Violent online video ban legislation faces review

Legislation to ban live-streaming of violent material is headed for review whichever side wins the election.

Journalist Peter Greste with Lamisse Hamouda, daughter of Hazem Hamouda, and lawyer Jennifer Robinson, at Queensland Parliament House in Brisbane,

Rushed legislation to ban live-streaming of abhorrent violent material is headed for review whichever side wins the May election as legendary journalist Peter Greste warned it could have a “chilling effect” on newsrooms.

Mr Greste, professor of Journalism at University of Queensland, said that despite defences provided in the legislation, it would catch legitimate journalism and could lead to self-censorship in cash-strapped newsrooms.

“There are always really good debates about what we should and should not be broadcasting,” Mr Greste said.

“I think the right place for those debates is in the newsroom, not in the courts.”

The criminal code amendment for Sharing Abhorrent Violent Material was passed last week after the government rushed a bill to respond to community anger over the live-streaming on Facebook of the Christchurch massacre last month.

The legislation imposes jail sentences and fines of up to 10 per cent of revenue for executives at sites that fail to take down abhorrent material in a reasonable time.

Communications Minister Mitch Fifield said the legislation was a move against the “weaponisation of social media” and a response to community concern.

“Where social media organisations do the wrong thing, there should absolutely be penalties, and under this law there will be,” Senator Fifield said.

“Our experience with the kids cyber-bullying take-down regime and also with the take-down regime for the non-consensual sharing of intimate images is once you legislate, behaviour changes.”

But the legislation sparked protests from traditional media and technology that it had been rushed without due consultation.

Media companies including News Corp, publisher of The Australian, remain concerned they have not been given a carve-out from the legislation that was designed to hit tech companies.

Mr Greste, who is also the co-founder of the Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom, said the bill provided defences for legitimate journalism but still meant media organisations would have to defend themselves in court.

“In the old days they would have said, ‘let’s go to the lawyers and fight it’,” he said.

“Now that we are all cash-strapped it will have a chilling effect. Newsrooms will concern themselves with trying to avoid getting dragged into this.”

The federal government has agreed to send the legislation to the Senate Standing Committee for Communications and the Arts if it wins the election. Labor, which supported the bill last week, said it would send the legislation to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security.

Technology companies have complained the legislation is too broad and will hurt smaller companies without the resources of Facebook and Google.

The local tech community was also concerned the sector would be seen as a pariah globally because of the government's haste in passing this legislation, hot on the heels of the encryption bill that is feared to have a chilling effect on investment.

The industry has notched a series of losses in its lobbying of Canberra as it fights to restore its reputation amid growing regulatory and legislative pressure. The streaming legislation followed meetings with Scott Morrison and Attorney-General Christian Porter which failed to reassure Canberra that the tech giants could act without legislation to prevent a recurrence of the Christchurch broadcast.

Facebook last week agreed to ban political advertising in Australia ahead of the election and to review its worldwide practice of streaming in a bid to head off legislation.

Reports emerged last week that Facebook was also paying the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph to run sympathetic content about it in a bid to counter the negative headlines and news articles it attracted.

According to Business Insider the broadsheet was being paid to run a series of features about the company, including stories that defend it on hot-button issues such as terrorist content, online safety, cyber-bullying, fake accounts and hate speech.