CANBERRA, July 2 (Xinhua) -- An Australian taskforce has recommended the nation introduce new counter-terror laws that would give the government greater powers to block access to websites.
The Guardian Australia on Monday night published a report from the Australian taskforce to combat terrorist and extreme violent material online, a panel convened following the Christchurch mosque shootings.
The task force, comprised of telecommunications companies, government representatives, social media representatives and other affected groups, came up with a short-term solution to address the problem of violent content being hosted online.
Under their proposal, internet service providers (ISPs) would block access to the content at the direction of the eSafety commissioner, with landing pages set up to tell users trying to visit the websites in question why they were blocked.
Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison made curbing the spread of violent and extremist content online after the Christchurch attacks, in which 51 people were allegedly killed by Australian man Brenton Tarrant.
The attack was livestreamed on Facebook for 17 minutes and a manifesto outlining the killer's motivations was also uploaded to the internet. Both were shared millions of times.
Shortly after the massacre, Australian ISPs began proactively blocking websites hosting a video of the shooting, an act that was praised by Morrison.
"The ISPs were left in an invidious position post-Christchurch," John Stanton, the chief executive of the Communications Alliance, told the Guardian.
"The government and public praised them for doing the right thing but some site owners were angry about having their sites blocked."
Under the laws proposed by the task force, the eSafety commissioner could issue new notices for websites to be blocked in the event of another Christchurch-style incident, eliminating the legal grey area for ISPs who take the matter into their own hand.
The task force said the law should cover material that depicted violent crime, murder, attempted murder, torture, kidnapping, gore, rape or encourages a terrorist or terrorist group to commit a violent crime.
However, it said that journalists and news organizations had to be exempt from the law.
