14 DAY TRIAL // What has already happened in other countries around the world, including here China, could also happen in Australia, as the local government wants to provide a subsidy to the country's ISPs in order to install filters and restrict access to certain online content, CNET Australia reported.
The Internet Service Providers will have to restrict the access of their customers to a list of websites written by the Australian Communications and Media Authority, The Laymans Guide added in a blog post. According to CNET Australia, the country's government has already granted a AU$125.8 million budget, especially supposed to help the local authorities increase the web security of the residents, part of this amount of money being destined to the Australian ISPs.
As mentioned, such restrictions already exist in some countries and China is the best example when it comes to censorship and web filtering. China's efforts to remove inappropriate content have also been criticized, most users pointing to freedom of speech and human rights but, even so, some bloggers were sent to the judge and then to prison due to the blog posts they have published on the Internet. Recently, China had another initiative to improve the security of the residents, designing a virtual cop that appears on the country's main portals and tries to keep visitors on the safe side by giving them all sorts of advices.
Back to Australia, it's interesting to see what "inappropriate content" means for the local authorities because, beside child abuse and other pornographic websites, other pages may also be shut down. For instance, just like The Laymans Guide points, Wikipedia, the online open source encyclopedia, which currently has millions of articles on a large number of topics, may be also banned due to the content published on the page. Besides that, YouTube may suffer the same fate in case clips considered to be inappropriate appear on the website. It's all up to the government from now on...