Australia's classification system is currently undergoing a public review. But there is a chasm-like disparity in points of view in the public submissions. To one side there are those who are fundamentally against censorship. They are joined by gamers who are pushing for an adult-classification of video games. On the other side are those who want the classification system to ban all 'objectionable content' in Australia.

From the public submissions, and numerous articles written by relevant lobby groups, the ultra-conservative stance revolves around the following: that classification gives an opportunity to fight against the sexualisation of society and a general desensitization to violence. These issues focus upon the objectification of women and protecting the children.

On the face of it these are noble aims (censorship issues aside) but the idealistic arguments being made by such groups are showing (if not screaming) a near-total ignorance as to the true realities and potential horrors of the internet. And that a very real generation gap has developed.

It all begs the questions: do these groups and the legislators know what is actually shocking on the internet? Are they aware of how abundant such material is? Do they know what little Australia can do to block such content even if it wants to? Certainly no internet filter will do anything meaningful.

A recent Senate committee report on the classification scheme attempted to address Australia's "broken" system but without mentioning, the "elephant in the room: the internet". Not mentioning the internet with regards to media content in Australia is like debating the causes of World War Two without mentioning Hitler.

Last year, a previous Senate meeting objected to the posting of a link (in a submission) to a scene from the animated comedy, Family Guy, on the grounds that it contained "objectionable material, or material that is or purports to be refused classification or links directly to refused classification material". The scene in question shows the evil-genius, adult-in-a-baby's-body, Stewie reacting to one of the sickest videos on the internet. At no point is the video itself actually shown. The clip itself is easily accessible on YouTube.

This decision resonates with current adult movie classification, whereby films with sexual content have been considered 'objectionable' for featuring a character with a black eye, or a newspaper headline describing a murder or for featuring a plotline revolving around the search for someone who had been kidnapped.

That's not shocking. THIS is shocking...

Regardless of the validity of these rulings what shines through is what must surely be a total ignorance about the content of the internet, both from lobbyists and legislators. Forget about children's sensibilities for the moment, we're talking about the sort of content that is downright disturbing to adults. The things that have given me, and other grown-ups, very real nightmares. Because the internet is full of such content and it's very easy to encounter - whether you want to or not.

I started university just as the World Wide Web started taking off. Since that time I've seen pretty much every type of shocking and disgusting thing there is to see. The novelty value wore off long ago for me and now there are many things that I actively try to avoid. That's not always possible with the internet.

I don't bat an eyelid to online porn - it is as ubiquitous as dust in the outback. These days it's something I amble past and sidestep around, without breaking pace, while perusing my favourite football message board or while researching the latest hacking story. I'm totally desensitized to it just as many people, whose lives revolve around the internet, are.

While this is exactly the sort of attitude that Australian legislators and conservative groups are (arguably admirably) trying to avoid spreading in Australia I'm afraid that horse bolted long ago. There are some 600 million sex-related web pages on the internet. There are countless more images and videos scattered elsewhere and many more appear every day. Unless you want to ban the entire internet it's there to stay. And as I said before, we haven't even reached the shocking part yet.

For those that think I'm in anyway endorsing the following, think again. Much of what is below I wish I could unsee and if I never meet some of this content's fans then that's fine by me.

Death

People used to talk about mythical snuff movies in hushed tones: films where someone would die - for real. Nowadays you can find countless examples with a simple Google search: on the internet this content is downright normal. My first experience of came when someone emailed me a small animated picture of a child crossing a railway line only to be hit by a massive steam train.

I felt sick for a week. I was working in a major merchant bank at the time. It came round on company email. Sent for a laugh. It went viral quickly. (It was quickly followed by a video clip of an Eastern European circus clown inserting his head into a horse's arse in a packed circus arena.)

This was 15 years ago. These weren't the things you'd ever see in traditional media. As every new 'horror' appeared, it got forwarded to everyone in the address book. But this isn't nearly the worst content.

One of the most harrowing deaths I saw was of a well-healed American at a presentation. In front of what looked like family, friends and colleagues he calmly made a speech and then took a gun from an envelope and shot himself in the head. It's all on camera. Close ups and all. It was real car crash viewing. [UPDATE: as has been pointed out in the comments, I am referring to the suicide of shamed Pennsylvania Treasurer, R. Budd Dwyer. Google shows that his suicide video is all over the internet - hosted on many websites that aren't associated with depravity.]

But, I later saw this video referenced on various high-brow websites. For the first time, the public had got to see what a very real suicide looked like. It wasn't like in the movies. His head turned into, what can only be described as, a 'blood sprinkler' which didn't stop. A knock-on effect, however, was to validate many conspiracy theories that 'suicides' featuring bloodless corpses (of prominent people who had apparently shot themselves in the head) found in parks in America during the 60s were staged and that the police covered up what really happened. It turns out the conspiracy theorists were right. This violent video going public had actually done some good. I don't relish the reality of that video and never want to see it again. But part of me knows I needed to see something like that: to see the realities of the world which Western societies otherwise censor. Nowadays suicide videos like this are a Google search away.

