Australian Sex Party May Sue Google Over Ad Refusal

New submitter niftydude writes "Australian newspaper The Age is carrying the story: The Australian Sex Party has threatened Google with legal action after the search engine refused to run its ads on the eve of tomorrow's Melbourne by-election. It comes after Sex Party ads were blocked by Google at the last federal election because the company — which is typically opposed to censorship — perceived the text as too racy (the ads were reinstated by Google the day before the election). Sex Party candidate Fiona Patten said this time the search giant said it would not approve her ads 'because we have a donate button on our page and we're not a charity.' Don't all political parties allow donations? Is google imposing its own sense of morality onto Australian politics?"

Re:There is no problem

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not necessarily the case. In some jurisdictions, it is required to give equal access to all political parties. If you will run ads for one candidate in a race, you must give make ad space available to all the other candidates in the race in similarly prominent positions for the same cost.

dom

Re:porn party?

[thegarbz]

It is censorship to ban adverts which don't breach the advertising legislations of the country in which they are being shown regardless of your moral standing.

Worse still I'm not sure on Australian law but some countries have specific rules about elections. Decisions like this may remove Google from the right to advertise for any political party during elections.

Also have you actually had a look at their policies? [sexparty.org.au] Despite what they call themselves this party stands for all the things a typical slashdot user holds dear including:
- Drug reform
- Anti-censorship
- Net Neutrality
- Anti government snooping
- Internet education
- Equal rights laws including same sex marriage
- Separation of religion from government

They are like the Pirate Party except they've been around longer.

Re:There is no problem

[evanism]

As it is here. Refusal to run one parties ads on non equal terms leads to a bollocking. Fairfax, NEWS et al get around it in the form of editorial support/panning but the ads must be the same.

Re:Grammar Standards Imposition

[Farmer Tim]

It's not "a sex party", it's "The Sex Party"...that is, it's a political party with policies centred on sexual and gender issues [sexparty.org.au], and has nothing to do with putting your car keys in a bowl.

I should explain that Australian political parties usually have deceptive names. For example, the Liberal Party are the conservatives, the Labor Party usually puts everyone out of work, One Nation divided the country before forking itself, and the National Party doesn't field candidates in most electorates. The Greens are pretty much what you'd expect, though until recently their leader was a chap by the name of Brown, so while technically they tried to fit in it was a predictably feeble effort. On the New South Wales state level we also have the Christian Democrats, whose values are hardly those of Christ and is run by a religious oligarch, and the Shooters and Fishers Party, which is a reasonably accurate description but they put the "jerk" into "knee-jerk".

And if you exercise your comprehension skills you'd find the grammatical mistake was on the part of the submitter, not the candidate.

Re:There is no problem

[AliasMarlowe]

Care to point to the Google policy which you claim is being breached by The Sex Party [sexparty.org.au]? Some [alp.org.au] other [liberal.org.au] parties [nationals.org.au] in Australia also have donate buttons on their websites, and there is no sign of Google refusing their election ads.

Re:There is no problem

[TapeCutter]

They can refuse to do business with anyone they want.

That's not how it works here, there are rules about equal access to media services for political candidates in an attempt to ensure that one rich party cannot hog all the eyeballs, besides the paid for adverts from registered political parties always come with an "authorised by", so you know who to blame should you be offended.

Re:There is no problem

[Attila Dimedici]

They would probably call the police and have you arrested for indecent exposure. However, most places of business do not have those signs because they care if you wear shoes and/or a shirt, but because of health regulations (they can be fined by the local health department if they allow people in the store without shoes and/or a shirt).