No frills ISP (Internet Service Provider) Exetel announced on the 28th of April that they would start trialling a mandatory content filtering system. Yesterday afternoon it was announced by the company that the trial was a success and that there was no impact on Internet access to non blocked sites for any Exetel user.

In what came as shock to some end users of the ISP, they decided they would temporarily filter “illegal content” for a period of 1 week as a trial to see whether ISP-level filtering was feasible.

In a forum post from a representative from the company it was warned that it would not be responsible for “moral obligations” or the “right to free-speech”.

This is not a discussion about what it right or wrong about the content filtering, the filter list, or our trial of it. You should use other forums for that – preferably those run by the government.

The company represenatative also added that those wishing to complain should write to their local MP and promise not to vote Labor at the next election.

Any opinions or comments relating to your personal views on government filtering should be directed to your local MP along with your promise that you will not vote Labor at the next election (comments unrelated to actual technical experiences will be deleted from this thread).

The company concluded with the following summary:

This is the result summary:

• 20,000 active hits against the filter list
• no false positives
• no measurable impact on any Exetel router
• no impact on Internet access to non blocked sites for any Exetel user
• there were 56 problems reported that users attributed to the filter trial, each on investigation was a ‘harbour tunnel’ effect
• three people threatened to cancel their Exetel service(s) because of the trial

We were able to determine:

• how we could implement a mandatory non user optional filter system with very little/no disruption
• how we could implement a mandatory user optional filter system with very little/no disruption
• that we could offer a ‘clean feed’ filter system now, as a user pays option (similar to the spam filter) for a price of $5 per month per user
• the cost of a mandatory, non optional filter system would be in the order of $6 per year per user