Australia, have announced its plan to ban at least 500 and more websites from next month. the criteria of filtering 500 websites is that they contain or might contain Refused Classification (RC), such as Child Abuse, Sexual Violence, Content related to crime, euthanasia, violence, drug use and promoting terrorist activities would be banned.
The father of the Australian Firewall, Mr. Conroy corroborates with ISP's in Australia to filter the internet. However, with such censorship brings about issues of democracy and human rights. The violation of the basic human rights to access information on internet. Such censorship is said to bring in several controversies, illogical content bans and censorship of websites that are unrelated to content banned by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA).
A look at internet censorship around the world and particuarly the plans for filtering in Australia, considering Conroy's statements and the supposed support of the ISPs.
Talks of Australia joining other nations that have internet censorship. Focus on removing obscene sites and Child pornography. Optus and Telstra willingly censoring sites. Possibly a futile effort and filtering needs to be more thorough.
Comparing Australia with other major countries in both western and eastern to highlight the similarities and differences in censorship on internet. iNet is agreeing on helping Conroy to provide ISP blockage for the censorship (google blog search)