Additional details emerging from Australia about its multi-million dollar Cyber-Safety Plan hint at the presence of a master blacklist of illegal content. The plan will be enforced at the ISP level and applied to all users so no one can "opt-out."  As I was working on that particular piece of news, I came across an indignant comment. The person said, "If the contents are illegal, then why do you care that you can't opt-out of the filter?"

Yes, why indeed? The issue is one of censorship.

You are probably not aware, but Singapore has its own blacklist of banned websites too. The list was established many years ago--at a time when the World Wide Web was just coming into existence--in an effort to protect citizens from "undesirable" influences like pornography, a long list of sites deemed "inappropriate" was compiled and blocked at the ISP level. Singapore was there first.

Today, the original sites on the blacklist, such as Playboy, still cannot be accessed. To the best of my knowledge however, the blacklist is no longer being maintained. Without a doubt, this is due to the exponential increase in the number of sites on the Internet since the list was formed. In effect, the blacklist idea was quietly sidelined into oblivion.

Of course, I have no doubt that the system implemented in Australia will be more robust and technologically superior in every way. At the end of the day however, someone still has to decide which sites will be included in the blacklist.

My question to that is: Is this sustainable? - Paul