I’ve been meaning to blog about this for many days, but have not found the time.

The Rudd government is planning (and already doing trials) for an internet blacklist. A mandatory filter, at ISP levels, that will censor whatever the government damn well thinks is illegal or harmful to children.

They had also tried to sell this plan with an option to ‘opt-out’ of this blacklist.

There are two sets of blacklists. One that blocks content that would be deemed harmful to children, and the other, the one you can’t opt-out of, blocks content deemed illegal by the government.

ISPs are up in arms about this, not only because of cost, but it would also severely cripple our internet speeds.

Tax-payers should bloody well be up in arms, too. This filter is currently looking to cost $125.8 million to implement!

Once set up, this filter is out of the hands of Joe Citizen, the government will then be able to add sites to the blacklist. This is in a similar fashion to the Chinese firewall, that has basically further oppressed it’s people.

What does this all mean?

Drugs are illegal - therefore, no school research, no research for a drug user to check up on some facts to avoid overdosing, and it has the potential to accidently block drug awareness and help websites.

And dissidence? Well, that would be considered illegal in the eyes of the internet filter. It will all start with extremist sites, then it will lead to anything that remotely goes against government policy.

Euthanasia will no longer be something we can read about, too.

P2P networks? Nope.

Violent games? May be on the agenda.

Buying exported video games that are refused classification, what will happen then?

If I suddenly post ALLAH AKBAR! Will this site be blocked to Australians? Or any other forum? Will we be pushed to censoring ourselves so that our favourite message boards suddenly don’t appear anymore?

Stephen Conroy - you’re a fucking wanker.