Fran Foo | January 08, 2008
THE controversial internet filtering scheme proposed by the federal Government requires a drastic upgrade as it currently would only block a tiny proportion of illegal pornographic websites.
In its current form the scheme would block only about 1000 websites containing child and extreme pornography.
Industry estimates of child pornography sites range from 100,000 to above 30 million.
According to the proposal, first mooted by the Coalition government, the Australian Communications and Media Authority would need to greatly expand its list of banned websites.
Local internet service providers would then have to adhere to the list by blocking the websites in question.
If internet users wanted to have access to certain listed offensive websites, they would have to contact their ISP directly.
At the moment, the ACMA list had 1000 websites, spokesman Donald Robertson confirmed.
One of the drawbacks of the blacklist system is that list is compiled by ACMA based on complaints by the general public. The agency would not move to investigate an illegal website unless it received a complaint.
According to South Australian internet service provider Webshield, ACMA should purchase available software that blocks millions of illegal websites instead of relying on the public.
Webshield managing director Anthony Pillion said: "We have been filtering undesirable websites for three years and we use an American-made software program which has been very effective."
Mr Pillion, who counts 1000 schools and parents as customers, said the software his company employed blocked access to an average of 30,000 websites a second without any sacrifice to broadband performance.
"We use three layers of filtering and there's about a 10-millisecond gap ... it's unnoticeable," he said.
The ISP-based internet filtering plan has drawn the ire of privacy advocates who claim the government is delving into internet censorship while the nation's largest ISP, Telstra BigPond, says parents should be solely responsible for their children's internet activities.
But Bernadette McMenamin, longtime anti-child abuse campaigner and founder of Child Wise, believes the government is on the right track.
"It is beyond belief that some representatives of the Australian ISP industry are reluctant to install filters that would prevent access to child pornography. Surely any decent person would do all they can to protect children," Ms McMenamin said.
She said swift action had to be taken to curb the rise of child pornography as it was one the fastest growing online ventures, generating approximately $US3 billion per year according to published reports.
"We are not asking for pornography to be banned. We're asking for child pornography websites to be banned. There is a vast distinction between the two," Ms McMenamin said.
In late 2006, Child Wise commissioned research house AC Nielsen to conduct a survey of 1497 Australian internet users over the age of 18.
A whopping 83 per cent of respondents said ISPs should block child pornography websites instead of home-based internet filters.
"Sweden, Norway, Denmark and the United Kingdom have ISP-based filters in place blocking child pornography to the majority of internet users in those countries.
"While no ISP filtering system is perfect at least these countries have introduced measures to counter the demand for child pornography," she said.