Oz to scrap mandatory filtering

Public opposition to the Australian government's plan to mandate Internet filtering has been growing, but this week the plan "has effectively been scuttled," the Sydney Morning Herald reports. after a senator withdrew support for the scheme. "The Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, has consistently ignored advice from a host of technical experts saying the filters would slow the internet, block legitimate sites, be easily bypassed and fall short of capturing all of the nasty content available online." Among those opposed to his plan were consumers, lobby groups, ISPs, corporate IT people, Save the Children, the political opposition, and "even the conservative Liberal senator Cory Bernardi, who famously tried to censor the chef Gordon Ramsay's swearing on television." A national survey unveiled this week found that "only 5% of Australians want ISPs to be responsible for protecting children online and only 4% want Government to have this responsibility," the Morning Herald added. [For background, see "Oz filtering update," January 2.]

All Oz to have filtering

Soon all Australians' Internet access will be filtered, "under the government's $125.8 [about $85 million US] million Plan for Cyber-Safety," TechWorld Australia reports. The Australian government is requiring all Internet service providers to provide "a clean feed" to households, schools and public places with Internet access available to children. By this report, it appears some Australians thought they'd be able to "opt out" of the filtering, but reportedly not. There will be two levels filtering that blocks content inappropriate for children (not clear how that's defined) and filtering that only blocks illegal content, which presumably means child abuse images. ISPs told TechWorld that the blanket filtering "will cripple Internet speeds because the technology is not up to scratch." The government's about to run a field trial to iron out any kinks, according to TechWorld.