The Australian government agency charged with classifying movies and video games has reportedly been hacked in protest of the nation's controversial ISP-level Internet filtering scheme. The culprits replaced the website's introductory text with a comical message which characterizes the government's censorship program as an attempt to "control and sheepify the nation."

In the all-important war against pictures of boobies on the Internet, the government of Australia has spared no expense. In 2006, after conducting a study which determined that ISP-level filtering was not feasible, the nation spent $116 million to develop Internet filtering software that parents could install on computers. When this software was easily circumvented by children, the government decided to try again with an $89 million ISP-level filtering scheme based on a blacklist devised by the Australian Communication and Media Authority (ACMA).

The ambitious filtering plan, which was announced in 2007 at an event hosted by the Australian Christian Lobby and televised live to 700 churches across the country, looked like a costly way to appease conservative voters rather than a practical approach to shielding children from seeing unclad naughty bits.

The filtering scheme is designed to have two tiers, a mandatory level of filtering that blocks "illegal" content and an optional (opt-out) level of filtering that blocks content which ACMA has determined is only suitable for an adult audience. Concerns about the scope of filtering were raised last year following a call by Australia's conservative Family First party to expand the mandatory tier so that it encompasses legal content.

The filters have consistently been shown to be problematic and suffer from a high volume of false positives. The government has ignored the issue and has attempted to stifle critics. The latest embarrassment for the program came when ACMA's blacklist was published on Wikileaks. A number of legitimate, non-adult websites—including the website of a dentist—were found on the list alongside links to child pornography distributors.

The government initially denied that the leaked lists were legitimate, but later reversed that claim and acknowledged that some items were erroneously included as a result of technical errors.

The hackers hit the classification board's website on Thursday and changed the homepage, leaving the message below, captured by the Australian gaming site Atomic MPC:

This is the text of the message inserted by the attackers:

This site contains information about the boards that have the right to CONTROL YOUR FREEDOMZ. The Classification Board has the right to not just classify content (the name is an ELABORATE TRICK), but also the right to DECIDE WHAT IS AND ISNT APPROPRIATE and BAN CONTENT FROM THE PUBLIC. We are part of an ELABORATE DECEPTION from CHINA to CONTROL AND SHEEPIFY the NATION, to PROTECT THE CHILDREN. All opposers must HATE CHILDREN, and therefore must be KILLED WITH A LARGE MELONS during the PROSECUTION PARTIES IN SEPTEMBER. Come join our ALIEN SPACE PARTY.

The board's website, which resides at classification.gov.au, was quickly taken down. At the time of publication, it is still displaying a "Bad Request (Invalid Hostname)" error message.