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Your support makes all the difference.Critics call it Australia’s great firewall: a filter that would block out content perceived as harmful by Australian censors. The Australian government wants to make the filter compulsory, a proposal that has triggered public outrage.
Behind the proposal is a secret blacklist maintained by Australia’s internet regulator - ACMA. No one knows what’s on it – not even the minister in charge. “The whole purpose of the list is to stop access – from people getting access to sites that include pro-rape sites, pro-incest sites, pro-child pornography sites. Publishing the list would defeat the purpose of having the list”, explains Stephen Conroy, Australia’s communications minister.
Under the proposed plan, all sites on the list would have to be blocked by Internet service providers across Australia.
Mark Newton is a network engineer at one of the biggest Internet service providers in Australia. He thinks the secret blacklist is farcical. “I think any government that proposes a system like this has to do so with their eyes open to the fact that the blacklist that they use is eventually going to be released in the public domain”, he says.
And the list was released into the public domain. On it were child porn, rape or bestiality sites. But also a pet care facility, a pro- euthanasia group and an American anti-abortion site.
The proposed filter will be limited to the Web and won’t apply to peer-to peer traffic or chat rooms, which now represent about 60% of the Internet traffic. Critics also say the filter will be easy to bypass.
Anthony Pillion is a CEO of an ISP specialising on filtering services. He believes the government’s proposal is worth a try.
“Australia has already determined as a community that free speech isn’t open slather," he argues. "There are boundaries which have been set in place. Doing that in the online world as well as in the offline world is not a great jump."
Mark Newton disagrees. For him, “it’s a fundamental change in the interaction between government and citizens to give the government that kind of decision power." Despite criticism, the government is now testing the filter. Results are expected around June.
From France 24
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