Australian ISPs to block more than 500 sites
Two of Australia’s largest internet service providers (ISPs) have agreed to block over 500 websites, it was announced. Telstra and Optus - by far the largest ISPs in Australia - as well as smaller ISPs itExtreme and Webshield, have decided to block all websites listed on the Australian Communications and Media Authority’s ‘Refused Classification’ (RC) list of offending websites.
Websites that are put on the RC list contain material that is banned for ‘sale, hire or public exhibition,’ because the content contains ‘matters of sex, drugs misuse or addiction, crime, cruelty, violence or revolting or abhorrent phenomena in such a way that they offend against the standard of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults’.
The Australian Government has made a number of failed attempts to introduce internet filters in order to fight child pornography, extreme violence and illegal gambling. This latest move by Australia’s largest ISPs means that ‘most Australian internet users will have their web access censored,’ the Australian news website news.com.au wrote.
