The (Australian) Rudd Government has struck a blow to pornographers with its announcement that it will introduce mandatory filtering of the internet at Internet Service Provider (ISP) level to block material rated Refused Classification (RC). RC is the worst of the worst in child, animal and rape pornography. The government will also provide incentives to ISPs to offer optional ISP level filtering of so-called mainstream porn rated X and R.
The mandatory filter is only bringing into effect existing laws which make it illegal to distribute RC material in Australia and will begin to catch material hosted on overseas websites. While parents will still need to remain vigilant about harmful material online, the announcement is an important step in the protection of children. The announcement has been greeted with a violent outcry from apologists for the sex trade and extreme internet civil libertarians with much misinformation being put into the media.The Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) which has fought a long battle to encourage the Government to take this course of action has welcomed the announcement saying it is an important step forward in making the Internet a safer place for children. ACL Managing Director Jim Wallace said the success of the 'real-life' ISP filtering trials in showing that a level of ISP filtering is achievable with negligible impact on Internet speeds has disproved the scare-mongering of the sex industry and Internet civil libertarians who claimed filtering would slow down the Internet by up to 87%."The success of the ISP trials in showing that blocking Refused Classification material is entirely feasible has highlighted the misleading nature of the campaign against Internet filtering," Mr Wallace said. "It has also proven the technological principle that can be extended to deal with other harmful X and R-rated material on the Internet. This is now clearly feasible and we need a review in three years that might test this in practice, particularly using third party providers of URLs," said Mr Wallace."In the meantime we welcome the clear establishment of the principle that the Internet should not be 'a law unto itself' when it comes to putting safeguards in place to protect children, Wallace said. "We also welcome the Government's provision of financial incentives to ISPs to provide their customers with optional filtering of other harmful materials not covered under the Government's scheme." Mr Wallace said that with children now growing up using the internet for both education and entertainment it is crucial that Internet safeguards are put in place to provide better protection."Parents are deeply concerned about the pornographic and abusive material children can too easily access on the Internet," Mr Wallace said. "A Newspoll commissioned by the Australia Institute in 2003 found that 93 per cent of parents of 12 to 17 year olds were in favour of automatically filtering out internet pornography at ISP level unless adult users asked otherwise. This shows the depth of concern on this issue - something which is only likely to have increased with the growing usage of the Internet over the past six years."
Source: Compiled by APN from information supplied by ACL
