Published in News

Aussie Web censorship plan flawed

by on23 December 2008

Image

Technology bogus


The Australian government's cunning plan to censor the Internet with a bizarre Web filtering system on a par with the Chinese is running aground because the technology is not up to it.

Trials of the technology are being pushed ahead, even though most of the Internet service providers involved expect it to break. A high-level report which has been leaked to the Aussie press says that the technology simply does not work, will significantly slow Internet speeds and will block access to legitimate Websites.

The report was commissioned by the previous government and penned by the  Internet Industry Association. It concluded that schemes to block inappropriate content such as child pornography are fundamentally flawed. The Aussie government is going to give $44 million to impose a compulsory "clean feed" on all Internet subscribers in Australia as soon as late next year.

The report said that the filters would slow the Internet by as much as 87 percent and the measures could be easily bypassed and would not come close to capturing all of the nasty content available online.  YouTube and Wikipedia could be censored over a single suspect posting.

Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, has already broken a promise made before the election that people could opt out of the censorship net.  Now he is saying that all "illegal" and "inappropriate" material, as determined in part by a secret blacklist administered by the Australian Communications and Media Authority, would be compulsory.

A second tier would filter out content deemed harmful for children, such as pornography, but this would be optional for Internet users. Not surprisingly, the report has been sat on by the government, but its contents have been leaked to the media.
Last modified on 24 December 2008
Rate this item
(0 votes)