Now, Australia is planning to bring the strictness with which they view films and television to the Internet.
Content that will be banned from cyberspace ranges from child pornography to discussions on euthanasia.
There is also new legislation that is being pushed by the Labor government to compel ISPs to keep track of the activities of their subscribers. It has been alleged that the government is trying to get a hold of the web browsing history of its citizens.
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)
The Australian Government for the first time since their election may be considering optional internet censorship, the original policy they were elected on. Australian Minister for Censorship Stephen Conroy today (Tuesday local time) told a Senate estimates committee that the "Great Firewall of Australia" could be implemented by a voluntary industry code, as opposed to legislation.