From: Peter Murphy <pkm@maths.uq.oz.au>
Date: Wed, 8 Jun 94 19:39:09 PDT
To: jamesd@netcom.com (James A. Donald)
Subject: Re: Cyberspace is by nature crime-free
In-Reply-To: <199406081555.IAA23639@netcom.com>
Message-ID: <9406090237.AA26512@axiom.maths.uq.oz.au>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text


> 
> Matthew Gream writes
> > > >  - sedition
>   
> I wrote:
> > > Not a crime.
> > 
> > Is in Australia, probably in other countries as well. Naturally
> > there are going to be problems with international aspects of
> > crime in this respect, jurisdictions and so on, but those are
> > only technicalities -- the crime can easily occur in a localised
> > environment.
> 
> Witchcraft is also illegal in Australia.  When was the last 
> prosecution for sedition?
> 
> During the many decades I lived in Australia there was never
> a prosecution for sedition, and there was plenty of sedition.
> 
> Has the place turned totalitarian since I left?
> 

Not really. No more so than other countries (like the U.S and Canada),
and a lot less than other countries (like Singapore). On the negative
side, the absence of a constitutional equivalent to the First amend-
ment does mean that speech is slightly more limited here, but not much.
One example is that the magazine "Who Weekly" was ordered to stop
distributing one of it's issues, as it identified on the front cover (with
photo attached) a person charged with murdering several backpackers. 
One other cloud on the horizon is that the Keating government may make
race-hate speech illegal. I doubt it will be tabled in anything other than
an emasculated format, and will be shredded to pieces in the Senate. It's
still a dubious precedent. :-<

However, there are a few positive aspects. The religious right are not as
numerous, and do not have as much political power. Our most notable 
fundamentalist, Reverend Fred Nile, is in the legislative council of N.S.W.,
but he is widely regarded as a loonie. Homosexuality is legal in every
state except Tasmania, and that will change soon :-) (although I do think
that the tactic of appealing to the UN Human Rights Commision to achieve this
is slightly shoddy.) We also permit hypodermic needle exchanges, and that
keeps the AIDS rate down. In short, in some ways we are as liber[al/tarian]
as the U.S., in other ways we aren't.

Unfortunately, legislation is always reformed on a piece meal basic. This
means that there is always a lot of miscellaneous obsolete legislation that 
no-one ever gets around to removing until something stupid happens as a result.
For example, one Tarot card reader in Ipswich (a satellite city of Brisbane)
did get charged with witchcraft by some undercover police. I think (and a
lot of other people would agree here) that this was a waste of police resources
that would be better served fighting real crime (i.e., murder, rape, theft,
etc.). I just hope the case gets thrown out of court.

	Alas, this ain't cryptography.

> 
> 
> -- 
>  ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> We have the right to defend ourselves and our    |
> property, because of the kind of animals that we |         James A. Donald
> are.  True law derives from this right, not from |
> the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state.     |         jamesd@netcom.com
> 

=======================================================
| Peter Murphy. <pkm@maths.uq.oz.au>.  Department of  |
| Mathematics - University of Queensland, Australia.  |
-------------------------------------------------------
| "What will you do? What will you do? When a hundred |
| thousand Morriseys come rushing over the hill?"     |
|                                       - Mr. Floppy. |
=======================================================