The Australian government has backed off its plan to impose a nationwide Internet content filter that would go far beyond child sex abuse and cover all material that is "refused classification" by Australian censors. The national filter will now be delayed for at least a year while Broadband Minister Stephen Conroy oversees a major consultation on transparency and accountability measures for the system.

What caused the climbdown? Complaints. Everyone from Google to Electronic Frontiers Australia to the Australian Christian Lobby had told the government that, for such a system to work, the secret blacklist had to earn public trust.

"The public must be assured that the processes adopted do not lead to outcomes that undermine the entire policy, such as inadvertently placing innocuous material on the RC Content List," said the Christian Lobby.

Conroy has finally bowed to the pressure. "The public needs to have confidence that the URLs on the list, and the process by which they get there, is independent, rigorous, free from interference or influence and enables content and site owners access to appropriate review mechanisms," he said today in a statement.

The upcoming review will examine Australia's "refused classification" (RC) list to make sure that it "adequately reflects community standards."

While Conroy says that RC includes "child abuse material, bestiality, extreme violence including rape, detailed instruction in crime or drug use, and incitement of a terrorist act," the category can be quite broad. For instance, Google's complaint cited a report by three Australian professors which noted that RC material could include "socially and politically controversial material" regarding drug use, abortion, and euthanasia.

Because Australia's constitution does not contain blanket support for freedom of expression, instead offering a more limited freedom of political discourse), Google argued that "there is a significant risk that filtering applied today to RC content could readily be extended by future governments to other forms of expression, whether related to sexual content or violence or not."

In addition to the RC review, the government has agreed to a set of accountability measures: those affected by a block can appeal the ruling, for one thing, and the list will be reviewed once a year by an independent auditor suggested by ISPs.

For now, the major ISPs Telstra, Optus, and Primus have all agreed to block a set of more specific child sex abuse URLs. Australia will also beef up this list with lists used by other countries, such as the UK's Internet Watch Foundation.

The national content filter may still arrive, but it won't be in place until 2011 at the earliest. That's not good enough for groups like Electronic Frontiers Australia, which would really prefer the filter to go away completely.

"Applying a classification scheme designed for books and movies to the internet was never going to work. Altering the definition of one category won't change the fact that the government will never, ever, be able to review enough web pages to make any difference to anyone," said EFA Chair Colin Jacobs.

"The Minister had an excellent chance today to let the filter die a natural death. Instead they've left the ailing policy on life support for another year."