Australian Law Makers Continue Debating Mandatory ISP Filters
The Australian parliament continues to debate legislation that would require Australia’s Internet Service Providers (ISP) to filter illegal content.
This has risen the ire of many of Australia’s citizens who say this is the first step on the slippery slope of Internet censorship.
Bloggers and average citizens are organizing protests next week.
Australia’s legislators heard testimony today from Greg Winn the head of Telstra Australia’s largest ISP.
According to iTwire, Winn testified that adding filters to an ISP is like trying to “boil the ocean.”
Get Up an Australian activist group that is running a Save The Net campaign says that efforts to filter ISPs in China, Saudi Arabia and other countries have proven to not work all that well.
They say that the filter slows down Internet speeds up to 87 percent and people will find a way around the filters through peer-to-peer encrypted networks and proxy anonymizers.
The proposed ISP filtering legislation is intended to block child pornography and other material deemed inappropriate by government officials.