advocacy

This page identifies some of the plethora of advocacy bodies concerned with online censorship and free speech.

It covers -

• introduction
• crusaders
• global and overseas rights groups
• Australian cyberlibertarians
• industry groups

It is not comprehensive but instead tries to provide some sense of the terrain. A more detailed map of the Australian advocacy landscape is here.

     introduction

As we suggested earlier in this guide, online censorship and digital free speech have become something of a crusade for enthusiasts of various persuasions, with truth caught in the crossfire while industry groups and government agencies tread warily (or merely wearily) across the battlefield.

From our perspective we are struck by

• internet exceptionalism, ie assumptions that the net (like precursors such as the moving picture or television) is unprecedently powerful - either for liberation or for the destruction of all that right-thinking parents hold dear
• the small size of many advocacy groups, with vehemence, enthusiasm and ability to shape public debate (or merely coopt policy makers in the face of community disinterest or uncomprehension) offsetting narrow support bases
• the mobilisation of larger communities - particular in the US as part of the 'religious-broadcast complex' - with many people supporting a 'gesture politics' or an elective 'identity politics' that is apparently inconsistent with their daily practice
• continuities with past campaigns against obscenity, subversion or violent content (eg there is little difference between the rhetoric of Fred Nile, Pat Robertson or Anthony Comstock)
• a recourse to extreme positions, often with little appreciation of administrative or technological impediments to grand visions
• and, more sadly, the lack of tolerance or basic courtesy shown by combatants on different sides of the fray

In considering advocacy within Australia and elsewhere it is desirable to be wary of some of the more reductionist dichotomies -

• left versus right
• secular versus religious
• technologists versus troglodytes

and the meme of the 'heroic band' fighting valiantly against the forces of darkness. As in any war, truth seems to be the first casualty.

     religious crusaders

In Australia recent crusades have been driven by small protestant evangelical bodies such as the Festival of Light (FOL) - an import from the UK that for many people has been as welcome as the rabbit or cane toad, fringe political parties such as the Christian Democrats and pronouncements from senior clerics such as Roman Catholic Cardinal Pell.

The extent of support is unclear. Neither the FOL or CD have become mass movements to rival the Greens or poujadist groups such as the Shooters Party or One Nation. As Peter Chen notes in his 2000 thesis mainstream religious groups have been wary about supporting the FOL and its affiliate the Community Standards Organisation (CSO).

As with some digital liberties advocates, polemic from pro-censorship enthusiasts has often been shrill and disingenous. Child Wise chief executive Bernadette McMenamin was thus reported in 2008 as dismissing agitation by the Digital Liberty Coalition, sniping that

most of these people are not fully aware of the facts and secondly, those who are aware are, in effect, advocating child pornography.

In considering internet regulation arguably the most impact over the past decade has been that of the Lyons Forum (a faction within the Federal Coalition parties) and Tasmania's Senator Brian Harridine, attributable to his skill in leveraging a quirk of the federal electoral system.

Australian activism is explored in more detail in a separate profile. Perspectives are provided by Fred Nile's Fred Nile: An Autobiography (Sydney: Strand 2001),The High Price Of Heaven (St Leonards: Allen & Unwin 1999) by David Marr and For God & Country: Religious Dynamics in Australian Federal Politics (Canberra: Parliament of Australia 2001) by Marion Maddox.

In the UK campaigns associated with Mary Whitehouse (1910-2001) waxed and waned, with her National Viewers & Listeners Association rebadged as Mediawatch-UK and the Festival of Light (founded in 1971) failing to achieve the success claimed for its 1.5 million signature Nationwide Petition for Public Decency during the 1972 'winter of discontent'.

Critic AA Gill sniffed in 2008 that Whitehouse

was a bigoted, censorious cultural fundamentalist. There was nothing comic or charming about her relentless blackmailing and bullying of creative life. She tried to take people's jobs, she even tried to get them imprisoned. It wasn’t just television, it was theatre and poetry and pop and anything else she could find. ...

[She] attracted an unsavoury and embittered collection of acolytes ­ the born-again Malcolm Muggeridge and Lord Longford. Mainly, they were sad Little Englanders, who saw breasts on the BBC as the tip of a much larger malaise. This included queers, darkies, long-haired men, floral shirts, American slang, popular music played by people not in dinner jackets, the demise of empire, masturbation and the uninhibited use of garlic.

