The Internet Industry Association has warned the downside of censoring access could be a reduction in the speed of access to websites.

Mr Rudd promised before the election to force internet service providers to supply a clean feed to households and schools free of "inappropriate" material.

Australians who want uncensored access to the web will have to contact their provider and opt out of the service.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy says the clean feed will be achieved by getting the Communications and Media Authority to prepare a blacklist of unsuitable sites.

Internet Industry Association spokesman Peter Coroneos said the industry is working closely with the Government on the policy to be trialled later this year.

But he warned it could never be completely successful in blocking access to all pornographic sites, just the ones on the blacklist.

If new sites were launched that were not included on the blacklist the clean feed would not restrict access to them, he said. "You've got to be aware of the fallibility of the approach," he warned.

There were millions of pornographic websites and if all of them were included in the blacklist "there is a potential for slow downs in access to occur", he said.

"The more sites you attempt to block the greater the effect on the network performance and speed," he said.

This is because every time you type a request into your search engine it will have to be checked against all the sites on the blacklist, he said.

In Britain where a clean feed policy is being pursued, only between 200 and 1000 child pornography sites have been included on a blacklist.

But if Australia insisted on including millions of general porn sites and others that include violence it could undermine internet users' speed of access to websites, Mr Coroneos said.

A 2005 pilot study carried out by the former Howard government found a clean feed approach could cut down speed of accessing the internet by between 18 to 78 per cent depending on what was being blocked.

The Rudd Government campaigned on a platform promising to speed up Australians' access to the worlwide web by rolling out broadband around the country.

Mr Coroneos said any clean feed policy would have to be carefully balanced.

He said households that really wanted to block out pornographic material would be better off investing in a home based filter system.

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Australian Internet Filter Not Foolproof

AFP, 8/27/07 - The Australian government Monday admitted no Internet child safeguards were foolproof after a teenager claimed he was able to break through its multi-million dollar porn filter in minutes.

Sixteen-year-old Melbourne teenager Tom Wood said it took him less than 30 minutes to override the cyber barrier technology which was launched by Prime Minister John Howard earlier this month.

"I downloaded it on Tuesday to see how good it was, because for 84 million dollars (69 million US), I would have expected a pretty unbreakable filter," he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

"Tried a few things, it took about half an hour and (it) was completely useless," he said, having effectively disabled the software.

Communications Minister Helen Coonan said that the NetAlert filters, which the government has announced will be free for every family, were always going to be challenged by teenagers.

"Sadly, just as a seatbelt will never prevent every fatal car crash, as the government has always maintained, no filter is foolproof," Senator Coonan said.

"But a computer with a filter is infinitely safer than one without."

The company which provided the technology was investigating the unconfirmed hacking report, she added.

The filter system was one of several measures, including an information and education campaign and telephone hotline, announced by the Australian premier earlier this month to make the Internet safer for children and families.

Australian Prime Minister Announces Porn Blocking Plan

ZDNet, 8/13/07 - Australian Prime Minister John Howard has announced a plan by the country's Coalition political parties to clean up Internet porn, in an effort to woo Christian voters.
Protecting Australian Families Online program, which will cost $160 million, is under the auspices of NetAlert, Australia’s Internet safety advisory body. The program will kick in August 20 and include a package of measures that the government says will help parents protect their children from online dangers.

Howard announced the slew of changes last week in a joint Webcast with opposition leader Kevin Rudd, broadcast to 770 churches and watched by an estimated 100,000 Christians.

The lion's share of the cash--$71.8 million--will go into a filtering program offered to individual homes and public libraries. Parents will be able to choose either to install filtering software on their home PCs or to request a "clean" connection from their service provider, which will be responsible for blocking pornographic content at the ISP level.

The government will post a list of approved filtering software providers on its Web site and mandate that all sanctioned vendors update their products as the threat landscape changes.

While individual filters will be available beginning later this month, ISP-level blocking may take some time to implement. The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) is currently planning a trial of ISP-level filtering in Tasmania that will inform the government's decision on a national launch.

The federal government has already examined the potential ISP-level filtering three times, starting in 1999.

