Telstra Media’s Justin Milne, Internode’s Simon Hackett and iiNet’s Michael Malone all have their say on ISP filtering in this video. They detail technical, legal and ethical reasons why ISP-level filtering won’t work.
Three majors sinking their teeth in. Ouch.
I do have one small criticism though and it’s to do with Michael Malone’s comment that filtering Refused Classification content might actually work as filtering through a small list of IP addresses or URL’s is viable.
Much of the legal adult pornography available on the Internet today would be considered RC by ACB standards. By no means would a list of RC content be a small list. It would also be impossible to collate accurately because X18+ material and RC material are too similar and would required countless hours of human review.
I understand Malone probably meant Refused Classification in regards to child pornography, but that is only a very small subset of the RC classification. RC material in Australia consists of content that ‘offends against the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults.’ That’s a lot. Bondage videos in particular are often rated RC and and Fallout 3 was refused classification in Australia because of in-game drug use (it might not have been given an R18+ even if the rating existed). There’s of RC content that is legal to possess in Australia, but illegal to sell or exhibit.
