the big difference.
If anything, I’d rate the US as being close behind these two countries in the drive to censor and ban sex or violence.
I’m not sure of the reasoning, but I can think of two reasons why that wouldn’t work.
First, what guarantee is there that the parental filter won’t be removed in a patch next week? Add it while the game is being rated, and then go all-out porn and gore afterwards.
And second, a chat filter wouldn’t prevent you from posting links to bad sites, and it can always be circumvented if you want to.
@drewski: No, they’re not left wing. Not technically, not pretending to be, not at all. Labor is just a poor man’s conservative party who stand for nothing but holding power. Sadly, just like America we don’t really have a major left wing party to balance things out.
Congratulations to Stephen Conroy on finally making up my mind on who to hate more out of him and Atkinson (the SA AG who keeps blocking an R rating).
Oh wtf? I may never move home then.
Btw, Australia is only trialing the internet filtering. And some major isp have withdrawn from the trials saying it’s technically ridiculous, even impossible to do, and just a stupid idea anyway. So many people are upset about it, it may never happen (hopefully).
@ Jalf – You’re wrong . The US has never succesfully banned a video game, though there are those that try. One lawyer got debarred (is that the proper term?) in the course of trying to get games banned and it is still his lifes work, I’m not sure why.
The only things that are banned in the United States are child porn and other exploitive mediums like that which I think we can all agree has nothing to do with freedom of speech.
Germany has banned games with Nazi references in them only and if you just take out the Nazi references and replace them with normal army units they’ll let you release them (that is a common law in that part of Europe I’m told) As far as US being close behind Australia on banning games I have to heartily disagree.
They’re selling their public services to private business, we’re buying private business and making it public we couldn’t be more different ;)
Anyway… banned content is what torrent sites are for.
Luminosity did you mean what you said that America doesn’t have a major left wing party? Who do you think is Presdient here Rush Limbaugh?
I look forward to Yahtzee’s return to the midlands. Its been too long, and he’s never answered my fanmail.
In other news; stupid governments are stupid. Is Germany next?
@drewski – the current government left wing? hah! Rudd & Co are part of the powerful conservative right faction within federal labor (with the notable exception of Julia Gillard). They are about as left-wing as Ronald Reagan.
The heart of the matter is that the government is rolling over on the net censorship issue because they need the vote of that rabid family first senator Steve Fielding, and he has a major hard-on for all things net-censorship. Him and Conroy got together and decided to tell us all what we should and shouldn’t be doing/seeing/playing on the net.
Also, regarding the comments in Australia – wow, just…wow. Its like saying that all Americans are like the Texan red-neck stereotype, and all Brits are toothless, cider-swilling bovver-boys.
@Railick: He’s right. It has an extreme right, and a slightly right wing party.
Obama is hardly left-wing. He’s just more moderately right-wing than the republicans. If you look at politics outside the US, you’ll see just how far left the spectrum goes, even in modern, first-world capitalist countries.
About the banning thing, yes, Germany bans nazi references (given their history, is it surprising?). But it doesn’t ban violent games as a whole. Anyway, my point was simply that the US, just like Australia and Germany, has a very outspoken group of politicians with quite a lot of power, who keep trying to ban violent games. They haven’t had much luck with it in either country so far, but they keep trying. In all three countries, there is a constant push to get them banned.
There isn’t in many other countries. In most of Europe, no one even suggests banning violent games.
That is why I said the US is close behind.
@jalf I would disagree , America has a moderate left and slightly right wing party, no extreme right wing party here has any power. The republicans have to be moderate to border line left wing to even get elected and they offer no resistance to Obama and his left wing party.
As far as Obama being modreate right wing I would disagree, he is a modeate socialist buying up massive pieces of private businesses and in some cases entire companies then TELLING them what kind of cars to make. He wants to redistrubte the wealth from the rich to the poor forcefully and dicates companies policies even when they don’t have any ownership of said companies (for examplec capping bonuses and changing tax laws to stop giving breaks for people giving to charity after a certain amount) This is pretty hard left wing, extremly socialist.
There has not been a constant push by anyone with any power in the United States to get video games of any kind banned and every time it has come up any where in the coutnry it has been shot down extremly fast. Even when violent video games are used as an excuse for violent crime the idea is thrown out of court right away. There are a VERY few vocal people with no power what so ever that try to get everything banned , for that matter there are senators here that try to get the draft put back into place every session but no one pays any attention to them what so ever.
@ Jalf – Yeah, that game wasn’t banned by the U.S. government, that’s literally impossible. The only way games in the U.S. can be SUPPRESSED is if stores refuse to sell them, usually because the ESRB gives it an Adult rating.
In the U.S. it’s perfectly legal to buy and play any video game ever made, as long as it doesn’t feature child porn FMV sequences.
