Internet censorship is back again on the agenda; most notably in Australia where the government plans to install a Chinese-style firewall to block certain sites. Australia has often taken a draconian lead in this area and research and experience suggests that filtering doesn’t work on a state level (for a whole bunch of reasons). Filtering should only happen at an individual or community level.
There is a complaints-based system in Australia at a community level that appears to work fine i.e. if an Australian ISP hosts a site that is deemed offensive through a certain number of complaints; then the site may get taken down (this didn’t apply to international sites of course).
Small countries like Australia are often ‘innovative’ (for better or worse) and many of the policies of Australia (ie. the immigration system etc.) have been taken up by Britain, so it is worth being aware of the developments. Plus the UK in particular has some pretty lax privacy regulation so I can see some battles looming. If ‘civil unrest’ is one of the results from the economic downturn (as it has been in the past), then the Web 2 world could become yet another battle ground and states may respond with many of the tools their disposal (i.e. censorship and monitoring).
