A previous government-sponsored, downloadable porn filter — which cost Australian taxpayers an insane $86 million — was hacked by a 16-year-old in 30 minutes, much to everyone’s embarassment.
The new proposal, brought to the table by pro-family-values Senator Stephen Fielding, involves a two-tier filtering system, the first tier of which would be mandatory for all Australian internet providers. And we quote:
The proposed censorship is more advanced than that in any liberal democracy and would put Australia on a par with oppressive regimes such as Iran, the internet industry says.
Despite his earlier promises that Australians would be able to opt out of any internet filters, Senator Conroy said the first tier would be compulsory for all Australians and would block all “illegal material”, as determined in part by a blacklist administered by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA).
The second tier, which is optional, would filter out content deemed inappropriate for children, such as pornography.
While some sensational Australian headlines are making the proposal out to sound like a widespread ban of hardcore pornography is imminent, it sounds to us like that extreme measure is only the purview of a certain pain-in-the-ass Senator not unlike our own Rick Santorum or [fill in the blank with some fundie/conservative]. The more likely event here is that the Senate will either shoot down the proposal on censorship grounds, or will limit filtering only to egregious illegal material, which would include child pornography and foreign gambling sites–which are illegal to run in the country.
Anyway, we have a hard time believing that the country that brought us Kath & Kim and Summer Heights High could be all that conservative…
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