Some Of Australia's Tubes Are About To Be Filtered

Slatterz writes "The first phase of Australia's controversial Internet filters were put in place today, with the Australian government announcing that six ISPs will take part in a six-week pilot. The plan reportedly includes a filter blocking a list of Government-blacklisted sites, and an optional adult content filter, and the government has said it hasn't ruled out the possibility of filtering BitTorrent traffic. The filters have been widely criticized by privacy groups and Internet users, and people have previously even taken to the streets to protest. While Christian groups support the plan, others say filters could slow down Internet speeds, that they don't work, and that the plan amounts to censorship of the Internet. At this stage the filters are only a pilot, and Australia's largest ISP, Telstra, is not taking part. But if the $125.8 million being spent by the Australian Government on cyber-safety is any indication, it's a sign of things to come."

Comments

Re:Just boycott the asses pleases

[Anonymous Coward]

Mmm... no.

1) my ISP (iinet) has repeatedly stated that it is only taking part in trial to demonstrate how badly it will fail, so I wouldn't be sending them any message they didn't already know
2) there's no way I'm joining Telstra if I have a choice! Which of the good ISPs aren't in the trial?

Hong Kong is facing the same problem

[razgriz]

Christian Groups in HK are trying to push web filtering on ISP to 'protect their children'. Those groups are nuts. They even think David (Michelangelo) is porn and should be banned. We will protest against it on 15 Feb. Sorry for my poor English.

Re:You know...

[Starayo]

I blame the Americans, for their culture of inactivity they brought over here back in the war.

Oh, who am I kidding, we're all lazy. And our general populous is just as ignorant as the American general populous.

I have not read TFA, due to the aforementioned laziness, but I think the summary misses some of the biggest news in regard to the filter trials: every damn ISP on the list (with the exception of iPrimus) are tiny little no-name setups that likely have customers numbering in the hundreds. Two major ISPs with large customer bases, Optus and iiNet, were excluded because, I would assume, their data would reflect poorly on the filtering scheme.

These "real world" trials are a sham, and Conroy's a bastard.

Re:Just boycott the asses pleases

[rdnetto]

I'm with iiNet, but there's no way I'm dumping them, and here's one reason why: http://www.iinet.net.au/customers/iinews/internet-filtering.html

To summarise it, iiNet's only going along with the trial to demonstrate the futility of filtering. They're also currently fighting a court case regarding copyright infringement to maintain their user's privacy, instead of just rolling over like most other ISPs would.