Mediawatch-UK is reported to currently have under 500 members, fewer than the client list of some adult video outlets in London, Belfast or Birmingham.

Insights are offered by Bill Thompson's 1991 Moral Crusades & Media Censorship (PDF), his 1992 'Anti-Pornography Campaigns: Saving the Family in America & Britain' (in International Journal of Politics, Culture & Society Vol 5, No 4) and Soft-Core: Moral Crusades Against Pornography in Britain & America (London: Cassell 1994).

In the US over the past two decades campaigns against obscenity, profanity, violence and the 'permissive society' have been a rallying point for what's been labelled the New Right or Religious Right. Prominent organisations include the National Coalition for the Protection of Children & Families (NCPCF), with offshoots such as Gideon's Army -

a program of the National Coalition designed to educate, equip and mobilize Christians to live out heroic faith and stand for truth and righteousness in this moment in history - Christians that will commit their hearts, minds and resources to articulating and advancing God's truth in a culture that has become hostile to the truth

and the Christian Coalition of America (CC) - "America's Leading Grassroots Organization Defending Our Godly Heritage" - under the leadership of sometime US presidential candidate and broadcaster Pat Robertson.

The American Family Association (AFA) was founded in 1977 by electronic evangelist Douglas Wildmon for

people who are tired of cursing the darkness and who are ready to light a candle ... AFA stands for traditional family values, focusing primarily on the influence of television and other media - including pornography - on our society

It warns that

Kids may not be safe in the local library because of policies that allow even children unrestricted access to pornography. That extreme policy flows out of the American Library Association (ALA), a private organization that has a virtual death grip on how many public libraries are run.

Differing perspectives are provided in Hellfire Nation: The Politics of Sin in American History (New Haven: Yale Uni Press 2002) by James Morone, Walter Capps' The New Religious Right: Piety, Patriotism & Politics (Columbia: Uni of South Carolina Press 1990), For a Christian America: A History of the Religious Right (New York: Prometheus 2002) by Ruth Murray Brown Perfect Enemies: The Religious Right, the Gay Movement & the Politics of the 1990's (New York: Crown 1996) by Chris Bull & John Gallagher, A Nation Under God? The ACLU and Religion in American Politics (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield 2005) by Thomas Krannawitter & Daniel Palm, The American Civil Liberties Union and the Making of Modern Liberalism (Chapel Hill: Uni of North Carolina Press 2006) by Judy Kutulas and Religion & the Racist Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity Movement (Chapel Hill: Uni of North Carolina Press 1994) by Michael Barkun.

For the UK SSV see M J D Roberts' 1983 'The Society for the Suppression of Vice and Its Early Critics, 1802-1812' in 26 The Historical Journal 1 and Ben Wilson's Decency and Disorder: The Age of Cant 1789-1837 (London: Faber 2007). An introduction to the US SSV is provided in works on Comstock highlighted elsewhere on this site, eg Nicola Beisel's Imperiled Innocents: Anthony Comstock & Family Reproduction in Victorian America (Princeton: Princeton Uni Press 1997) and Jay Gertzman's Bookleggers & Smuthounds: The Trade in Erotica, 1920-1940 (Philadelphia: Uni of Pennsylvania Press 1999).

Jean Hardisty's Mobilizing Resentment: Conservative Resurgence from the John Birch Society to the Promise Keepers (Boston: Beacon Press 1999) and The Old Christian Right (Philadelphia: Temple Uni Press 1983) by Leo Ribuffo offer points of vantage in considering the AFA and personalities such as 'Rapture' enthusiast Tim LaHaye, founder of the Institute for Creation Research, Californians for Biblical Morality, Council for National Policy and American Coalition for Traditional Values (ACTV) highlighted later in this guide.

     global advocates

The US Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) is a leader in the field, noted for its lobbying and publications. The Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT), another US body, has largely supplanted the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). Ralph Nader's Consumer Project on Technology (CPT) is another contender. The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) is a US umbrella group with an arts focus.

The EFF was one of the original US online lobby groups. It has spawned groups within the US (EF Texas and EF Georgia are of interest) and overseas, such as Electronic Frontier Canada (EFC).

