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© Committee of Australian University Directors of I.T., 1996, 1997
CAUDIT licences the use of this document by any party, but not for profit, provided that the document is copied in its entirety, including this copyright notice
As a service to its members, and to University communities more generally, CAUDIT provides a Code of Practice relating, in particular, to content that may infringe Australian censorship laws, at http://www.caudit.edu.au/codes/Code.html.
This document contains:
Drivers of Australian Developments
Appendix 3: Relevant Associations
The explosion in university use of the Internet has presented many challenges to University Directors of Information Technology.
One issue that requires urgent attention is the balancing of censorship laws against the freedoms of expression, communication and access. Of particular concern is the emergent regulatory framework for materials that infringe existing laws, i.e. 'hard pornography', and incitement to and instruction in crime. Related to that are a number of further bases for action, including incitement of hatred (e.g. on racial, ethnic and religious grounds), and harassment and 'stalking'.
In the second half of 1996, CAUDIT commissioned Roger Clarke, of Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd to conduct an assignment. The purpose of the project was to develop elements of a Code of Practice that:
This document provides background materials relevant to the recommended Code. It comprises the following sections:
An outline of the relevant law, together with references to Internet sources, is provided in a separate document of legal materials.
During 1994-95, considerable media coverage was provided to the feasibility of young people gaining access to highly objectionable materials via the Internet. It was claimed that the new technology was being used to subvert existing protections, such as criminal offence provisions, and mechanisms applying to conventional media, such as restricted access to 'adult shops', and opaque covers on magazines.
The media coverage resulted in investigations by government agencies and parliamentary committees. In the United States and France, highly oppressive legislation was passed as a knee-jerk reaction, and was subsequently ruled invalid by the Courts. In Australia, as a result of considerable efforts being invested by public interest groups and by officers of the public service, a more considered approach has been adopted.
Detailed information on the course of events in Australia, together with references to sources relating to overseas developments, is available at http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/II/Regn.html.
The most recent, and most conclusive, report on the matter was published by the Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA) on 30 June 1996. This is available at http://www.dca.gov.au/aba/olsrprt.htm, and key information from the Report is provided at Appendix 1 to this document.
The Report recommended a regulatory framework for 'on-line service providers'. This is to be based on one or more Codes of Conduct developed and administered by the on-line services industry / community in consultation with the public and relevant regulatory agencies, subject to a number of specific requirements and the purview of an appropriate agency. The matter is reviewed in a paper for the CAUDIT Conference on 23 August 1996, starting at http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/II/CensCope.html#Fr.
Specifically, it is proposed that 'on-line service providers':
Further aspects of importance are:
The recommendations generally propose controls over organisations and individuals according to the function they perform. This is important, because the relationship between organisational types and the roles they perform is not simple; for example:
The ABA Report demonstrates a reasonable appreciation of the technology. Not all of the ramifications of these differences have been fully thought through yet, however, and further developments in the ABA's thinking is to be anticipated. In particular, it appears likely that the following roles may be emerging:
Relevant information from the ABA Report is provided in Appendices 1A, 1B and 1C.
At State level, the ABA's Report is an important driver. However, several of the States are pursuing somewhat different agendas. Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Victoria have passed legislation prior to the ABA's Report, which take a rather different line.
Information on these matters is available, starting at http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/II/Regn.html#State.
The following progress has occurred since the release of the ABA Report:
No progress appears to have been made to date, however, in relation to the following aditional steps:
The ABA has subsequently provided a short version of its position.
The Internet services area is a new and fast-developing field, and it overlaps considerably with existing stamping grounds. A 'turf battle' for representation of the interests was therefore inevitable, and a moderate number of existing and newly formed associations claim to be in consultation with the ABA on this matter.
A list of those that have been identified is at http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/II/NetGroups.html. These associations have been contacted, with a view to exchanging information relating to plans for the development of Codes of Practice.
