The federal government's plan to provide a free child-safe Internet filter to every Australian family is progressing, with the Commonwealth today calling for industry help with the technical details of the idea.
The plan was announced in June by Communications Minister Senator Helen Coonan as part of the government's AU$116.6 million Protecting Australian Families Online (PAFO) package.
Coonan's move came in response to increasing debate about whether Internet service providers (ISPs) should filter adult content before it reaches the household or business level in the network.
While that debate still exists, the government's move to push ahead with the filter idea represents Coonan's expressed belief that filters installed on individual PCs are more effective than broad ISP-level filters.
"As part of the implementation of the PAFO package, expert advice is required on the operational requirements for an Internet portal, which will host a number of PC content filters which can be downloaded or provided on a CD to customers of Australian ISPs," the government said in tender documents released this week.
"Expert advice is also required on suitable registration, tracking and payment systems for the provision of PC-based filters and ISP filtered services."
The government said it would use that advice to go to market for a party to establish and operate the portal for three years, commencing in April/May 2007.
The government is separately looking into the development of assessment criteria and testing methodologies to be used in the selection of the actual content filters themselves.
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Hideous
31/10/2006 06:13 PM
My fear is that the Government will have a process in place to filter anything it deems unsuitable, just like in China. In the last 10 years the access to news and relevant information on many topics has been reduced or removed whilst the proliferation of rubbish sites has continued.
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Larry
31/10/2006 06:48 PM
The fact is that to be completely effective, any "anti-porn" filter to allow kids online unchecked will require an "in" rather than an "out" listing. That is to say, every site will have to be manually checked before it is added to a "suitable list". No one can afford the cost or the time to constantly check sites for lewd content of any description - meaning that only certain sites will ever be available.
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Mark J.
31/10/2006 07:12 PM
to be quite honest this is a great idea. up until now parents are having to pay for filters because of the content that others have placed on the web not caring about who gets exposed to it. the internet is a great tool for our kids but parents are reluctant to let them use it in case they stumble across something not age appropriate. porn is a massive issue within the community, not just with kids, but at least we can help stop them being exposed to it before they are able to fully understand what impact it will have in their lives. i'm 26 and i have a filter on my computer called 'safeeyes'. it is fantastic! its remote access and only $50 a year. it blocks anything you want or allows anything you want. user specified. tracks IM convo's, tracks and limits time spent on the net with each user as specified by the 'administrator'. if the government was to model their filter on this, or even strike a deal with safeeyes, parents would have TOTAL control over what their children are looking at. (by the way, if you wondering why i have a filter on at 26 y.o., i was not long ago addicted to porn, know the pitfalls all too well)
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Wheezle
01/11/2006 10:11 PM
As long as it's optional, I don't care. I don't need my internet filtered, thank you.
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Ian
02/11/2006 11:38 PM
This shows an extreme lack of understanding on the part of anyone involved with it. It will do nothing. It will simply mean that kids trying to get porn will use proxies - ways to bounce through other sites to get what they want. This approach can't be stopped, especially since it can be done encrypted, and there's special networks set up to allow people to do it anonymously (see torr). It will also increase the popularity of freenet, which parents would freak out about. Frankly these days what's needed is parents looking after their kids, not some hope that that state will, it's not their role, and results in everyone paying for what turns out to be a horrendous solution with disasterous side-effects. Sadly politicians occasoinally decide they have a great idea for a field they know nothing about (this time computers) and try to solve a problem with a solution that just flat out doesn't work, as *ANY* person knowleadgeable in the field can tell them. It's like expecting a flat tire to be solved well by solving on a square box. It just won't roll. This filter crap really would take a 12 year old less than three minutes to get around once a child heard off their friends at school a single one of the words that might show them how when typed in to google. Step up parents, do some parenting, and the state should bugger off and stop trying to censor things.
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Jono
19/11/2006 01:31 AM
impossible to stop, heck i can look up porn sites at school if i really wanted too (proxies, p2p etc). Stupid government doesn't have any idea what their doing. I cant believe there gonna spend $116 million on this crap when they could be spending it on a much more needed resource, water.
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NICOLAS
23/05/2007 09:00 AM
THX
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123moyc
27/11/2007 04:20 AM
i want no porn on my computer...
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