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Comment by josephg | Hacker News Reader

> You need to get the government's permission to be able to publish your game in Australia.

That sounds weird. I'm Australian and I've never heard of that. Can you share some links so I can learn more about that?

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Sure!

https://www.classification.gov.au/classification-ratings/wha...

>Every film and computer game has to be classified before it can be legally made available to the Australian public, unless it is exempt or is being shown at a registered event.

If they refuse classification then it is banned.

It looks like Australia is close to China not only geographically but also by the censorship practices.

It’s more that Australians don’t care about things that don’t actually mean anything, it’s accepted that the politburo will pass laws that are irrelevant and the general population ignores the ones that don’t matter

This has worked so far because we don’t have extremist police who apply the law to the letter- they themselves see laws as mostly suggestions

Except that, in practice, they are miles apart in what actually gets censored.

Not really. You can't discuss Australian war crimes openly in the media - this will get you shut down quite rapidly.

Something most people don't understand is that Australias' sovereign, the Queen, is used to keep embarassing state secrets well and truly out of the public eye. This is an intolerable state of affairs that will hopefully get addressed when she dies, and the Australian Republic movement gets fresh air under its wings ..

Australia has secret prisons, and a star court for the things it doesn't want the world to know. Witness J, K, L, M, &etc.

> Australia has secret prisons, and a star court for the things it doesn't want the world to know. Witness J, K, L, M, &etc.

So does america. I'm not sure how a republic movement could save australia from having these things when one of the largest republics in the world also has, e.g. hundreds of thousands of censored warcrimes on wikileaks and guantanamo bay

The US is a military junta masquerading as a republic. Presumably Australia's republic movement will address the issue of the corruption of the republic, eventually.

Pretty weird military junta that gives its opponents executive power every 4-8 years

.. puts its populist puppets in place, you mean. Just as it has done, with great success, in every sovereign country it has usurped in the last 50 years.

Odd that many of our recent presidents were not in the military, and that top generals are regularly fired by civilian government. The whole vote on everything all the time, even dog catch, thing seems like a real waste of time for a Junta.

The Junta has a trillion dollars a year to do whatever evils it wishes to the world. I don't think any of the generals are going to be butt-hurt about being fired, especially when the revolving door between the CFR and the JCoS is so well-greased with the blood of innocent people across the globe. The goal isn't local power, that is a done deal - the purpose of the junta is the projection of global power.

The proof is in the pudding: Yemen, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Nigeria, Somalia, Ukraine, etc.

A Junta is an oligarchy lead by a military council. The US literally has civilian rule, you're misapplying the term. Myanmar has a junta, the US does not.

>A Junta is an oligarchy lead by a military council.

The USA has exactly this, in the form of the revolving door that connects the Joint Chiefs of Staff with the CFR.

https://www.opensecrets.org/revolving/

Its figureheads give the impression of democracy, but nobody voted to murder 5% of Iraqs population - the generals went ahead and did it anyway.

The same has been the case in the UK for at least the last 20 years with games requiring BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) or VSC (Video Standards Council) [0] ratings.

As of 27th July 2012 [1] UK enacted a Statutory Instrument "The Video Recordings (Labelling) Regulations 2012" [2] ...

> From today, it is a criminal offence to sell video games with a “12” rating to those younger than that age.

... manadated VSC as the sole organisation...

> The new law ends the dual system, gives legal backing to PEGI 12, 16 and 18 ratings and will result in clearer, unambiguous guidance about the suitability of games content for specific age groups.

... with responsibility for PEGI (Pan European Games Information)[3] ratings.

> PEGI provides age classifications for video games in 38 European countries. The age rating confirms that the game is appropriate for players of certain age. PEGI considers the age suitability of a game, not the level of difficulty.

[0] https://videostandards.org.uk/RatingBoard/about-history

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-rules-to-better-prote...

[2] https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2012/1767/contents/made

[3] https://pegi.info/

Is the outcome ever a refusal to classify them at all though?

I think even when some films (e.g. Clockwork Orange at first I believe?) were banned they were still rated by the BBFC, it was councils that banned cinemas from showing them locally?

The BBFC is a non-government organisation nevertheless required by the government to view and rate all films. Councils licence cinemas (originally for fire safety) and require cinemas to only show rated material to the public, but they also have a discretionary power to rate and therefore ban films themselves.

As an example, Life of Brian (1979) was only an “AA” (14 years+) but a moral panic made 28 councils raise to an “X” (18+) and 11 actually banned it completely.

(For clarity, a film is de facto banned when either the BBFC or a local council refuses to rate it. It can still be shown privately (eg at a film society) provided it doesn’t contain illegal material (ie it’s not obscene))

Yes, but what I'm saying is do they ever refuse to rate a film?

Life of Brian was another example I was thinking of, and as you say, same as I described there - rated, then banned.

Apparently so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_works_rejected_by_the_...

I’m surprised by how long the list is; I thought it was much rarer and more exceptional. The only time I’d heard of them rejecting a film was when it showed unsimulated animal cruelty, but I guess there must be other reasons.

Huh, thanks for that. I had heard about requesting cuts now you mention it. (And this is also done to target a rating, if they want to get a 12A but as-is it's a 15 for example.)

I wonder if the ones never released are just because they didn't want to cut enough, preferring to abandon the project though.

> The only time I’d heard of them rejecting a film was when it showed unsimulated animal cruelty, but I guess there must be other reasons.

Porn, or rather it somehow going too far, seems to be a big one based on a lot of the titles there.

Some films are so grim that if they cut out all the unacceptable stuff there’d be no film left worth seeing. Porn gets an R18 rating - provided it’s not dangerous, violent, illegal or obscene - and can shown at specially licensed sex cinemas.

It wasn't banned in the UK & the BBFC passed it uncut. Stanley Kubrick himself requested it be withdrawn from distribution after some copycat incidents.

Same seems true here in Germany. I had to import Gears of War (1) from Austria because I wasn't allowed to buy it irrespective of Age.

The same is true for Quake 3 Arena. They didn't meet the requirements for USK-18 (similar to pegi) at the time.

But I don't think that's a thing anymore because there outdated policys have changed. Video games aren't "new" anymore for a long time.

AFAICT Gears of War was not banned but rather not allowed to be sold OR ADVERTISED to minors as is/was the case with most "violent" games. Only a few (e.g. the uncut version of Left 4 Dead) were ever banned from sale entirely. Of course the distinction is mostly theoretical as no store is willing to sell either games even with age verification.

That's not quite true. You are allowed to buy games without an age rating in Germany, if you are over 18. However, the burden is onto the seller to verify your age and it might not be publicly listed. So many resellers are not bothering importing games under these conditions, but they would be allowed to.

Not OP but I think this is about classification which is done by the same office that gives movie ratings, etc. The way I understand it unclassified versions can't be sold via retail. The biggest stink was what happened to GTA with the Hot Coffee minigame.

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

This issue was brilliantly parodied by Penny Arcade back in the day:

> ESRB employee: "What about games with infinite replayability, or ones that include procedurally generated content?"

> Bureaucrat: "I don't understand anything you just said."

https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/10/02/censorship-mad...

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