Australian Cybermalls News

Hundreds of people throughout Australia turned out to nationwide rallies against the Australian Government's new Internet censorship law on Friday. In Sydney, an estimated crowd of between 300 and 350 marched on the offices of the Australian Broadcasting Authority, who will be administering the new law. Similar crowds were estimated at parallel rallies in Melbourne and Perth, while in Brisbane 250 people marched on the Commonwealth Parliamentary offices and attempted to deliver a petition calling for the law to be repealed. The national day of protest was organised by online civil liberties group Electronic Frontiers Australia, who've questioned the need for the bill at all. Addressing the Sydney rally, EFA spokesperson Danny Yee said that the bill could affect the development of the Australian Internet industry and the Net was far from the unregulated medium the Government had asserted it was. "ISPs are already regulated under the Telecommunications Act and are subject to trade practices acts like any other businesses," Mr Yee said. "Internet content is subject to state and territory laws regarding child pornography, defamation, racial vilification and copyright. This bill is therefore unnecessary and dangerous."

Communications Minister Senator Richard Alston was yesterday forced to defend the Government's new Net censorship law. Faced with an avalanche of criticism in the media, a proposed industry blockade of Government web sites and news that the first consequence of the law's passage was a likely mass exodus of Australian net-based businesses to offshore hosts, Sen. Alston responded by asserting that many critics haven't grasped the key elements of the package. "This bill isn't designed to 'censor the net' or to 'restrict freedom of speech' or to 'force web sites offshore' or even to 'kill the net', as some critics and some elements of the media have claimed," Sen. Alston said in a statement issued yesterday. "The bill ensures that the content classification system used and accepted by Australians for decades (the system that rates movies or videos as, for example, PG or MA or R) is extended to include content on Australian Internet sites. The government doesn't invent these standards or ratings. They are the product of an extensive process of community consultation." However, this drew an immediate response from Australian Consolidated Press (ACP), which had been attacked earlier in the day by the Minister's own Department for its "overblown and unsubstantiated rhetoric" in reporting the immediate fall-out of the law's passage. ACP noted that in recent months the Federal Government has begun actively intervening in the process by which ratings are assessed. Last month, ACP noted, it rejected all candidates for censor roles proposed by the Office of Film and Literature Classification, demanding that individuals from rural communities be added to the list.

A mass exodus of Australian sites from domestic to US hosts began today as the full implications of the passage of the Government's Net censorship bill (see yesterday's story) began to sink in. The Eros Foundation, which represents Australia's adult industry, said that it estimated there were 300 to 400 adult site operators in the country, all of whom would be relocating to US servers over the coming week because of the new law. In addition to this, several non-adult site operators - such as Free4All Classifieds - also let it be publicly known today that they intended to relocate their entire businesses offshore because of the problems they could forsee the the new law causing to their day-to-day operations. Under the new law, the Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA) has the power to instruct ISPs to terminate any web sites that are deemed "offensive" - a very broad-ranging power which provides affected site operators with little redress and which regulates the Net more stringently than any other media the ABA supervises. Meanwhile, several Australian internet industry professionals launched a new initiative today to give the Government a taste of its own medicine. Under their "No Porn For Pollies" campaign, the group are urging webmasters world-wide to boycott all traffic originating from .GOV.AU sites and redirect to an anti-censorship page instead. "If they want censorship, we'll show them what it really is," a campaign spokesman said.

Australia moved a step closer in its relationship to China, Singapore and Malaysia today when the Senate passed the controversial Internet censorship act which allows the Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA) to control what content Australians can access and block any sites considered "unacceptable". The Broadcasting Services Amendment (Online Services) Bill was passed with the support of Independents Brian Harradine and Mal Colston and opposed by Labor, the Democrats and Greens. Both Labor and the Democrats had attempted and failed to have amendments inserted into the Bill. The widely-opposed legislation, which the Government has defended as a necessary minimum level of control over the medium on par with controls it already exerts over traditional TV, radio and newspaper media, would allow the ABA to instruct an ISP to terminate a web site on receipt of a complaint about it. Earlier this month the ABA's deputy chairman praised China, Singapore and Malaysia - totalitarian or authoritarian states which attempt to monitor and control their citizens' online activities - as role models.

