Big boost for Aussie firewall
Another shrimp on anti-prawnography trial barbie
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The controversial Great Aussie Firewall got a big boost yesterday when Australia's second largest ISP Optus agreed to join the pilot.
The testing of filtering technology has suffered credibility problems since the refusal of iiNet to take part, after it was unable to reconcile the trial with its opposition to censorship. iiNet said the proposed blacklist of unwanted material was much wider than just child sex abuse images.
Last month the scheme suffered another blow when the list leaked and it was shown to include poker sites, fetish and religious sites, Wikipedia pages and the website for a Queensland dentist.
Gaffe-prone comms minister Stephen Conroy said Optus's decision would help the government obtain "robust results" from the pilot.
Conroy also said the government is working with incumbent telco Telstra - not on actual customer-facing trials but on other ISP filtering technology. This is not part of the official pilot but will influence policy.
The Aussie government effectively wants two levels of control over online content - one to restrict "unwanted material", which they say is content that would be refused a classification, and one for a child-friendly internet which families could sign up for.
Optus joins seven other ISPs - Primus Telecommunications, Highway 1, Nelson Bay Online, Netforce, OMNIconnect, TECH 2U and Webshield. ®
COMMENTS
Spelling error reveals conspiracy
In "This is not part of the official pilot but will influence policy,"
shouldn't "official pilot" read "official plot" ?
@Joe M
"•Gas and Electricity, Burns, maims and kills thousands of people worldwide every year, many of them children" etc.
I think you'll find he is being amusing. If you are sufficiently hysterical you can play the "But think of the children" BS to justify the removal of *virtually* anything on the grounds that it *may* at some point cause harm to some child. The stop sign is in the spirit of this sort of hysterical over reaction
And just to be perfectly clear. Child po(n is far too serious a matter to deal with by *hiding* the problem so *ordinary* people won't see it. It is however a *very* useful excuse to hide other pages you (the government) don't want people to see. Which seems to have been happening.
I agree with you on alcohol and heroin. Some years ago a documentary series showed 2 brain slices. One looked normal, the other had holes in it. Literally empty spaces like a slice through a sponge. That was the alcoholic. The other was a heroin addict.
Disappointing. . .
It really sucks that I have to find out my ISP has started filtering my internet by reading it off El Reg.
Even an email from them would do, but I guess they just aren't that decent.
So. . . has anyone ever tried ddos'ing an ISP?
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