Australian government keeps website blacklist private

Those that are skeptical about government control of the internet may feel conflicted about a new announcement by the Australian government about its mandatory web filter.

Australia's New.com reported that the country's government recently conceded to greater oversight over its list of banned websites but ruled out making the list public.

Senator and communications minister Stephen Conroy says making the list public would undermine what the internet filter policy was designed to achieve.

"Out of all the issues in the filter policy this is the one that's caused me the most thought because a URL address is just that, it's an address", Conroy told ABC Radio. "When you publish a list of titles of books that are banned, or movies that are banned, you don't give access to the materials by producing that list. The problem when you produce a list of URLs is you are actually giving the address of where to go and look".

The article explains that although the blacklisting of child pornography has been accepted, filtering through so-called content refused classification has created a controversy.

The concession to some oversight comes after internet service providers and major websites like Google and Yahoo have criticized the government's filtering policy as heavy-handed.