^ That extends to all forms of creative expression too.
I heard “bearded axe wound” back in school, c.1999, London. So nerr.
This won’t go anywhere that’ll last, surely.
@Railick: The Democrats certainly have left wing members, but as a party they aren’t really left wing. As far as most of the world measures the terms.
I stand corrected on The Guy Game. But this is a little different, because as the description reads: “It was banned because a 17 year old was flashing her lady bits.”
That’s child pornography under U.S. law, and has absolutely nothing to do with it being a video game or not. If it featured an 18-year-old flashing her tits and blowing two men at the same time while getting analized, it would have been perfectly legal…you just wouldn’t be able to find it in Wal-Mart :)
And I’d like to agree with Railick. I think you’re a little uninformed Jalf.
In the U.S. there’s a movement by a small group of politicians who want to restrict children’s access to violent and pornographic video games, just like porn is restricted to adults. That’s not quite the same as outright BANNING the games, the production of the games, and blocking your citizens from viewing the websites of those games. I repeat: the things being attempted in Australia and Germany would be completely unconstitutional in the U.S; could. never. happen. Saying that there are similar movements in the U.S. is false, as dumb as the anti-game politicians are, they know that banning a game is impossible so it’s not even a part of their agenda.
@Jeremy: Thank you.
If you hadn’t said it, I would have. In fact, I think I’ll stress the point anyway.
@Those having a go at Australia: This reminds me of people I’ve encountered in online gaming communities (more on this later); because anyone can throw a lifestyle slur, or present an uneducated racist sentiment, but if I hear someone slandering an entire nation, the person is almost always English.
Not even so much Scottish, Irish, or Welsh in particular. English. And it’s really getting me down and my nerves fray because of it. Oh yes, so civilised as to mock every other freaking civilisation out there, poorly veiled racism en masse.
There are two things to consider, here: The first being that the British empire is so flaccid at the moment that it’s making our country metaphorically look like a small, bald, fat man with a tiny dick who presents his bitterness about this for the World to see as hatred and hostility toward anyone who might be a little bit better off and/or simply different.
Dignity. Now. Please?
The other thing is that Britain isn’t as superior as Brit supremacists out there (and in here) would believe it to be. Has anyone checked out our HDI rating lately? Frankly, we’re racing backwards! The HDI of a country implies how developed a nation is, how well its people are cared for, the state of education and progression, and so on.
Currently, Iceland, Norway and Canada are way ahead of us. So anyone who’d want to slag off another nation, consider that before you do. In fact, I wonder what Australia’s HDI is?
Oh look, they’re in 4th, behind Canada, Norway, and Iceland. I really can’t say I’m surprised.
They might have some screwy laws going around (what country doesn’t have screwy laws agoing around?), but I’d say they’re doing pretty well for themselves considering they’re a “former prison/exile country” filled with “strange and crude people”, eh?
Also: I feel a frustrated “fffffffffffff” coming on. To assuage it and ease my indignant feelings about all this, I’ll paraphrase Kieron and say: Frigging English.
I apologise for that, but this kind of thing gets me down. It’s a sore spot, because a game group I’m a part of (one comprised of various ethnicities) recently had to ostracise an English member for this very reason; really bad choice in ethnicity-based insults and slurs, lifestyle attacks, calling nations backwards and full of primitives and whatnot.
And yes, I’d say this to anyone I’d see doing this kind of thing. Such supremacists spout corrosive ideas, they’re eroding away the collective intelligence and progression of Britain, and they’re going to make us truly isolated if we alienate the World any more. So knock it off already!
For the record, I like Australia.
This stereotype of Americans being on the whole more right-wing than everybody else probably comes from a habitual inability to agree on what’s actually left or right.
Man, if that’s you stressing a point, I’d really like to see you make a point, Wulf.
Also, at least based on conversations I’ve had, the HDI system isn’t terribly well respected.
Dorian Cornelius Jasper – Also because simple “left or right” doesn’t really cover all of politics. The simplest I think it could be stripped down to is left-right economics and liberal-conservative social.
I’d say on average Americans are socially liberal (the republican party is a corpse everywhere but the south due to their inability to keep up with the times socially) and economically centrist.
I’m an Australian, and this doesn’t worry me in the slightest, because the net filter will never happen. The government don’t have the numbers in the senate to get it passed, and aren’t even going to try until they can get it to work properly, which will be never.
They just have to come out with little news items like this every now and then to make it look like work is still being done on the legislation and they aren’t just holding it back because they are embarressed.
Also RPS, your line that Australia is “also known for its net-censoring” is a bit misleading, as it makes it sound like we already have a net filter; the news here isn’t that the filter is being chaged, just that the proposed filter has been changed.
