Australia mulls mandatory ISP filtering

The Federal Government today announced it will introduce amendments to the Broadcasting Services Act, which will by 2011 require all ISPs to block refused classification-rated material hosted on overseas servers.

As part of the new legislation, the government intends to explore what additional process could be implemented around how websites are added to the government's "Refused Classification" list.

It appears though that the government has already decided how the Refused Classification list will be generated, indicating it would be compiled via "public complaints mechanism". It is not clear yet what this mechanism is. Other sources for the new RC list would include known URLs shared between international agencies.

For more, read "Mandatory ISP filter due mid-2011" from ZDNet Australia.