Australia Net censorship plan comes unglued
p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- A plan by Australia’s Labor government to censor the net has apparently fallen through.
Australia’s largest ISP has refused to take part in live trials of the system with the second largest committing, “only to a scaled-back trial,” says The Age.
Around 1,300 websites have already been designated as undesirable by the Australian Communications and Media Authority as part of its self-appointed role as Net Censor, said p2pnet last month.
Under a Kevin Rudd government edict, the Australian Net Curtain, similar to China’s, means citizens will have to use to a ‘filter,’ whether they want it or not, said the story, adding, “Just in time for Christmas.”
Now, “The live trials, scheduled to kick off before Christmas, were supposed to provide a definitive picture of whether the filters could work in the real world, after lab tests released by the Australian Communications and Media Authority in June found available ISP filters frequently let through content that should be blocked, incorrectly blocked harmless content and slowed down network speeds by up to 87 per cent,” says The Age.
However, Telstra and Internode refused to be involved and iiNet said it would take part, “only to prove to the Government that its plan would not work, while Optus will test a heavily cut-down filtering model,” it’s states, going on:
“The Government plans to introduce a two-tiered censorship system of filtering from the ISPs’ end. The first tier would be compulsory for all Australians and would block all “illegal material”, as determined by a blacklist of 10,000 sites administered by ACMA.
The second tier, which is optional, would filter out content deemed inappropriate for children, such as pornography. Experts say this second tier will have the most marked effect on network performance because every piece of traffic handled by the ISP will need to be analysed for “inappropriate” content.
“”Optus confirmed it would start a live pilot early next year but stressed it would test only the first tier and even then it would only block the current ACMA blacklist of 1300 URLs, as opposed to the Government’s expanded 10,000 URL list.”
Stay tuned.
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The Age – Labor plan to censor internet in shreds, December 9, 2008
p2pnet – 1,300 sites already on Australia censor list, November 14, 2008
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December 10th, 2008 at 11:37 am
HAHAHAHAHAH
can i repeat myself
HAHAHAHAHAHA
and one more
HAHAHAHAHAHA
December 10th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
LMAO … and any kid can get past it in minutes
another neocon bad attempt at locking down our net … again
they must be on crack .. just like Bell and Rogers
December 10th, 2008 at 9:49 pm
As an Australian i don’t find this a laughing matter. I knew it was doomed to fail from the beginning, and i understand that its very easy to circumvent, but i feel like this sets a dangerous precedent. I find it disturbing that our government would be thinking about ways to censor the network; that it would desire to do so.
December 11th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
And have you heard about this new Australian Sex Party? They are trying to stop the mandatory ISP filtering initiatives. Interesting stuff. Check it out: http://www.covenanteyes.com/blog/2008/12/10/sex-and-politics-australias-new-political-party-takes-on-the-mandatory-internet-filter/