A body that is of particular relevance is the Internet Industry Association of Australia (INTIAA). It has been positioning itself for over a year, seeking recognition as the primary association. It was, for example, successful in attracting the Minister for Communications (Senator Richard Alston) to announce the release of the ABA Report at an INTIAA meeting.
Meanwhile, the Director of the Service Providers Action Network (SPAN) claims to have been instrumental in the formation of an Electronic & Online Services Forum to act as a peak body within which members of a variety of industry associations concerned with telecommunications can meet and co-ordinate their positions with respect to policy issues. SPAN has named about 20 industry groups that it claims participate in the Forum.
The first document that appears to have been produced by an association is that of the Western Australian Internet Association (WAIA). Its Draft Code was published in August 1995, in response to a legislative initiative of the Western Australian government. The document is at Appendix 4A.
INTIAA published a First Draft Code in February 1996. It was not very good, and is briefly reviewed at Appendix 4B.
The Second Draft of the INTIAA Code was released in September 1996, and relevant excerpts are at Appendix 4C.
Xamax submitted comments to INTIAA in relation to the First Draft, and analysis and further discussions are being undertaken in relation to the Second Draft.
In October/November 1996, several organisations indicated that they were working with INTIAA, with a view to a single Code emerging. These organisations included AIIA and ECA. In addition, SPAN has published a set of action points relating to self-regulation. They are at Appendix 4E. However, SPAN states that INTIAA is acting as the coordinator for the industry's approach to self-regulation.
Several other organisations, however, indicated that they were opposed to at least some aspects of the INTIAA Draft Code, and that they were preparing separate Codes. These organisations included the WAIA and EFA, and may also include SAIA and ACTIA. As part of the EFA response to the ABA Report, it published a set of criticisms of the INTIAA proposals. This is reproduced in Appendix 4D.
EFA was particularly critical of the INTIAA role, because it considers that INTIAA:
and was also highly critical of INTIAA's Draft Code, claiming that it:
A number of interests need to be recognised, and, to the extent that they may involve conflict, balanced. The stakeholders include:
Universities perform a special role, which has been referred to as "the production, distribution and legitimation of knowledge". Reflecting this, universities' mission statements generally refer to core functions of research, education and community service.
Research demands an ethos of enquiry and an infrastructure that enables access to information. Education may, at the lower levels, involve some degree of filtering and pre-ordering of information, but this is a means to the end of enabling graduates to cope with access to vast quantities of information. In relation to the broader community, the primary contribution that universities make could be summed up as 'intellectual leadership'. All of the core functions of universities are therefore entirely dependent upon unfettered access to information.
On the other hand, universities exist within societies, and are subject to the laws of one or more jurisdictions within which they operate. These laws include specific constraints on freedom of access to data, including intellectual property law, exemption clauses within freedom of information laws, and the laws of confidence, defamation, and censorship.
Universities therefore have interests in securing unfettered access to information, but subject to the constraints of compliance with the law, and with the minimisation of the costs of access, and of the costs of compliance with the law.
Directors of I.T. Services provide critical information infrastructure and services to a demanding clientele. Their primary function is service delivery; but they are subject to constraints including the law, policy expressed by the university's governing bodies and executives, and budget and resource limitations.
Censorship issues need to be addressed within the contexts of:
CAUDIT exists to serve the common interests of its members. CAUDIT's 1995-97 strategy includes "the production of a CAUDIT response to key issues affecting information technology in Australian Universities". CAUDIT services are accordingly focused on matters that confront all Directors, and that either:
I.T. Services staff are confronted by demands that typically outstrip the organisation's capacity, and that change continually. They seek a sufficient degree of formalisation and routinisation of activities that they can achieve reasonable effectiveness and efficiency in their work. They also seek some stability of employment, and a career path.
On the other hand, many of them choose to earn less within a university I.T. Services environment than they could elsewhere, precisely because of the dynamism of the work, and the access that it provides them with to leading-edge technologies. Many are also active members of the Internet community, and some have been contributing for a long time.