The number of Australian online households mushroomed from 300,000 in 1996 to 1.1 million by the end of 1998, according to a new report issued by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). The 1998 Household Use of Information Technology report, drawn from surveys of 13,000 households about computer, Internet and ecommerce issues, estimates that more than 4.2 million Australians surfed the Net in 1998, and speculates that there may be as many as 2 million online households by the end of 1999. The ABS found that almost half the households they surveyed (45%) had a computer, and that 38% said the computer was used regularly (up from 31% in 1996). However, the ABS also found that amongst the 55% of households without computers, 37% said that they felt they had no use for one, and 27% thought that the costs of computing were prohibitive. The ABS estimates that of the 4.2 million Australians who surfed the Net in 1998, approximately 350,000 (8.3%) made an average of 4 online purchases each, but 68% of these purchases were made from overseas vendors.

Independent senator Brian Harradine would like to see all Australian ISPs licensed and compulsorily forced to implement content filtering. These revelations were made yesterday when Senator Harradine appeared on the Ten network's "Meet The Press" program to outline his views on the Government's proposed Internet censorship law, which he has long championed. Senator Harradine told interviewers that he intended to vote for the controversial legislation despite some misgivings he had that the proposed new law was "weak", and then went on to attack the Australian Broadcasting Authority (which would handle complaints under the legislation) as a "passive regulator". Senator Harradine said that he would prefer to see all Australian ISPs licensed and forced to filter content without exception. Today the Internet Industry Association (IIA) - which represents Australia's 650-plus ISPs - said that it found Senator Harradine's idea "interesting", but pointed out that if it were implemented it would give the Government tighter control over ISPs than it currently enjoys over carriers like Telstra and Optus. The IIA said it would be surprised if the Government would seriously entertain Senator Harradine's idea in a supposedly deregulated telecommunications environment.

Almost 8 months after first announcing its partnership deal with Excite (and subsequently @Home, who acquired Excite shortly afterwards), LibertyOne will be relaunching the Excite Asia-Pacific portal next week. The revitalised local version of the US site will be operated in conjunction with a number of domestic content partners including Sofcom, ZD Net Australia, LookSmart, Seek, iMovie and AAP and will offer most of the features of its parent including a search engine, free email accounts, the ability to limit searches to Australia-only content and personalisation. The relaunch will be the first major test for franchise owners LibertyOne, who've raised millions from Australian investors on the promise of the Excite deal during the last year without - so far - apparently delivering anything of substance. The new portal will also be opening into a market where other US engine portals (such as Alta Vista and Yahoo!) have failed to achieve the dominance over domestic engines that they'd initially hoped for, and where the local engine market now exceeds the imports in terms of breadth of competition, depth of content and currency of information. If the domestic Excite relaunch is successful, however, LibertyOne will be opening additional localised versions throughout the Asia-Pacific.

Inspired by the successful float of Travel.Com.Au earlier this month, Harvey World Travel announced plans today to float its own travel agency franchise network on the Australian Stock Exchange before the end of the year. The group, which was established in 1981, has 440 locations in 6 countries and currently achieves turnover of around $1 billion a year. According to managing director Mr Paul Fleming, a listing on the ASX is likely to raise between $50 million to $60 million for the group - around the same as Travel.Com.Au (which is a purely Net-based travel company without any offices or franchisees). Mr Fleming said that according to a recent independent study, Harvey World Travel has the highest recognition of any travel agency in Australia, followed by Flight Centre (which has already listed on the ASX). Mr Fleming anticipates that franchisees and staff will be the first to benefit from any public listing, with equity issuance and additional shares reserved at the listing price for employees.

