But Which ISPs?

Fri, Jul 17, 2009 at 10:25 am Posted in Censorship 6 Comments

I’ve been writing to a lot of people and asking a lot of questions in the last few days. One group I’ve been mailing to is the ISPs, asking them whether they plan to implement the DIA’s internet filter.

Edit: TelstraClear told me on Wednesday the 15th that they weren’t sure whether they would be implementing it, but on Friday the 17th have confirmed that they will be.

ISPs that will implement the DIA filter

ISPs that won’t implement the DIA filter

ISPs that will offer filtered and unfiltered feeds

ISPs on the fence

I’ll be updating this post as more responses come in.

Question: Is there any point in even having a filter run by the DIA when some major ISPs won’t be taking part in it?

I note that at least some of the ISPs already offer their own optional filter to customers such as schools and businesses. This optional filter tends to be a lot broader in coverage than that proposed by the DIA, covering mainstream pornography as well as images of child abuse. Of course, I suspect that many businesses are probably more worried about their staff spending time on Trademe rather than porn sites!

6 Responses to “But Which ISPs?”

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  1. 1Andrew Hedges on Jul 17, 2009 at 11:29 am:

    I wrote to XNet (owned by World Exchange) and asked them not to implement the filter. No response yet. Here’s the text of my email: http://twtlong.com/ten68h

  2. 2thomas on Jul 17, 2009 at 11:39 am:

    Good move, Andrew. The fewer ISPs that participate, the more irrelevant the whole thing becomes.

    I encourage other people to write to their ISPs and ask them not to participate in the DIA internet filtering.

  3. 3Tatjna on Jul 17, 2009 at 12:50 pm:

    Written to TelstraClear.

  4. 4Grant on Jul 17, 2009 at 1:30 pm:

    “TelstraClear … not aware of any sites that had been wrongly blocked”

    Why would they be aware? As I understand it, they pass requests through a transparent proxy and the magic box at the DIA then decides if the URL is clean or not. Are TelstraClear monitoring the results from the filtering?

    Are TelstraClear employees then privy to the list of URL’s that the general public don’t know about?

  5. 5Stu on Jul 17, 2009 at 2:48 pm:

    Undecided as yet.
    ISP opt-in is relatively easy; customer opt-in is harder.

    Tier-1 -2 -3 opt-in opt-out is not clear at this stage. For BGP customers, same scenario as ISP opt-in.

  6. 6some dude. on Jul 20, 2009 at 9:47 pm:

    cheers, thanks a lot for taking your time and writing to all these ISP’s mate, much appreciated.

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