Perhaps the Australian government has not learned from the experience of China and some countries in the Middle East – filtering Web sites leads to massive criticism.
According to a news article, the new government plans to filter the content from Internet service providers so it would be free from pornography, violence and other malicious contents.
However, the privacy groups fear this will lead to state censorship happening in China today. Moreover, they emphasized this effort is not only futile but out of the government’s jurisdiction.
Australian Privacy Foundation chair Roger Clarke believes it is the responsibility of parents and guardians to protect children from such contents.
On the technical side, it can slow down the Internet service and can block pages that should not be blocked in the first place. Since most providers already offer free filters, they doubt the feasibility of this initiative to help solve these problems.
Originally posted on January 2, 2008 @ 9:06 am