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Australian Web Filter to Block More than 10,000 'Unwanted' Sites

By soulxtc

New mandatory filter will begin with 1300 and grow to a range of about 10,000, but many are questioning who gets to decide what sites should included and why. As Australia gears up for the testing phase of its new plan to have ISPs filter the Internet of "inappropriate content" and "offensive and illegal material," it's now being reported that the govt blacklist has already been compiled and will begin with some 1300 sites. "The pilot will specifically test filtering against the ACMA blacklist of prohibited content, which is mostly child pornography, as well as filtering of other unwanted content," Broadband Minister Stephen Conroy told Parliament today. "While the ACMA blacklist is currently around 1300 URLs, the pilot will test against this list - as well as filtering for a range of URLs to around 10,000 - so that the impacts on network performance of a larger blacklist can be examined." Many are rightly upset with the plan because not only is the plan mandatory, but it also means that a govt bureaucrat will be the one determining what sites ar included.

Full post as published by ZeroPaid on November 13, 2008 (boomark / email).