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Comment by pnw | Hacker News Reader

Australia has always been somewhat of a prison colony with extensive censorship of media and the Internet and almost no constitutional rights as Americans understand them.

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Most Australians assume they have the same rights as Americans.

Are you living in Australia? Just curious to understand where is this belief coming from.

I lived there for a long time. Australia is just so politically aligned with the USA that most Australians just think they’re entitled to most of the same freedoms by default.

Fwiw, it seems to be true in UK that people without legal training think most of what they see in the media about "the law" relates to them. Things like Miranda rights. I assume that's just because most of our A-tier media comes from USA.

It's almost like people think that they should be entitled to rights, or something. Perhaps the government should give them some rights, in that case.

What extensive censorship of media? Australian's have plenty of 'constitutional rights', the right to vote, the right to property, the right to trial by jury, freedom of religion.

"constitutional rights as Americans understand them" I assume is referring to the bill of rights. Australia doesn't have a bill of rights and most of our "rights" mentioned above are not "constituional" (in the sense that the constitution guarentees them) and are either conferred via common law, legislation, or not at all.

And to be honest, I am OK with this. A lot of negative change in the US seems to be coming from a SCOTUS that nobody voted for and that the regular population cannot overrule without a constitutional amendment.

Yep. The general consensus here in Australia is: "look at the USA, their bill of rights has the right to bear arms, gee didn't that turn out great, we'll stick with what we've got thanks".

You missed the “ as Americans understand them” part. Those are rights, but not constitutional.

Lot's of videogames have had to be modified to be released here, in recent memory Hotline Miami 2, Stick of Truth, Fallout 3.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banned_video_games_in_...

From your link:

> Stick of Truth: Banned because of a scene of sexual violence involving minors.

Sounds to me like the censors are doing a good job.

Are the censors doing a good job? What about these reasons?

> Banned for drug use related to incentives and rewards.

> Banned because of sexuality and nudity in relation to incentives and rewards.

> Banned because of high impact violence and torture.

> Banned because of high impact bloody violence.

I'm sorry you hate your freedoms. Just for some context, this horrifying clip of child sexual abuse seems to be freely available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1NiMzlDBO8

Yes there was no R rating for a long time, and the ASRB still takes a negative view of illicit drug use in games. But is 'cant use illicit drugs in games' the definition of excessive media censorship?

Absolutely? Sounds like some Saudi Arabia tier shit. Australia: you are in good company.

The literal raids to prevent the media from reporting on Ozzie Special Forces committing gruesome murders in Afghanistan come to mind.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-51526607

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