AUSTRALIA‘S mandatory net filter is being primed to block 10,000 websites as part of a blacklist of unspecified “unwanted content”.

The Australian government has recently revealed a scheme to massively increase their internet blacklist from about 1300 websites that have already been identified by the Australian Communications and Media Authority to a whopping 10K websites before the years end.

ISPs will use volunteer subscribers to test various methods of filtering “unwanted” web content. The 6 week pilot program will be launched sometime shortly before Christmas and is expected to end after a 6 week testing period.

This pilot program is mostly aimed at ridding the internet of child pornography and the like, but it also targets so called “unwanted content” which includes not only illegal and adult material, but a lot of R rated content, and even some material rated MA15+.

This topic has stirred up much debate at the Courier-Mail’s website and it appears that a vast majority of the readers there are nothing less than outraged at the governments heavy handed approach to dealing with issues that could as easily be handled with user based filters, parental controls, and good old fashioned supervision.

Pirates caught off the coast of Somalia by Her Majesty’s warships after trying to hijack a cargo ship opened fire on two Royal Navy assault craft full of well trained, well armed, and well prepared commandos. The gunfight that followed left two Somali pirates dead, and a third Yemen pirate dying. According to an article posted on the TIMESONLINE, “by the time the Royal Marines boarded the pirates’ vessel, the enemy had lost the will to fight and surrendered quietly. The Royal Navy described the boarding as “compliant”.

Well done.

Her Majesty’s warship, the HMS Cumberland