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They tried implementing a similar system here in Australia, but recently our Communications Minister Stephen Conroy backed down and instead said they would only block sites related to child abuse only after years of public backlash about the filter.

Seeing what has happened in the UK even if it was an accident with The Promo Bay has made me realise that even though a government says it has its peoples interests at heart with a filter, it's all too easy to add a site to a blocklist when it should be a much more complicated and drawn out process that ensures only bad sites get blocked not sites trying to help unsigned artists.



> instead said they would only block sites related to child abuse

Thats how we started here in the UK. It may sound better, but it's simply putting you a bit higher up the slippery slope. We'll see you at the bottom!


It's not the government that expanded filtering use, it was the courts.


Who do you think was responsible for implementing the filter in the first place? The courts may have been responsible for extending it, but there should never have been a filter introduced in the first place to be extended. Filtering has been proven to be very ineffective, expensive and detrimental to an open society. The Internet might have it's grey areas, but filtering doesn't benefit anyone other than the lobbyists acting on behalf of the entertainment industry averse to change.


I'm saying that governments may be sincere in their motives with censorship, and not betray their motives, but other mechanisms may still pervert and corrupt the implementation.

Don't mistake me for someone in favour of filters.




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