Nationwide Internet Censorship Planned In Australia

The democratic west, with all its ideals of free speech, free religion and believes, is on the forefront of demolishing those ideals for the greater good as politicians like to call it. The greater good can be terrorism, child pornography, pornography, different believes, different political views, violent video games or anything else that politicians might feel inappropriate to be viewed by the general public.

Plans came to light recently that described a nationwide Internet censorship initiative in Australia to protect the children from the Internet. One could say that parents should take care of that but the Australian government does not seem to have much faith in Australian parents and decided that a far better way to protect the children would be to ban selected websites completely in Australia meaning if you are of legal age to view a website you might not be able to by normal means because of the censorship to protect the children.

One common denominator is always the vagueness of those plans. Questions like who will select the websites that should be banned, how will they be banned, who will decided what is appropriate, who will maintain the blacklist, what can be done about false positives or who will have access to it are not addressed at all.

Current plans favor the use of two blacklists, one for material unsuitable for children and one for illegal material. It is possible to opt-out of the first but not the second. No definition of illegal was given and it is likely that the blacklist will contain websites that might not be illegal but considered illegal.

Nationwide Internet censorship puts Australia right in the midst of elusive countries like China and Iran who censor the Internet for different reasons. Australians who want to fight this plan can head over to the No Clean Feed site for more information and calls to action.