Global means Global

I mention Western values as everyone needs to remember that the internet is global and conservative Western values are the minority.

Foreign news channels frequently show death on a daily basis. Polish prime time TV thinks nothing of cutting to a feed (with no warning) which shows a line of hostages' severed heads. I saw one South American TV News channel which showed a disastrous rescue attempt when a helicopter winch cable snapped and a conjoined mass of bodies was filmed crashing into, and rolling down, a mountain side. The people became very dead.

Dead bodies are so common in Brazil that Google Street View had to spend a great deal of time covering them all up. In Pakistan, the Middle East and other war-suffering countries, sensitivities are far more hardened compared our cossetted Australian souls back home. The internet takes no account of us.

There's far worse.

Videos which I can't bring myself to watch include Czechen soldiers clumsily beheading Russian POWs with six inch knives. Then there's the famous beheading of US journalist Daniel Pearl. They're easy to find on the internet. Often on official or 'terrorist' websites.

There's far more. The brutal realities of war are frequently filmed these days. The internet is their home. This isn't something new. Recently, on SBS' Who Do You Think You Are, black and white pictures were shown of British soldiers posing with the local 'terrorists' they'd killed that day in Indonesia. It was common back then and it's more common now. If there was an internet 50 years ago, those pictures would probably be on it. Along with HD camera phone footage.

Crime scene photos and road traffic fatality pictures are everywhere. So are videos of legal and illegal car racing deaths (especially in Middle East countries). All too often you'll find them when you don't want to, because someone is 'having a laugh'. I can't tell you how much I would like to unsee a picture of a ritually-killed dead woman with a plank-sized crucifix rammed down her throat. That was from a joke link on a soccer message board.

Some sites revel in this: rotten.com was the first. Faces of Death is self explanatory. All of these expose the abhorrent, gritty realities of the underbelly of society. But blocking them won't fix anything: any Google search you do will find heaps of death videos and pictures. Many are from officious sources.

And they don't always have to die. You may have heard of harsh punishments under some Islamic laws. Not surprisingly these punishments are all over the internet. If you ever want to know what someone having their arm chopped off looks like, you don't have to look very hard.

More sex

Then there's the really controversial sex. While most tame adult content is banned in Australia, legislators would be shocked to see what is widespread on the internet.

Firstly, it cannot be underestimated just how many naked and copulating teenagers there are on the online. These aren't pictures that are taken by child abusers, they're taken by the teenagers themselves. A simple ABC site search shows how common the problem of sexting is in Australia alone. This is why the mandatory Interpol-ordained internet filter, which has recently appeared in Australia, only cites child pornography as featuring those that are under 13 years of age.

Some teenage pictures are posted online for revenge by a partner after a couple broke up. Others are posted because they want to show off. Others seem to do it because there aren't any hang ups about sex in their country. According to Australian legislation, depiction of someone who looks like they might be under 16 can warrant prosecution as a pederast. Yet doing a simple Google image search (don't for pity's sake do this by the way) for "Facebook Hacked Girls" will dump enough deviant content on your computer to potentially put you away as a child sex offender for a very long time.

Suffice to say, if a maturing teenager is curious about sex, a simple Google search for 'Teen Sex' will give them more than they bargained for. Recent research on hacking frequently saw one landing at non sex-related pages which nonetheless had explicit 'teen sex' website ads. Every day in the UK, the enormously-popular The Sun newspaper shows a topless page 3 model. They are usually teenagers and the minimum age is 16. These images are accessible on The Sun webpage every day.

Why do teenagers do this? Probably for the same reason that so many adults do it. Anti-porn activists like Gail Dines have said that porn is "actively designed to degrade and debase women" (frequently on the ABC) but such claims fly in the face of numerous 'home-brew' websites where adult women, men and couples video themselves and post the results online for exhibitionist reasons. According to Wikipedia, one of the most popular, YouPorn, is in the top 35 adult websites on the internet and gains an additional 15 million new viewers every month.

Then there are the sex acts which come under banners which are not only innocuous but double as child friendly terms. I'll let Wikipedia tell you what 'Snowballing' also means. But pity the child that does a Google image search for it without strict 'Safe Search' parameters turned on.

Meanwhile, in Japan

One of the dominant sub cultures of the internet is Japanese Manga (comics) and anime (cartoons). These frequently feature heroines that look like school kids. Some devoted fans get obsessed with such characters and have drawn very sexual images of them. The term given to this is lolicon. It's popular online.