@Dorian: A great Wikipedia page that one. The key bit I think was that left-right politics are based ”along a one-dimensional political spectrum.” Arguing that a huge party is simply left or right seems frankly ridiculous when made up of so many members. I’d tend to agree with Real Horrorshows lowest common denominator of political opinion.
@Wulf: Could the fact that you tend to hear English slating entire nations have anything to do with you tending to play English people? I of course don’t know who you game with, but I for one play at least 50% Brits. Gotta love a sub 20 latency.
I don’t think Britain is any worse than most countries to be honest. The European elections gave rise to some nasty parties getting a large share of the vote in some countries (the Netherlands, for example), and just last week the Iranian supreme leader basically called the UK ‘evil’. I think you sell the country a little short.
Stephen Fucking Conroy. Gah. Why do both major political parties over here have to be equipped with such an amazing spectrum of muppets.
@Bah I’m not the only one posting about politics mate, this entire thread is about politics as is the post itself so , as to use an Aussie catch phrase “Go and get fucked mate”
Man, and how about France disallowing Muslim women to wear the burkas? “For humanitarian reasons” and everything too.
How come supposedly progressive countries in this world are becoming so controlled and do things that should be considered unconstitutional and/or downright fascist?
Oh, and I didn’t forget about Sarcozy trying to pass that idiotic antipiracy bill, I just didn’t mentioned it because it, thankfully, got canned already.
Im pretty sure most of our prime ministers are elected based on potential hilarity.
There’s been a large public outcry ever since this idea went public (in the online/tech enthusiast crowd at least.
Most everyone else is caught up in the ‘big things’, such as the terrible state of our health system and public transport network.
I really do doubt this will ever happen. But if it does I’ll be most upset.
Also, around 60% of us australians don’t know our national anthem. The ones that do have no idea what its about :D
Oh, for all those non-aussies scoffing about how this would never happen where you live, just wait. A lot of countries are apparently watching this keenly to see if they can do the same in future… think of this as a test-case.
@wcaypahwat: It’s about stealing sheep innit? :)
I for one can’t wait for this to happen (and if they promise to block enough online gambling sites, they might get Xenophon to agree).
The current situation where one small state can block changes to legislation that are unanimously agreed upon by everyone else needs to change, but at the moment there is too little impact from the situation for anyone to really care. Start blocking access to WoW though, I can see the headlines now… “crazed videogame junkies burn South Australian Parliament to the ground”
There was a reason you Brits kicked them out, yes?
I very much doubt that an ISP filter or other restrictive law on digital media will go to be law in Australia. Most natives I’ve talked to seem to sensible. It strikes me as the usual hyper reactionary political BS that goes on in any country with more than one political party. The suggestion has come up here a couple times (Iceland) and been laughed out of the discussion. That it is technically possible is not really a point of debate, seeing as one of the largest nations on earth does it quite effectively.
Comparing the US political spectrum with any other western country is an exercise in futility. Social (that is completely – no questions asked – absolutely free) healthcare is an absolute prerequisite for being even slightly left of the center in my opinion. For all my respect for individual US citizens, friends, relatives and casual acquaintances, I can’t even include a country in a personal tally of the civilized without it.
As for the HDI. We (Iceland) have lead the list along with Norway for some years of the last decade, and I’d like nothing better than to emigrate off this forsaken reef… It needs to be taken with a grain of salt really.
aussies what you want to do is cripple petty government with a benefit scandal, all the big important stuff carries on as usual and everyone ahtes the ministers so much they cant even begin to start vote nabbing with dumb policies
As an Aussie, I think the low-level racism many have encountered in fellow Australian’s more comes from sheer ignorance than malicious intent. We’re still a very white/middle-class nation in many respects. Just look at our politicians for an indication of this – parliament is a massive middle-aged white dude sausage fest.
Of course, that’s not to excuse us as a nation, but just know that the those of us in the generation that only ever knew a ‘multicultural Australia’ stand a much better chance of overcoming those prejudices.
Oh yeah – this thread was about internet filters and stuff. Yeah no one I know is taking that stuff seriously.
Re: changeling101 – You got it right mate. But the smart ones in the Aussie crowd will find their way around to get what they want. Well until our rubbish politicians implement Big Brother 2 anyway.
What’s up with all those penal references though? Such prejudice against us Aussies… tsk tsk. Remember, we aren’t too impressed with our government either.
What country in the world has free health care? You say completely, no questions asked, absolutely free? Do the Drs not get paid? Do the owners of the hospitals and medical facilities not get paid? I don’t understand what system you’re describing here Klumhru. So far as I know there is no country in the world that has free health care. Even if you don’t have to pay up front you’re paying for it through your taxes and your hard work. All that is is public insurance where everyone in the country shares the risk for everyone else’s health even if they don’t want to.
