I know we have lots of people from Oz on the forum, have you all heard about this? You must be outraged by it, I know I would!
Australians may not be able to opt out of the government's Internet filtering initiative like they were originally led to believe. Details have begun to come out about Australia's Cyber-Safety Plan, which aims to block "illegal" content from being accessed within the country, as well as pornographic material inappropriate for children. Right now, the system is in the testing stages, but network engineers are now saying that there's no way to opt out entirely from content filtering.
Assuming this is in fact the way the scheme is implemented in practice, it raises plenty of troubling questions. "Illegal" is a broad definition, leaving users wondering exactly what kinds of content will end up falling prey to the government's apparently mandatory filtering restrictions. Will Big Content be ringing up the Aussie government soon to have tracker sites added to the blacklist? What about sites that discuss topics like at-home bomb making, or something a little less explosive, like DVD decryption tools? And how about those sites that advise users on how to get around the filters? Will various Wikipedia pages be blocked?
Now that it's out in the open, It'll almost certainly be scrapped pretty soon. Looking at my ISP's forum (Topic here), they are not involved in the 'trial'.
As for myself, I'm not outraged personally, because I'm not affected with this in any way, just yet...
There is no such thing as a risk, when you don't have EVERYTHING you want
