Week Ending 25th November, 2001 Page 3 2 1
Free Speech On-Line Under Threat in NSW Special Feature
While everyone's attention was focussed on the federal election, the NSW Labor government quietly tabled a piece of legislation in parliament that has the potential to seriously curtail free speech on the Internet. Entitled the Classification (Publications, Films and Computer Games) Enforcement Amendment Bill 2001, it makes it a criminal offence to publish an excerpt from a potentially R-rated film on the Web...
(Maximum penalty : $5,500 for an individual, $11,000 for a company)

So we're not just talking hardcore porn here - to get an R-rating all you need to do is discuss "adult themes" like 'suicide, crime, corruption, marital problems, emotional trauma, drug and alcohol dependency, death and serious illness, racism, religious issues' in a manner that is not discreet (ie that deals with them is some detail)...

Furthermore, it's not just limited to what you might ordinarily think of as a film...
Under the Commonwealth censorship regime, a "film" can include 'any form of recording from which a visual image, including a computer generated image, can be produced'. As a single keypress can produce a screenshot of anything on your computer screen, then it could be argued that ANY WEB PAGE could be classified as a "film"...

And we're also talking about material that has not even been classified yet, but 'would, if classified, be classified R'... And it doesn't matter that you're only making this material available to adults - the offence still applies... Anyone else feel more than a little bit nervous about this?... Electronic Frontiers Australia are actively campaigning against this insidious Bill and provide some advice about what you can do. They also have a full analysis of it on their site.
Mary Whitehouse Dies posted 25 Nov 2001
Turning back to the subject of censorship, we should mark the passing away of that grand old dame of censorious morals campaigners, UK's Mary Whitehouse. For 30 years, Whitehouse - who Australians may remember as the butt of jokes on British comedy shows like The Goodies and Not the Nine O'Clock News - harrassed the BBC in her ongoing battle against the 'poison being poured into millions of homes through television'... Even going as far as attacking 70's Doctor Who for being 'too scary'...
George Clooney To Star in Tarkovsky Remake posted 25 Nov 2001
I kid you not... Steven Soderbergh is planning to film a version of the 1972 sci-fi "thriller" Solaris by that Russian master of ponderousness, Andrei Tarkovsky. It will star George Clooney in a leading role... Will this mark the start of a renewed interest by Hollywood in "serious sci-fi"? Can we look forward to a new version of Stalker starring Edward Norton, or Soylent Green starring Mark Wahlberg?... (As a final note about the thoroughness of Internet "entertainment news" research, the article asserts that the film is 'based on a Russian novel', when the writer Stanislaw Lem was actually Polish.)
Harry Potter And the Nation Of Dweebs posted 25 Nov 2001
With initial box-office receipts from the US providing the final evidence that world is in the grip of Pottermania, the Washington Post's Hank Stuever worries about the damage that this is doing to the impressionable children of his country... No, this isn't some tract about the spectre of Potter-inspired black art dabbling. For Stuever, the real concern is that JK Rowling's mesmerism has finally sent the born-and-coddled-on-self-affirmation youth of America over the edge and turned them into... a nation of major dweebs!... Where, he asks, are the bullies that will beat the crap out of them for it? And what hope is there for the future of angry art and biting comedy in the face of these minions of unchecked dreamy wand-wavers?
US Networks Refuse To Show Ad Telling Us Not To Buy Things posted 25 Nov 2001
In an effort to attack rampant consumerism, a former ad-exec has spent the last five years trying to turn Nov 28, the day that traditionally kicks off the Christmas orgy-of-spending season, into Buy Nothing Day... This year, he tried to take his campaign to the airwaves with a 30-second ad showing a corpulent talking pig superimposed over a map of America... Only CNN agreed to air it. Elsewhere, it was regarded as 'inimical to our legitimate business interests' and was refused a slot...
Shock! Horror!... CGI Makes Micheal Jackson Black! posted 25 Nov 2001
Fans of cosmetic surgery will be disheartened to hear that Micheal Jackson, the world's most prominent showcase for its potential as a creative medium, is using CGI to subtly mask the glories wrought upon his face by acid and scalpel... In his recent return to the small screen, a high level digital imaging device called 'the Henry machine' was used to darken his skin frame by frame.
Warning : Disney World Is An Environmental Hazard posted 25 Nov 2001
Preparations are well underway to build yet another Disney World on land reclaimed from the sea around Lantau Island off Hong Kong. In the process, however, this reclamation work is ravaging an already fragile marine environment, and destroying the last of the remaining fish stocks in the area...
I wonder if The Little Mermaid would approve...
First There Was Helmet-Cam and Stump-Cam, Now... BALL-CAM! posted 25 Nov 2001
After watching the All Black's woeful efforts in lineouts, a team at Otago Polytechnic decided to help them out by developing a video camera that can be placed inside a rugby ball... Initially, I dismissed this as chuckle-fodder but then I considered the surreal possibilities of seeing the world from the perspective of being drop-kicked, jostled through the sea of legs in a scrum, and buried beneath a ruck... Is there anything in the world of avant-garde dance film to even rival this? I think not!
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