Australian BlackList released to the world

Tags: Great Firewall of Australia, Internet Filtering, Government Stupidity

Well, no surprises there. The Australian list of blocked sites is supposedly now in the wild - and all reports I've seen thus far indicate it's correct, at least for the most part.

ACMA has come down pretty hard on sites linking to blocked material and since the published list is sure to contain at least one site that really IS on the blacklist, I can't in good conscience link to the leaked list.

But I'm thinking that if you searched Google for it, you'd find it on a community edited site (a wiki) containing government and corporate leaks. Possibly even run by a non-profit org.

As before, my key concerns are that there's no way to request that you be removed from the list, and that the list contains sites that are, at least at this moment in time, NOT illegal, X rated or R rated. Many of the sites apparently link to dead pages or items, and thus return 404's. Others seem to be miscategorized - a dentist, a tourist operator.

Government efficiency and efficacy at its finest.

References: OCAU, Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, WhirlPool.

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