Internet Censorship in New Zealand

Major social networks operating in New Zealand have agreed to voluntarily self-censor content considered misinformation and hate speech.

Those signing up to what's known as Aotearoa (New Zealand) Code of Practice for Online Safety and Harms include Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Amazon's Twitch, Twitter, and TikTok.

The initiative comes from Netsafe, a New Zealand campaign group.

It is not stated what type of action the platforms will now be taking in order to achieve that goal, but the companies behind them will be publishing reports each year to demonstrate compliance, and will detail what tools, policies, processes and systems are being used to this end.

The list of content requiring censorship includes child sexual exploitation, bullying or harassment, hate speech, incitement of violence, violent or graphic content, misinformation, and disinformation.

New Zealand is also preparing to adopt actual new laws that would impose further censorship of content labeled as misinformation or hate speech.

Momentum had been building in New Zealand over recent months for a nationwide law blocking internet porn, but the effort spearheaded by Interior Affairs Minister Tracey Martin appears to have hit a roadblock. Martin said late last year that she planned to bring her porn ban bill before New Zealand's parliament prior to the 2020 elections, which are scheduled for September.

Martin created a draft proposal to require blocking of porn sites by internet service providers for anyone under 18 years of age. But when she circulated the paper among members of the governing coalition including her own centrist New Zealand First Party, as well as the liberal-progressive Labor and Green Parties, she found a lack of interest. She now says she will not attempt to push the porn-blocking plan any further.

Despite her inability to win support for her porn-blocking proposal, Martin still says that she favors an age-verification system for online porn, according to the Herald report.

New Zealand ISP Spark says it will block the controversial website 8chan if it resumes service, because it continues to host disturbing material.

8chan is currently down after its web host pulled out in response to 8chan being used by US mass shooters. However, Spark said if 8chan finds another host provider, it would block access. Spark said:

We feel it is the right thing to do given the website's repeated transgressions and continual willingness to distribute disturbing material.

The 8chan internet forum was used by the accused Christchurch mosque gunman to distribute his manifesto and live stream the attack.

However Spark seemed to realise that it would now become a magnet for every easily offended social justice warrior with a pet grievance and said that the the government should step in:

Appropriate agencies of government should put in place a robust policy framework to address the important issues surrounding such material being distributed online and freely available.

Technology commentator Paul Brislen responded:

It's very, very nearly the edge of what's acceptable for what your internet provider to be doing in this kind of situation.

I'm as uncomfortable as they [Spark] are about it. They do really need to find a new way to manage hate-speech and extremist content on the internet.

It's much like the Telecom of old to decide which phone calls you can and can't make.

The risk was someone would now turn around and say okay you blocked 8Chan because of hate speech, now I want you to block this other website because it allows people to access something else. It might be hate speech, it might be pornography, it might be something that speaks out against a religious group or ethnicity.

You start down a certain track of Spark or any of the other ISPs being forced to decide what is and isn't acceptable for the NZ public and that's not their job at all. They really shouldn't be doing that.

Update: New Zealand's chief censor David Shanks chips in

11th August 2019. See article from classificationoffice.govt.nz

I applaud the announcement by Spark that they are prepared to block access to 8chan if and when it re-emerges on the internet.

This move is both brave and meaningful. Brave, because a decision not to provide users with access to a site is quite a different thing from a decision not to provide a site with the server capacity and services it needs (which is the choice that Cloudflare recently made). Meaningful, because everything I have seen tells me that 8chan is the white supremacist killer's platform of choice, with at least three major attacks announced on it within a few months. There is nothing indicating that upon re-emergence 8chan will be a changed, safer platform. Indeed, it may be even more toxic.

We appreciate that our domestic ISP's have obligations to provide their customers with access to the internet according to their individual terms and conditions. Within those constraints, as the experience post the March 15 attacks show, our ISP's can act and do the right thing to block platforms that are linked to terrorist atrocities and pose a direct risk of harm to New Zealanders.

I know that ISPs don't take these decisions lightly, and that they do not want to be in the business of making judgments around the content of sites. But these are extraordinary circumstances, and platforms that promote terrorist atrocities should not be tolerated on the internet, or anywhere else. Spark is making the right call here.

