A taskforce made up of tech companies like Facebook, Microsoft, Google and Amazon, alongside Australian ISPs, has proposed specific laws be put in place giving the country’s eSafety Commissioner more power to block sites sharing malicious and abhorrent violent content online. This proposal comes in the wake of the Christchurch shootings in March when ISPs began proactively blocking websites hosting the video or sharing the shooter’s manifesto. They relied on a vague subsection of the 1997 Telecommunications Act which gives the eSafety Commissioner the power to issue written directives to ISPs.
Now, however, the taskforce wants more concrete legislation, asking the government to develop a “protocol [that] would set out the arrangements and process for implementing blocks of websites hosting offending content, including the means of determining which ISPs would…
