Clean Feed to attack the Horde

There are times where I’m proud to be an Australian, with our national sense of humour and mateship, and then there are times like these where I think we truly must be one of the most backward countries on earth.

He's going to hit your interwebs from his epic mount for critical damage

So under the new government proposed internet filter, supposedly to be installed at ISP level, further to not being able to access the most vanilla of porn we’re now also told that apparently we can’t see or purchase any game that’s not suitable for 15 year olds. Seriously? 15 year olds? To put this in perspective, apparently this means Australians shouldn’t play a game targeted for anyone older than HALF of the average gamer’s age.

This is a simple extention of the filter’s denial of anything that’s been “refused classification” under our archaic classification system. Since we lack an R18+ rating, this means any game over MA15+ will be blocked by our filter.

Still don’t see the fuss? Well think about this: Australia as a country has refused classification to MMPORPG games. So if the filter is installed, Australian players of World Of Warcraft can forget playing ever again as the filter bans access to servers.

The saddest thing of all, of course, is that the implementation of the clean feed doesn’t actually mean ANY of these things. As the filter can be sidestepped by any twelve year old with access to Google and the word “proxy”, I feel even more shame about our country that we’re idiot enough to install such an expensive waste of time and resources. In the middle of a global recession of all times.

The article is right, however, when they say this is going to cause backlash of even greater proportions. Hopefully if nothing else, this highlights the need for an R18+ rating in Australia.