Plans for Web site blocking causes outrage in Australia

Australia could soon become one of the strictest regulators of the Internet among democratic countries with the new internet filter it is proposing, which has been named by many as the “Great Aussie Firewall”.

This Internet filtering system, which will be mandatory and will block more than 1300 websites that the government has prohibited, largely excessive violence, child pornography, advocacy of terrorism, drug use and instruction in crime has many critic including Internet providers, consumers, politicians, civil rights activists and engineers from various opposition parties.

This culminated early in the month when hundreds protested in state capitals. The organizer of the Melbourne protests and an officer in one of the many anti-filter facebook groups, Justin Pearson Smith said ”This is obviously censorship.”

The government is refusing to make the prohibited site list publicly available and will not be subject to legal checks, which will allow personal online agendas to be pursued by lawmakers and the government, said Smith. He said ”I think the money would be better spent in investing in law enforcement and targeting producers of child porn.”

There are many questions being raised as to whether the intended goals of the filter would be achieved and Internet providers have also said that browsing speeds would suffer as a result of the filtering.

Spokesman for Electronic Frontiers Australia, an Internet advocacy organization, Geordie Guy said ”People don’t openly post child porn, the same way you can’t walk into a store in Sydney and buy a machine gun. A filter of this nature only blocks material on public Web sites. But illicit material … is traded on the black market, through secret channels.”

In following up on a promise made by the Labor Party government to make a safer and cleaner Internet, Stephen Conroy, the Communications Minister proposed the filter earlier in the year. In an e-mail to The Associated Press he said ”This is not an argument about free speech. We have laws about the sort of material that is acceptable across all mediums and the Internet is no different. Currently, some material is banned and we are simply seeking to use technology to ensure those bans are working.”