Is Conroy’s plan dead?
Stephen Conroy’s office just sent out a media release on the “Outcome of consultations on Transparency and Accountability for ISP Filtering of RC content”.
The release talks about a “suite of measures [that] will help the public have confidence that only the content specified by the legislation is being blocked’’. These measures are the same or similar to those that have been spoken about before: [quote]
• an annual review of the RC Content list by an independent expert who will be appointed in consultation with industry;
• clear avenues for appeal of classification decisions;
• that all content identified on the basis of a public complaint be classified by the Classification Board under the National Classification Scheme; and
• that affected parties have the ability to have decisions reviewed by the Classification Review Board;
But added into the release is this:
“The Government also announced it will recommend a review of the Refused Classification guidelines to the States and Territories and welcomed support from the major Internet Service Providers to block a list of child abuse URLs.”
And then later in a section titled: “Review of Refused Classification” this bombshell is dropped:
“As the Government’s mandatory ISP filtering policy is underpinned by the strength of our classification system, the legal obligation to commence mandatory ISP filtering will not be imposed until the review is completed.”
Therefore ISP filtering will not be mandatory until after a review that is only ‘recommended’ and outside the control of the ACMA or the Federal Government.
It sounds to me that the filter is dead, and good riddance to it.
Media release: http://www.minister.dbcde.gov.au/media/media_releases/2010/068
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