Australia’s Internet Filtering Plan Falls Short

AUSTRALIA - The mandatory Internet filtering plan proposed by Australia's federal government currently blocks only a small amount of pornographic websites.

According to Bernadette McMenamin, the chief executive of anti-child-abuse group Child Wise, more than 100,000 commercial websites offer child pornography and more than 20,000 images of child pornography are posted on the internet every week. The current scheme proposed by the Australian Communications and Media Authority would only block about 1,000 sites that contain child and extreme pornography, spokesman Donald Robertson confirmed.

The controversial plan devised by Australian Telecommunications Minister Stephen Conroy would compel the country's Internet service providers to implement content filtering services.

All ISPs would be required to provide clean feeds for homes and schools by blocking blacklisted websites. Home-based Internet connections will automatically carry filters, and those wanting uncensored Internet access will have to opt out of filtering.

The ACMA's list of banned websites is based on the public's complaints. The agency only investigates a website after receiving a complaint.

Senator Conroy's office is not deterred by the news. "Admittedly, it will be difficult, but that's the intention," Senator Conroy's spokeswoman said Monday. "Obviously there are many sites out there and they change their names. It's going to require a fairly vigilant monitoring system and it's not going to be 100 per cent foolproof."

South Australian Internet service provider Webshield said the ACMA should purchase software that blocks millions of websites instead of relying on complaints from the public.

"We have been filtering undesirable websites for three years, and we use an American-made software program which has been very effective," said Anthony Pillion, Webshield's managing director.

Pillion said the software blocks access to an average of 30,000 websites a second without any sacrifice in broadband performance.

"We use three layers of filtering, and there's about a 10-millisecond gap," he said. "It's unnoticeable."

Online free speech advocate Irene Graham said ISP filters could be circumvented simply by using proxies such as Google Translate or Google caching. "ISP filtering systems are going to be looking for the URLs of blocked sites, but if you can get the link up through a Google page, it will not be recognised," Ms Graham said.

"PC-based filters such as Net Nanny and CyberPatrol solve this problem by blocking anonymising proxies that people can legitimately use to visit a website without revealing their real internet protocol address.

"Because home filters are designed to protect the child using the system, there is a trade-off in favour of blocking those services for safety reasons.

"One shouldn't try to apply this across the entire population, but if you don't people will be able to get around ISP filters."

The US is by far the largest source of illegal and offensive material. In 2006-07, it accounted for 53 per cent of the total, according to ACMA, followed by Russia at 11 per cent.