Following the most recent trial, Coonan acknowledged problems with the concept saying: "Each report has found significant problems with content filter products operating at the ISP-level...The Australian trials have also found the effect on performance of the Internet by ISP filtering to be substantial and a lack of scalability of the filters to larger ISPs."

NetAlert's Protecting Australian Families Online program will also see publicity campaigns stepped up, including an $18.6 million awareness scheme to "inform parents and (caretakers) of children about online safety issues and provide information about where they can go to receive support and assistance", and 10 new ACMA Internet safety officers who will visit schools to talk about online dangers.

More "Web police" will be added to the Online Child Sex Exploitation Team, which will receive a $36.8 million cash injection to pay 36 new hires in 2007-08, rising to a total of 90 in 2009-10. The Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions will also receive a funding boost to cope with the expected increase in prosecutions resulting from the additional Web police.

Other changes include an extension of the ACMA Blacklist, which includes pornography denied classification by regulators, to cover malicious software and terror sites.

The plan comes in addition to a previously announced government initiatives to curb online pornography. Communications Minister Helen Coonan first unveiled the plan to launch content filters last year, although the program has been beset with delays since then.

Coonan welcomed last week's announcement, saying in a statement: "Unfortunately, no single measure alone can protect children from online harm and, in fact, traditional parenting skills have never been more important."

Australians Get Free Internet Porn Filters

Sydney Morning Herald, 5/13/06 - Australia's 6 million internet subscribers will be given software to filter out pornography for free under a federal government plan to toughen controls on internet content.

Communications Minister Helen Coonan is preparing to launch the service with an injection of funds into the government's NetAlert online safety agency, The Weekend Australian Financial Review reports.

But the government is reluctant to put its stamp of approval on software that may later turn out to have flaws, so it is leaning towards creating a list of software suppliers for consumers to chose from and making them available on the NetAlert site, the paper says.

Australian Politician Wants to Subsidize Porn Filters

Sydney Morning Herald, Sep 3, 2005 - OPPOSITION Leader Kim Beazley has called for a subsidy on the cost of internet filtering so families can better protect their children from violent and pornographic websites.

Mr Beazley said today that as a father and grandfather he was deeply concerned about the type of material children could access unchecked on the internet.

He said good filtering software now sold for about $60.

"The Government should subsidise this with a one-off $30 rebate," he said in a statement.

"There are approximately 1.5 million Australian family computers connected to the internet and Labor calls on the Howard Government to provide this rebate to help families install internet filters. This software can prevent children from accessing violent and pornographic websites and give parents some peace of mind that their children are not being exposed to this highly damaging material."

Federal communications minister Helen Coonan said the Government already required Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to offer filters to parents on request.

She said there is also a $30 million Cybersafe program announced in the last election aimed at helping Australian Federal Police weed out nasty internet content.

"We have also got a very effective organisation called Net Alert which is actually currently conducting a roadshow all around Australia to actually help parents and teachers teach children how to use the internet," she told the Ten network.

"This combination of measures which also understand the enormous costs to ISPs and small business that this kind of proposal would entail will be a better overall outcome for the safety of children on the Internet, which the Government takes very seriously."

$50 Million Will Help Keep Kids From Net Porn

Northern Territory News, 9/3/05 - IT WILL cost less than $50 million to protect Australian children from violent and pornographic internet sites.

And Labor wants the Government to offer parents a $30 rebate to speed up the process.

Industry experts say software to filter out undesirable sites is rapidly improving -- and a good quality program can be had for about $50.

There are an estimated 1.5 million family computers connected to the internet in Australian homes -- and only one third have internet filters.

Based on these figures, it is estimated that it will cost about $50 million to safeguard every Australian child from such images.

A recent Australian Broadcasting Authority study into internet usage found:

MORE than 90 per cent of parents have reported an issue of concern about their child's use of the internet;

ALMOST two thirds of parents say having their child exposed to online pornography is a concern;

TWO in five children have accidentally found a website their parents don't want them not to see and one in five said it had happened more than once.

See...
Australian ISPs Don't Want Porn Filter Trial.

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