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Telecoms giant Telstra has opted not to participate in live trials of the government’s planned web content filter, which is expected to slow down the entire country’s internet connection.
Telstra came to the decision after deciding it was unpopular enough without helping to slow down and partially block the internet.
Federal Communications Minister Stephen Conroy will push ahead with the blocking plan, however. Authorities have already identified 1300 illegal websites, while Senator Conroy’s own research has uncovered another dozen or so marked “barely legal”.
Labor strategists are planning to expand the banned list to include some 10,000 sites, most likely including GroceryChoice, a perverted site for ministers with a humiliation fetish.
Not content to slow down the whole network, Labor is also planning to jam the office printer and somehow break the shared address book in Outlook.
But with other ISPs, led by Optus, still involved in the trial, Australian internet users should look forward to a cleaner, slower internet in the near future. The government has yet to announce whether you’ll be allowed to keep the porn you’ve already downloaded.
Child-development experts say that the content filter will only absolve parents of responsibility for keeping an eye on their children. Children themselves say that if the Federal Government wants them to be supervised by a computer system, it might as well be an Xbox 360.
Telstra CEO Sol Trujillo is always looking at options to make his telco even less popular, but censoring and slowing the internet isn't one of them.
