Broadband discussion forum Whirlpool was threatened with an A$11,000 a day fine by the Australian Communications and Media Authority because a commenter posted a link to an anti-abortion website which appeared on the regulator's list of websites banned in Australia.

But the story gets murkier - ACMA added the website to its secret blacklist after receiving a complaint about one page on the site from someone in Melbourne with the user name Foad.

Foad's intention was to highlight the stupidity of the blacklist idea by getting a site which had nothing to do with child sexual abuse added to the list. Foad succeeded.

In the last five months the Italian Parliament has accelerated the legislation against the Internet. Probably because it's the last media that is out of control in Italy after out of seven National TV's 3 are owned by the Prime Minister, 3 are State owned and controlled by the Government (read: Prime Minister), and all major newspapers are financed by the State.

If it is true that Levi was attempting to kill the bloggers, then Cassinelli first screws them, making as if he is trying to help them and then he kills them having the same objective: get bloggers to register with the Government.

Then Senator D'Alia comes along wanting to black out the Internet.

Now Carlucci, ex show girl now member of Parliament for the right wing, is proposing to a law to forbid to publish any content in any form on line anonymously.

Germany's Minister for Families has announced a legislative initiative to force ISPs to implement a government-mandated block list (in English), which will be updated daily.

As usual, this is being brought in under the 'fight child porn' guise. The minister is quoted as saying: 'We must not water down the problem' in reply to being challenged that this law and technology could be used to censor other content. She then went on to say: 'I can't know what wishes and plans future governments will develop.'

Vietnam has approved new regulations banning bloggers from discussing subjects the government deems sensitive or inappropriate and requiring them to limit their writings to personal issues.

The rules, which were approved Dec. 18, attempt to rein in Vietnam's booming blogosphere. It has become an alternative source of news for many in the communist country, where the media is state-controlled.

With the story earlier this week about Australia's Broadband Minister, Stephen Conroy, considering adding BitTorrent filtering to the country's ISP filtering/censorship program, it was notable that Conroy said he was paying close attention to the commentary about the program online.

While that post about BitTorrent filtering got a lot of attention, it also got a ton of comments, and now Conroy and his team are turning off their blog and closing down the comments.

China appears to have banned a number of foreign websites, including the BBC's Chinese language news site and Voice of America in Chinese.

The sites had been unblocked after journalists attending the Beijing Olympics complained that the government was censoring sites deemed sensitive.

More censorship and increased internal security are expected in 2009, our correspondent adds.

After some research by Wikipedians, it appears that the image of the 1970s LP cover art of the Scorpions' 'Virgin Killer' album has been blocked because it was judged to be 'child pornography,' and all other attempts to access Wikimedia foundation sites from these ISPs are being proxied to only a few IP addresses.

The filter is fairly easy to circumvent simply by viewing the article in some other languages, or by logging in on the secure version of Wikipedia.

The company held extensive trials with the system, without letting users know that their clickstream data was being sold to advertisers in order to do more targeted advertising.

BT has apparently banned discussion of Phorm on its forums and erased earlier forum discussions about the technology. How's that for openness?

The only reason to erase these discussions is if BT knows that what's it's doing is highly questionable, and BT would rather not have to explain itself.

A German Member of parliament for a left-wing party, Lutz Heilmann, has obtained a preliminary injunction against the local chapter of the Wikimedia foundation, Wikimedia Deutschland e.V..

Apparently Heilmann is not happy with the fact that his Wikipedia article contains information on his work for the former GDR Stasi, the much-hated internal secret service.

ISP filtering is the blocking of certain sites which the government deems illegal or inappropriate, and is the central plank of the Rudd government's "Plan for Cyber-Safety".

The aim, he said, was to create a safer online environment for Australian children.

Senator Conroy has since indicated that there would be a two-tier system: a mandatory one that would block all "illegal material" and an optional tier that would block material deemed unsuitable for children, such as pornography.