Next month, two of Australia’s largest Internet service providers, Telstra and Optus, will begin blocking over 500 websites that they have voluntarily agreed to censor. The sites in question have the common theme of child abuse, and a list of the sites will be given to the ISPs by the Australian Communications and Media Authority, as well as other sites compiled by unnamed international organizations.
As anyone who regularly uses the Internet can probably assume, blocking 500 sites won’t exactly prevent any greenhorn eyes from potentially laying upon the blackened depths of the Internet, but more casual users may see the move as a positive step toward cleaning up the web, or at least a savvy public relations move by the two ISPs.
The plan, proposed by Federal Government last year as part of a bigger plan costing almost ten million dollars, was actually scrapped due to limited interest, but Telstra and Optus were still on track to enact the voluntary filter. System Administrators Guild of Australia board member Donna Ashelford claimed blocking the sites was merely a “cosmetic fix” rather than something that could affect Internet speed, and also notes that actually blocking the child abuse website addresses probably won’t have much effect, as the URLs can simply be slightly altered to get around the block.
Of course, with the Deep Web becoming more popular amongst less hardcore Internet users, one must wonder how any ISP or government could ever truly block enough websites to make the web “safe” for the kind of users that could stumble into something unsavory.
(News.com.au via Hacker News)
