Australia's frustration with the Government's push for mandatory Internet filtering is coming to a head. Last night Communications Minister Stephen Conroy appeared on ABC's Q&A and faced a mountain of questions from the Australian public on this scheme - far and away the most questions the ABC have received on any subject. By starving the public of information on the policy and dismissing criticisms with sound bytes about children, the Minister has angered many people, but last night Tony Jones put him in the hot seat and he had to answer some real questions.

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Update 9.55pm: Wikileaks has published a more up-to-date copy of the ACMA blacklist, current as of the 18 March. This list includes abortiontv, wikileaks itself and Philip Nitschke's Poison Pill Handbook as well as a similar smattering of legal material and innocent sites.

The leaking of the ACMA blacklist as reported in the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday and commented on by EFA has provoked a lot of interest and we have received many questions from the public and journalists. Here are a few more comments on the revelation of the blacklist.

I'll address the authenticity of the list in a moment, but the question is almost irrelevant for a couple of reasons, First, a leak of the blacklist is inevitable once it is distributed to every ISP in the country. It may happen tomorrow or a month from now, but the leak will occur and the contents will not be substantially different from the list we have seen on Wikileaks. (more...)

Edit 19/3 4.00pm: The Minister has refuted the authenticity of the list in a media release. Indications are that the leaked list contains the ACMA list plus sites chosen by the filter vendor. In any case, comments about individual sites on the list should therefore be treated with caution.

Electronic Frontiers Australia today hailed the leaking of the government's secret internet blacklist as a "wake-up call for Australians concerned about secret censorship". The blacklist, which appeared on the whistle-blower site Wikileaks, is compiled by the Australian Communications and Media Authority and distributed to the vendors of approved internet filters, but is otherwise secret.

"The leaking of the list has confirmed some of our worst fears," said EFA Vice-Chair Colin Jacobs. "This was bound to happen, especially as mandatory filtering would require the list to be distributed to ISPs all around the country. The Government is now in the unenviable business of compiling and distributing a list which includes salacious and illegal material and publicising those very sites to the world."

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Next week I will be speaking at a forum organised by New Matilda, "The Tangled Web: Beyond an Internet Filter". The abstract reads:

The Federal Government's proposal to block internet sites with a mandatory filter has drawn overwhelming opposition from voices across politics and civil society. So what are the real questions for policy-makers?

These forums explore the ethical, social and political questions raised by government regulation of the internet. With the growing intersection between technology, politics and media, how do existing and proposed classification regimes measure up?

Is filtering inevitable? Or are there better ways to regulate the world wide web?

The forum will be chaired by Peter Black, and will include Senator Scott Ludlam, Irene Graham, and myself, Nic Suzor.

It's a free event on at 6pm, Tuesday 24 March, at QUT. Places are limited, so please RSVP to enquiries(at)newmatilda.com.

I highly encourage anyone in or around Brisbane who is interested in the ongoing mandatory filtering discussion to attend. We will be leaving plenty of time for discussion, and it should be a really interesting evening.

Despite premature celebrations or wishful thinking that the Government are looking for an exit strategy, the Government is powering ahead with its plans to censor Australia's Internet.

On Sunday's edition of Background Briefing on radio national - an excellent and in-depth look at the scheme, available here for download - the Minister could be heard proclaiming the necessity of the scheme, dismissing the critics, and confusing the issue, saying that the filter would protect Australia's children from "'such vile websites as child pornography and the ultra-violent sites" and that Labor made no apology for trying to "block these sites from families' loungerooms and children's bedrooms." These are frightening words for anyone who understands the issues at stake, for they demonstrate some very confused thinking lies at the heart of this policy. If the Minister truly believes that children are seeking out, or being bombarded with child pornography, then there's a dearth of both common sense and proper research in the Ministerial suites.

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