Australia Doesn't Have To Release Banned URL List

Legal Issues

from the as-if-that-helps dept

I’m constantly amazed at people who continue to think “hiding” stuff is a way to protect people. An Australian tribunal has decided that the folks in Australia who officially censor the internet don’t have to reveal the list of censored URLs. They claim that doing so will “lead a person to content that shows child pornography, pedophilia or child abuse”. It also lets Australia decide to block sites they deem inappropriate that might actually be very useful for people to see. Of course, they might not be doing this – but since no one other than the censors get to see the list, we’ll never know. It’s not as if people were trying to get their hands on the list in order to find out where they should go to get their child porn. They were simply trying to put some sort of check on the censors to make sure they were doing their job properly. That seems like a completely reasonable request.