AUSTRALIANS will be forced to contact their internet service provider to avoid having their access to the web restricted.
The restrictions are planned by the Federal Government to give greater protection to children from online pornography and violent websites.
Under the plan, all internet service providers will be required to provide a "clean" feed to households and schools, free of pornography and other inappropriate material.
Any internet users who want to "opt out" of the clean feed will have to contact their ISP.
Online civil libertarians yesterday warned the freedom of the internet was at stake, while internet providers are concerned the new measures could slow the internet in Australia down to a crawl.
But Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said everything possible had to be done to shield children from violent and pornographic online material.
"We have always argued more needs to be done to protect children," he said.
Senator Conroy said the clean feed, also known as mandatory ISP filtering, would prevent users accessing prohibited content.
"We will work with the industry to get the best policy. (But) Labor is committed to introducing mandatory ISP filtering."
Senator Conroy said the Australian Communications and Media Authority would prepare a blacklist of unsuitable sites.
The adoption of mandatory ISP filtering comes on top of the former government's offer of free internet filtering software for home computers.
Chair of the internet user group Electronic Frontiers Australia, Dale Clapperton, said mandatory ISP filtering eroded internet freedom and would not improve online safety for children.
"China, Burma and Saudi Arabia and those type of oppressive countries are the only ones that have seriously looked at doing something like this," he said.
"In Australia, which is supposedly a Liberal democracy, the government is saying that the internet is so full of this material that it must protect us from it by trying to block it."
Mr Clapperton feared that parents would be lulled into a false sense of security.
"Parents should not allow their children to use the internet unsupervised," he said.
"Stuff that should be blocked will inevitably get through."
Family First Senator Steve Fielding, who has campaigned for ISP filtering, said he would be watching the Government like a hawk on the issue.
"Australian families want more (internet protection) and deserve more than they are currently getting, and this is a real test for the Rudd Government," he said.
A report by the Australia Institute in 2003 showed 84 per cent of boys and 60 per cent of girls using the internet had experienced unwanted exposure to sexual material.

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/sto...08-661,00.html

Kind of torn on this one, on one hand cleaning up the net wouldn't be a bad thing and on the other hand I don't like censorship or the precedent that this sets.

I think this is nonsense. This isn't going to stop kids from getting porn and it'll just make life harder for the rest of us. Kids are smarter than adults give credit for. They will have all kinds of ways to get access to contraband they want.
What I am in favor of though is a home filter that is password protected. It is far more reliable and won't mean adults ranging from age 18 to up until God knows how old will suffer from having crappier internet just because a bunch of idiots aged 10-18 (only 8 years mind you) want to see naked women.
I'm sure it'll be not too different from a virus scan software. Viruses will get in anyway at some point and all it does is slows down and messes up your computer.
Not to mention the precedent with the ban on the freedom of speech.

we need to get our priorities in order...

Anything to get people to take their eye off the ball for a short while.

Get us some reasonable speed at a fair price before slowing services even further.

that's just wrong...

What's so bad about porn as to warrant spending all this money on blocking it?

Originally Posted by the_13th_redneck

I think this is nonsense. This isn't going to stop kids from getting porn and it'll just make life harder for the rest of us. Kids are smarter than adults give credit for.

Well said.

The government shouldn't be parenting anyways. The parents should be watching their kids online.

I am up to the ears of the "protect the children" excuse. Its becoming so that the big-brother of public opinion is observing every facet of public life.

We see it in the media, in various forms of entertainment, and now on the internet.

I AM AN ADULT, NOT A CHILD, AND I REFUSE TO BE TREATED LIKE ONE!

Its the parents responisbilty to protect their children. Not the TV, not these various "MORALITY" groups, and certainly not the government.

But this has nothing to do with protecting children, it has to do with controlling society.

Originally Posted by mmarsh

Its the parents responisbilty to protect their children. Not the TV, not these various "MORALITY" groups, and certainly not the government.

But this has nothing to do with protecting children, it has to do with controlling society.

I'm no wowser, but I find that I must disagree.

Responsible governments do have an obligation to safeguard minors from irresponsibly posted unsuitable material, just as they do from paedophiles.

Unfortunately all laws lessen our freedoms in some small way. It is the price that we pay for stability and a degree of law and order.

I would love to have the right to make all of my own decisions too, but if it were the case, the world would soon descend into anarchy.

Originally Posted by senojekips

I'm no wowser, but I find that I must disagree.

Responsible governments do have an obligation to safeguard minors from irresponsibly posted unsuitable material, just as they do from paedophiles.

Unfortunately all laws lessen our freedoms in some small way. It is the price that we pay for stability and a degree of law and order.

I would love to have the right to make all of my own decisions too, but if it were the case, the world would soon descend into anarchy.

I would agree but in this case wouldn't the best option be to legislate that browsers must contain configurable filters and leave it up to the parents to implement the level of filtering they see fit?