Online voting to gauge opinions on Australia’s impending internet filtering scheme indicate a strong feeling against government controlled censorship.

An early result after only a 2 hours showed 97% [7,767 votes] against and is indicitive of the growing public outcry. The Rudd government is moving its agenda ahead regardless.

The government's $128.8 million Cyber Safety policy includes forcing internet service providers to block access to a secret blacklist of website pages identified as ''refused classification'' by the Australian police.

Web pages will be nominated for blacklisting by Australian internet users who come across illegal or ''unacceptable'' websites.   SMH

Senator Conroy has been suggesting from the get go that criticism of his censorship filtering brainwave is the work of pornography lobbyists and voyeurs.  Apparently there has been no word from lobbyists representing the criminal element that might abuse the internet.

The scheme has attracted broad opposition from communications experts, search-engine companies Google and Yahoo!, the federal opposition and members of the nation's intellectual elite.

Critics claim the policy will not result in any meaningful dent in the availability of harmful internet content, will create significant freedom-of-speech issues and will be prone to abuse by politicians.

It seems Senator Conroy won't consider that 97% of Australians are not into pornography or criminal activity and freedom of speech, access to information and the potential for political abuse are very significant issues.

Would a disgruntled Australian franchisor nominate a Blue MauMau block?  Could disgruntled franchisees nominate Franchise Council of Australia website blocking?

Blocking material is not considered to be censorship. This filter is really not changing much, except that the blacklist of website pages will be mandatory.  Senator Conroy

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