Conroy induces mass facepalming

If you’re one of our Australian readers, you may have seen people today muttering: “Oh gawd, he didn’t just say… he did?  Really?“. And if you’re one of the poor unfortunates who didn’t get where the random resentment was aimed at, well by all means let me fill you in.

Our fearless Federal Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Stephen Conroy, has asked Google to censor any content on YouTube that would fall into the Australian “Refused Classification” category.  In the process, he’s compared Australian internet policy to that of China and Thailand … as though that were a good thing.

Seriously:

Google at the moment filters an enormous amount of material on behalf of the Chinese government; they filter an enormous amount of material on behalf of the Thai government.  What we’re saying is, well in Australia, these are our laws and we’d like you to apply our laws.

-Stephen “I did it for the lulz” Conroy

If your friends or co-workers struck this pose today, it's likely they read this story...

To put this in context, China is one of the 13 countries that the Paris-based NGO Reporters Sans Frontières lists as an “enemy of the internet”, putting them in the same category as Iran and North Korea.

Way to put us in the same room as the enemies of the internet, Senator Conroy!

Google has (thankfully) told the minister that they won’t comply voluntarily, citing among other things the fact that YouTube already has stringent content guidelines, the fact that the request was way too broad and the fact that they’re threatening to leave the Chinese market to get away from increasingly stringent censorship demands.

Plus there’s small stuff like the Australian government probably doesn’t have any jurisdiction over foreign-hosted websites like YouTube anyway.

You can see the whole interview with the minister on the Hungry Beast website (be patient, they’re getting spiked traffic at the moment), which is where this particular Conroy failboat set sail.  You can also read the full article over at the Sydney Morning Herald for more info and be sure to use a full strength palm moisturiser to avoid face chafing.