The Digital Freedom Network (DFN) is a US-based human rights group with a strong emphasis on the internet as a tool for civil liberties in the third world. It is a member of the Global Internet Liberty Campaign (GILC), a coalition of rights groups ranging from Feminists Against Censorship to the Internet Society and Soros Foundation.

The Internet Free Expression Alliance (IFEA), a US-based body that opposes filtering technologies. Those technologies, discussed later in this guide, are a key feature of plans by the EU-based Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA), an industry body frequently criticised for overstating the effectiveness of its solutions but offering an approach that is worthy of consideration.

Most sites present only one point of view. UK-based free expression group Internet Freedom (IF) is particularly commendable because its site includes links to bodies such as ICR that support strong censorship.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) took a lead in the landmark Reno v ACLU free speech litigation about the Communication Decency Act (declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court) as it plays catch-up with the internet.

The US Free Expression Network (Free!) acts as an anti-censorship clearing house. Its members include the National Campaign for Freedom of Expression (NCFE) and the National Coalition Against Censorship (NAC).

Article19: The Global Campaign for Free Expression (A19) is a UK-based libertarian group. The '19' refers to the corresponding article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Cyber-Rights & Cyber-Liberties (Cyber-Rights) is a UK group established by Yaman Akdeniz of Leeds University. Dr Akdeniz is the author of the 1997 paper on The Regulation of Pornography & Child Pornography on the Internet.

The EU-based INHOPE organisation is an example of industry and community bodies underpinning government action against child pornography. Apart from community awareness, it operates a hotline for reporting illegal online material. Its site provides a useful starting point for study of hotlines.

There is a less positive view of such initiatives in Donna Hughes' 1999 study Pimps & Predators on the Internet - Globalizing the Sexual Exploitation of Women & Children, quoting a Dutch hotline

Some people may regard the hotline as a moralist movement against indecency on Internet. That we are not. … Instead of being a censor, the hotline must be regarded as an initiative against censorship. By having an active preventive policy, the hotline tries to minimize repressive actions against entire newsgroups or areas of Internet. There is an ongoing trend of repression against Internet, providers are being persecuted and forced to block off large parts of the Net. The hotline tries to be a positive and constructive answer that may prevent an overreaction from governments and providers.

The Censorware Project is a libertarian group notable for cogent demonstrations that few filters meet the claims of their vendors or promoters in government. Peacefire is a similar group for young technologists; founder Bennett Haselton has gained recognition in fighting spam.

     Australian cyberlibertarians

Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA) is the local offshoot of the US EFF. Arguably it has yet to persuade government, industry or the wider community and continues to be marginal.

2008 saw the establishment of the Digital Liberty Coalition (DLC), which boldly described its series of protest rallies - which by the DLC's estimates attracted 2,500 people across Australia - a "phenomenal success". The DLC promised that a 2009 rally in Canberra would feature "much more chanting and a lot louder protesting from a lot more people", dismissed by one critic as "offline I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow Parliament House down".

Watch on Censorship (WoC) is another Australian libertarian group.

     Industry

In discussing the adult content industry we have noted the quip that online sex is the "crazy granny" (the US version of the madwoman in the Victorian attic) whose mere existence is discomforting. Industry stances regarding online content regulation and the range of advocacy bodies reflect the diversity of commercial interests.

They also reflect the shape of regulation. Major ISPs for example may receive little direct revenue from adult content or be indifferent to notions of free speech but are susceptible to government suasion, potentially face significant costs regarding 'takedown' of offensive content and are conscious of concerns about precedent and regulatory creep. Bodies such as Australia's Internet Industry Association (IIA) accordingly offer policy solutions that are more nuanced - and arguably more practical - than those from some zealots.

Life is less complicated for advocates for adult content site operators, such as the US Internet Freedom Association (IFA).

Concerns about content regulation have been reflected in the emergence of a range of groups. The Internet Content Register (ICR) and Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) are two UK bodies that call for a "commitment to quality, honesty and decency". Their effectiveness for some is undermined by questions about statistics and an overly emotive tone in statements about dangers. (As with other pages on this site, readers should make their own assessments based on examination of a range of material.)




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