It is completely illegal in Australia. However, distinguishing regular anime from the sexualised stuff is near impossible on the internet. A Google image search for "anime girls" will instantly deliver heaps of banned images onto your computer. [Note: Google's ability to deliver Refused Classification material will be dealt with in a separate article.]

REALLY abhorrent fetishes

All images of fetishes are Refused Classification in Australia but such content is rife on the internet. The ultimate example is a film called, 2 girls, 1 Cup. This fetish video is so disgusting that, once again, I'll leave Wikipedia to describe it to you. All I'll mention now is the word, coprophagia.

However, it's a perfect illustration of how you'll find obscene porn in normal places. The video went viral in 2007 for being the ultimate gross-out movie clip. It's since been parodied by John Mayer and Perez Hilton and was found in mainstream media everywhere online when it appeared. It also saw a phenomenal amount of reaction videos - people filming the faces of other people watching it. There are many on YouTube - some featuring child-friendly characters like The Muppets. However, the only thing that was officially banned in Australia was a link in a Senate committee submission which pointed to a reaction video shown in Family Guy. The scene is easily accessible on YouTube. It's arguably a definitive example of the gap between ultra conservatives and the realities of the internet.

Animal cruelty

Once you've been to some of the dodgier areas of the internet, for whatever reason, after a while you'll realise that Westerners - mainly those of British origin - are somewhat unique in their sensibilities regarding animal welfare.

Abhorrent images include (but are certainly not limited to) cats been hung on washing lines and beaten plus numerous pictures/videos of them being set on fire. All can appear in the most unassuming places. I know of them thanks to anonymous idiots subverting message board threads which featured funny cat images and videos.

Even so, on popular internet comedy sites like Memebase, which specialise in internet meme humour, images featuring content like graphic 'seal clubbing' appear almost regularly. This moderated site is aimed at adults and children alike but policing is done using American values which tend to accept violence while vilifying bad language. The site provides a good yard stick for internet humour yet it regularly produces or refers to images that would be Refused Classification in Australia.

What's shocking on the internet?

Much of the above may sound like it comes from the worst places on the internet, but such content often appears in the most popular and unassuming places.

Nonetheless, there are still many websites which skirt the borders of what even the internet deems acceptable. Websites like Something Awful and 4Chan are hugely popular online. The latter is arguably one of the most influential websites on the entire internet. Yet much of what appears there would make a conservative Australian Senator explode in a fit of apoplexy.

Wikipedia's description of the site is here. It includes a quote from the UK's The Guardian newspaper which summarized 4Chan as "lunatic, juvenile... brilliant, ridiculous and alarming". It's the birth place of the Anonymous hacking collective and the launch pad of many of the internet's many memes. Its leader, Moot, was named the most influential person in the world according to Time's 2009 100 list (although this was later exposed as a hack).

He has also spoken at the influential TED talks about the importance of internet anonymity and the privacy concerns of Facebook.

4Chan has a population the size of Australia. It's like the final frontier town before you get to the ultimate bandit-ridden badlands of the internet - where everything is unrequitedly illegal in most places. Its dominant theme is Japanese subculture but its anonymous message boards are geared around protecting users' privacy above all. This means that contributors appear from all over the world and are of all ages - mainly teenagers upwards. All of the above content can be found there if you wait long enough. You'll also get the occasional, overt paedophile.

To extend the above analogy, child molesters sometimes appear like bandits riding into town firing a gun making a huge scene. While overt child abuse images are banned, once someone has posted one (whether for shock value or in the solicitation of more) many people will see it whether they want to or not. Such images are usually taken down very quickly and the internet addresses logged. But with such enormous traffic, it can be impossible to avoid. It should be noted that 4Chan is cited in this regard as illustrative. This happens in many places online.

Conclusion

This will all be depressing reading to many Australian conservatives, but it may explain the downright hostile reaction they've received by people railing against seemingly-obvious desires to protect the children.

Indeed, while they may discuss, legislate for and tell people that 'objectionable content' issues are fixable, the evidence favours the opposite. We've shown before how any internet filter is facile to circumvent but ultimately, the notion that any filter can hide more than a fraction of 'objectionable content' on the internet, from innocent eyes, is completely untrue.

In the case of violent video game classification, a ban on supposed-R18 content has backfired and meant that adults-only games are practically all available in the MA15 category - putting children directly in harm's way instead of protecting them.

Arguably similar would be true of any proposed internet filter and additional, proscriptive changes to the classification system, because of the accompanying false sense of security that would come with any ban.

Regardless of the moral merits of either side of the debate, the real issue should surely be that this content is here, it's everywhere, and that banning it is out of the question whether we want to or not. To this end, Stephen Fry's analogy is well worth reading (skip to: Why the web needs a red light district).

Managing and banning internet content will be covered in future articles so post your views below. Also note that the deadline for public submissions to the Australian Law Reform Commission review close TODAY. You can read existing submissions and submit your own views using this link.