706Australian Government to Go Ahead with Internet Censorship
posted on January 8th, 2010
Internet freedom may soon be a thing of the past in
It has been decided that an independent body will make the selection of the sites that are to be filtered. The body will select those sites against which the maximum number of public complaints is registered. The filtering system has already undergone extensive trials with phenomenal success. Aussie communications minister Stephen Conroy has worked in close coordination with service providers to conduct the trials.
Conroy is now planning to implement the cyber-safety measures and is about to introduce a filtering package that will allow parents to block content inappropriate for children. Conroy recently voiced the general opinion of Australians that some inappropriate content that can cause potential harm ought to be blocked.
However, critics are not too happy with this decision, and some critics have even dubbed the plans ‘the great firewall of
The organization pointed out that novelist J. D. Salinger had been a victim of similar blacklisting attempts, which resulted in his famous novel ‘The Catcher in the Rye‘ being banned in Australia.
What is interesting to note is that even the supporters of the filtering policy are wary of the final implementation of the plans. In an interview to the BBC, Dr Windsor Holden, principal analyst at Juniper Research, said that the filtering system may fail to accomplish what is has set out to achieve in case it is implemented in the wrong manner. Holden added that implementation of the plan requires ‘extreme caution’.
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