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Australia Scales Back Internet Blacklist, Nixes Full-Scale Censorship

Posted by timothy on from the now-with-less-poison dept.

littlekorea writes "The Australian Government has officially abandoned plans to legislate a mandatory internet filter. The news ends a four-year campaign by the ruling party to implement legislation that would have compelled ISPs to block a list of URLs dictated by Australia's telecommunications regulator, the ACMA. ISPs have instead been told to block a list of known child pornography sites maintained by INTERPOL." Also at ZDnet.

5 of 51 comments (clear)

  1. Just block? by srussia · · Score: 4, Insightful

    FTFS: "ISPs have instead been told to block a list of known child pornography sites maintained by INTERPOL."

    I say make Interpol shut them down!

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    Set your phasers on "funky"!
    1. Re:Just block? by TWX · · Score: 5, Funny

      Why the hell is INTERPOL running child pornography sites in the first place?!

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      Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
    2. Re:Just block? by djl4570 · · Score: 4, Informative

      INTERPOL cannot just shut down a site. It has to be shut down by law enforcement where the server resides. INTERPOL can work with local law enforcement but it can be difficult to get local law enforcement to cooperate. Look at a timeframe here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Ukrainian_child_pornography_raids to see how long it took to shut down these notorious sites.

    3. Re:Just block? by just_a_monkey · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So if there is copyright infringement going on the US readily twists other countries arms so they shut down the sites and extradite the owners, but if there is child pornography going on there is wringiing of hand and "so sorry, nothing we can do, must have cooperation of the locals, incidentally we have this censorship thingy so that we can hinder our own citizens from seeing what we don't want them to"?

      It's almost as if fighting CP wasn't the real priority here...

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      How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when clearly it is Ocean.
  2. Dont forget their plans for mandatory logging by GiantRobotMonster · · Score: 4, Interesting

    While this seems like a small victory for common sense, don't forget that Conroy wants the ISPs to store years of traffic for every customer.
    Rather than prevent a site from working (via blocking against a secret government list), they want to be silently collecting "evidence" instead.