Coming to a broadband connection near you!

The Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) has been trialling Internet filtering in conjunction with several New Zealand ISPs.  This in itself is little known, and even more so is that the DIA is about to fully implement it.

Censorship of the Internet is currently being done under the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act 1993 which automatically bans ‘objectionable’ publications.  The DIA maintains a list of banned sites that are ‘routed’ to participating ISPs.  When an attempt is made to access a banned site, the ISP diverts the request to the DIA’s server where it logs the requestors Internet address.  The scheme is currently voluntary for ISPs as there is no law to enforce it. 

Many businesses filter the Internet provided to staff – banning sites and content that is not essential to workplace productivity – such as various social networking media and file-sharing protocols.  This is normally done for commercial purposes and for protecting a limited and essential business resource.

NATCOM will not opt in to the scheme in belief of Open Internet.  Instead, we will leave the decision to filter the Internet with our business customers.  At NATCOM, we include our SLAM™ Firewall service free with all of our fibre Internet services.  Content filtering in SLAM™ is optional and in it, a business can easily decide what they want to filter, if anything at all.