This is a unique set of circumstances, and relying on ISPs to make these calls is not a solution for the mid or long term. I agree with calls for a transparent, robust and sensible regulatory response. Discussions have already started on what this might look like here in NZ. Ultimately this is a global, internet problem. That makes it complex of course, but I believe that online extremism can be beaten if governments, industry and the public work together

New Zealand could follow the United Kingdom in bringing in age restrictions for online pornography and blocking websites which refuse to comply.

Department of Internal Affairs Minister Tracey Martin, who also holds the children's portfolio, says young people are being bombarded by internet pornography and she wants censorship laws to be strengthened.

This is a really, really big issue to New Zealand and we are going to have a serious conversation about it, she told the Herald. Martin supports the approach of the United Kingdom, which has ambitious and controversial plans to introduce mandatory age verification for pornographic websites later this year.

She made the comments after the Chief Censor began a major piece of research on New Zealand teenagers' online pornography habits. We're pretty excited about it, Chief Censor David Shanks said.

We think it's going to give us some potentially world-leading data on the New Zealand situation and teens and pornography. With this research our aim is to get solid evidence about the experiences and perspectives of young people on the table so there can be an informed debate.

In our view policy in this area does need some consideration, in terms of how do you regulate use and access to porn in the digital environment. The question there is . . . when the average age to get a smartphone is 10 and a half to 11 years old, what sort of tools and restrictions can we really place on access to material that's widely available on the internet?

The Office of Film and Literature Classification began the survey last week of 2300 people aged between 14 and 17. It asks if teenagers look at online pornography, how often, what sort of content, why they are looking at it, and how they are viewing it. The survey is expected to be completed in December.

Martin said the Chief Censor's research was vital work, though she is already intent on changes:

I have already had conversations with the Chief Censor with regard to a particular drive of mine to make sure we as a nation do something about what is the bombardment of pornography and the easy access to pornography that our young people are experiencing.

Considering our censorship laws were pre-internet, this is an area that we have left for a long time without addressing and I think we need to address it.

Martin said she was not interested in wholesale bans on online content because they did not work. But she supported the UK Government's approach, saying she was interested in any policy which helped to protect young people. She added:

I would really like to watch how they implement it and see what are the challenges for them.

The New Zealand moralist campaign group Family First have been campaigning for new laws to censor pornography.

Family First national director Bob McCoskrie is calling for an expert panel to consider health and social issues supposedly created by pornography, and somehwhat presumptively, how to solve the problems identified.

More than 22,000 people signed McCoskrie's petition, and this week he spoke to the Governance and Administration Select Committee at Parliament, where he said porn was feeding the health crisis of the digital age.

Parliament's Governance and Administration Select Committee is currently considering the petition and whether to set up an 'expert' panel.

Chief censor David Shanks seems to have been caught up in the pre-censorship momentum. He said more needs to be done to understand porn use, and the effects. Then NZ can get to work tackling the issue. He added that New Zealand needs to take a societal approach to tackling the pervasive effects of porn, including further regulation.

As far as regulation goes, Shanks said New Zealand could consider making similar moves to the United Kingdom, where anyone wanting to watching online porn had to go through an official age verification process. An ISP-level ban, where pornography viewers had to opt in to viewing pornographic content, could also be part of the solution.

The Office of Film and Literature Classification, headed by the chief censor, was dedicating its major research project for the year to the prevalence, and effects of porn.

Justice Minister Andrew Little said he was aware of the issues surrounding pornography use, and he was open to suggestions on what regulatory approach New Zealand could take to tackle problems. However, there was no specific legislation in the pipeline at the moment.

New Zealand's outgoing chief censor has urged the Government to hurry up and deliver the law change it proposed on streaming services like Netflix.

Eight months since the Government announced a plan to update broadcasting rules, including making online streaming services subject to classification and content standards, chief censor Andrew Jack has revealed his frustration at what he says has been a total lack of progress.

Jack spoke to the Herald on Sunday in the final week of his six-year tenure at the top of the classification office and cited concerns around pornography as well as how issues like suicide, rape and sexual violence are being used by entertainment companies for commercial gain - beyond the reach of regulation. He whinged:

Nothing has actually happened, just nothing. And I have to say that is a source of significant frustration. We know some of this material is causing harm, we know the measures which can improve the situation, but nothing has actually happened.

