Internet Censorship Machine Quietly Revs up

After the Federal Government shelved its much-maligned mandatory internet filter policy pending a review of the scope of content to be blocked by the scheme, ISPs sought to defuse the issue by agreeing to voluntarily block child abuse material.

Critics claimed Senator Conroy's scheme – much broader than just child abuse material - would be open to abuse and would block reams of legitimate, innocuous content.

ACMA yesterday clarified that its child abuse list would include “material that meets the criteria for Refused Classification under the National Classification Code for containing offensive depictions or descriptions of children”.

The list of URLs, which ACMA has not yet begun distributing to ISPs, was being formally classified by the Classification Board “in preparation” for the voluntary ISP blocking scheme.

“The ACMA investigates content – at specific URLs (webpages or images), not whole websites – that may be prohibited upon receipt of a valid complaint,” ACMA said.

But Conroy's mandatory filters still kicking

Senator Conroy's spokesman said the government was still committed to introducing its heavily criticised mandatory ISP filtering scheme, which would see all “refused classification” (RC) material blocked by ISPs on a mandatory basis.

But the spokesman said the legal obligation to implement the mandatory scheme would not commence until the government was able to conduct a review of the RC category.

The review, which is being conducted by the Australian Law Reform Commission, was announced following claims RC was too broad to be the basis of a mandatory censorship scheme.

“The Government remains committed to introducing legislation to require all ISPs to block the RC content list,” Senator Conroy's spokesman said.