[LINK] ACMA blacklist (was Re: www.classification.gov.au haxored)

[Stilgherrian]

On 26/03/2009, at 11:52 PM, Andy Farkas wrote:
> When I said "... that blocking things on the list (are they actually
> blocked? And if so, how?) ..." what I was really trying to ask, is the
> list *currently* being blocked in any way, and if so, how?
> Or is it (currently) just a list with URLs you are not supposed to  
> view?

The ACMA blacklist contains "prohibited" and "potentially prohibited"  
content which is hosted outside Australia. (If it's hosted within  
Australia, ACMA issues a takedown notice to the hosting provider  
instead.) The list is provided to vendors of approved Internet  
filters, but there's no "compulsory" aspect to it.

The vendors presumably incorporate it into their own blacklists, but  
otherwise nothing much happens with it (except that it gets leaked).

The Rudd government's policy is (at least according to last week's  
reading) that ISPs would censor out everything in the blacklist on a  
mandatory basis for all Australians.

This week's reading, following growing public awareness that it's not  
just the "very nasty" stuff on the blacklist but anything rated MA15+  
without an age-verification mechanism, is that the mandatory filtering  
will apply only to the Refused Classification (RC) items on the list.

In months gone by, the policy has thrown around words like "harmful"  
and "inappropriate", without defining them.

Basically, they're making it up as they go along.

Stil



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