The only entities winning out of the current situation are the entities selling depictions of sexual violence as entertainment.

In my view, you can't just announce you're going to do something, and not do it.

Arts, Culture and Heritage Minister Maggie Barry said the Government intends to refer the bill to a select committee this year. She said:

Work on the bill has been fairly complex. It needs to be future-proofed in an era of rapid technological change, as well as being practical for existing providers and not putting barriers to the entry of new services.

In his final days as chief censor, a role he wanted to continue but was unsuccessful in seeking a third term, Jack said there were other aspects to consider, specifically around pornography and depictions of suicide and sexual violence. Jack said there was absolutely a concern over pornography becoming an unwelcome form of sex education in young generations, though more research needed to be done to understand what exactly young Kiwis are consuming online.

Jack spoke of complains about the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why:

I can't talk specifically about the series you talked about because the classification office has called that in and is in the process of deciding whether that needs to be subject to a restriction or a warning on it.

Historically as a country we've tried the 'let's not talk about it' approach [to suicide] which has not been successful. We've an appalling rate of youth suicide.

Where those issues are dealt with in a positive way, it's a really good thing. But it's where you get depictions of suicide which are instructional, or two-dimensional or suggest it's a viable option for dealing with some of the tribulations life sometimes deals at you.

Several thousand New Zealand families have signed up to use an internet blocking service that is designed to prevent access to a wide range of websites with adult content.

Vocus, which owns the Slingshot, Orcon and Flip internet brands, began offering its network level family filter a few weeks ago. Stuff Fibre has announced it will also offer a blocking service, called Safe Zone, which its managing director Sam Morse said would be more flexible.

Vocus consumer manager Taryn Hamilton said parents often eschewed parental control software that they could install on individual computers and other devices, as it was complex, possible to circumvent and often did not cater well for smartphones. Hamilton said that the Vocus Family Filter instead blocks content at the network level so that the same level of censorship applies to all devices in a household. He added that parents could easily switch the filter on and off, if they chose, using their account password.

Vocus plans to provide the filter free for a year, after which it will charge $5 a month. Hamilton said Vocus' filter was being provided by United States company Fortinet and was designed to screen out:

• R16+ nudity and pornography
• sites featuring dating, drugs, tobacco, alcohol, gambling
• websites about hacking, the dark web and other illegal activities
• sites that promote self harm or suicide and known infected or hacked sites

Stuff Fibre managing director Sam Morse said its Safe Zone service would be more flexible. Rather than only having a single on/off switch , Safe Zone would come with a range of pre-configured profiles . Not long after launch, it would let customers configure settings differently for devices on a network so you will be able to decide what set-up you want for Johnny's iPhone ..

New Zealand has imposed some of the world's strictest blasphemy laws by stealth, a humanist group says.

The new Harmful Digital Communications Act could have the effect of landing a person in jail for two years for committing blasphemy, the New Zealand Humanist Society president Mark Honeychurch:

This legislation not only flies in the face of human rights, but the introduction of yet another law that gives special privileges to religions is unfair, unpopular and unrepresentative of our society, where over 40 per cent of New Zealanders identify as not religious, making this our country's largest single belief group.

The society said the act stated digital communications should not denigrate an individual by reason of his or her colour, race, ethnic or national origins, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or disability .

Honeychurch said the law would effectively impose some of the world's strictest penalties - including fines of up to $50,000 - on people found guilty of blaspheming, or insulting religion. He added:

We want to increase social cohesion and understanding, and by awarding privileges and protecting groups from critique we are closing the door on free speech, free inquiry and public debate. New Zealand has to abolish its blasphemy laws before they are used to censor, suppress, and silence public debate

Last month, lawyers cited in The Law Report said another possible unintended consequence of the law would be the establishment of a new legal avenue for recipients of defamatory digital content.

Justice Minister Amy Adams defended the censorship law claiming it would take a lot for someone to be charged under the act:

Not only must the perpetrator be responsible for posting the communication, they must intend to harm another person and that harm must actually occur. The offence is targeted at the very worst online behaviours, and will not censor, suppress or silence public debate.