Network censorship in New Sealand

[Jacob Palme DSV <dsv-jp () DSV SU SE>]

The message below, quoted from the newsletter "tidbits", may
be of interest to members of this mailing list:

Letter from the Antipodes: Censorship on the Internet
- -----------------------------------------------------
  by Matt Neuburg -- clas005 () csc canterbury ac nz

  About a week ago, system administrators at the Computer Center at
  the University of Canterbury, in Christchurch, New Zealand,
  removed from the list of available Usenet newsgroups all those
  beginning with "alt.sex", and perhaps others believed to contain
  pornographic material. Since this computer is the distribution
  point for Usenet news for the entire South Island, these
  newsgroups are no longer available to users in that half of the
  country. (If they have a friend in the North Island, though, I
  presume there's nothing to stop the sending of an email message
  containing extracts from these newsgroups, which are still
  available there.)

  This move made the media news, but did not raise the automatic hue
  and cry over "repression of free speech" that it might have in the
  United States. New Zealand has no written constitution at all, let
  alone one where the notion of free speech has been enshrined for
  two centuries; the concept of freedom of speech and other notions
  familiar to Americans were only guaranteed in law three years ago,
  and even then in an ordinary statute not considered to have
  ascendancy over other statutes. In this case, the system
  administrators were, they said, simply bringing themselves into
  compliance with a law against the distribution of pornography.

  My own view of these events is unimportant and probably
  inaccurate. As an American, just two years a stranger in this
  strange land, I don't know much except a lot happens here that I
  don't understand. Personally, I had never noticed these newsgroups
  (honest!), and despite my knee-jerk '60s liberalism, tend to
  applaud a system which can at least try to do something about
  pornography, unlike the U.S. which, in one view at least, becomes
  enmired in its own rhetoric while things get worse. But I rather
  think that the lesson is clear. The Internet feels like a free
  unimpeded flow of information, but in fact its packets must be
  relayed by nodes, where anything can happen, and there are no
  envelopes to steam open. Neither the University of Canterbury nor,
  as far as I know, anyone else, has plans to check my email to see
  if it contains words like "sex" or "communist." But that, as this
  incident seems to show, is a contingent fact, not a law of the
  universe. Let's stay awake: there are going to be big issues to be
  decided one of these days.