It is indeed a sad day for all Australians today as it seems with our communications policies it's two steps forward and five steps back. The Federal Government plans to implement mandatory ISP filtering for "refused classification" websites, it was announced today.
The government concluded trials of its mandatory filtering policy in October but has only just released the results of the trial today, the same day it announced its intentions to filter "refused classification" websites. Under Australian classification laws, RC-rated material includes child sex abuse content, bestiality, sexual violence including rape, and the detailed instruction of crime or drug use.
I have no problem with the government wanting to stop this stuff from getting onto the computer screens of Australians but it opens up a very slippery slope to other "grey areas" being added to the filter later on. The Australian Christian Lobby has already indicated that it wants the filter to go further and block R and X rated material.
However the filtering trials clearly showed that the filters "over-blocked" up to 3.4% of sites that were not intended to be filtered, and that high volume sites would likely cause the filters to fail. The other key aspect of the report also blatantly spelled out that anyone with technical knowledge could easily circumvent the filter with simple Virtual Private Network (VPN) technology.
Australia has now been put in an exclusive club with countries I'd rather we not associate with. The likes of China, Iran, Cuba and United Arab Emirates are all countries that enforce mandatory filtering upon their citizens.
This filter is wrong. It's been pushed through into policy under the guise of "protecting the children" while it does nothing to combat other areas such as the growing concerns over online bullying.
Stand up and protest this filter.The legislation will be introduced to Parliament in the new year so make sure you contact your local representative and let them know we don't want this filter. For those of you in the Cairns region our representative is Jim Turnour.
LINKS:
Electronic Frontiers Australia
DBCDE Filtering Report Kindly mirrored by Whirlpool| Comments |
|
