The Null Device blog: Are you relaxed and comfortable?

The Howard Era's paternalistic censorship regime strikes again. A Tasmanian band were fined for importing their own CDs to Australia. Customs officers seized 207 copies of the latest album by Intense Hammer Rage (let me guess: they're a metal band of some sort). The CD is released by a US label and is legally available over the counter in the US; in Australia, it is a prohibited product, because it contains "offensive lyrics".

(Offensive lyrics are banned in Australia? They should go down to the Arthouse some evening.)

There are 1 comments on "Are you relaxed and comfortable?":

Posted by: Ben
http://leviathan.weblogs.com
Sat May 17 06:26:10 2003

Actually most of the things customs bans the import of are perfectly legal to own and/or sell or make in Australia, they just don't allow you to import them. (Yes I know it is odd but when did you expect customs rules to make sense? I've probably given you my rant about them siezing highly dangerous blowguns before).

As the OFLC can't classify spoken word records as obscene, they would probably try and get them due to the jackets or artwork on the CDs or something equally stupid.

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