Australian anti-porn campaign
p2p news / p2pnet: Australia is to spend $A117 million (about $US85,968,197 to “beef up” its “family values [read anti-porn] credentials” by offering a filtered service or a free filter for home PCs, downloadable or delivered on a CD.
This will include an $A18 million television advertising and mail-out blitz, says the Sydney Morning Herald, going on:
“The software will allow parents to customise internet access for each of their children. This could include blocking specific websites or chat rooms, banning credit-card transactions, nominating words that cannot be typed into search engines or restricting the amount of time children spend online.
Does this mean censorship? Perish the thought, says Oz communications minister Helen Coonan.
Quoted in South Australia’s The Advertiser, the government isn’t, “dictating to every Australian internet user what they should and shouldn’t see,” she says.
The scheme is expected to be in hand by the end of the year, and, “All Internet Service Providers (ISPs) will also be required to offer filters to new and existing customers at no additional cost,” adds the story.
Also See:
Sydney Morning Herald – Free software to trap internet nasties, June 22, 2006
The Advertiser – $93m to block net porn, June 22, 2006
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June 22nd, 2006 at 5:48 pm
how much are you willing to bet that the filter software is tied into the aussie government somehow, and they’ll monitor everything that occurs on that PC.
June 23rd, 2006 at 1:53 am
Q. Just how many parents out there would even know how to set something like this up? Even with help from the govt helpline that is going to be set up.
A. A whole lot less than the number of 10 yr olds who will figure out how to get around it within 5 minutes. Even without any help from <insert name of favourite search engine here> or their friends.
June 24th, 2006 at 3:28 pm
It will be COTS stuff – no backdoor (in reply to first comment).
I’m just glad (so are the ISPs) that they didn’t make the ISPs do it at their network level. /Rings ISP “Hey, can you turn off my ’scat’ filtering pls?”
Funniest thing was in their news release on TV a page accidently popped up with all the words that were blocked!! The TV didn’t show a screenshot (not a clear one anyway), but did show the poor little 5 yr old girls shocked face! Worth1000