According to a new study by the US-based Association of National Advertisers (ANA), 44% of US Fortune 500 companies are now trading online and a further 36% are planning to do so within the next year. At least part of the stampede is being caused by news that 92% of companies now selling online are closing the sale online as well, rather than via phone or fax follow-up, leading to significantly lower transaction costs. ANA's study found that the top 3 objectives of Fortune 500 companies currently using the Net are to provide product and service information (67%), increase brand/corporate awareness (58%) and improve brand/corporate image (44%). And the major concerns of those corporations already operating web sites are lack of evidence of return on investment (68%), poor measurement techniques (58%) and the high cost of banner advertising rates (48%, up from 27% a year ago). ANA also found that most Fortune 500 companies who started a web site in the last year spent an average of $US252,0000 building it, with a typical e-commerce enabled site coming in slightly higher at $US359,000. Average annual maintenance costs in 1998 amounted to $US182,0000 for typical sites, and $US275,000 for e-commerce sites. In return, however, ANA found that the average Fortune5000 corporate web site now draws around 1 million site visitors per month (up from 719,000 a month in 1998) and that the average site visit now lasts 10.2 minutes (up from 7.1 minutes a year ago).

Microsoft appear to have leveraged their stranglehold on office software and PC operating systems to make Internet Explorer the leading browser amongst US corporates, according to the latest browser study released today by Zona Research. In its 1999 Browser Study of 308 randomly-chosen corporations, Zona report that Internet Explorer now appears to hold 59% of the browser market against Netscape Communicator - an immense rise over the last six months since Zona's previous survey, which had IE trailing Netscape by almost 20%. Zona said an increase in adoption of corporate browser policies appears to be driving this shift toward IE. When asked whether their employers encourage or require use of a particular browser, 69% of those surveyed said their companies now had such policies. And of those respondents indicating their companies had browser policies, 62% revealed that Microsoft's IE was standard, while 38% specified Netscape Navigator or Communicator. "The fact that corporate policy dictates over two-thirds of all primary browsers reinforces the notion that the desktop browser at work has long ceased being a personal choice," Zona's chief analyst Clay Ryder said when releasing the figures. In Australia, most web sites report that their visitors now seem to be equally split between one browser or the other.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) today unveiled a new service which will allow participants to register companies online in as little as 15 minutes. The new Electronic Company Registration service, which has been undergoing secret trials over the last year, operates in conjunction with a smart card and card reader attached to a PC. Users who can supply ASIC with adequate identification are issued with the smart card and reader, and can then use these devices to supply company registration information to ASIC across the Net with a secure digital key, reducing company registration turnaround times from hours or days to a matter of minutes. The main users of the new service are expected to be solicitors and companies which specialise in off-the-shelf incorporations. ASIC hopes to raise as much as $70 million a year from the new service when it becomes fully operational.

Critics of the Australian Federal Government's proposed Net content censorship law have begun to question how serious Canberra really is about the issue. Earlier this week the Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA) was given $7 million in extra funding in the 1999 Budget - spread over 4 years - to police the new law when and if it comes into effect. But critics from the Australian Computer Society, Electronic Frontiers Australia and several major ISPs have raised doubts that the money will be sufficient for the ABA to carry out its work, and have expressed surprise that it will manage to fulfil its charter to act as the Australian Net's "thought police" on less than $2 million a year. If the law is passed, the ABA will be responsible for overseeing the development of industry codes of practice and determining standards where there are no codes or where codes are deemed to be deficient or fail. It will also investigate public complaints about online content, set up a community advisory body to monitor material, operate a complaint hotline and advise the public about filtering software for online content, as well as instituting blocks or other censorship controls on sites deemed to contain "unacceptable" content. "This would be an amazing achievement on the funding if the Government seriously expects the ABA to do all this," a spokesman said. "Otherwise, this simply looks like a half-hearted follow-on to a half-witted idea." Meanwhile, plans for a national day of protest against the new law are gathering steam. Electronic Frontiers Australia is currently organising nation-wide protests for May 28th.

