Smutty E-Mail Legal In Australia

spam-it-to-me-baby writes: "Welcome to Australia. Over the course of a few months, Aussies now can't gamble online locally, you soon may not be able to serve p0rn from a website, we have what could be the world's greatest luddite for an IT minister, but now we find there's nothing wrong legally with spreading a bit of bestiality via e-mail. Is something upside down Down Under?"

Australia is not really a federation ...

... precisely the same way that the US states are subserviant to the federal government. Each Australian State is effectively a sovereign entity (think of it as economic block) while the federal system tries to centralise certain activities (cough*taxes*cough). This creates some rather interesting political dynamics (e.g. vertical fiscal imbalances) in that States can ignore Federal laws (by passing their own variants) or create enough hue and cry that the federal government ends up back-pedelling. The good point is that there's diversity in the system, if you don't like laws in one state you can fairly easily relocate to another, or even Christmas Island which is a separate territory (which has fewer taxes). The downer is that some shanghinans get perpetuated, for example one premier (equivalent of US State Governor) in Queensland went straight to the Queen when trying the national hobby of rocking the boat.

What this means is that usually the government is too busy trying to sort out the mess in its own backyard to really bother the people that much (except for the recent introduction of GST which they've botched badly) so you can get away with some odd things. I believe someone mentioned that one of the world's biggest purchasers of SGI gear running a porn site is in Queensland which coincidenctally has one of the country's most conservative voters. Given the legal and economic stability and access to technology (some nice software hot spots around) it is not actually not a bad place to do IT work provided you focus on the export market and ignore the silly buggers down in the capital city.

LL

Smear campaign by New Zealand......

Trying to portay Australia as the home of bestiality.

Re:And they say the US is weird?

Government (and Utility, but this may change soon in California) workers are _very_ hard to fire. They basically have strict due process (called "Civil Service") protections against unfavorable personnel actions (like, i.e., firing). It's the same in most first-world countries, including the UK, the EU, the US, Canada, Australia, NZ, Japan, etc.

All they have to do is show up for their shift (not discernably drunk or stoned), stay awake (mostly) for eight hours, and they're guaranteed to keep their jobs, pretty much.

In the US, somewhere around 40% of employees work for Local, State, or Federal governments. Scary, isn't it? Most of them vote, too, which is one reason it's so hard to pass meaningful tax reductions. In the UK, EU, etc., the percentage is probably even higher. Of course the idiot kept his job. H*ll, he'll probably get a raise this year! You have to be around "civil servants" for a while to figure out that they aren't motivated by the same incentives that lead most enterprise employees to be useful, productive, effective, and efficient. Public workers usually evince none of these characteristics. (But exceptions do exist.) For the most part though, "civil service" rules need changing.

this can be solved...

you soon may not be able to serve p0rn from a website....but now we find there's nothing wrong legally with spreading a bit of bestiality via e-mail.

So does that mean that all the Austrilan porn sites will now have to switch their servers from http to POP3?

Re:Umm...okay

...depicting a women with a german shephard using government facilities...

And exactly what government facilities were the woman and her german shepherd using?

duck!

(Yes, I read the story; just poking fun.)

Ludicrous

I'm an Australian and have known about this for about a week now. This is not going to stop Australians from gambling, only they're going to gamble on sites overseas. The wierd thing is, Australian gambling sites may allow only overseas gamblers to gamble and not Australians. Where's the logic in that? This was the exact point made by one of the owners of an Australian gambling site. He also said that it''s not going to make much difference because about 90% of his revenue comes from outside Australia. I'm glad theregister said what they said.

April Fools?

Are we still in April Fools day mode? I mean, looking at the date evidently isn't enough, based on earlier stories today...

Australia - Land of the free choice?

Ok, so I might agree to the stupidety that is associated with the email forwarding stupidety or even the call to filter net content. But from the point of view of someone that might occasionally buy a scratchie (scratch lotto ticket) from the local newsagent the gambling angle is a valid concern. Gambling is pretty widespread in Australia and to limit access to those that can board (a free) Bus to the local casino does not sound unreasonable to me.

I do however wish that Mr Alston hire someone with a brain before making statements that lead to unenforcable laws. Sh*t even a Marketing drone could tell you some of these laws sound implausible (ok ..maybe not a marketing drone). Australia needs more support for IT companies to whaul themselves out of the crap they have fallen into, not more stupid laws for people to laugh at.
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Suggestion Made from Slashdot Reader

Salieri writes, "Ever notice [dictionary.com] how it's sometimes very difficult [bell-labs.com] to tell which is the real [real.com] or relevant [retrogames.com] link [zeldagames.com] in the article [dcita.gov.au] write-up [slashdot.org]? Perhaps the editors [freshmeat.net] can distinguish where the main attraction [wisc.edu] is." He then clicks preview to make sure the links work.

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Beastiality and Aussies? Reminds me of a song....

Get a wobbly bit of cardboard out and sing.... Tie me Kangaroo down sport Tie me Kangaroo down.....
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