It is worth noting that you get taxed 15% or more on your income tax then I do (I know this because you have a flat tax ;) ) and your government more or less fell apart because of your health care system among other things.
I’m not bashing Iceland mind you, just pointing out the differences (Where as you are bashing the United States calling us uncivilized O.o )
As enraging as this is, it’s not likely to ever actually happen.
Precious tax monies are at stake here. Any government-level internet censorship lost all credibility when the prospective list of websites that would be blocked was leaked.
The list included a tour guide operator’s website and other things that had absolutely no objectionable content. The communications minister has been distancing himself from the plan ever since.
TL;DR this ubercensorship is likely to die a quiet, pitiful death once it fades from public view.
If it doesn’t, I’m becoming a full time pirate.
Could be worse. Could be french. French people wear onions, ffs. Weirdos. Get a modern bike, stripey shirt! And wash your moustache!
You folks aren’t getting it. This is actually a good thing as far as proposed implimentation of the ratings and filter system goes.
Conroy and others have always sought to apply ratings to every single thing and block anything which is not rated or prohibited (incidentally this is across political lines. Howard Inc. tried two or three times to look at the same thing. Labor are decidedly left wing, however).
People just keep pointing out all these fancy new ways that people can see rude and violent things and they just keep writing them in. The last thing was proposing to monitor all P2P traffic and rate that. Now someone has pointed out that there’s web games and digital downloads etc, so they add that.
The whole thing was already destined to fall on its face for sheer unworkability. The trials of the various systems keep collapsing because the law makers don’t understand how the internet works and the ISPs pull out.
So you see all you’ve got to do is point out some fancy new thing on the net, Conroy adds it to the bill and the whole thing becomes even more inclinded to topple over than it already is.
I plan on making some suggestions myself. I’m not sure they’ve had a look at the rise of international podcasting yet. Every second of it must be rated! Right now.
(btw. Axe Wound is just an amusingly gruesome euphemistic way of saying ‘cunt’. Most of the time the real word does the job fine.)
I live in Australia and hate the sun. Is there anywhere cold left in the world that isn’t melting? If so… wanna swap?
Germany? Your turn at being a dick. Can you surpass Australia?
God I’m sick of my nation’s leaders being a bunch of pricks when it comes to censorship.
You know we’re not even allowed hardcore pornography here? One would assume they’re going to use this filter to stop more than just videogames.
Squadman I assure you if you moved to the US and lived in Washington or MN you’d find it more than cold enough for your liking ;)
The government’s ISP level internet censorship is yet to be enacted – a couple of ISPs are running small scale trials, however no laws have been passed, as the government does not have the numbers in the senate – the greens and Nick Xenophon (an independent senator) have both said they would not vote for the ISP censorship.
This is all just posturing by the government, trying to justify their censorship policy, but in fact probably only making it less desirable.
Re the statements about WoW, have a look here: http://www.ausgamers.com/features/read/2614953
@Nicomallo The thing is that the government is fairly sure that they can get this done without legislation.
I thought everyone knows what a hatchet wound is. At least here in the California. Maybe it’s a beach thing?
Australians suggesting that it’s not worth worrying about because it’ll never happen are burying their heads in the sand. The only reason it won’t happen is because the balance of power in the upper house is held by independents. The government lacks the seats to ram through whatever they want unless they get the greens or all the independents on side. This issue is split such that a single independent changing their tune would flip it back to the government’s favour.
Additionally, the opposition seem to be opposing the plan for the sake of opposing it, not because of any deep & meaningful convictions. The more important issue is that they’ve been blocking a lot of other stuff. There’s all that talk of a double-dissolution going around, which would mean kicking the entire senate and starting over. If that happened, the chances are extremely high that we would end up with a government majority in both lower and upper houses of parliament, which basically gives Krudd a free license to do whatever the hell he wants.
Not to mention there should be another election next year which will mean a changing of the guard then too.
Be very worried, because this retardation is going to happen eventually, unless Australians are constantly vocal about how much they dislike the idea. Though at this point it seems that Conroy is basically ignoring everyone because he ‘knows’ that it’s in our ‘best interests’. :\
Howard Inc. had effective domination of both houses as well and used every opportunity to say “We won the election, therefore we have a tacit mandate to impliment every hare brained scheme in the policy fine print. And anyone who opposes us is anti-democracy and Un-Australian”
Labor aren’t any more authoritarian and arguably less so. They’re more destructively helpful in a Frank Spencer kind of way.
I don’t think we or our foreign friends need to worry in the long term because it’s going to be an utter disaster one way or the other. But that doesn’t mean we have our head in the sand. It should definitely be opposed at every turn. It’s just that that vociverous opposition is there to prevent the unpleasent experience of them trying to make it work.