A survey on mandatory ISP filtering conducted by one of Australia’s major ISPs, Netspace, has received responses from nearly 10,000 customers.

Asked whether they agree with the Federal Government’s policy to make ISP level filtering mandatory for all Australians, 61% of respondents strongly disagreed, with only 6.3% strongly agreeing.

Question one in the Netspace customer survey mandatory ISP filtering.

Question one in the Netspace customer survey on mandatory ISP filtering.

Over 70% of respondents also strongly disagreed with having to pay more or suffer reduced Internet speeds to facilitate mandatory ISP level filtering.

When asked if they agreed if it is reasonable for consumers to experience “innocent” websites being blocked from viewing in order to facilitate mandatory ISP level filtering, 70.1% of respondents strongly disagreed and 16.6% disagreed.

In response to whether customers would purchase a filtering service or “Clean Feed” from their ISP if it was available, 64.9% of respondents answered no.

The full questions and results are available from NetSpace.

Netspace says upon evaluation of the ISP filtering trial Expression Of Interest, they determined that it contained insufficient detail, unrealistic time frames and unclear funding arrangements.

“We considered these barriers to participating in the trial in any meaningful way,” said Matthew Phillips, Netspace’s Regulatory and Carrier Affairs Manager. “Instead we are contributing to the discussion and debate around internet filtering in another way, by engaging our customers to find out what they want and how they feel about the Government’s ISP Filtering policy.”