Australia's Online Gambling Filtration System to be mandatory by 2013

Few years ago, the Australian Federal Labor Government proposed a plan – to block people's access to online gambling and Internet content on a secret blacklist. This Labor Government's so-called plan has been changed for three significant times since its original introduction way back in November 2007 as more work needs to be done to perfect the system before it is applied.

According to the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General, the controversial internet filtration system may be mandatory by year 2013. They have been planning on drafting a more complete proposal of the notorious plan to implement a stricter internet filtration system by March 2011.

The purpose of this filtration system would be to block “refused-classification content” or RC, at the ISP level. As a result, all online casino websites in Australia became greatly affected since they are included in this category, as well as sites promoting content, such as child pornography. The full list of sites blocked has not been finished yet and the completed list is expected to be part of the revised proposal by the SCAG due in March 2011.

The list of blacklisted sites will never be made public, but if one were to speculate about its contents, it most likely targets online gambling sites that are operated out of other countries, and which target Australian gamblers without being licensed to do so under Australian gambling law.

Going back on the mid-part of the project, December 15^th 2009 to be more exact, the Labor Government announced the third version of this mandatory ISP-level blocking policy plan stating (contrary to their 2007 election policy) that adults will not be able to opt-out, and that ISPs will NOT be required to even offer to block any adults-only material, i.e. X18+ pornography or R18+. Hence, the mandatory ISP blocking system will be utterly useless for a purpose of protecting children online. The sole purpose is to require ISPs to (attempt to) block adults' access to content that the government deems unsuitable for adults. If implemented, Labor would be the first government in a "western democracy" to mandate that.

The Federal Government has indeed done much effort just to make Australian internet users apply current filtering software with a similar purpose until the broadened version is available. Included in the current filter are some of the RC content sites that offer internet gambling in Australia.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority is also involved in the 2013 filtering plan and is set to receive $400,000 every year to manage the list of RC sites which ISP’s will be using to filter the internet. Also, $800,000 will be given to The Department of Broadband over three years for the development of the toolkit needed to make the filter work.

While this plan has seen several significant delays, 2013 seems to be the realistic date of execution. Once implemented, the blocked sites will be extremely difficult to access considering they are blocked at the ISP level.