This picture is a bit of a joke, but Australia's new regulations on bringing porn into the country aren't.  If you’re planning to travel to Australia on business, pleasure, or for any other reason, you might want to keep your porn off of your computer or at least well-hidden. As Gizmodo reports: Australian customs officials are now allowed to search your computers and your mobile phones for porn. While this is not nearly as strange as Australia's new requirements for large-breasted porn stars, it does have the Australian Sex Party (who protects the sex interests of Australians) all riled up about the regulation at the moment.


The Australian customs form now has a special section for items brought into the country, which includes a box for Pornography.

If you don't check the box but have mature content on your laptop or phone, you're breaking the law. If you do check it, officials are going to go through your stash.

This creates a sort of a Catch-22 situation in which for travelers who are damned if declare and damned if they don’t.  Another problem with the regulation is that there doesn’t appear to be a specific definition of what pornography is. However, as the Gizmodo article points out- even personal, normally legal porn filmed at home is illegal to carry with you into Australia.

I can definitely understand the concerns of Australia’s Sex Party- this seems to be quite an invasion of privacy. The thought of a random custom’s officer getting his (or her) jollies off while watching a couple’s private adult film in a Custom’s office at the airport kind of makes me a little nauseous.

For the Custom’s Agent, the law is probably not all that bad- rifling through someone’s PC has absolutely got to be a far more interesting way for any bored Australian customs official to spend their day than just asking random travelers if they are carrying illegal fruit into the country.  I would also venture to say that it’s possibly one of the few times that looking at porn is actually encouraged at work.

Even after reading a few articles regarding the regulations, I am uncertain if the Australian customs agents have the right to seize a person’s computer or phone if they find porn on it or if they will just fine the individual, delete, the porn, and allow the person to enter the country without further problems.