Porn Down Under

"The Internet industry has got to be brought back to the real world; they're just like any other industry but they've got away with murder because they've convinced politicians that they've saved the world," Australian Prime Minister John Howard said.

Howard wants to force ISPs to filter content for their users, following the release yesterday of a report by an Australian think tank concluding that "regulation of pornography is manifestly failing."

The ISPs say filtering should be left up to parents.

"For industry people to dump it on parents is outrageous," Howard said, describing the position of ISPs in general as a "commercially driven morality."

Meanwhile in the U.S.: Tomorrow the Supreme Court considers the government's appeal of a lower court decision which found a federal law requiring public libraries to filter content to be unconstitutional.