Civil Liberties and Intellectual Freedoms in Education

Universities | Schools | Libraries

Universities

Unconfirmed report (October 2001):

Thought you might be interested that UTS has started to content filter its entire network. The filtering is done by Websense and includes 'adult' content such as say www.fhm.com and hacking content such as www.2600.org. Of course it's also blocking content such as www.sexualhealth.com (a site I've never actually been to, so don't really know what the content is like) and www.sexualitydata.com/ but not sites such as sexhealth.org.

Organisations:

• Committee of Australian University Directors of Information Technology (CAUDIT)
  - http://www.caudit.edu.au/caudit/codes/ - "code of practice relating to content that may infringe censorship laws" (1997)
  - response
  - parody

• Flinders University uses Webtrack blocking software

• University of New England stops carrying the alt.* hierarchy

  About a month ago here at the University of New England all of the alt.* hierachy was removed from the news servers. Not just the alt.sex.* or alt.binaries.*, ALL of them. The rational was based on cost, volume of traffic, academic use of facilities, and that it was easier to cut all of the groups than some of them. I still get a few articles filtering through for a couple of alt.* groups, but, as someone has already said, this could be due to crossposting causing the articles to appear in their original groups. (report from aus.censorship)

  Comment: can it really be argued that there's no academic value in alt.books.reviews, alt.culture.internet, alt.history.what-if, alt.fan.noam-chomsky, alt.fan.shostakovich, alt.books.technical, ... not to mention alt.education.distance and alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk?

• University of Queensland bans use of encryption [DEAD http://www.uq.edu.au/vcit/it_security_policy.html]

  13.No information stored on University systems or transmitted from University systems is to be encrypted unless the written approval of the Head of Department or section has been obtained and the Head of Department is provided with the encryption key. The Head of Department may give blanket approval for designated staff members to encrypt information for specific purposes (eg. examination questions).

  Comment: they were obviously having too much fun reading peoples' email!

• ANU bans use of IRC, MUDs [DEAD http://www.anu.edu.au/its/policies/dialin.html]

  Users of the IT Services dial-in service may not connect to certain proscribed services. The services are notified in the Campus Information Service. Proscribed services include Internet Relay Chat, Multi User Dungeons and Dragons services (MUDs) and other games. This restriction applies at all times.

• Swinburne Uni bans WWW based 'chat' sessions [DEAD http://www.swin.edu.au/proxy/FAQ.html#restrict]
  Comment: I know academics who use IRC for collaborations, and there are several MOOs designed specifically for academic purposes (e.g. MediaMOO, BioMOO).

Many universities seem less worried about preventing access to external information than about supressing internal criticism and dissent:

• Brian Martin's Supression of Dissent, including a case at Adelaide University
• UWA tries to supress Rindos site.

• AAUP - report on Academic Freedom and Electronic Communications [DEAD http://www.aaup.org/statelec.htm]

Schools

Most Australian schools have both some form of net access and some form of access control. Different states and individual schools have connected via different ISPs and used different filtering systems, so the situtation is complex. If you are a teacher, a student, or a parent, we would like to know what your school is doing and how well it works.

• A survey of teachers' feelings about content filtering [DEAD http://www.gil.com.au/~jrp/teachnet/results3.html]
• The Association of Heads of Independent Schools of Australia:
  • submission to ABA Inquiry [DEAD http://www.dca.gov.au/aba/olss79.htm]
  • response to DoCA censorship proposals [DEAD http://www.dca.gov.au/policy/subs/macdon.htm]
• As of 2001, Ozemail uses SmartFilter and Cyberpatrol in NSW schools (problems with SmartFilter and Cyberpatrol)
• Ed Online - problems [DEAD http://www.schnet.edu.au/~edonline/probs.htm] (unsuitable material, stalkers, plagiarism, etc.) and suggested solutions

• Irene Graham's "The Net Labelling Delusion"
• Peacefire (a US-based organisation opposing censorship of youth)
• Why Schools Should Avoid Filtering

Libraries

While filtering in libraries is the subject of debates in the United States, it doesn't seem to be that big an issue here. This may change... apparently some Australian libraries are using censorware.

• The Australian Library and Information Association
  • Should you use internet filtering in your library?
  • free access to information policy
  • statement on online content regulation
  • submission to ABA enquiry
• Australian Council of Libraries and Information Services
  • response to DoCA censorship proposals (1997)
  • response to ABA enquiry (1996)
• The Council of Australian University Librarians
  • response to DoCA censorship proposals (1997)
  • submission to ABA enquiry (1996)
• Jennifer Cram
  • Censorship of the Internet
  • Information Isn't Criminal
  • Censorship and Public Libraries
• [DEAD http://www.lib.uts.edu.au/mkts_forum/AB_transcript.html] The story of Yongyi: intellectual freedom and academic libraries (Alex Byrne)

• The Censorware Project
• Filtering and Censorware in Libraries
• Filters and the Public Library
• The Ethical Spectacle censorware page

Internet Censorship in Australia << Danny Yee