Oz child advocates oppose filtering

US educators frustrated with school filters will be interested in this news from Oz: "Support for the Government's plan to censor the Internet has hit rock bottom, with even some children's welfare groups now saying that that the mandatory filters, aimed squarely at protecting kids, are ineffective and a waste of money," The Age reports. The plan - "to block 'illegal' content for all Australian internet users and 'inappropriate' adult content on an opt-in basis" - has also received "harsh opposition" from Australian consumers, online rights groups, the Greens, the Opposition, and the Internet industry. The Age cites the view of Holly Doel-Mackaway of Save the Children, "the largest independent children's rights agency in the world," that educating kids and parents is "the way to empower young people to be safe internet users." Filtering's flawed, she told the paper, because it doesn't get to the problem at its source and can't help but block useful online resources. "Live trials" of the filtering are scheduled to start by the holidays, The Age adds.

India to ban SNS? April Fool's, maybe

Could be an April Fool's joke on the part of India-based Tech2.com, but the site reports that India's Home Affairs Ministry is considering banning overseas-based social-networking sites and requiring domestic ones to "maintain records of all user activity including 'change of status, profile picture, favorite sitcoms etc.'." Here's the part that's suspicious in comedic terms: "Intelligence operatives are of the belief that Jehadi terror cells could work out a sophisticated system of communication by 'throwing sheep' at each other using a site such as Facebook.com whose servers the Indian government cannot access." Foreign sites such as Google's Orkut, MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, and LinkedIn would be blocked by a government directive to Indian Internet service providers. Popular India-based social sites the story mentions include BigAdda.com, Yaari.com, and Minglebox.com. If all this is serious, other government certainly will be watching to see if this kind of control over the participatory Web is possible, but I have a feeling teen users would find workarounds.