Australian government calls for live Internet filter trial

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 12 November 2008 01:20

Business IT - Networking

The Australian government has invited Internet service providers to join a live trial of content filtering. But will ISPs get on board?

Even though content filtering was an established part of ALP policy well before the last election, the topic has proved contentious, with strong views being expressed on each side of the argument.

In June, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) published its report to communications minister Senator Stephen Conroy on a laboratory trial of filtering products. It found that the products tested had successful blocking rates between 88 and 97 percent of relevant content, overblocking (blocking content that should not be blocked) rates of between one and eight percent, and caused performance degradation of between two and 87 percent.

Most of the filters were unable to block content carried by non-web protocols.

Despite these less than stellar results, the government is going ahead with a live pilot of ISP-level content filtering.

The Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy wants the pilot - which will be run by Enix TestLab - to begin before the end of the year, "but preferably before 24 December 2008."

Documents issued by the department show that there will be two tiers of filtering. The mandatory part of the trial involves enforce the ACMA blacklist of prohibited URLs, but ISPs will also be allowed to provide "additional content filtering e.g. dynamic filtering of other unwanted internet content and non web based applications (such as peer-to-peer networks)."

What's on the blacklist? See page 2.