Travel.Com.Au raised more than $52 million when it made its debut on the Australian Stock Exchange yesterday. The company, one of the pioneers in online travel bookings in Australia, saw its $1.25 shares reach a high of $3.18 during the day on turnover of 7.3 million shares, before closing at $2.94. Both company executives and industry onlookers believe the strong support for the listing confirms public interest in Internet stocks in Australia. Over the last half-year a number of online Australian businesses have intimated that they hope to list on the ASX, including Ecorp, Fairfax Online and the ABC. However, Travel.Com.Au has been the only major domestic float this year. The company will use the funds to investigate overseas opportunities and to continue to develop and market the site.

In a move similar to retailer Harvey Norman's threat last month to axe any supplier who tried to sell directly to consumers through the Net, the Traveland chain has now threatened to disenfranchise its most successful online agent. According to a report in today's Courier-Mail, Traveland has threatened to expel Brisbane franchisee Caruso Traveland over its web site, which has been so successful over the last several years that it now accounts for 40% of the booming agency's travel business. Traveland has objected to the fact that the site draws sales from a global market (Traveland's 270 franchisees are all required to trade within strict geographical areas) and that the agency site frequently offers travel bargains which are not available on Traveland's own site. However, owner Adrian Caruso - who established his site two years before Traveland established theirs - has refused to budge. He believes that although current Australian laws surrounding the operation of franchisees on the Net are still vague, Traveland's demand is likely to conflict with at least part of the Trade Practices Act. "The problem is that my site does more business than theirs," Mr Caruso said.

The Australian Federal Government, confident that it now has the numbers to ram through its unpopular new Internet content censorship law in the face of overwhelming industry and consumer opposition, allocated more than $10.5 million to the Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA) for Internet policing activities in today's Federal Budget. Of this, $7 million has been set aside over 4 years for the ABA to create a regulatory framework to handle consumer complaints over content under the new Broadcasting Services Amendment (Online Services) Bill 1999, which received Senate approval yesterday. The ABA will also receive $3.4 million over three years to develop digital television conversion schemes, and $150,000 to look at measures to restrict access to adult telephone services. However, this year's Federal Budget largely overlooked any other areas of the IT industry and has adopted a "hands off" approach. Last week the ABA praised the concept of Internet censorship and lauded Singapore, Malaysia and China as "models" that Australia should imitate.

In an ironic twist of fate, the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) - which is responsible for policing US radio and TV stations for what it considers obscene and indecent language - accidentally sent out an email to its extensive mailing list late last week which contained an obscene joke. According to reports, an FCC staffer uploaded the joke to the list for unspecified reasons. Although the joke described the sexual confessions of nuns attempting to get into Heaven in great detail, it did not contain any of the "hot" words that would have tripped off an automated email scanning process and was distributed to Daily Digest subscribers before anyone noticed. A red-faced FCC sent a follow-up email a few hours later in which it apologised to its subscribers (who usually receive a synopsis of FCC orders, news releases, speeches, calls for public comment and other information from the list) and said that disciplinary action had been taken against the employee involved.

According to a study by Greenfield Online which may have relevance to Australia's current Net censorship debate, most US children under the age of 12 are strictly supervised when they surf the Net. Greenfield's survey of 1,350 US online households, conducted in February 1999, found that 85% of parents provide constant supervision when they allow children under the age of 12 to surf the Net. However, this declines to about 50% of parents for children aged from 12 to 15, and down to as few as 25% by the time children reach the age of 16. Greenfield found that only 5% of parents continue to supervise children after this age. The study also found that only 20% of the US households try to use filtering software to limit the content children can access, preferring "hands-on" supervision instead. Greenfield estimate that 55 percent of children aged 11 and over use the Net for school work, while 20 percent of parents with children in this age group report that their children are more interested in the Net than in TV. One of the Australian Federal Government's arguments for wanting to impose Net censorship is that children may be exposed to unsuitable Net content - an argument unsupported by any independent local research.