University 'general' or support staff have become highly dependent on information technology. Mainframe, mini-computer and client-server phases are currently being augmented with, and to some degree replaced by, Internet, Intranet and Extranet approaches. Support staff need access to particular kinds of information, within a user-environment that is convenient and consistent.
Academic staff, on the other hand, place great value on access to information from a very wide, and ever-changing, variety of sources. They seek at least the opportunity to choose whether or not to apply filters, and preferably also the ability to adapt them dynamically to suit their current interests.
In extreme circumstances (such as under fascist governments and in the recent case of apartheid in South Africa), academic staff argue that unfettered access to information, even in violation of the law, is essential to the preserrvation of freedoms. University executives appear to be constructively unwilling to join in this particular debate.
If a university is successful in its endeavours, its user-population is a severely biased sample of the overall population. Ideally, and in many cases in practice, students are among society's most intelligent, inquisitive, challenging and experimental people.
At undergraduate level, at least in the more vocationally oriented courses, some amount of intentional filtering and selectivity of information is practised by teaching staff, in order to simplify and compress information, and to shape the interpretations made by the student body. Ideally, but also in most cases in practice, these constraints are progressively relaxed, and the students encouraged to exercise judgement in performing their own filtering and selection. At graduate level, moreover, the dividing-line between students and academic staff becomes quite blurred.
The 'catch-all' concept of 'the general public' is misleading, because of the immense variability in opinions among different population segments.
A special case that has been the focus of attention in the debates to date has been the broadly (though not quite universally) accepted need for protections to exist whereby children are not subjected to the full freedoms of access to information. This takes on somewhat different flavours in the cases of:
A further interest that must be acknowledged is that of people of 'conservative' persuasion, who seek the means to limit their own access to particular kinds of information. There is a (weak) argument to the effect that the State should take responsibility, and a much stronger one that the State should empower individuals to exercise that responsibility for themselves.
A further interest that needs to be recognised is that of people of 'conservative' persuasion, who seek the means to limit other people's access to particular kinds of information. This is a highly contentious issue that demands very careful treatment. Broadly speaking, the contemporary position in Australian society appears to be that information should be available except where a legal prohibition exists, or at least a legal authority for non-provision of information exists. Significant numbers of people of both 'conservative' and 'libertarian' orientation are dissatisfied with the balance points that exist at present; but perhaps much larger numbers are satisfied, or not dissatisfied, or just plain apathetic about the matter; and hence discussions are heated, but change is fairly slow.
The combination of institutional role and user characteristics engenders a particularly virile intellectual environment among students as well as staff. This is uncomfortable for university executives, but it is an unavoidable, and, from the viewpoint of society as a whole, absolutely essential, role.
The degree of discomfort experienced by IT Directors will sometimes be acute. When parliaments pass unpopular laws, and governments implement unpopular policies, one of the most likely hosts for resistance activities is universities. Sometimes this will involve university facilities being utilised in arguably illegal, and occasionally clearly illegal activities. On the other hand, some actions by parliaments and governments are illegal too, and the role of individual universities in assisting the community to hold out against unreasonable behaviour may in due course be applauded.
In structuring a Code of Practice, University I.T. Services executives need to seek a balance between the conflicting interests of some parts of society in suppressing some kinds of information, and those of academic staff, students, and universities as a whole, in having unfettered access.
It is suggested, however, that the missions of universities are such that freedom of expression must be sustained as a very highly valued objective, and, at the margin, risks may need to be taken of being in breach of censorship provisions.
At a more practical level, the elements of a Code, and associated legal commentary, will of necessity be generic. Each University Director will need to implement the elements of the Code within the context of their own Statutes and disciplinary and other instruments, and may need to seek specific legal support to ensure that the implementation is effective.
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Created: 26 October 1996, Last Amended: 3 April 1997