Australian media classification: depictions, descriptions, and child protection as logic of regulation

This chapter addresses the workings of the Australian media classification system. This system is one of the most censorious of all Western states, particularly regarding content distributed online. I describe it so as to explore how music can be deemed child exploitation material. What this means it that commercially available recordings can be classified in Australia as child pornography, and prohibited from sale or distribution. As I will show over the following pages, the scope of the prohibition is disconcerting.