Oz plan to ‘clean up the Web’

One piece of Prime Minister John Howard’s plan to “clean up the Web” for Australian families is to provide free filtering software for them to install on household computers, Australian IT reports. That’ll help families with young children who use the Web only on those computers, not those who access the Web on gameplayers, phones, or other portable devices. “Of the $189 million [US $155 million], $43 million will be provided immediately to double the size of the online child sex exploitation branch of the AFP [Australian Federal Police] and establish a working group to find ways of getting around privacy laws that protect sexual predators (Howard has pledged to “upgrade the search for chat-room sex predators and cut off terror sites”). He made his clean-up pledge “on a Webcast to more than 700 churches and thousands of churchgoers around the country.” Here’s the New York Times on a US cleanup effort, ObscenityCrimes.org, run by Morality in Media.