Great Aussie firewall claims first victim
Found on The Register on Monday, 16 March 2009
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.
Nothing's worse than censorship; except bad censorship. That system is designed to be abused and trolled. Looks like we'll hear lots more about that soon. In fact, we already do: other sources report that Wikileaks made it onto the blocklist too.