The Straits Times has reported that more than 200,00 Internet users - about 50% of Singapore's online population - had their computers secretly probed by the Ministry of Home Affairs in mid-April this year while they were connected through SingNet, the island's largest ISP. The emerging scandal unfolded in late April when law student Anne Lee complained to police that someone with an account in the Home Affairs Ministry had apparently hacked into her computer while she was online. Within days, SingNet issued a statement saying that customer computers were indeed being scanned, but that it was to check if their systems were vulnerable to hacker attacks. SingNet said that it had asked the Ministry's IT Security Unit to do the scan because of its technical expertise, and had not told its customers "to prevent alarm". SingNet also said that the scanning program used was non-intrusive. "It (the software) passively scans the Net to determine security vulnerabilities. The program does not intrude into the contents of any PC," a company spokesperson said. The Home Ministry is in charge of police and security in Singapore, where Net content is censored and users are closely monitored.

The Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA) has praised China, Malaysia and Singapore as role models for the censorship of Internet content and suggested that Australia should follow the same path. In a submission to the Senate committee currently looking into the Federal Government's widely criticised proposed Net censorship bill, ABA deputy chairman Mr Gareth Grainger called for an additional $1.9 million in funding and 5 extra staff so that the ABA could assume responsibility for content regulation if the legislation is passed. He then praised the three totalitarian and authoritarian Asian states for taking a lead in the area. "Whatever noises Malaysia is making about this issue (censorship), they don't intend to allow problematic content on the Internet into their country," he said. Mr Grainger then added that he was confident the new regime could be in place by January 2000 and noted that the bill - if passed in its current draft form - would give the ABA more powers over ISPs than it currently enjoys over TV and radio stations. Meanwhile, morals crusader Senator Brian Harradine told an Internet industry group appearing before the Senate committee this week that he thought the proposed legislation was "weak" and that he was unsatisfied with it. "You ought to be happy," he said.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) announced today that it had pulled off Australia's biggest Internet scam by persuading more than 230 people to part with between $10,000 and $50,000 each, using a fake web site to advertise an equally fake company. The scam - which began on April 1st - is part of ASIC's ongoing campaign to educate investors to be more cautious about investing in high-risk ventures. The web site claimed that investors could triple their money in a year by investing in Millennium Bug Insurance - a fake company which was supposedly offering insurance against Y2K losses to blue-chip corporations. ASIC spent $60,000 on the scam (which paid for construction of the site, listing in search engines and a banner ad campaign). In return, more than 10,200 people visited the site and 233 people committed themselves to investments of between $10K and $50K (for a total of $4 million). A further 1,212 people requesting more information. Surprisingly, only 11 people recognised that the site was fake and complained to ASIC about it. ASIC run an annual scam every April 1st to hammer home its message that investors should be prudent. It selected the Net for this year's scam because of the rising interest in online investment sites. Last year it had attracted more than 700 potential investors for a fake scheme through newspaper advertising.

The number of Australian sites on the Internet remained almost flat in April 1999, according to the search engines we monitor to construct our monthly Australian Internet Growth Index - the sixth month in succession where the volume of new entrants failed to exceed the number of cancelled ventures. However, the depth of existing sites expanded marginally over the same period, indicating that established sites are continuing to invest in Internet technology, extending their lead over the overwhelming majority of Australian businesses who've yet to open an online presence. The May 1st figures (with April 1st figures in brackets) are as follows:

Australian Internet Growth Index April 1999
(Figures Show Estimated Sites)

Brisbane - 2,247 (2,243)
Sydney - 7,096 (7,084)
Melbourne - 5,172 (5,190)
Adelaide - 1,962 (1,958)

Perth - 2,502 (2,490)
Hobart - 827 (821)
Canberra - 1,987 (1,925)
Darwin - 1,892 (1,898)