IT IS STARTING to look like the Australian government is going to lose the chance to censor internet sites that it does not like.
Opposition to the idea, which will turn the Australian internet into a nanny state, is growing and it now looks like ISPs are threatening to boycott the idea.
The government has been pushing the idea of filtering with the age-old idea of protecting children from everything and the nation from terrorists. However what it apparently didn’t realise is that Western Societies are not that keen on censorship these days... for any reason.
For the scheme to go ahead, it needs the support of the Green party, and the looney religious nutters who want to use it to ban porn or anything else that is not in their interpretation of the Bible.
But the Greens have said that the proposal is "daft".
Spokeshippie Scott Ludlam told The Age yesterday that the policy was technically difficult and very expensive for taxpayers.
Ludlam said server-level filtering imposed a kind of censorship that "runs counter to what the internet is all about", adding that the Government would be better investing the filtering money in law enforcement and education.
Communications Minister Stephen Conroy is now saying that he does not want to set up a Great FireWall of China, or Great Rabbit Proof Fence, since it is Australian.
All he wants to do is protect the children from paedophiles he said.