Apparently Australia is going the way of China under the auspices of keeping children safe. Sometime back Australia announced that they were working on a national internet filter to protect children from pornography. Despite reports that show that ISP filtering is not very effective, they decided to push onward. In order to appease those who were publicly crying foul, it was announced that the filters would not be mandatory and that citizens could “opt out” if they so desired. It turns out that is true, but only for half true.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m no proponent of pornography sites, but governmental intervention can sometimes get kind of scary, and Australia is getting into scary territory with the other side of their filters. See, adult content is only one thing that their filters will be blocking. The other major item blocked will be what the Australian government deems “illegal” content. What defines illegal?
Illegal is a very non descriptive term and could mean anything from breaking copy protection to speaking out against the government. It’s a slippery slope the government’s chosen here. Users can still opt-out of the adult content filters, but experts say that they will not be able to opt out of the illegal content filter, since the content itself will be deemed illegal so viewing it would also be illegal. Sadly, I envision a future where Australia mandates the net and free speech the same way China does, and that’s a very scary prospect.
This post was written with information from a story on ars technica. For the full article click below.
Filed under: Current Events
