Australia's 2 Largest ISP's Start Censorsing the Web

unreadepitaph writes "Looks like after Stephen Conroy's web filter went down in flames he went quietly behind the backs of Australians and struck a deal with Telstra and Optus to start filtering an undisclosed blacklist of sites from organization within and external to Australia. From the article: 'Electronic Frontiers Association board member Colin Jacobs also expressed concern at the scheme, saying the Government and internet providers needed to be more upfront about websites being blocked and offer an appeals process for website owners who felt URLs had been blocked unfairly. "There is a question about where the links are coming from and I'd like to know the answer to that," Mr Jacobs said."

Comments

We have something like this in the UK

[splodus]

It's a 'voluntary' scheme whereby the biggest six ISPs implement a block list maintained by an organisiation called the 'Internet Watch Foundation'. They claim that only child pornography sites are blocked, but of course there's no way to know what is on the list.

Recently the first efforts to expand block lists to include 'other illegal' content have been made, and to set up a list for copyright-related restricted sites.

It seems governments have realised that legislative oversight is a bit of a nuisance, and it's just easier to coerce and/or bribe big business to get what you want.