Watchful eye better than Web filters

25.05.2009
The federal government's will be outpaced by the emergence of offensive Web pages and won't stop offensive material appearing in e-mail inboxes, according to the Internet Society of Australia.

The Web filters are part of the government's $128 million Plan for Cyber Safety and are undergoing a series of six week trials with eight Internet Service Providers.

Internet Society of Australia president Tony Hill said it is up to parents, not the Web filters, to prevent children from being exposed to graphic material.

His comments follow reports by the that violent sexual acts were falsely edited into a Wikipedia entry on the novel Mrs Frisby And The Rats Of NIMH, which is listed prescribed reading for year 5 to 9 students.

"Filtering is often seen as the total solution, but won't solve all problems. It wouldn't stop children handing over personal information in chat rooms, and offensive content in e-mails," Hill said.

"It is very hard for a manual process to keep up with the creation of pages on the Internet - blacklists tend to not cover the full range of offensive or illegal material.