Reporting from CNET News, Jo Best writes that Australia is making a country-wide push to block pornography at the ISP-level to clean up the Internet. This is a huge and drastic move for an entire country to be filtering their Internet.
NetAlert’s Protecting Australian Families Online program will also see publicity campaigns stepped up, including an $18.6 million awareness scheme to “inform parents and (caretakers) of children about online safety issues and provide information about where they can go to receive support and assistance”, and 10 new ACMA Internet safety officers who will visit schools to talk about online dangers.
The big issue that the country is facing points directly at children and the lack of censorship among pornographic websites. There is absolutely no clear and cut way for sites to do age-verification for anyone — even those that are legally allowed to view it.
This transition for Australia should see a serious ripple effect among other countries around the world. There has been a huge battle with the ICANN about creating the dot xxx extension, yet nothing has actually moved forward with the case. The last article even mentioned about the extension dates back to over a year ago, May 2006.