Industry calls for website-blocking appeal process
The laws allowing Australian government agencies to block websites should include an appeal process for owners of websites that may be inadvertently blocked in the scheme, the parliamentary committee reviewing the legislation has heard.
During a public hearing last week, Communications Alliance director program management Christiane Gillespie-Jones told the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Infrastructure and Communications that such an appeals process would provide website owners with a channel of recourse that is currently not available.
"Importantly, it should ... include a review mechanism where people who believe that the website has been blocked inadvertently, and they are the owner of the website, can appeal against that block," Gillespie-Jones told the committee. She also argued that other potential mechanisms aimed at making the website-blocking process more transparent, such as so-called "stop pages" providing information as to why a site has been blocked, should be written into the legislation.
