“The state of South Australia has a new election law that went into effect January 6, and its effect was shocking: anonymous political speech on the Internet was simply destroyed.
The law required anyone posting a political comment online during an election period to supply their real name and address or face a fine of up to AUS$1,250. The measure was grossly discriminatory—it applied only to bloggers and commenters, not to online “journals” (newspapers or magazine which are written by Real Journalists).
Politicians had apparently developed a thin skin to anonymous commentary, some of which no doubt did devolve into rank defamation, but Australia already has defamation laws that could be used against truly egregious material. Ending online anonymous speech was an extreme solution, one not appreciated by the targets of the law.”
Read more at Ars Technica
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I like the Headline. Got lost a few times though when reading it.
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It is a shame this law will stop some ordinary voters airing their views for fear of prosecution. Though it is not surprising that when people abuse a freedom someone comes along and checks their behavior just like a parent. Maybe people have forgotten that with freedom comes responsibility.
if you do some research in the UK we are even more restricted. you cant even comment with your name etc.
long live freedom eh?
vive la revolucion
Andrew – was it Spiderman who said “with great freedom comes great responsibility”?
I live in south australia, and I didnt even know about this issue. Not that I particulary care about our politicians in the first place as they are the usual bullcrappers they go round every country.
@spiderabc1 No, in Spider-Man the well known line – as said by Peter Parker’s Uncle – was “with great power, comes great responsibility”
The one thing that puzzles me here about this article is how exactly the Australian Government planned on tracking down and issuing these fines to what must be hundreds of thousands of comments across thousands of websites; when not even all the comments could result in a fine if the commenter lived abroad
i think that was spiderman’s uncle…
Actually.. just finished reading the whole article.. the law is going to be repealed after the next election, and backdated, thankfully. When I first heard of it I was wondering how in the world they were intending to police such a law outside of South Australia, Myself, living in Melbourne, Victoria (the state next door to the south-east of SA for those unaware) would still be able to post on SA newspaper or other websites hosted in the state without technically falling under the umbrella of that law. Although I would assume they’d be able to extradite me under some other pre-existing law. I’m not the most knowledgeable when it comes to law, but can usually logically figure my way around it, heh
The other thing, is that personally, as far as I’m concerned, we only have one person to blame for this level of nanny-state-ism in Australia. Micheal Atkinson, the current South Australian Attorney-General. He’s known extremely well in the Australian gaming community for constantly veto blocking the introduction for an R18+ rating for games in Australia. Against all recommendations and the approval of all other state and territory attorney-generals.
This makes Australia the only “western” nation to not have an adult classification on video games. Has led to the world wide release of a “toned-down” Fallout 3, as well as other numerous “toned-down” games in Australia.
Hmm.. I might be a little ranty on this issue.. heh
Was so ridiculously unimplementable from the beginning that I was not surprised when Atkinson promised it would be repeal. Luckily SA staves off yet another attempt to be famous for something really stupid.