Fergie's Tech Blog

Australia: Pressure Builds for Net Censorship

James Riley writes on Australian IT:

The federal Government is planning to bolster NetAlert, its online safety agency, and give the media regulator greater powers as pressure builds from Labor and its own backbench to curb online pornography.

Communications and IT Minister Helen Coonan says, however, that calls from Labor and Coalition colleagues to force internet service providers to filter porn sites are misguided.

At its best, mandatory filtering by internet service providers was an expensive and ineffective way to limit children's access to online pornography, Senator Coonan told The Australian.

At its worst, mandatory ISP filtering was ineffective and seriously degraded the internet's performance, she said.

posted by Fergie @ 3/27/2006 07:33:00 AM