Internet Censorship Machine Quietly Revs up

It is highly likely that any blacklist of banned sites will be leaked, as has already occurred with previous ACMA blacklists. Furthermore, filtering schemes can generally be bypassed relatively easily by tech savvy users.

Greens communications spokesman Scott Ludlam is on leave but in a recent radio interview said he was less concerned about the voluntary blocking scheme because it was much narrower than the one originally proposed by the government.

“Most of the filter campaigners who have expressed a view on this voluntary system think it's either irrelevant or dangerous to the extent that it may be even less regulated than the government's scheme,” Senator Ludlam said.

“But at least we've stopped having the argument about the much greyer areas around the [mandatory] refused classification scheme while that review is going on in the background.”