More ACMA Blacklist Opinion

After all the rumpus that surrounded the leaked ACMA internet blacklist (which included perfectly harmless and legal gambling sites such as Betfair and poker based information portals) that was leaked onto the web just a couple of weeks ago, the government has come up with a novel excuse to cover up their incompetence.

The Sydney Morning Herald quoted that the list “cast serious doubt on the Australian Government’s ability to filter the internet”

You may have seen the TV programme aired a few nights ago in which the Aussie communications minister, Stephen Conroy, eventually admitted that it was a serious error to allow the leaked blacklist of potentially blocked websites.

If you did miss all the controversy when the list was leaked – the problem many Aussie citizens have with the list is that many of the sites listed were perfectly legal… Mr Conroy’s explanation for this was that a “Russian Mob” that had added small businesses to the list by adding strange content to their sites.

However the debate will go on as to whether the government is up to the task to of blocking sites at an ISP level and whether they will actually target the sort of sites everyone would want banned or whether they’ll end up with a load of sites that are actually perfectly legitimate such as online poker, gambling and casino information sites.