Family First Senator Steve Fielding wants hardcore pornography and fetish material blocked under the Government’s plans to filter the internet, sparking renewed fears the censorship could be expanded well beyond “illegal material”.

Net filters may block porn and gambling sites (The Age)

I was going to go on a rant about internet filters, which aren’t only offensive to my personal morals but are also impossible to operate effectively, but Electronic Frontiers Australia put it much better than I could’ve:

The clean-feed, if attempted, will be a technical disaster. The Internet does not work in a manner that would let a filter be effective, and the World Wide Web contains far more content than could ever be effectively rated by a Government organisation. The host of technical hurdles include:

1. Like asking Australia Post to filter out objectionable letters, a filter would require ISPs to examine all web traffic, causing enormous expense and technical headaches.
2. A filter will slow Internet access down by up to 80% according to a Government report.
3. Even the most accurate software the Government has tested would incorrectly block 10,000 sites in every million.
4. The ACMA would be overwhelmed with the task of maintaining a blacklist. Millions of web sites, with the list changing on a daily basis, would need to be monitored by Australian bureaucrats - an impossible task.
5. Only illegal material published on web sites could be targeted, completely missing other methods of distribution such as BitTorrent.
6. Any determined user - including children - could bypass the filter quickly using an anonymizer service, open proxy, or VPN connection.
7. The clean feed would be less customisable and effective than a PC-based filter.

In short, as the best experts in the country unanimously agree, Conroy’s plan does not make sense technically.

No Clean Feed