No Porn-Free Internet for Australian Teenagers

A 53-million-euro software filter aimed to protect the youth from online pornography has been declared a failure by the Australian government. From the Sydney Morning Herald:

Sixteen-year-old Tom Wood, aka "The Porn Cracker", who shot to national prominence when he showed the new NetAlert filters could be bypassed by any savvy teenager in a matter of minutes, said the scheme had been a waste of time and money.

"Although these are amongst the best PC-based filters available, it didn’t take long for teens to work out how to bypass them," said the schoolboy with a passion for cyber-safety.

Australian politicians are idiots if they think the government could ever deny teenage boys access to online pornography. I would suggest information instead. In most cases, pornography is nothing but harmless sexual entertainment. However, there is a lot of disturbing pornography on the Internet, so the best thing a parent responsible for a teenager can do is to calmly inform about this. The teenager will find it sooner or later anyway.