Australia Will Proceed Along Internet Censorship Route

Despite glitches and complaints from various groups in Australia, the government will be moving forward and implementing the internet filtering program that has caused much controversy there. The Sydney Morning Herald reported recently that ISP-based censorship of the Internet is to proceed despite errors already experienced. Government trials found that filtering out a blacklist of banned sites constructed by government agencies was accurate and would not slow down the internet at all.

Electronic Frontiers Australia has voiced concern over this treatment of the internet stating that this is not good for freedom on the web.

Greens political party communications spokesperson, Senator Scott Ludlam, said the policy of the government was still fundamentally flawed.

Stephen Conroy, the Communications Minister, said that he would introduce legislation just before next year's elections to force Internet Service Providers to block a blacklist of "refused classification" websites for all Australian web users.
Enex Testlab, conducted a test study of ISP internet filters that according to Senator Conroy, blocking banned material, "can be done with 100 percent accuracy and negligible impact on internet speed." The Senator claimed without specifying which countries he was referring to that 15 western countries had encouraged or enforced internet filtering, and there was no reason why Australians should not have similar protection.

Colin Jacobs, spokesperson for Electronic Frontiers Australia, said, "Any motivated user will be able to get around it, it will be quite easy, so who is this being targeted at?" Calling into question the effectiveness of the censorship filter. Jacobs added when discussing the plan, "Although it may address some technical issues, what it leaves out is far more important, exactly what will be blocked, who will decide, and why is it being attempted in the first place?"

Conroy said that the next step would be for the government to start a public consultation process with the release of a discussion paper on additional measures to improve the accountability and transparency of processes that lead to sites being placed on the blacklist.