How does Australia’s approach compare with other western democracies?
Unlike the situation in countries such as the United Kingdom, Canada and Scandinavian countries, ISPs in Australia have not introduced ISP filtering voluntarily. In the UK, British Telecom (BT), one of the UK’s largest ISPs, provides a filtered service at a wholesale level as well as on a retail basis. Filtering is undertaken using the Internet Watch Foundation list of URLs. While the size of this list fluctuates, it usually contains around 1000 URLs of child sexual abuse material. Filtering is undertaken voluntarily by other ISPs in the UK, with over 95 per cent of connections in the UK filtered at the ISP-level. In Canada, Cybertip.ca maintains and distributes to ISPs a list of URLs hosted outside of the country containing child sexual abuse material. Eight major ISPs in Canada voluntarily block the Cybertip.ca list, providing coverage to almost 90 per cent of Canadian internet subscribers. In Denmark, 19 ISPs voluntarily participate in a scheme covering around 99 per cent of that co
