Australian government calls for live Internet filter trial

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 12 November 2008 01:20

Business IT - Networking

If your ISP is involved and you are surveyed, think twice about giving answers that reflect your feelings about filtering - you probably won't know for sure whether your account was being filtered at the time.

Unless you have a high-speed connection, that is. For some weird reason, the pilot framework only envisages connections ranging from 56Kbps to 12Mbps.

Although "Consideration will also be given to future internet network performance above 12Mbps", it seems incomprehensible that a pilot intended to "test a range of content filtering solutions in a real world
environment" would not include the fastest connections currently available, as they are likely to become increasingly commonplace.

ISPs have until 18 November to submit any questions about the trial, and applications for funded places in the trial close on 8 December.

The pilot will commence before the end of 2008 and conclude sometime in the first half of 2009.

If your ISP does participate, you may to be able to opt out. The testing framework says ISPs must filter the ACMA blacklist for all participating customers, but that "It is highly desirable that there are individual user and/or management controls (to switch filtering on/off)".

Just don't expect that to continue if and when things progress beyond the pilot stage.