This is something that is happening in Aus that may interest (or enrage) some of you guys.

We have a senator called Senator Conroy that is trying to have a mandatory internet filter enforced by ALL Aus isp's. Basically he is stating that it will be used only to block Illegal content and hiding behind that it's to protect the children as it will attempt to block child porn.

This filter will not be able to block bit torrent / usenet. Also it is implyed that the filter will be scann https packets to determine if they are needed to be blocked.

The scope for blocking can be increased to include 'illegal' activities such as euthenasia sites, pro-anerexisa site, drug sites etc.
It is not becoming dubbed 'The great fireall of Australia'.

There have been online polls that are getting about 85 - 90 % of votes opposed to this filter.

This will effectivley censor the internet for all Aussies.

This is the start of a thread on an Australian forum (around 200+ relplies in a few days)

What Happened to ISP Level Filtering? - Broadband - Whirlpool Broadband Forums

Most of the idea to block illegal and child porn etc sites doesn't seem to bad. However with testing currently done we would be expecting anywhere between 30 - 70% degredation in internet speed. Depending on the accuracy of the filters in place. at 30% we are looking at a false positive / negative rate of 15% and at 70% degradation we are looking at a 3% false positive / negative rate.

Which will be thousands of errors per second.

They are trying to push for a live trial by the end of the year.

The other 2 main issues are price and censorship of what is meant to be a neutral place.

ISP's will have to drastically increase call centre staffing to cope with the demand of incoming calls and errors also the cost of installing and maintaining such a system will have to be covered by the customer.

Here a few links on interviews and details of what is happening.

Interview with ?Bullied? Network Engineer on Australian Gov?t Net FiltersNetwork Performance Blog, Network Performance Management News, Tutorials, Resources - Network Performance Blog
Mark Newton is the network engineer for internode one of australias biggest ISP's.

Currently the information that has been released by the gov is minimalistic to say the least. Also when this was first announced (2 days before and election) we were advised that anyone could just opt-out.

A few news links

Australia's compulsory internet filtering 'costly, ineffective' | NEWS.com.au

Filter to cause World Wide Wait | Australian IT

Internet filter to cause World Wide Wait for Aussies | The Courier-Mail

Tech Wired Australia - An Australian Technology Blog and Podcast Interview with Colin Jacobs of Electronic Frontiers Australia Re: Australian Internet Filter

And for more reading...

No Clean Feed - Stop Internet Censorship in Australia

And this is a document on a trail that was done not to long ago.
http://www.acma.gov.au/webwr/_assets...ial-report.pdf