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Australian Idol And ISP Censorship

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the sex-censorship-and-a-land-down-under dept.

fembots writes "Teenage fans of the new Australian Idol Casey Donovan rushed to the homepage of a dead gay porn icon with the same name when a URL was advertised in major newspapers without the .au country code. ISP BigPond took matters to its own hand by redirecting millions of its subscribers' requests back to the Idol's website. On top of that, BigPond lodged a formal complaint with the Australian Broadcasting Authority on the basis Mr Donovan's site may contain X-rated material or material that would be denied classification by the Office of Film and Literature Classification."

3 of 335 comments (clear)

  1. BigPong = Telstra by Sapphon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's worth noting that the incorrect URL was published in an advertisement run by telecommunications giant Telsta, who, as well as being an Idol sponsor, also own BigPond.

    Hence it's less suprising that the ISP arm of their company reacts to minimise the damage, rather than an independent ISP doing this out of goodwill.

    --
    Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem.
  2. For the children by ValuJet · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I'm so sick of everything being changed 'for the children.' If kids were as fragil as everyone wants us to believe, we never would have survied as a species.

    Kids are tougher than you think and changing heaven and earth for them isn't necessarily in their best interest.

  3. As an alternate view ... by dustpuppy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Let's face it, the vast majority of viewers for that site will be kids (based on the published URL, not coz they are after a porn site :-). As a result, I would rather Bigpond redirects users in the short term then getting a whole lot of parents jumping up and down demanding that the Internet be censored.

    Frankly, i think the long term benefits far outweight the short term 'loss of rights' issues.